Unfortunately, we left and went to the other party.  I knew we were making a bad decision, but I took off with the rest of the crew hoping for the best.  On the way to the party it was revealed that we were going to a 70′s party… GAME OVER.  At that point I knew we were on a death mission.  We stayed at the 70′s party for 15 minutes before we bailed and went to the bar down the road all still wondering why we left the shindig at the warehouse.  Moral of the story: Stay where the free booze, good music and lovely ladies are… no exceptions.

Anyways, in honor of good party music and staying with an “8″ I present to you “Girl Talk” which will get even the shittiest party started… enjoy.

It looked like a crayon vomited on a canvas in geometrical shapes.  But I digress…  One of my girlfriend’s friends came over and remarked at how awful the painting looked and wondered aloud why the fuck we would ever put something so ugly up at the house.  Then she continued on-and-on moving from insulting the painting to insulting the painter, concluding by asking, “Who the fuck is Jurgen Peters????”  I would not stand for someone insulting my interior decorating style so I replied “Maybe YOU are fucking Jurgen Peters.”  She was not to happy with this assertion.  This back-and-forth marked the beginning of a vicious campaign she and I had against each other where would we not call each other anything but Jurgen.  She had me in her phone as Jurgen, I would get everyone else to call her that etc .  I pains me to say this but eventually she won the battle.  I gave up and everyone was calling my Jurgen including my girlfriend.  I couldn’t stand for this, so I did the only thing that I could, name the cat Jurgen.  There can’t be 2 Jurgen’s, right?”  **end sidenote**  Looking back at it, he was with me throughout my San Diego experience and was woven into the fabric of my life since I had moved from Chicago.  He has sat in the laps of all of the girls I had dated over the years and been slinking around in background of pictures of every party I had thrown.  He was loyal and unlike every other cat I have encountered.  He was always down to chill and he was never a pain in the ass.  In short, he took care of me and I took care of him.

That leads up to when I had decided that I wanted to take a new job opportunity in Sydney.  I made the decision not to take him with me because of the 6 month quarantine that would be required before I could take possession of him in Sydney.  I thought that would have been a form of abuse.  I wanted him with me.  I knew with all of the newness Sydney would bring me it would be great to have some familiarity with Jurgen there.  I couldn’t do that to him though.  I’m sure that they take great care of the animals in quarantine but it would have been prison for him and I didn’t want to put him through that, even though I really would have liked to have him out here with me.  Instead, I left him with a close friend in San Diego who just happens to be the person that I declared was “Jurgen Peters” 8 years earlier.

Flash forward to last night when I got a text from her husband asking me to call right away.  I knew that there was something wrong.  I either thought something terrible happened with my friend or my cat.  It turned out to be the latter.  Jurgen apparently had a degenerative heart disease that was a ticking time bomb inside him since he was born.  He had an embolism that pretty much paralyzed the back half of his body.  I spoke with my friends, they said it was bad.  I then spoke to the vet and she said the humane thing to do was to put him down.  After that I talked to my friend a bit told her to take the vet’s advice and hung up the phone.  I was very upset.  Things don’t usually bother me, I am always on an even keel, but this impacted me.  Jurgen represented San Diego and my life there and to have him taken away from me was jarring.

My friend is gone now.  There is something about endings that impacts everyone differently.  Sometimes an ending is unwanted, it leaves us wanting more or feeling like things are still unfinished.  Sometimes an ending is all we are looking forward too and we anticipate with every fiber of our being.  In any case, we are faced with a series of endings throughout life.  Everything we do and experience is an ending in itself, each second ticks away, never to be attained again.  This is not something to be sad about.  Each second that we move forward is a second of potential that is taken away, however, for every second of potential that is exhausted there is a second of experience put in its place.  His death has had me thinking the past 24 hours about my experiences, not just with him, but in San Diego as a whole.  I am thankful for that time, the circumstances and people that led me to that path in life.  I  am still sad, because this type of ending is never pleasant but that sadness is tempered by the experiences that will occupy the space of that loss from now on.

This is not meant to be some sappy “live life to its fullest” type monologue, fuck that.  I have already written about my thoughts on the notion that “everything happens for a reason“.  There may be no grand “reason” but everything does happen, and when we as humans perceive that something has ended we should look back with gratitude on our experiences rather than with disappointment at the loss of potentiality.  I will be flying back to San Diego in 2 weeks and instead of seeing my friend I will be spreading his ashes.  I am not mad that he is gone, I am thankful that I had him and for all of the people who knew him and in turn, me.

Wow… that was a little more intense than I expected for a cat eulogy, I guess I am a pussy.  Anyways, I will end on a glorifying note for Jurgen’s sake.  Here is some footage that I recorded the day before I left San Diego as proof that Jurgen is the most talented cat this planet has ever seen.

I miss you, buddy!

It got to the point where my brother’s and sisters would poke fun at him for saying his line and try to beat him to the punch before he could say it.  Back then I really didn’t get it.  As I got a bit older I thought that he was totally wrong.  People DO change… I mean, as a child I thought I was changing all the time.  The way I acted changed dramatically as I grew up and I felt like almost as if I was a different person.  Since then I have realized something.  He was right.

People don’t ever fundamentally change.  I realize that life is dynamic and a person grows and develops over time.  This is not the change that I am talking about though.  What never changes in anyone is the core of a person’s emotional motivation.  People’s immediate actions and reactions to their motivations may change but eventually they will always be back to their “unchanged” habits because even though their actions may have deviated from their “norm” the complex reason’s behind their actions have not.  They are at their center the same person and will have the same successes and failures throughout their life given enough time.  It is a constant and it is something I can count on from my friends… to act how they have acted since I have known them.  It seems like such an easy concept but most people don’t realize it to choose to ignore that fact.

This idea has helped me in understanding the people around me and why they do the things that they do.  So many people are wrapped up in the actions of others and are upset when people act a certain way.  They complain about someone for something that they do all the time instead of either coming to terms with their friend’s actions they just complain more.  To take a simple example, lets say my friend Sally is a flake.  She is always late and never calls when she is.  Lets say that Sally is late to a friend’s wedding.  After the ceremony the other people at the wedding would talk about how inconsiderate she was or how Sally is a jerk.  In reality though she is acting the way she always acts.  How could someone expect anything different from her?  It may have been inconsiderate of Sally to act that way, however, it should not be a surprise.  In my opinion I have two choices with people when I and getting to know them.  Can I deal with their personality and the way that they are?  If that answer is yes then I accept that person as a friend, buddy, acquaintance or whatever and understand that they have shortcomings like anyone else and not be surprised or upset when they continue a pattern of behavior.  So in my example I am either Sally’s friend and don’t beat up on her when she is late or not be Sally’s friend at all.

So many people spend time wondering if a person will change their ways or act differently.  I will save you the suspense… they won’t.  People are who they are.  They may deviate from their norm for a while but it is not sustainable and eventually they will fall back into reacting to their motivations the way that feels most comfortable for them.  It is best to just understand people’s strengths and limitations and be OK with how they act or don’t include them in your life.  Everyone would be much happier and more peaceful if the would just listen to my Uncle…

What do you think?

I am not saying that I am above corner cutting and overall “softening” of the US’s collective intelligence, if anything, I am a product of it.  I can admit it though, a great example is my job.  I have been working in technology sales for a about ten years.  Some of it has been a never ending grind of cold calls and call metrics while other positions have been so incredibly cushy that I am surprised that someone is stupid enough to be paying me to do my job.  Right now I am in a position that is the latter but shifting to more of the former.  Most of my job is just exhibiting the appearance of work and doing anything in the background that needs to be done to attain my goals or at least be equal or better to my peers.  Sales jobs in general are a cat and mouse game between the salesperson and the executives where the executives try to game the quota system and the salespeople take the path of least resistance to get as much money as they can and not break too much of a sweat.  It disgusts me sometimes but then I look at my W-2 and everything seems OK after that.

That last sentence is part of the point that I am trying to make.  Everything is so focused on the short term results of whatever we are doing that it is difficult to zero in on any longer term damage or what we had to do (good or bad) to achieve those goals.  Sometimes my job success requires me to be shady or tell half truths to get results and I do whatever it takes because if I don’t, someone else will and where will that leave me?  Most issues that are facing the US is a culmination of that problem.  Environmental issues, the collapse of the mortgage/banking system and the health care debacle are all cases of people in charge focusing on the short term and trying to rig the system for their own interests.  Everyone is out there doing the same thing.  Why should I work hard, play by the rules and focus on sustainable long term goals when everyone else is cheating and no one seems to really care?  This is only exacerbated in oligopolies like the government and corporate America where a few key people have control over the destinies of millions.  When I screw someone over on a deal at work it only effects a few people.  When a senator or a CEO is selfish or not working for the good of the community at large it can have a terrible effect.

This sense of entitlement and short sightedness has spilled over into the world of entertainment.  Reality stars surface, skyrocket to popularity and plummet back to anonymity while the public clamors for news about people that are in the public eye not because they are talented but rather because they are aberrations from the norm.  I seldom watch these shows but when I do I watch them for the “train wreck” factor.  Really it is just me revel is other’s misfortune and idiocy.  Is that what our society has come too?  Seeing talentless idiots like “Snookie” is a cheap thrill and diminishes the collective intelligence of everyone involved.  Instead of talking with a friend, listening to some good music or reading a book people get sucked in to watching complete morons make asses of themselves on TV.

In addition to the worship of shallow idiots modern entertainment zealously feasts on the poor decisions of the talented (or at least semi-talented) people.  When someone like Tiger Woods, Michael Jackson or celebrity du jour X       fall, they fall hard.  To the glee of the media and its ravenous consumers the dirt of the fallen is paraded around until they are dropped to the level of the reader.  Only then is the public satisfied, craving the decimation of public, talented people to temper their jealousy and make them feel more important.  It always gets me when people demand an apology from a celebrity for some public gaffe.  Why does anyone give a shit if a celebrity is sorry for what they did?  I certainly couldn’t give a fuck.  It is all part of people’s self importance and the only thing the public likes to see more than no name reality show idiots rise and flame out is talented people crash disastrously.

I think at the core people are good.  Society and the environment are constantly taking that core and shaping it into what we really are at that moment – in the case of most Americans that core has been changed into a narcissistic, lazy conniving shadow of what it could be.

There is some good left though.  How can we change our current trajectory?  Damned if I know but we can’t change anything about what we are until we take a step back and realize there is a problem.  Only then can we move away from a hard fall for our own country punctuated by fingerpointing and apathy.

Geez – I guess Mondays suck… what do you think?  Is there a silver lining somewhere that I can’t see?

Everyone can remember seminal events from their childhood that changed how they take in the world around them.  These events are numerous and many of then caused radical shifts in how we live our lives today.  Every single event changes us as we proceed through life but there are only certain things that can really impact the way that we process the information that is constantly flowing into our sensory mechanisms.  As we age fewer of these perception changing events occur and we become more set in our ways.  Events happen and we use our existing perception mechanisms to process the events.  Rather than changing the way external events are processed a person uses the mechanisms already entrenched to perceive the events happening in a familiar way.

I think a example would help flesh out exactly what this means.  The same event can happen at different points in life and a person will react to them in very different ways. It is particularly evident when an event happens to a person for the first time versus something that has occurred in the past.  For instance, when a person breaks up with a significant other for the first time it can shape how that person approaches every single future relationship.  I could always tell when someone I was dating  had been cheated on in a early relationship in their life because they were always very jealous and distrustful.  They used that early event to form their perception on how people act and applied that to how they perceive every other relationship.  This is different when it happens later in life. To take that same example and have it happen later in life after a person has had more relationships under their belt the event becomes more of an exception to the rule, rather than the rule.  Instead of having that event occur and changing the perception of future events in a major way, a person can see what happened and process it using what they already know.  As we age we are less apt to radically change that view.

This is not to say that one’s perception can’t change later in life, it is just far more likely to have these changes early in life.  This is good and bad.  The positive is that we gain a deeper understanding to the actions that we do take and our behavior is far more consistent.  This leads to predictable more decisions.  The problem with this is that if the perception that we adopt has negative impacts on a person they are less and less likely to recognize those negative consequences and change the way that they perceive their environment to eliminate these negative impacts.  For example a religious viewpoint that was developed early in life may limit the amount of other ideals that a person will recognize if their chosen viewpoint does not agree with the new information, effectively limiting what that person can experience.

The end game of all of this has to do with understanding the things that have impacted us early in life and trying to disentangle what we are doing from the motives behind why we choose to see things how we do.  An honest audit of WHY we are doing the things we do is necessary and healthy.  Far too many people do the things they have done simply because that is the way that they have done it in the past rather than making changes that may impact them positively in the long run.

Do you think that you can change the way you perceive what goes on around you or are you set in your ways?

Dreams are so fascinating to me because everything is so random and logic does not apply the way I use it in every other part of my life.  Dreams are jumbled and fleeting yet they can compel me to do things or infuse me with real emotion. ”I had the most fucked up dream last night…” usually precedes a convoluted story that makes no sense the the person hearing what the speaker dreamt.  Invariably the story ends with “… I don’t know, it’s hard to explain… but it was fucked up”.  The reason it was fucked up is because interpreting a dream is like translating a language that is different for each individual.

The subconscious contains all of the urges, impulses, intentions, perceptions, thoughts, deductions and feelings we have ever experienced.  Most of this information stays cordoned off in the recesses of our subconscious and may only bubble up as an instinct, idea or at times a rational thought in our waking lives.  Our minds have evolved and developed a rational sense that is unparalleled in the animal kingdom.  Having the conscious and subconscious working in tandem is a uniquely human characteristic and elevates us to be able to think in infinite terms while the subconscious unites us with our instinctual heritage in the animal kingdom.  I imagine when we are able to more clearly determine exactly how animals think that we will discover it is very similar to our experiences in the visceral simplicity of a dream-state.

The information that is “given” to us though the medium of dreams is unfiltered and we are unable to “translate” it the way we do in our conscious mind.  This is not a bad thing.  Our conscious filtration of the ideas of our subconscious is very useful to be able to live a normal life.  If we had to process all of the things that bombard us everyday we would be crippled by the onslaught of information.  Our subconscious soaks in all of the details of our surrounding and feelings that we generate about them.  It is good to have access to ALL of the information every once in a while and if we pay attention to the details we may realize things about ourselves that we would never have known.  In addition to that the subconscious is not just a stockpile of the past, it can be grounds for the creation of new thoughts.  The “eureka” moments that happen in science and math many times are attributed by scientists to something they dreamt about or an idea that “popped” into their head.  The key is understanding what our subconscious is “communicating” through dreams and being able to understand how to translate that into rational thought the way we do when we are awake.

Dream books are bullshit because they do not take into account the differences between individuals.  That is not to say there are not some universal ideas or archetypes among certain societies, cultures or groups but most symbols are pretty personal representations that can’t be generalized.  A bird may symbolize freedom for one person and death for another.  The key is looking at the themes or ideas that dominate your dream-state and understanding what that the symbols mean to you personally and what they can tell you about your conscious mind.

For the amount of time that we spend dreaming we take little time to analyze what happens compared to our daily lives.  Usually if I wake up and remember a dream it effects me for a few minutes and I usually forget about it before I brush my teeth.  A few months ago I wanted to change this so I started to write down what I was dreaming about immediately upon waking up.  Whenever I wake up there is about a 50/50 chance that I will write down what I dreamt due to my laziness but I managed to get a few down on paper.  There are 3 main themes that I have noticed from the dozen dreams I have written down.

1. Being chased or pursued by someone – There is always a feeling of dread that I know I am going to get caught or that it is useless to run but I run anyways.
2. I am not prepared for an important event – It usually has something to do with not being properly dressed or not having materials for a meeting
3. I do something that I can’t undo – I cheat on a girlfriend or hurt someone gravely.

Looking at this list is kind of depressing – why can’t I dream about flying or fucking supermodels?  In all of these dreams there are people I know and don’t know, specific objects, places or environments that I may or may not have experienced in my conscious state.  All of these parts and pieces form to create the unfiltered subconscious thoughts that I am made aware of through dreams.   The subconscious is the core of our being and is the key to looking at what there may be after death.  What do we have after we die and our rational self is pulled away along with our physical bodies?  Nothing – except maybe our instinctual selves (or life force, soul or whatever you want to call it).

Anyways, I know that there has to be something there that I am unable to decipher.  Dreams are often seen as silly or trivial but I think that they can be an important part of understanding oneself and why a person does the things that they do.  As man has replaced the “unknown” from life through rationalism he has replaced it with facts and marginalized the subconscious which has led to superstition and blind ignorance coexisting with skepticism and scientific conviction.  As we become more reliant on rationalism and move away from the symbolic side of ourselves we may lose an important part of our humanity. There is much to learn from the subconscious and we need to be more open to the possibility of accessing the knowledge and insight which may come from understanding our dreams.

What do you think?

I hear it all the time whenever someone talks about things that have happened to them in the past.  Why do so many people believe that to be true?  The idea that events are culminating into some grand plan which will eventually put the individual in some sort of more evolved state or “right” position is part narcissism, part blind faith and 100% bullshit.  In reality there is no “reason” for any of the disparate events that befall us.  There are any number of realities that could have culminated based on actions that we take throughout every second of  life.  There is one reality that we perceive and it did not come into being because of a reason but rather because we took a specific set of actions that led us to our “current state”.  People attach a significance to an event after the fact in order to help make sense of their reality and achieve a more ordered state to their perception of the world around them. It may help people process their current reality and help them feel better about it but it is logically false.

This notion is relied heavily upon by many religions in order to explain why “bad” things happen to “good” people but even the non-religious buy-in to this idea to help take the sting out of negative events that may befall them.  “It is God’s plan” is frequently heard when someone dies tragically.  This response is simply an antidote for the simple minded to counteract the poison that a randomly ordered world can inject.  Bad things happen because bad things happen.  There is no reason other than the reason we come up with in retrospect to justify the things that happen in the reality that occurs.  After a long enough time line a person can play “connect-the-dots” with any event and eventually come to the conclusion that even the most terrible events “should” have happened.

If reality is a randomly ordered series of events then what is the point of doing anything?  That is difficult to answer and is a very personal question.  However, the first step to answer it is to do away with the assertion that there is some sort of grand plan that we are subject to retroactively.  Horrible things will happen and wonderful things will happen – some horrible things may start a series of events that lead to wonderful things or vice-versa.  Once one strips away the “Everything happens for a reason”-factor then one is left with a clearer perception of “truth” in their existence and can take a clearer view of their reality without needing to attach some arbitrary reason to it.

Narcissism is an aspect of this viewpoint because the individual boils down the activity of the world around them to be a series of events that result in a current reality for them.  We are a insignificant part of the world and to think that the events of life are somehow focused on us is delusional.  The world can be a scary place and people have little to no control over the events that occur.  It is in one’s best interests to not attach a significance to random events.  Instead one should process the activity around them as it occurs and not attribute the way things happen to some grand plan or fate.

The final component to this viewpoint on life is a faith that there is some benevolence out there that has a plan in mind for each of our lives or has an artificial reason for our existence.  We are thinking, feeling beings perceiving the world around us within finite bodies.  The infinite portion of ourselves (our thoughts and mind) is constantly at odds with the finite portion of ourselves (our bodies).  It is from the interaction of these two parts of ourselves that we have developed faith to help reconcile the two competing parts of ourselves.  The infinite portion of ourselves battles for reason and invulnerability while the finite portion of ourselves decays and betrays the idea that a plan is in effect to defeat any obstacles in our path.  If there is a “reason” that things happen to us it feeds the notion that we can overcome the things that may block our path in life because there is something greater than ourselves at stake.  As discouraging as it can be this is untrue.  We exist in an uncertain world and when we attribute our reality with the actions that we take rather than fate we step closer to “reality”.

I call it the Theory of Normalization (if someone has already thought of this idea – fuck off) and it specifically deals with how people perceive their current state of being.  What I am proposing is that a person always feels exactly the same about their current state after a short period of “normalization” no matter how “positive” or “negative” that state is in relation to their previous state.  So I guess in short the theory could be put simply by saying:

“A person’s perception of their current state of being after a period of “normalization” is the same irrespective of the external variables.  A person will always have the same outlook on their current  state based on their internal cues that create a baseline for the positivity or negativity of any situation.”

Are you with me so far?  I think I kind of lost myself but an example will probably help explain my thought process. First, I would first like to explain what I mean by a period of “normalization”.  This is the period of time immediately after a  change event in someone’s life before they have internalized the event and integrated it into their perception of their current state.  For example, if someone is single and they get someone pregnant, there is a period of shock and ambivalence after they are aware of an eminent change in their current state.  Once they have integrated the change, then that event is normalized and part of their current state.  At that point they are able to imagine future states and take take into account the event that had occurred and it is part of their normalized current state of being.  This is not just for major event but also for even minor changes to the current state.  The more minor the event for that person the more quickly it is normalized.  For instance if someone dented your car in the parking lot you would normalize that event more quickly than if you found out that you won the lottery.

Another more fully fleshed out example will help clarify the process and the conclusions one can come to from the theory.  Say a person, call him Bill, is married, working at a company making decent money with no kids.  Bill has a perception of future states that may or may not come to fruition.  He may get divorced, he could lose his job, have a child or get a job promotion.  Internally Bill would attach a positive or negative significance to each of these scenarios while he played them out in his mind.  In reality though all of those future states are the exact same and would leave Bill with the same perception of his current situation once he has normalized them.  So in actuality one does not need to focus on the events that are happening in their lives to determine their level of satisfaction and happiness.  One would need to focus on improving the perception of their current state disregarding their external environment.

This leads to some dramatic changes in how one views life and the circumstances one finds themselves entrenched in.  Instead of dreading being let go from your job or fantasizing about winning the lottery one would focus on how one perceives their current state.  That is the only way to achieve a more lasting positivity in a dynamic existence.  Once a person is able to understand and come to grips with how they approach any situation they can be free of most of the anxiety that is attached to normal every day life.  This is the thing that people look for when they find their “center” or meditate – it is a world where the external circumstances are stripped away and all that remains is one’s perception of those external events.  When all that remains is one’s perception then they are fully in control of their existence.

As a side note I think this theory helps explain why people find drugs so appealing.  This is the lazy-man’s way to alter the perception of their current state temporarily, or in some cases permanently.  The introduction of drug into the body dulls, or heightens the different mechanisms we have to process our current state effectively changing our perspective from the way we perceive our “normalized” condition.

Again, this is the first time that I have actually put these ideas in print and I know there are bound to be some logical errors that I have made.  It is something I hope to expand upon over time but at its core it is a simple way to simplify and understand the perception of one’s existence.