Agnoiologist

I’m amazed at Pixar’s ability to consistently put out great movies. I saw Wall-E twice in theaters, which is something I almost never do.

I don’t have much useful to say about their latest movie “Up.” I mean, I really, really liked it. The storytelling is excellent, and even remembering the movie hits me emotionally.

The moral of the story, even though explicitly stated by the kid, is something I’m not sure kids will understand. Despite being an adventure story, the movie celebrates the mundane. By that, I mean the ordinary everyday activities of our lives. It’s a theme that resonates with me because I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the mundane recently, and how important it is because that’s what most of our lives consist of.

I love throwing things away. Well, the only thing I love more is throwing things in the recycle bin.

After I came back from Baltimore, with all my stuff, I realized that my room is now packed with junk. I have a lot of old toys, among other things, that I don’t need anymore. So I’m giving things away, recycling others, and throwing away the rest.

Eventually I’ll need to sell a lot of my paperback books. That’s a goal I’ll hold off on for now. There’s a lot to conquer in this room. It’s like a long campaign, and I’ll need to fight it one battle at a time. Hopefully it will all be decluttered by the end of summer.

It’s amazing being back home, with nothing hanging over my head. I hung out with my cousins and laughed harder than I had in a long time. I was crying, and I had a cramp the next day — all from laughing. I met a new person who does a lot of stuff with music, and connected him with another one of my musician friends. I played basketball, which was more physical activity than I’d done in a long time. Socially, physically, emotionally, I feel better about myself. Overall, life feels better.

There’s a part of me that is missing, but that’s a good thing. It feels as if a lot of bitterness has just melted away. My life felt useless at Hopkins; I hated writing essays and doing schoolwork. I will never go back to the academic life.

The only thing I will miss from Hopkins is some people, but I will make sure to stay in contact with them.

I put my entire life in a holding pattern during school, I realized. Now, there are all these things I can do, and there’s nothing holding me back. I’m out of excuses, and I’m in a better setting.

One thing I will have to do is make sure I create enough time for myself. Well, I have enough time, but I have to make sure I spend that time more wisely. It’s good to be happy, but I have to be sure I’m always moving forward.

Years later, I’m not so sure why I found “penguins on monkey bars” so amusing.

At the end of the year, I typically go through my class notebooks to find doodles in the margins. Some of these are funny enough to convert into a comic. I rip those pages out and keep them. I recently found an old ripped-out page with a “penguins on monkey bars” sketch, and I don’t know why the hell I thought this premise was worth hanging onto. Some premises are promising enough that their rough form can turn into something good. Others begin terrible and end terrible. There is no evolution in their lives. “Penguins on monkey bars” is one of them.

I still need to cancel cable and internet, and sell my furniture. This has led to a little bit of anxiety: How am I going to live without these things?

Yet this is me, less than a year ago, Living on the floor:

I don’t know why, but there’s something deeply satisfying about not having too many things. For some reason, sleeping on the floor made me feel like a more disciplined person.

Now I not only have electricity, but cable, a chair, a table, my Wii set up, a couch, a kitchen table, and a mattress. I already feel like this is too much. It weighs me down. And now that I am more comfortable, I find myself wasting too much time on the internet and TV again.

I had way less than I do now, and I was still happy — more happy, perhaps. Thinking this through has now reduced my anxiety.

I’ve been doing a whole lot of nothing. Well, I’m slightly exaggerating, but my life does feel as if everything is in a holding pattern. I’m not trying to progress or improve myself, and I’m just waiting until I get back to California before I do anything. Part of this, I’m sure, is just me distracting myself from the necessary things that need to be done before moving. I guess another part is the idea that I shouldn’t do anything until I’ve moved and this chapter in my life is over. But I don’t really believe in chapters, so I should start preparing for my life after the move. I should do some serious reflection now, and not wait until I get to California.

I’ve been packing up my books. I’m moving, and I want to take my books with me. They’ll be shipped via the USPS, and I was worried they might not make it. So, I decided to write down the titles of all my books. If they were to be lost, then I would be able to slowly re-accumulate my lost titles.

I discovered that I have 99 books in my little room. Wow. The books that I’ve accumulated since college actually exceeds that number because I’ve already shipped batches of books home.

Which would you rather have? A humane interrogator who hears what he needs to hear, or an inhumane interrogator who hears what he wants to hear?

Are we really surprised about Obama’s non-enthusiasm about prosecuting for torture? What happened when he was a Senator running for the presidency and the telecom issue came up? They broke the law and he voted for immunity. This, depite his statements that indicated the opposite. When it comes to civil liberties, Obama’s words are about as good as Arlen Specter’s. We really can’t trust him.

This is not to say that I hate Obama. He will get us out of Iraq, even though his views on foreign policy are quite pedestrian. Despite his opposition to the Iraq war, he is still a typical liberal interventionist. He’ll do better on healthcare and the economy than Mr. McCain who wanted to freeze spending during a recession. The choice was between Obama and someone completely moronic. And during the primary, the choice was between Obama and Hillary Clinton, who could not even admit that she made a mistake voting for the Iraq War.

Mr. Obama has his good points and bad points. And one of his bad points is civil liberties. Get FUCKING used to it. When it comes to civil liberties, the president is our enemy. We can’t trust him.

By the way, these false dilemmas about what the president can and can’t do are really annoying. They are always completely arbitrary. Fight in two wars OR prosecute for torture. Fix healthcare OR cap-and-trade. Fix the economy OR fix healthcare. It’s as if we completely swallowed the Republican talking point about Obama having “too much on his plate.” Please, tell me how busy Mr. Holder is fixing the economy. Then, tell me with a straight face that he can’t pursue prosecutions for war criminals, which is required under the Geneva Conventions. These types of arguments about what Obama can and can’t do are never argued with any facts, just blind assertions. They are based on either what they in fact don’t want to happen, or on some desire to make Obama not a villain.

Face it, he’s wrong when it comes to civil liberties. He has been and he will be for the rest of his presidency. He has embraced the worst of Bush’s arguments for secrecy. Use Occam’s Razor, goddamnit.

Even if Obama doesn’t torture, the power is still there for the next president to use. Unless we prosecute. And we make some structural changes to the executive branch. (Independently elected AG anyone?) Even Hamilton never envisioned a presidency this strong.

As much as I hate the twitter fad, I’m thinking about signing up for it. Basically, I’d just do what I already do with facebook status updates. Er… well with what used to be facebook status updates.