When I wrote the previous post, I couldn't remember who said "An armed society is a polite society".

The Google thing has a real future -- it told me right away that it was Robert Heinlein.

That made me remember one of the most beautiful quotes in the world:

"Love" is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.

This is from Stranger in a Strange Land -- which if you have never read -- run to the nearest library/bookstore and get it.

I recommended The Illuminatus Trilogy to someone today. 

I once sent to copy of this book to Chris Sells once when he was finishing up his latest WPF book and he was cursing me for days because he couldn't put it down.

http://www.rawilson.com/illuminatus.shtml#drake gives you a little flavor (read the last sentence a few times).

This recommendation today reminded me of a couple of things that have been processing in the back of my mind:

1. Crowley: Liber Oz

Man has the right to live by his own law--

to live in the way that he wills to do:
to work as he will:
to play as he will:
to rest as he will:
to die when and how he will.

Man has the right to eat what he will:

to drink what he will:
to dwell where he will:
to move as he will on the face of the earth.

Man has the right to think what he will:

to speak what he will:
to write what he will:
to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will:
to dress as he will.

Man has the right to love as he will:

Man has the right to kill those who would thwart these rights.

2. Mao: Problems of War and Strategy

Every Communist must grasp the truth, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party. Yet, having guns, we can create Party organizations, as witness the powerful Party organizations which the Eighth Route Army has created in northern China. We can also create cadres, create schools, create culture, create mass movements. Everything in Yenan has been created by having guns. All things grow out of the barrel of a gun. According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army. Some people ridicule us as advocates of the "omnipotence of war". Yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolutionary war; that is good, not bad, it is Marxist. The guns of the Russian Communist Party created socialism. We shall create a democratic republic. Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the laboring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed. We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.

3. The fact that the above are likely directly responsible for my proud lifetime membership in the NRA.

You have no idea what hell I get because of my membership in that organization, but I can normally balance it out by saying that I give money to CARE & UNICEF (which is true too).

I rediscovered the first four-track recording I ever made of me playing the electric guitar tonight.

Oh my -- just some basic 4/4 blues with (terrible) solo over top.

I forgot when I even recorded it -- so I certainly hope I have improved...

First Blues.mp3 (3.41 MB)

Someone at work commented on the number of quotes that I post on my blog.

I don't think they were commenting in kind way, but that is beside the point.

As I thought about this, two quotes entered my mind:

• Shakespeare: "This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine."
• Chesterton: "Hailed of my hand and by this sign alone, My eagle comes to tear me."

First, this tells me that I am guilty of using too many quotes. 

Second, this tells me that I only think in quotes.

Don't know how I missed this one...

Music Blog Zeitgeist of 2007 / The Hype Machine

Upward they look: again and yet again

Comes the loud crash of thunder, and between

A cloud that frets the firmamental plain,

With bright, red flash amid the sky serene,

The glitter of resounding arms is seen.

All tremble; but Æneas hails the sign

Long-promised. "Ask not," he exclaims, "what mean

These prodigies and portents; they are mine.

Me great Olympus calls; I hear the voice divine.

The Aeneid of Virgil

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense. --- Buddha

amidabuddha.org - Daily Meditation

Get Spook Country.

Read chapter 20; it ends with the above quote.

Read chapter 29:

Not just hot [Szechuan], but correctly, expertly seasoned.  Hot like when they brought you a plate of lemon slices, to suck on as needed, to partially neutralize the burn.  It has been a long time since Milgrim had had food like that.  It had been a long time since he'd eaten a meal that had provided any memorable pleasure at all.  The Chinese he was most familiar with these days was along the lines of the stepped-on Cantonese they brought him at the laundry on Lafayette, but just now he was recalling that sensation, strangely delightful, of drinking cold water on top of serious pepper-burn -- how the water filled your mouth entirely, but somehow without touching it, like a molecule-thick silver membrane of Chinese antimatter, like a spell, some magic insulation.

I love William Gibson.

I need to find the exact quote, but I once read something like:

"We are so advanced that we can spend the resources to make movies.  Even more amazing, we are so advanced that we can make bad movies."

This quote summarizes my thoughts around Cloverfield.

I really want to check out this program (I live in Outlook these days).

You can help me get access by click on the below icon/button.

They have some sort of referral program (which I think is interesting) that can get you access to the beta quicker.