There’s so much we can learn from history but nobody cares to know the mistakes of the past.  So we keep making them again and again.  Some day in the future, whether near or far, all of this will be forgotten.  The street signs saying MLK Blvd will be gone.  No more JFK high schools.  The Statue of Liberty, Taj Mahal, even the Pyramids of Giza will be swept away into the sand.  What’s left?  Our existence has been nothing more than a blip on the line of time.  We matter but little yet think ourselves so great.  The ego overtakes us all…

Another thought to photographs.  The photos on a piece of paper will slowly fade over time just as the writing on a piece of paper will do the same.  It may take thousands of years but eventually those images and words are nothing more than forgotten memories of a collective consciousness.  What’s the shape of the universe?  We thought the world was flat once but then we realized if we go one way we’ll eventually get back to where we started.  I mean the universe can’t be flat because you can’t put a marble into a piece of paper.  So… if it’s not flat, then what the hell is it?  Round?  Is it an expanding box?  I want verifiable answers to this question, with pictures.  We need some robots to figure this out.  And why aren’t we living in the stratosphere on other planets in jetson-like houses yet?  I don’t feel like walking anymore either, I’d rather use a conveyor belt to move me places, like in airports and I want to work for a sprocket company.  I don’t think that is too much to ask for.  Scientists need to get these things going.

I went from photographs to sprockets right there in that paragraph.  You won’t get amazing thoughts like this from just anybody.

I have neglected wordpress for awhile so I guess I’ll try to write something here even if it doesn’t wind up being all that much or maybe I’ll get in the mood to write and it could wind up being very long winded too?  Who knows?

That article of a 7-year-old British painting prodigy just amazes me.  One of many questions I had while reading was the fact that the child takes pictures he saw on the internet that he likes and he infuses a new reality into them by painting what he would imagine that scene would look like at a different time of the year.  Not many people have the capacity to take an unknown scene and postulate what that scene may look like beyond what they can visibly see.  I wrote that last night and my thoughts about it are all pretty much gone now.  Mainly my point is that a lot of people lack the capacity to think beyond what they are told to think or believe.  Most don’t trust their own senses and don’t even think to ask people to go beyond their senses and try to imagine.  I think that was my point.  I don’t remember.

New thought.  Why is it that people leave comments on youtube videos that turn into personal attacks and battles amongst people who in all likelihood you will never personally know in your life?  Even this, some random person half way around the world could see this and say “You suck.  I hate you.”  Then I would reply, “No I don’t.  That’s just harsh.” (Because that’s probably about what my response to something like that would be.)  Then it just goes back and forth for awhile and for what reason?  Why are we so damn confrontational?  Let’s all just calm down for a little bit and think or something.  Maybe it won’t do any good but it’s another choice?

New thought.  How many years into the future will film camera technology truly be obsolete?  I mean people love their digital images with the ability to keep taking pictures until they get the image “right.”  But what’s “right” to begin with?  Cameras are tools to take photos of scenes so that we have an easy way to recall a memory of that scene but I can also take my camera, set a slow shutter speed and wave it in the air at lights so that a streak is exposed but that is not at all what I saw with my own eyes.  So what is that then?  It can’t be a memory of the moment because I did not see it that way.  It also cannot be “art” because then anybody who mistakenly left the shutter open on their camera too long has just created “art.”  What should those photos be called?  With digital photography those “mistakes” can be instantly deleted, gone forever into that place with unrealized dreams and lost creations.  With film photography though, those photos are saved onto the roll of negatives along with all of the “correct” memory-inducing photos.  Even if the print itself is thrown away, the only way to get rid of the “mistakes” is to also get rid of the negatives of the good pictures too.  Again just like with erasers, why throw away those pictures on your digital camera (other than to save space, in which case just save the photos to a computer or spend the $12 to buy a new memory card) when those pictures may in themselves be awesome?  We look at things we create and seem to strive for an unrealized perfection.  Accept mistakes.  We’re all human and the best things are always those that have elements of humanity in them, that being beauty tinged with slight hints of flaw.

Tolstoy wrote a book called “What is art?”  I will read it and eventually be able to tell everyone what art is.  Just in case anybody was wondering.

The point of global warming never should have been whether or not we directly influence the climate, whether insignificantly or greatly.  Rather we should look at the fact that computers never existed until the 1940′s and to look at how far we have advanced computing since is just amazing. Yet in 1886 the internal combustion engine using gasoline as a fuel source was invented and while in the preceding years of the 19th century many other sources of fuel were attempted, such as hydrogen and even electric cars, gasoline has been the only way to run our vehicles for over 120 years.  We have advanced computing from giant rooms full of vacuum tubes to an iphone which is exponentially more powerful.  But we can’t figure out a better way to run our vehicles?  Oil.  That’s the end all of motor transportation?  A limited natural resource is the best way to move a car…  The thing about the republican party that I despise the most is their longing for the status quo.  It was in the best interests of the railroads during the late 19th century that motor vehicles not exist as it eventually took profit away from those companies, even more so after WWII and the creation of the national highway system by Eisenhower.  And if those companies had their way we would all be riding trains everywhere today.  The only reason we do not have a better fuel source than oil is because companies such as BP, ExxonMobil, or Shell would begin to lose profit.  So what.  Isn’t capitalism supposed to be about progressing an idea and making it more cost effective?  The guy who makes the stuff the cheapest wins.  If those companies wish to survive then they should be forced to progress or go the way of the dinosaurs…

There will be a day when those crazy people holding signs on the street saying “the end is near” will be right.  Will we still view those people as crazy or as genius?  Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in awhile.   But no matter how many nuts they gather, chance still can vastly alter their outcomes.

I really don’t know what to write.  Thinking is not coming easily for me right now.  I could go look at the news and find something to complain about, some way that the world just seems to be entirely screwed up.  Or I could write about the deeper thoughts which I hope everybody has but it just seems like everybody else also has an easier time pushing them back into their subconscious.  You know that little stuff like why are we here, where are we going, why do we do what we do, what’s the meaning of everything?  Simple stuff like that.  If anybody has some answers worth anything that would be awesome.  I think society is our drug.  Whether for good or bad.  Society pushes us not to think so much.  We take simple answers as being the best because they are the easiest and require the least thought and least time.  That leaves us more time to live within the society.  

Sitting here for 20 minutes with so many thoughts and nothing that I can write.  That’s it.  The best part of this may very well be the title.

“Baby can you hear it?  Don’t it make you wanta wake up and open your eyes?”  -Matthew Good   

I can speak or I can stay silent.  Emerson says “We hear, that we may speak.”  But Buddha, at times, remained silent.  Both were great men.  Who is correct?  It is never a question as whose thought is greater as much as you have to ask yourself, what will you do?  There are countless thoughts in the world.  How many of us have our own?  Original thought never exists.  Our thoughts have always come about from those things around us, starting with nature.  Now they generally start with someone else’s thought.  Why don’t we expand upon them?  Take that thought further.  Combine some thoughts.  Challenge the “known reality” of today and imagine a new reality for tomorrow.  

The eraser is the worst invention ever created.  Why should we cover up our mistakes?  Embrace your mistake and force yourself to the perfection that you aspire.  Even while writing in a notebook I have taken to a habit to not erase.  If I make a mistake, I merely strike-through or scribble out and move on.  If 1,000 years from now my notebook is found and the English language needs to be deciphered maybe they will mistake my mistake for some new found reality?  Maybe we have mistaken a hieroglyphic mistake for meaning that which we want it to mean?  Either way makes little difference.  We will take what we want from the world.  A work of art means to us whatever we want it to mean.  To the artist it means that he was willing to share with all of us a little peek into himself.  Why can’t we all do the same?  Society has bred us to be fearful of nearly everything, each other included.  Even ourselves.  We should be fearful of ourselves if we think things which have not been thought or which differ from the status quo.  What happened to those dreamers who imagined a better world?  Why are they the ones who usually die too early?  Why don’t we ever listen to them?  Maybe we will one day before it’s too late…  

Not bothering proofreading.  Just read.  I’m not even positive exactly what I wrote.  And I’m not heaping praise unto myself but I would bet that more thoughts can be provoked by these nearly 500 words than most people can find in the 400+ pages of Sarah Palin’s book.  And even though it is now only $9… my words are free.  I’m cheaper.

Just a thought but wal-mart absolutely positively sucks.  Books that are on the pre-seller top 10 list are 95% of the time not worthy of being on that list, save for the fact that they are written by somebody who is popular in today’s culture.  But it’s fantastic that they are willing to sell those pieces of trash for $10.  God knows they are not worth the $24.99 price that most of them start out at, but maybe there are more worthy books out there that should be made available for that $10 (or less) price? Probably not. Nobody should bother reading classics anyways! Hemingway, Homer, Fitzgerald, Cicero.  They don’t matter! What the hell can you learn from them anyways?!  Give me Coulter, Brown, Palin, King (Stephen, not Martin Luther).  Those are the real authors!  

By all means it is fantastic that they want to write books  (or in the case of most politicians and celebrities hire a ghost writer to write them a book, then post their own names on the cover…) but their books should not be best sellers. Yet we gobble up their tripe as if it is enlightening and for the most part ignore the great authors of the past, save for a few select books which are required high school or college english I & II reading.  Not to mention we never give a voice to those who, today, could be the new great authors writing amongst us.  Hopefully we do not discourage too many of them by ignoring their voices while we mainly listen to those who have the podium and can yell the loudest.  Who knows what greatness sits amongst us that will later be discovered in the future?   

Oh wal-mart how I despise your business practices and everything that you stand for.  The dumbing down of a populace just accelerated a little bit more.

One day I will also write about the death of objectivity in the media.  Yet another way to ruin a pillar of society.  We watch it slowly crumble and rot away right in front of our faces.  But that is for another night.

As Matthew Good says in “The Future is X-Rated” around 2:01- “Help us fight for a better looking, less intelligible future.”  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdHEOwFDObU

Sad… yet true.

Barack Obama, Dancing with the Stars, porn?  I bet that helps my viewership right there.  Plus it will get more people to view this site http://terraverdesoapco.wordpress.com/.

Now time to go use some good smelling soap, listen to Bob Dylan, and probably read a boring book.  

Am I really writing this as if somebody is reading??  Time to also start referring to myself in the third person too.  

Jason, out.