Well kids, It's been a great 3 years on the google/blogspot servers. My page has never been down for any serious amount of time, and I never got my work randomly deleted out from under me. Kudos.
However, we're all grown up now and the time has come to get a domain name of my own. I bring you editorialjoe.com, a place of differentiated postings, comments, videos, photo albums, and whatever else I decide I'm going to put on the site.
Cheers, kids. I'll be migrating all of the current editorialjoe.blogspot.com posts into the new site over the next week. Stay tuned.
GO TO EDITORIALJOE.COM!
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
Wah wah wah, the economy is bad...
Cry me a damn river.
Did it ever occur to you that your house was NEVER worth that much, and that the economic market three years ago simply PRETENDED it was?
Yeah, that's the reason I never understood economics. I thought it was just that I was an idiot, but it turns out that everyone else who has blind faith in the infinite expansion of value are the real idiots. You're the ones buying and spending pretend value--I'm just sitting on the sideline wondering how and why.
I'm poor. I have no assets. And you know what?
A very dark side of me is laughing my ass off.
"You'll feel it soon enough..." is what people have been telling me, but honestly--I make 30% less than I did a year ago, and I'm feeling great.
I'm sorry you lost your mid-level management job and you live in a house that you paid 250% too much for. I'm sorry you can't afford your massive new vehicle that you don't need. I'm sorry you can't afford the fucking gas to feed it.
I'm sorry you're too proud to get a job shoveling shit. I'm not. Now if only trust funds would take a dive, maybe your sniveling children would learn something from this whole crisis as well.
Am I coming off as bitter? I'm not at all bitter--I'm not the one mired in debt, after all. Rather, you're the ones who believed that we could go on pretending that the economy would soar ever skyward. I, on the other hand, have been mumbling warnings for years.
And for all the things we can blame President Bush for--this is NOT one of them. You fools did this to yourselves. This is a punch in the face from reality: no, you are NOT worth as much as you assumed. No, your house is NOT worth as much as you paid. No, your dollar will NOT stretch that far.
Suck it up baby, cause we're not even near Black Thursday. Not yet, at least...
Did it ever occur to you that your house was NEVER worth that much, and that the economic market three years ago simply PRETENDED it was?
Yeah, that's the reason I never understood economics. I thought it was just that I was an idiot, but it turns out that everyone else who has blind faith in the infinite expansion of value are the real idiots. You're the ones buying and spending pretend value--I'm just sitting on the sideline wondering how and why.
I'm poor. I have no assets. And you know what?
A very dark side of me is laughing my ass off.
"You'll feel it soon enough..." is what people have been telling me, but honestly--I make 30% less than I did a year ago, and I'm feeling great.
I'm sorry you lost your mid-level management job and you live in a house that you paid 250% too much for. I'm sorry you can't afford your massive new vehicle that you don't need. I'm sorry you can't afford the fucking gas to feed it.
I'm sorry you're too proud to get a job shoveling shit. I'm not. Now if only trust funds would take a dive, maybe your sniveling children would learn something from this whole crisis as well.
Am I coming off as bitter? I'm not at all bitter--I'm not the one mired in debt, after all. Rather, you're the ones who believed that we could go on pretending that the economy would soar ever skyward. I, on the other hand, have been mumbling warnings for years.
And for all the things we can blame President Bush for--this is NOT one of them. You fools did this to yourselves. This is a punch in the face from reality: no, you are NOT worth as much as you assumed. No, your house is NOT worth as much as you paid. No, your dollar will NOT stretch that far.
Suck it up baby, cause we're not even near Black Thursday. Not yet, at least...
Saturday, April 12, 2008
To spend time and energy the way I learned to spend money
It's a wonder. In 3 months, I saved $850.
After getting paid about 30% less and paying 20% more rent, I was able to save around $70 a week.
$400 went to back rent and $450 has, so far, gone to saving for my move.
Now how much time could I save if I started writing as efficiently as I spent money in these last three months? I've never had as many projects going as now, but I still lull. I can't keep a streak going.
That's weakness speaking. That's laziness, I guess. Like I said, I could apply the same principle of saving money to the principles of writing and prioritizing.
Will kept me doing what I knew was better for me in the long run in terms of money. No fast food. No eating out. A smart person can make the price of one pizza hut order last a slim week when you're crunched for cash. Small allowances were made. $2 a day discretionary budget.
Then you start saving money. Then you see--despite how meager your savings--progress. It becomes a plant to cultivate. It becomes a game. Save more. Cut the discretionary down from $2 to $1. Then from $1 to nothing. Drink water away from home. That's ten more dollars a week.
And something else happened too. I started losing weight. I know I'm 6'5", and 220 doesn't sound that bad, but it's around 195 in the right places and 25 in the wrong ones. I have a slim build, so what I ended up with after three years at a desk job and my lazy sedentary habits was about 25 lbs around my mid-section.
$40 is A Chinese take out order and a pizza dinner, or it's ten days worth of food. Yes, ten days. That's $120 a month for good, reasonably healthy food. When my budget limited me to fruits, grains, legumes, and an occasional meat entree (a 3 to 8 oz serving once or twice a week), I found I lost 23 pounds in 8 weeks. That's just under 3 lbs. a week, a little over the recommended maximum rate of healthy weight loss.
But it wasn't that I wasn't eating enough. I ate three times a day and ate until I was full. It was that I was finally eating the right thing, and at 24, my metabolism was glad to help me so long as I gave my diet a push in the right direction. On my fruit, grain, legume, and occasional meat diet, I found I slowed my weight loss at about 205, and finally hovered around 200 lbs.
So I learned how to save money, I learned how to eat real food, and I lost the weight I gained as a desk jockey.
Well, I'd say this Jr. Sabbatical is a grand success.
After getting paid about 30% less and paying 20% more rent, I was able to save around $70 a week.
$400 went to back rent and $450 has, so far, gone to saving for my move.
Now how much time could I save if I started writing as efficiently as I spent money in these last three months? I've never had as many projects going as now, but I still lull. I can't keep a streak going.
That's weakness speaking. That's laziness, I guess. Like I said, I could apply the same principle of saving money to the principles of writing and prioritizing.
Will kept me doing what I knew was better for me in the long run in terms of money. No fast food. No eating out. A smart person can make the price of one pizza hut order last a slim week when you're crunched for cash. Small allowances were made. $2 a day discretionary budget.
Then you start saving money. Then you see--despite how meager your savings--progress. It becomes a plant to cultivate. It becomes a game. Save more. Cut the discretionary down from $2 to $1. Then from $1 to nothing. Drink water away from home. That's ten more dollars a week.
And something else happened too. I started losing weight. I know I'm 6'5", and 220 doesn't sound that bad, but it's around 195 in the right places and 25 in the wrong ones. I have a slim build, so what I ended up with after three years at a desk job and my lazy sedentary habits was about 25 lbs around my mid-section.
$40 is A Chinese take out order and a pizza dinner, or it's ten days worth of food. Yes, ten days. That's $120 a month for good, reasonably healthy food. When my budget limited me to fruits, grains, legumes, and an occasional meat entree (a 3 to 8 oz serving once or twice a week), I found I lost 23 pounds in 8 weeks. That's just under 3 lbs. a week, a little over the recommended maximum rate of healthy weight loss.
But it wasn't that I wasn't eating enough. I ate three times a day and ate until I was full. It was that I was finally eating the right thing, and at 24, my metabolism was glad to help me so long as I gave my diet a push in the right direction. On my fruit, grain, legume, and occasional meat diet, I found I slowed my weight loss at about 205, and finally hovered around 200 lbs.
So I learned how to save money, I learned how to eat real food, and I lost the weight I gained as a desk jockey.
Well, I'd say this Jr. Sabbatical is a grand success.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
To Die as Rich as Socrates
And for a moment, even the philosophers have that moment of doubt, that recollection--no matter how silly--of the everyman's worries: Should I be making more money at this point in my life? Is there something special I should have accomplished by this age? Am I perceived as a fool for my wanderings?
To be sure, those doubts still exist. We are still men, and we are still pack creatures. It is in our blood and bones to compare our standings to those of our peers--the ones in our pack that nursed together on the same teets of culture and time.
The doubts of a philosopher doing his job last but for that moment. Under normal circumstances our nomadic tendencies in mind and body don't allow us to cultivate too much of such nonsense. Money is the simplest of all to bellow a laugh at, many of us having the goal at life's twilight to "die as rich as Socrates."
Not such a goal to an everyman, who fears with all his heart the same end as my last prize.
If I come into money, will I spurn it? Of course not, but neither will I attempt to build a private empire which for all concerned is nothing but a sand castle formed with plastic, wood and concrete. I see no use in cultivating such an empire. My empire is, and always has been, what my mind is able to touch. Not control or impose, but touch.
The market school calls me a fool and tells me that such ideas are a quick path to premature mortality, but I disagree. Wealth is anonymous. It is equivalent to fame insomuch as the wealth is held, but rarely does it ever lead to the type of immortality that its keepers had hoped for.
Empires rise and fall, and so too would wealth flow along with the empire that guarantees the wealth's meaning. Ideas, on the other hand, do not succumb to such charges. Ideas bend without breaking. Ideas change to suit their environment. The only type of wealth with a well cultivated path to immortality is a wealth of ideas. You may pass on money to any of a thousand people and many of them are likely to keep it locked away, more still are likely to lose it without ever having understood the good it can do. Would the same dichotomy of horde and expunge happen with an idea as it would with money? Likely, yes. But less likely.
To be sure, those doubts still exist. We are still men, and we are still pack creatures. It is in our blood and bones to compare our standings to those of our peers--the ones in our pack that nursed together on the same teets of culture and time.
The doubts of a philosopher doing his job last but for that moment. Under normal circumstances our nomadic tendencies in mind and body don't allow us to cultivate too much of such nonsense. Money is the simplest of all to bellow a laugh at, many of us having the goal at life's twilight to "die as rich as Socrates."
Not such a goal to an everyman, who fears with all his heart the same end as my last prize.
If I come into money, will I spurn it? Of course not, but neither will I attempt to build a private empire which for all concerned is nothing but a sand castle formed with plastic, wood and concrete. I see no use in cultivating such an empire. My empire is, and always has been, what my mind is able to touch. Not control or impose, but touch.
The market school calls me a fool and tells me that such ideas are a quick path to premature mortality, but I disagree. Wealth is anonymous. It is equivalent to fame insomuch as the wealth is held, but rarely does it ever lead to the type of immortality that its keepers had hoped for.
Empires rise and fall, and so too would wealth flow along with the empire that guarantees the wealth's meaning. Ideas, on the other hand, do not succumb to such charges. Ideas bend without breaking. Ideas change to suit their environment. The only type of wealth with a well cultivated path to immortality is a wealth of ideas. You may pass on money to any of a thousand people and many of them are likely to keep it locked away, more still are likely to lose it without ever having understood the good it can do. Would the same dichotomy of horde and expunge happen with an idea as it would with money? Likely, yes. But less likely.
Monday, March 17, 2008
And the Pantheist says, "Yes"
To anyone who follows a higher power: If God stood before you in a form different than the one you've kept in your mind, would you be able to recognize God as God?
I won't speak for any religion, but so far as I know, only the Pantheist can truly say "yes" to this question.
Why?
The Pantheist recognizes God in all things. God is embodiment of all structures and actions, all things living and non-living. God is the sum of the experiences of the universe. This means that in any form, the Pantheist would recognize God as God. Because the Pantheist sees God in all things, No possible form, no action or consequence, no idea could befall the Pantheist without being recognized as God.
Were the sciences to put an end to mystery (a most unlikely event) and discover that we mortals are no happenstance, but a moderately common cell amongst the tapestry of organs in a nearly infinite cosmic body; a small fragment of a macro-organism, a pattern of which we know for certain zooms both in and out infinitely--even then the Pantheist would have recognized God as God, for the "higher being" is not only omnipresent in the Pantheist's own surrounds, but far beyond the Pantheist's ability to perceive it. Should the sciences reveal this as the "final answer," the Pantheist is vindicated. God exists not only as all things, but also as all things unperceived.
And if the mortalists are right, and matter (an accidental type of extremely lucky couplings of quarks and fundamental pulses bound together in such a way that they allowed for more complex and exotic particles) exists nowhere save in our universe and life (an accidental type of extremely lucky recombinant proteins that eventually "learned" to work together--not because they were patient or understanding or fearful of a loving god--but because working together was the only way things could work in order to allow a cascade effect of more complex creatures) exists nowhere save early carbonaceous planets and then disappears in a sneeze of time much too short for us to develop the technologies to travel the stars--even if we are nothing but a cosmic clock with no architect, machinist, engineer, nor custodian--even then the Pantheist wins. In recognizing God in all things internal and external, the Pantheist has come to realize that all things are connected, that the system that binds all things together is the system that allows for the very perception of what it means to exist.
This means that even in God's most clever form: nothing--the Pantheist has recognized God as God.
Cool, huh?
I won't speak for any religion, but so far as I know, only the Pantheist can truly say "yes" to this question.
Why?
The Pantheist recognizes God in all things. God is embodiment of all structures and actions, all things living and non-living. God is the sum of the experiences of the universe. This means that in any form, the Pantheist would recognize God as God. Because the Pantheist sees God in all things, No possible form, no action or consequence, no idea could befall the Pantheist without being recognized as God.
Were the sciences to put an end to mystery (a most unlikely event) and discover that we mortals are no happenstance, but a moderately common cell amongst the tapestry of organs in a nearly infinite cosmic body; a small fragment of a macro-organism, a pattern of which we know for certain zooms both in and out infinitely--even then the Pantheist would have recognized God as God, for the "higher being" is not only omnipresent in the Pantheist's own surrounds, but far beyond the Pantheist's ability to perceive it. Should the sciences reveal this as the "final answer," the Pantheist is vindicated. God exists not only as all things, but also as all things unperceived.
And if the mortalists are right, and matter (an accidental type of extremely lucky couplings of quarks and fundamental pulses bound together in such a way that they allowed for more complex and exotic particles) exists nowhere save in our universe and life (an accidental type of extremely lucky recombinant proteins that eventually "learned" to work together--not because they were patient or understanding or fearful of a loving god--but because working together was the only way things could work in order to allow a cascade effect of more complex creatures) exists nowhere save early carbonaceous planets and then disappears in a sneeze of time much too short for us to develop the technologies to travel the stars--even if we are nothing but a cosmic clock with no architect, machinist, engineer, nor custodian--even then the Pantheist wins. In recognizing God in all things internal and external, the Pantheist has come to realize that all things are connected, that the system that binds all things together is the system that allows for the very perception of what it means to exist.
This means that even in God's most clever form: nothing--the Pantheist has recognized God as God.
Cool, huh?
Thursday, March 13, 2008
From my phone
So I upgraded my phone, and now I can blog from it. Neato. I know I'm behind the curve and that this nothing special, but it's kind of cool to me.
I want to see how well the formatting comes out when I blog from my phone.
Now I have no excuse not to be writing since I have a phone with a full keyboard and access to the internet. I can now record the written word anywhere I am.
So now all I need is an angry rant to make this device fulfill its purpose.
I want to see how well the formatting comes out when I blog from my phone.
Now I have no excuse not to be writing since I have a phone with a full keyboard and access to the internet. I can now record the written word anywhere I am.
So now all I need is an angry rant to make this device fulfill its purpose.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Signs that I'm Talented at Avoiding Television
1. The oscars happened and I didn't even realize it until I looked at the NY Times.
That is all.
That is all.
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