An official apology

To Juz, who I haven't seen in many a year, and probably won't see this. But I felt I should apologize, for many years ago, on IRC, I kept making bad jokes whenever his script would pop up and say "Juno Reactor - Conga Fury" as the song he was listening to, mainly because of the name.

It is, truly a good song, and I just was on 14.4 modem, so I never got to hear it. It's funny, of late, some of my musical tastes have been shifting, or expanding, to match stuff he was listening to years ago. He's the one who introduced me to Dream Theater, years ago. And also Starcraft, through a pirated version I played through that made me run out and buy it, a week after it came out. Wonder what I'd have turned out like if I'd hung around him more. Aside from having much much more warez lying around on CD-R, probably.

Tags: Me, Journal, The Internets

On Symbolism

My parents, for reasons unknown to me, bought a copy of the movie National Treasure. Now, it wasn't a horrible movie or anything, but it's not one I'd pay more than the $5 it cost to rent and watch with my friends. Nicholas Cage is always interesting, but. It was like an adventure movie written by a US history school class. Though it was neat to see places I've actually BEEN in a movie.

But that's not what I feel like talking about. What I want to talk about is this book it came with, called The Secret Symbols of the Dollar Bill. I started reading the book over breakfast, and couldn't help but keep chuckling at it. It's not really a very well done book. It's pages of "this was once symbolic in such and such", all numbered. Maybe it get better later on, but I'm not holding my breath. He leaves out important things, like the fact that the "In God We Trust" was put on the back of the bill at the request of the Knights of Columbus, to differentiate us from the Evil Godless Commies. And there's lots and lots of numerology bull, which is like algebra without any rules, you just manipulate the numbers until you get the result you want. Or the Law of Five, which is "If you look at it hard enough, anything can be related to the number five."

What it really reflects, to me, is the fact that after thousands and thousands of years of history, there's nothing that HASN'T been considered symbolic by some group of people somewhere. Yeah, the seal was DESIGNED to be symbolic, because it's a symbol. And it was designed by people who had associations with Masons etc. So some of their symbols turn up in it! SHOCK! Heh. If you want a more interesting exploration of conspiracy and magical theories behind the dollar bill, and the Great Seal, read either Illuminatus! or Suppressed Transmission or volume 2 by Kenneth Hite, who's much more interesting when it comes to conspiracies than most people.

Tags: Writing, Mindscribbles, Books

Memorial Day

Does Memorial Day even mean anything to most Americans any more? Between the constant cheesy "MEMORIAL DAY SALE!" ads and the ceremonies presided over by President Bush, where he sings the praises of Americans who "sacrificed to defend out country" while those Americans are sacrificing their lives in another country, in a war of aggression and choice, founded on lies, lies he told us all, how are we supposed to keep the real memorials separate from the hypocrisy and lies?

My friend whose wedding I was at will be back in Kuwait in the next few days, right after his honeymoon. He's not going to re-join up when his stint's over. He's not on the front lines, but even so. To him, and all the others who serve or have served in the military, you're not forgotten, and come back safe. We owe you many things, including making sure that your sacrifices aren't in vain, or for the wrong reasons.