He knows too much.

There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck. - Jean-Paul Sartre

Thoughts Before Work Tonight

“Historians are left forever chasing shadows, painfully aware of their inability ever to reconstruct a dead world in its completeness however thorough or revealing their documentation. We are doomed to be forever hailing someone who has just gone around the corner and out of earshot.” - Simon Schama (pictured above making cheese soufflet in his home)

I had a fine day today. I went to Tim Hortons, had Chocolate milk, listened to a good lecture by a genius historian (Prof. Sainsbury) and then had an actually good Latin class! craziness. Then I had a great lunch, and when I came home I decided I needed my Simon Schama fix so I lay down on the couch and watched him compare Ireland and India. He even talked about Thomas Babington Macaulay whom I had researched without remembering Schama talked about him.

Now I'm just waiting to go to work. It's been a good day, but it's weird having the fear of work and prospective essays looming over you. Then I realized: this is my life. I'm only viewing it on a daily cycle though. Like why should I relax the day before I work if I just have to work the next day? ANd I'll have to work my entire life, so really this, "just get through it" attitude is really the bane of my existence. What's the point in toughing out your entire life?

When I think about History and Schama and the job of a Historian I constantly think about how many people have gone before me. The Romans had a phrase we translated in Latin the other day. It was "to go to the majority", and it meant 'to die'. They saw the majority as those already dead. Schama said 1 million Irish died in the potato famine of the 1840s and 5 million people starved in India during one famine. 6 million people, dead.

...

What were their lives like? What did they think of God? What did they love and hope for?

I guess we'll never know. And one day I will 'go to the majority'. And people like Simon Schama (and myself) will write essays about me as one of the beleagured multitude. They'll try to place me into a group that all sought one clear goal, that fit somewhere. Whether I'm a proletarian wage slave who died working in a grocery store, or one of the many morbidly obese Canadians of the post-modern period who died from heart faillure due to excess, or one of the 'faithful departed' in a liturgy (better than unfaithful departed).

...

What kind of an account will I give for my life? I can picture it now: "Hi... I'm (name), I was of the (religion) faith, does that mean I'm in? ....Yes that's correct, mhmm glutton, lustful, etc yep. ... Ya I guess I was a Capitalist? is that bad comrade? ...oh I see...well I only shopped at Walmart because it was so cheap, though I guess that doesn't count... alright ... Ya I only did that with one girlfriend ..." and then the questions get even weirder "... well ya, I preferred Charles I to Oliver Cromwell ...but you do remember what he did to Ireland... oh you saw that on my facebook" It's so unimaginable to think of such an epic ending to such a transitory life.

So little of life is epic, so much of it just the drab everyday. So much isn't about Ideals, but rather endless compromise.

...

If I believed in reincarnation, I'd just do whatever the hell I wanted. I know that's kind of against the point, but seriously, it'd be like being invincible. It reminds me of when the Romans had trouble fighting the Germanic tribes because they believed in the immortality of the soul so strongly, they had no fear of death.

...

Plato makes a pretty good argument for the immortality of the soul.

...

well I guess I'll get ready for work.

A Parable For You

Imagine a place called "normal". In this strange village everyone would wake up earlier than they desired, to prepare to journey to places they didn't want to go. For each prospective journey they would all dress in clothes they didn't actually find comfortable or functional, but rather they would select vestments from a spectrum of rigid conformity known as "Fashion". Then imagine they paid to translocate themselves in a manner horrifically destructive to their own environment so that they could go to work in a place they didn't want to, for longer than they wanted, with no one that they liked. Their twenty-somethings would go to the 'school' where they would pay to be forced to do things they didn't want to do, and occassionally learn, if only, by accident. Their overlords would yell at them but were no longer able to hit them, and so only psychologically degraded them. The establishment that had instituted these 'schools', "the kirk", was hated and derided in them. There had been a great rebellion against it called 'the enlightenment' and so at the basis of all they were forced to go through, there was no underlying purpose anymore.

Basically, I hate the way the world functions. ... I miss the Middle Ages & Renaissance... then you could go to cities and have a lively urban environment, or you could choose to be a rural farmer. You could get one coherent education which was actually based on LEARNING rather than getting a piece of paper or doing homework (an American invention I hear). I would've lived in an italian city-state given another shot. Been like the people in the merchant of Venice, forcibly baptizing Jews, and living the high life.

Although I'm sure I'd find things to hate about that era too. ...

C.S. Lewis said that we always thing the light is on the other side of the hill or just around the corner, just not where we are, and so we live in the Shadowlands.



Rant over.

Anarchy, Life a Joke?, and Thora Birch

I talked with my dad about politics tonight after dinner. It was the first conversation we've had where we didn't fight since January. I didn't say it, but I finally realized that I'm basically an anarchist or at the most a socialist when it comes to State authority. I think the institution of the State is a joke. What pretended authority could it have? I actually think Monarchies have a better claim to sovereignty than Democracies. If I could find a Catholic Monarchy I'd be set.

...

At work today my co-worker who is an Atheist said that his girlfriend always gets angry at him because he laughs about serious things. He said 'I laugh because life is a joke. You're born, you do what society tells you to do, and you die.' While I disagree with the philosophy I found it very honest. It reminds me of American Beauty, and the Comedian from Watchmen.

...

Tonight I watched a bit of American Beauty. What a fantastic film. I have many favourite parts, but one of them is the conversation between Jane (Thora Birch) and Angela (Mena Suvari):

Angela Hayes: Jane, he's a freak!
Jane Burnham: Then so am I! And we'll always be freaks and we'll never be like other people and you'll never be a freak because you're just too... perfect!



...

Out of interest I went to see what Thora Birch is up to these days, the news part of her website was last updated in 2005...4 years ago.

She has a discussion board to talk about herself. The most recent comments are viagra ads someone has spammed, followed by 2 people talking about the last time they had a new picture of her. It's pretty creepy.

But I successfully found people more lonely and pathetic than I am. I wonder if Thora Birch ever checks her website and finds these few pathetic fans hanging on, I wonder what she'd think of them.

She's an interesting character too, from a German Jewish family, named after Thor, the Norse god. And her parents were 'adult film stars'.

I bet she'd be an interesting person to have a heart-to-heart with.

I found out that 'heart-to-heart' comes from the Confessions of St. Augustine. The Latin is "cor ad (cor) loquotor"... I think?

Essays, Sartre, and looking in the Mirror

I have 3 essays due in the next lil while. Today I skipped class to write one so that I could finish it. I have 1 page so far (double spaced)... that was the result of 20 minutes of actually forcing myself to write. Then I went to go see New Moon, and now I'm back.

... The last 2 weeks I've been going crazy because I'm not able to force myself to work. Colbert once said in an interview where he talked about a bunch of his family dying in a plane crash "any threat they could make seemed pretty silly", in regards to his teachers for not finishing his work. He said that all education needs fear to work. I think I'm losing the fear. I'm not going to pretend like I'm independant or anything, I'm definately sure I'll suck it up and finish all these essays. Hell I'll probably get 75-85% on all of them. But I just feel like I'm starting to not care.

I feel like I'm an actor in a play about my life, but that I've got so tired of acting that I'm starting to get out of character, and people around me are starting to get scared/disturbed. I talked to a friend the other day about Jean-Paul Sartre, the famous post-modern atheist. I've only read his wikipedia.

Lance told me his ethics were based on the principle that as long as you can look at yourself in the mirror, you're ok. The only ethics are self-preservation and self-esteem I guess you could say in his model - as opposed to most atheists who stick with Utilitarianism.

I haven't done anything evil really besides the usual.

However, on the drive home today I couldn't look myself in the mirror. I don't really know why. I think it was because I had just seen so many beautiful people around me. It was almost eerie. Like living in a movie. I was grossed out a bit. The other day I was at the Dentist and I kept looking at the pictures they had of all the perfect people with perfect teeth. I started laughing and the hygenist looked a little puzzled. I didn't tell her why I laughed, but it was at the pictures, I didn't belong there. The Dentist told me about how my tooth was dead and I pre-empted him (because he'd told me it 6 months ago with the same severity). He listed a series of surgeries I could get, I told him they could rip it out and I could get the gold tooth I've always wanted.

...silence...

some people have no sense of humor. Anyway, he looked a little worried and said something about getting a second opinion and left. Then I looked at myself in the mirror and smiled. I started laughing, thinking about the giant gap in my teeth. Thinking about how it would continue to make me look even weirder. It was a weaker version of the hysterical laugh I had before.

at least I'm not as ugly as Sartre, no wonder he was an advocate of 'free love'.


I read a bit about Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, SJ (Jesuit) and his philosophy/theology/phenomenology. He fused Catholicism with Evolution and argued that the world is being drawn towards God the 'Omega Principle' in a constant state of becoming/evolution which will culminate in complete redemption. He was criticized by the Church, but eventually garnered some respect. He's a love-hate person in the Church, much like the Society (Jesuits) itself.

.

I think I'm moving away from the Omega principle. I'm devolving. I'm becoming more and more lost. I read Sartre's idea about being trapped by your own freedom, I kind of feel that way right now.

...

i've just wasted another hour that was supposed to be for my essay. FUCK!

...

I wish I could go drinking with Simon Schama or watch some mythbusters, or get stuck in an elevator with Kari Byron.

A Dream I Just Had

So normally my dreams are too weird to record, but this one I felt had too many characters I knew and seemed fairly easy to understand, so I quickly wrote it down (I just woke up), and thought I'd post it. Here are my summary notes:

My best friend Dan and I, go on a double date with 2 girls (apparently they went to Eden - our high school - a few years after us). We arrive and my girl kisses Dan...even after they tell her it's not me, and then shakes my hand awkwardly. Her dad (who looked exactly like my ex-girlfriend Sarah's dad) tells us that we should try and act funny ease the situation and tells me to do something funny with a bowl of snack mix he hands me. I throw the bowl into the air, no one is impressed, and I have to crawl around picking up every piece. Neither of the girls seem at all interested, so Dan and I start watching movies (we watched Goldfinger for some reason) and I fall asleep.



I wake up, go upstairs, and find the girl I was supposed to be dating doing homework and looking bored and mildly angry. I feel like a total faillure and we leave. Dan tells me that I was making gross/weird sounds in my sleep while we watched Goldfinger. I tell Dan that Goldfinger is 'that kind of a movie after all' (I have no idea what I meant there). A guy I work with picks us up in a some Asian drag racing car. He drops me off at Eden (where I went to high school), and it's day again now, I cry on the sidewalk and everyone walks past me like the guy in the parable of the Good Samaritain...except no Good Samaritains show up.

hah. what a weird dream. Oh well, it turned out alright for Dan, that's something.

Hysteria

All I know about it other than the fact that it's a Muse song (and a good one at that) is that when people have it, they laugh an insane laugh, which might just be in movies...

Anyway, for the last week, I've been alone for so long that sometimes I think I'm going crazy and forgetting how to interact with humans. I've been arbitrarily bursting out in disturbing laughter over nothing as well. ...

Oh well, at least if I go crazy I won't have to go to work or write essays anymore. And if they let me bring some Tolkien I'll be fine.

Names

I've been thinking about names recently and what it means to be 'branded' with one. I tried to Latinize mine. Andrus Petrus Cottrillus in the nominative (I made Andrew ; Andru so that it was a 4th declension noun, there's now 'ew' ending nouns in Latin).

I was looking up names I saw in the Twilight Saga, and found the meaning of some like "Esme" being the old French for "To love". When William the Conqueror came from Normandy and destroyed the Anglo-Saxons and English was codified as a language, many concepts indescribably in Anglish/English just simply adopted Old French words and placed them in the language (because the Normans spoke Old French). I found this interesting as my decendents were Norman serfs brought over to England with King Bill the first there.

Celeste (heavenly) & Rosabelle (beautiful rose)are good Latin names I like.

Some Boethius

Boethius was an early medieval philosopher and was thus heavily into Aristotle and Plato as well as the Church Fathers probably. I really want to read his work "The Consolation of Philosophy" and whilst trying to find a copy online free (I couldn't), I found this beautiful excerpt:

"So sinks the mind in deep despair
And sight grows dim; when the storms of life
Blow surging up the weight of care,
It banishes its inward light
And turns in trust to the dark without.

This was the man who once was free
To climb the sky with zeal devout
To contemplate the crimson sun,
The frozen fairness of the moon --
Astronomer once used in joy
To comprehend and to commune
With planets on their wandering ways.

This man, this man sought out the source
Of storms that roar and rouse the seas;
The spirit that rotates the world,
The cause that translocates the sun
From shining East to watery West;
He sought the reason why spring hours
Are mild with flowers manifest,
And who enriched with swelling grapes
Ripe autumn at the full of year.

Now see that mind that searched and made
All Nature's hidden secrets clear
Lie prostrate prisoner of the night.
His neck bends low in shackles thrust,
And he is forced beneath the weight
To contemplate -- the lowly dust." - Boethius "The Consolation of Philosophy"

Everyone says I'm like Sam from Lord of the Rings and apparently most of Sam's proverbs came from Boethius. Hence my interest becomes evident

Martin Buber & the Exclusivity of Love/Relation

Martin Buber proposed in his book "I and Thou" that true relations (in common english it would be the word 'love' but I hate to use the word because he defines love as something wholly different, and the english word definately has lost most meaning). ... although after Bill Clinton "relations" became a terrible word as well.

Anyway, his theory is that in order to for love to be meaningful it must be exclusive and must involve reciprocity. At first I disagreed, but now I'm thinking he might be right.

A Cold Walk, Twilight/New Moon, Wikihow, and Unfinished Homework

I was home alone tonight and I sat down to watch Top Gear with some Butterscotch ice cream. When I looked down at myself. I was feeling particularly obese, so I threw my ice cream out...all of it. I went through the act in my mind to evaluate it ethically. It was objectively a bad action (wasting food) but the motive (moderation) was good and the situation was good (I'm already morbidly obese). So I figured it was ok to do.

I've been reading Twilight and now am half way through New Moon. This officially makes me gay, I know, but I think it's just because the books are about love and beautiful girls and stuff, and I'm desperately lonely (in the words of SNL jeopardy's Martha Stewart). But they've been making me think I really need to find a girlfriend again. It's been a year and 2 months since I last kissed a girl and that's far too long.

In my sudden bout of self-hatred I did 2 stupid things. I went to my bathroom to try to throw up (I could never be bulimic if I don't even have the willpower to diet don't worry). And then I decided that instead I should try and exercise (so that I could get a Bella of my own). I put on my rosary, and went for a walk in the freezing cold. I prayed a pseudo-St. Michael Chaplet "O God make Speed to Save me, O Lord Make Haste To Help Me, Glory be...etc." x ? , as well as some of my usual painfully honest and blunt prayers which contain far too much Anglo-Saxon.

I finally got home and my legs were tingling from the friction and yet freezing from the weather. I read some more New Moon - a terribly depressing book , which isn't helping my recently returned Depression.

So then for some reason I looked and saw that I had twice as much Latin homework as I had thought. So I just decided to put it off, and looked on WikiHow for how to find a girlfriend.

One thing I think was hillarious, they kept saying "be confident" and "be yourself". What if your personality is self-deprecating and unconfident. Eh?! riddle me that !

Anyway, I think it was a waste of time as I already know how to talk to girls, and I think I'm pretty charismatic, it's just that if I was about 100 pounds lighter, wasn't Catholic / dogmatic, and cared about meaningless pop-culture stuff, i'd be fine. But I am all those things, so it doesn't seem like anythings going to happen for a while. I should probably get up and do my Latin.

Oh but 4 good things happened (so that it's not all depressing)..

1. I had an amazing talk with my philosophy prof about St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotelian Metaphysics, and Post-Modernism (the fact that those things excite me are a perfect example of my aforementioned unpopular interests).

2. I openly disagreed with a girl on Religion in the American Revolution and argued it was a Presbyterian revolt against the CofE and she actually said she respected my opinion and was glad I challenged her. A kindred spirit! (I bet she has a boyfriend).

3. I got to have lunch with my best friend today.

4. I got to have a good meeting with the Roman Catholic asst. chaplain and we discussed the faith and what I was learning from the Newman Club, and he treated me like a person/end rather than means to something.

Well. Another week chasing Eudaimonia via women, weightloss, and wishy-washy teen literature, as well as western philosophy