Listen to your elders? Fuck that.

It struck me last night that I'm so skeptical/agnostic in part because of my upbringing - more specifically, it's pretty damn hard to believe what your "elders" tell you about Jesus, et al. when you know they purposely lied to you about Santa, the Easter Bunny, and pretty much everything else (like how the Pilgrims and Indians were great buddies)...

I don't normally hold a grudge, but seriously - what kind of fucked up society acts in colusion to delude and lead astray it's youth - then make it a rite of passage to find out that all along you've been lied to? Like a huge echo of "Ha ha, gotcha!" this kind of thing just dumbfounds - it takes my breath away really... I understand the "Spirit of Christmas" and the special circumstances that surround each make-believe story, but it goes further than that. We create newer, more elaborate lies to cover the old ones. And then we take great joy in revealing it all at whatever age we deem appropiate - as if such a realization will vault children into adulthood. no wonder they're little shits as teenagers.

Somehow it's all okay because we're doing this to kids... though that logic doesn't really work for me. In movies like The Game the main character reacts with anger and distrust when he finds out that his whole world for the last several days has been a farce - why should it be any different for children? Sure their whole world isn't what's been a lie - but when you're young, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are all it takes... especially when it's practically all adults lying to you about it.

Anyway, not sure how this morphed into a society-wide critique, I just meant to take a look at why I'm such a skeptic now. Meh.

Society

I used to think that society was something we all had an interest in improving - that society provided protection for all so that we could improve ourselves. I would get angry when people scorned a progressive society - I thought that as humans we were better than that. We should be actively participating in our betterment, in our salvation.

Now I realize that society is only an arena for our competition. It's the medium for our individualist struggles. We build protection for the weak so we can be their gods. We save the poor and hopeless, sot because it is the right thing to do, but because we want to be their saviors. We "work together" so that we can measure our contributions against one another. Our society has no collective conscious - it has no "greater good" - it is a mockery, a farce, and a sham.

Society is an extension of our personal greed and pride and ambition, but not of our compassion, our integrity, or our love.

I *am* organized

So I noticed something sort of weird. I don't consider myself a really "neat" person per se. I mean, I keep things tidy, and everything has a place - even if it is in a pile with other things... in the corner. But, "neat" I'm not.

Except this. When I'm working on the computer... any computer, your computer, my computer, the work computer... when using computers, I minimize the applications I'm not using. To the point of staring at my desktop while not doing anything at all.

This goes beyond just closing the applications as I finish with them - which I believe would count as "putting things back when you're done using them." This is into the realm of "using things in certain spaces, and only those spaces." I also separate all the foods on my plate and eat them in order - I'm not sure if these things are related.

At any rate, think about it (because I'm fairly certain I'm not the only preson that does this...) - you open Word, start typing something, and you need to look up a specific idea, so you Save (unless you're retarded), minimize Word, and open Firefox (these application names are really just for the sake of example, don't get your panties in a wad if you use something else. And if you're panties are in a wad for some other reason, for instance, my use of the phrase "panties in wad," I'm truly sorry. That must be uncomfortable.), go to Google, and look up your topic of bumfuckery. During the topic searching, you decide to check your email, so you open another tab in Firefox (users of IE can weep with shame here), check your email, close the email tab, finish looking up whatever, and minimize Firefox. And you're staring at your desktop. Now you decide that the song Winamp is playing sucks, so you maximize the app (cuz, duh, it was minimized already, before you started typing in Word ;) ), change the song, and re-minimize Winamp. Now you maximize Word, and start typing... but you need to double-check what you looked up, so you minimze Word, and maximize Firefox, check what you need, minimize Firefox, and maximize Word. etc, etc, ad nauseum.

I think you get the point. What's up with this nonsense? I know that the machine doesn't mind if I leave all my windows (or workspaces for you GUI freaks) open. I know it doesn't suck away resources that wouldn't still be sucked with the apps minimized. I know Windows doesn't run any better with things "cleaned up." I know all of these things. So why the fuck do I minimize?!
I use the task bar to switch between apps anyway, so it's not like having all of them open would make it hard to find something. Or is it?

I hereby postulate that the reason I do this (it's amazing how authoritative you can sound when you're guessing about your own actions) is because I don't like distractions. Like when I'm working on a research paper, look something up, and find some other app than Word in my face when I close Firefox/Google. I think this may cause me to lose some semblance of the clue towards the train of thought I once had, and I've evolved to avoid this.

And when I'm multi-tasking hard-core (IRC, IM, Winamp, Email, Word, and more open at once, all in some state of use), losing the train of thought can be seriously time-consuming.

So there you have it folks - proof of evolution.

Thank you, thank you. You can send my Nobel Prize to my house. Where I live.

resignation

Busy, busy Bee -
Not as busy as me.
Drone all day, slave away;
At least you don't have to pay.