etvart

back from working, time for reading!



I'm doing 38 things
 

etvart's Life List

  1. 1. Sleep better
    780 people
  2. 2. Finish projects on time
    1 entry
    2 people
  3. 3. Learn Japanese
    1 cheer
    9,744 people
  4. 4. Make a ridiculously large sculpture
    1 entry . 1 cheer
    1 person
  5. 5. Get rid of my headaches
    50 people
  6. 6. Work at a funeral home
    2 people
  7. 7. Remain married
    1 entry
    1 person
  8. 8. Get married
    18,646 people
  9. 9. Own a grand piano
    1 entry
    119 people
  10. 10. Compose film scores
    3 people
  11. 11. Invent a musical instrument
    1 entry
    4 people
  12. 12. Start a political party
    1 entry
    19 people
  13. 13. Start a religion
    54 people
  14. 14. Learn Portuguese
    1,056 people
  15. 15. Learn Esperanto
    402 people
  16. 16. Use pseudonyms
    1 person
  17. 17. Use heteronyms
    1 person
  18. 18. Move to Coober Pedy
    1 person
  19. 19. Publish a series of textbooks
    1 person
  20. 20. Become a certified hypnotherapist
    4 people
  21. 21. Eat better
    1,489 people
  22. 22. build my own guitar
    111 people
  23. 23. Skydive
    10,197 people
  24. 24. Die sensibly
    1 person
  25. 25. Build my own house
    924 people
  26. 26. Carve my own headstone
    1 person
  27. 27. Build my own coffin
    1 entry . 1 cheer
    2 people
  28. 28. Be in the Guinness Book of World Records
    9 people
  29. 29. find out what my blood type is
    1,316 people
  30. 30. learn Tarot
    256 people
  31. 31. Get an electric violin
    3 people
  32. 32. Astral project
    223 people
  33. 33. Record a hip-hop album
    2 people
  34. 34. Start a record label
    366 people
  35. 35. Write a cookbook
    248 people
  36. 36. Play bass for an artist I admire
    1 person
  37. 37. Record a few stand-up comedy albums.
    1 entry
    1 person
  38. 38. Sell a painting
    358 people

How I did it
How to never own a TV
It took me
23 years
It made me
free.


How to record my music
It took me
3 years
It made me
very happy.


How to get hit by lightning
It took me
17 years
It made me
laugh.


See all "How I Did It" stories...

Recent entries
watch Obama's inauguration
1-20-9 10 months ago

I’m happy about this.

I’m off work that day, so I get to watch it on TV.
I live too far away to attend in person.

This is one of my generation’s most historic moments.



Record a few stand-up comedy albums.
Why "albums?" 10 months ago

I can’t really tour.
I don’t have the time, the money, or the cocaine habit to do it “professionally.”

The occasional gig out would be better for me… and the audience.
Instead of slowly allowing my material to change form, I could do one show, then disappear, eventually… months or years, here… return with a completely new set. No reprisal whatsoever.

The occasional show would be better to record, also, in that it wouldn’t be a show in the middle of a tour… a tour based on the same material. The audience would be hearing it for the first time, and it would be my first performance with it.

I could record it myself, and sell it over the internet… something.

This is very do-able for me with no time frame.



start a political party
...no name for the movement yet. 10 months ago

I’ve got no name for this.

I think it’s more of a political philosophy that could be taken alongside any other party allegiance… although it would be a rejection of any and all party allegiance, in the first place.

It’s all based on progress.
It makes me sick to my stomach that we “have a two-party system” in the USA because we’ve “always had a two-party system.”
Isn’t it obvious, then, that this is part of why we make little progress?
Right calls left “left” as an insult.
Left calls right “right” as an insult.
These blows don’t hurt…
...but if you’re neither one—whether you’re a moderate or out of the picture all together, you’re still attacked ad hominem.
If you’re a moderate, you’re called a “moderate,” and criticized for not picking right or left.
If you’re out of the picture, not right, left, or centered, then you’re (“some kind of”) “radical.”

The last insult stings the most because you are much more progressive than right or left, and right and/or left wants to destroy you for that because they are so afraid of progress.

My political “party” would probably be considered just an adverb added in front of another party name.

The two-party system doesn’t work… and could only work if there was only ONE issue people were voting on. Some people do that, of course, but it is out of ignorance; “I only care about this” implies, indeed, that “I don’t care about anything else.”
Apathy is often ignorant.

The two-party system could only work if there was only one issue.
One party would take one stance on the issue, we’ll say “Yes,” and the other party would take the opposite stance.
That would work. It currently doesn’t.

As it stands now, a party is a strange collection of “Yes” and “No” answers.
As an individual, you are very unlikely to share the arrangement of opinions that a party advocates.

My “party”, my adverb in front of the party name, shakes the pressure to fall directly within party lines.

It might end up destroying an individual’s party allegiance in the first place… but that is progress.

The nation is full of moderates and radicals as well as “liberals” and “conservatives.”
I aim not to create a “moderate” party, as views there would be muddy, and there’d just be so much in-fighting.
I aim not to create a “radical” party, as no matter how progressive I may be, there is still so much resistance to change.

...the resistance to change, by the way, the practice of holding so tightly onto the past, is based on the idea that looking back, we have some idea of “what the hell was really going on.”
Well, prove it.
Can you?
Thank you…

My main personal, not “party,” belief in politics is that:
We are living in an anarchy in which many people don’t believe we’re living in an anarchy.

The main party belief would be a loosely related idea of mine, that:

We are moving forward, for better or worse.
We often don’t know until very late, later, whether we’ve done better or worse.
Attempting to truly progress is all we can do, actually.
After we’ve attempted to, then we can check if we were right.

We will be wrong some of the time.

How do you like that: a political party that will admit that they could possibly be wrong?

The stance that “things are getting better” is not completely true or false.
Neither is the opposite stance that “things were so much better.”

We cannot change the past for the better, though, so this party of mine will attempt to change the future for the better.



See all entries ...


 

I want to:
43 Things Login