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ALright, so I 'm going to reply the way I should have. Honestly, after reading it through again, I still maintain that this is shoddily written, with an added flaw of perceived egotism. My biggest criticism of this is not in fact the philosophy itself, but you're vague insistence of "reading and understanding" in response to people's inquiries about your original post seem to go against your very assertion that you don't make claims that you cannot explain. You have to put more effort into responding.

At 1/3/12 06:32 PM, Insanctuary wrote:
Let us start with who I am: My name is Shane, I am 19. I am a very simple being, and I see everything like it's made out of puzzle pieces. I'm not a materialist. I do not have a will to ignorance. [I do not create claims that I cannot explain to make sense out of everything that I cannot explain.] I wish to become aware of all of what I can; knowing that clouded judgment is highest level of perception we can attain.

My first mistake was to overlook this sincere preface.

When they are the ones who want to stop the argument defensively. When they make it blatantly obvious that they are being cracked-- that they don't want to heed to the words of a voice that speaks that of which they refuse to hear.

This is where you start to lose me and begin to seem egotistical. It seems that you are referring to something specific. There is one very good reason not to listen to someone, and that is because you lead separate lives, and to challenge someone is to not only to say that "I am right" but also that "you are wrong". It's not wrong in itself to assert this in any one situation, but it is a misstep to extend this to "the next time I will also be right" and "the next time you will also be wrong".

How dare man play hierarchy with this world's life forms and pretend to be the highest. When man is the one who is destroying this world with their 'intelligence' and their 'superiority'.

What do say to those who believe the world is prospering because of the proliferation of humans?

Example: ''We all have a child sleeping inside of us.'' I'm not actually saying there really is a real life child roaming inside us. I'm expressing that we have innocence locked away somewhere in each and every one of us.

I find it strange how willing you are to call someone childish though for very different reasons. Children are the students of life. A man in the Wild would find it difficult to engage with society while a child raised in the Wild would be able to learn to live in society with more success. There is nothing "childish" about an insult because children learn to insult from adults.

The Shadow And Us Part A:

But this is nothing new. In fact, fear of the unknown IS seeing something in the darkness. People live in darkness and fill in the unknown with, as you say, God and other illusions. But while some of what we fill the darkness with is fearful, like God or nothingness, sometimes what we fill it with is delusional, like truth, an insistence that if we keep reaching out into the dark, our hand will hit something. We know we can never find anything in the dark, but we must for fear of touching nothing. The darkness is not a mirror so much as it is a puddle of unknown depth that we are compelled to step into.

The Shadow And Us Part B: I have noticed a perculiar trait humans possess while analyzing this world. It seems as though humans are able to see parts of them in other things.. As if darkness isn't the only mirror to ourselves. We see rejected aspects of ourselves in people, even animals.. even inanimate objects.. For an example.. My mom over exaggerates her pains, and she likes to get out of fights by saying that she is in pain.. When she is blatantly faking it. Anyways, my mom accused our dog of pretending to be sick.. When really, she saw a part of herself through our dog. Strange? Yes. Sensible? Completely. Illogical?

So is everything we say a reflection of ourselves? If dog's are able to pretend to be sick, then why can't your mother be right?

A man who beats up a woman and rapes her calls her a whore is either A. Actually calling himself the whore by seeing himself through her. B. Kind of like serial killers who killed women that reminded them of their mother. Then again.. My concept explains why the man kills the woman after she has enough of it and rejects the man.. In a sense, when she says ''YOU ARE NOTHING. I HATE YOU. GET AWAY FROM ME.'' He basically just made her tell him that he is nothing. So he felt nothing while killing her.

This example is not well told. Why does the man believe her? It sounds like suggesting that serial killers project their oedipal complexes onto the women they rape, which I don't may be true for some but certainly this is not the driving force for every man.

The Shadow And Us Part C: This is the most interesting part of it all.. Are we really what we say we are? It seems to me that the shadow has no problem telling us things that we do not want to hear.. While we abandon the shadow and say that it's evil.. When the shadow never lied to us.. It was us that lied to ourselves since the beginning of time.. The shadow is the whole of you, as you are the hole of your shadow. You are the hollow one. The shadow is the solid part of you that you rejected to live in this world that doesn't accept pieces of ourselves, and to hide from your negativity. The monster in the closet was never really in the closet when you were a kid.. The monster was created by your mind, and it is the same exact thing that created the illusions of Otherwordly beings, Logic, Languages, Ideals, Etc.. When we are only painting an already painted world..

How do me know that what the shadow says is true? We have no reason to believe the shadow as being the truth.

At 1/6/12 02:09 PM, lapis wrote:

At 1/6/12 01:27 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: I know what other people mean when they say a good leader. My putting it in quotations was more to remind people that the concept means.

I know, but I also felt like I needed to point out that the concept of being a good leader is not completely relative. I may not be helping the "point" that I was making in the OP by wrtiting this, but I actually do think the whole US election process might lead to better leaders being selected. By forcing candidates to tour the entire country for a period of several months, speaking in public at every possible occasion and having questions thrown at them while constantly scrutinising them and lashing out at them for every minor fuck-up, you might filter out candidates who could not handle the stress of leading the country through a prolonged military conflict. In most other countries, the political parties perform this selection process, but of course to a much lesser degree. The US process of constant scrutiny requires time and effort, and what I'm curious about is whether this increased leadership skill off leaders weighs up against the higher costs. And yes, I know it's hard to measure.

I can see what you mean about weeding out the less stress-capable candidates. I mean if campaigns weren't stressful, who knows, we might have Fred Thompson as our president today. At the same time, I think it's more of a shifting of where the source of stress comes from.

I mean, it could be that Americans are culturally predispositioned to not mind that a lot of money in their country is spent on agitating them, through commercials, to vote for a specific candidate or party. It is then still interesting to see how low the approval ratings of both the president and Congress are. The money is apparently not making people happy, not through better leadership and not through what I'd call entertainment.

Originally, you would think that the stress incurred by any politician would be from having high executive decision-making powers (The U.S. Presidency is famous for turning the hair of its officer's white). But as fundraising for the next election or for simply gaining fundraising support from a variety of sources, the stress comes not just from analyzing whether your voting in line with that of yourself or your constituency but also with your fundraisers.

Well the problem is that most of the money is not coming from the American public itself, but from corporations and lobbies. There's basically a cycle of blackmail at work here. What political leaders gain from having lenient campaign laws is the ability to get more money from higher fundraising sources. It's like an arms race, and as a result, congressmen spend anywhere from 30% to 70% of their time fundraising. On the other hand, you've got corporations that need political access, so they have to demand access to politicians through threatening to restrict their funding.

So as you can see, politicians and fundraiser strangle each other. If the corporations don't fund politicians, they lose access, but they need to threaten to not fund politicians, because they know politicians need money to campaign. So i don't really see how someone can be an effective leader when 30% to 70% of their time is spent thinking of fundraising and not what is best for the country.

At 1/4/12 10:09 PM, Insanctuary wrote:

At 1/4/12 08:40 PM, TrevorW wrote:

At 1/4/12 12:48 AM, Insanctuary wrote: Ken, I will give you an idea how to challenge the unchallengable. Do not target the belief system; attack the person who supports it.

If a man cannot stand; their visions falls.

Or they will lash out and you have yourself a pissing contest.

They have no reason to lash out. I have argued with religious people over a 2.5 year period. I have made people who were 100% dedicated in God heed my word, and become interested in what I had to share. Those who lash out like children should not be bothered with. Not one religious person has opposed me. I only subtly opposed them, and converted a few.

I highly doubt this, and if you ever have "converted" anyone into betraying their beliefs, it was when you were a different person than you make yourself out to be now. A reasonable person.

At 1/4/12 09:40 PM, Insanctuary wrote:
My ego is big, I will not deny this. I'm sorry that the millions of pig-headed teenagers delude you from understanding that I am not a pretentious asshole who looks down on others. Infact, you should see me complain about ''sensei's''. Yea, they have interesting knowledge and willpower.. but they are hypocrites, and never let you oppose them. I /WANT/ somebody to oppose me. I want somebody to try to challenge me. I'm not hiding anything. Give me /everything/ you got, because I am sure as hell giving this world everything I got.. beyond my body.. My will is my life alone. My body shakes whenever I speak my mind.. My legs feels like earthquakes surge through them.. I feel like my soul is breathing in the air instead of my lungs.. I can feel every word that comes out of my mouth.. I can feel this lake of fire in my chest that is full of passion; and phoenixes that rise from the flames to fly around.. I am not your average 19 year old.

How can I stop sounding pretentious if I was never pretentious to begin with? You are deluding yourself with your own misconceptions. I'm not the bad guy. Please, understand this.. and continue discussing with me. ^^

Seeing as this is the writing forum, I hope you don't mind that I treat your work as merely a piece of writing and not soulless insights into the human condition.

Your main character, while expansively delineated, is ultimately one-dimensional and uninteresting. At first, you seem to want your character to lie in with a classic sociopathic mind. This conclusion can be drawn by his narcissism and his insistence that he is somehow "different", something that gives him great pleasure to say. However, as the discussion continues, the emphatic resolve of your character just reveals a dislikably petite psyche bent on attention-whoring. A fine flat personality for a secondary character perhaps. But because of his unwavering ego, your character does little to prove himself besides speaking in inane platitudes.

He claims that he "wants people to oppose him", but why is worth opposing in the first place? His own claim is that his philosophy is "beyond logic" which makes it unhuman, which of course makes him no philsopher of the human condition. His own contradictions reveal his flaws. This might be an interesting character in that sense, but his avoidant nature runs the risk of "losing touch with reality" so often, that any plot involving this man would be dull, single-faceted, and as incomprehensible as the ephemeral garbage he spews.

This is God-forsaken prose and could be detailed far more effectively with fundamental changes to your writing style. The simple fact that I, as well as the many others on this forum who possess writing skills superior to yours, could vastly improve the eloquence of your own philosophy if we so chose, should clue you into just how much life experience you (and everyone) would need to steadily hold the human condition under a microscope.

What a crock of shit. I hope this is meant to be satire, even if it's bad satire because to imagine someone who consistently operates in this state of mind frankly drains all of the piece's entertainment value.

At 1/1/12 12:22 AM, ZeeAk wrote: She noticed three things. First, she saw that her headlights were splashing across the trees on either side of the road, and she thought it looked like a silent piano,

Great, original image! It feels a little odd as a first image since we haven't got a sense of what the narrator is like, but that's just my taste.

as they flicked between black and white and black and white. Second, she felt the warm drop of scotch on the inside of her thighs and she wanted to scold the open bottle, but she didn't, because even in the car she didn't feel entirely comfortable with just saying things. Third, she saw the deer. She didn't want to want to look at the deer. It was just there, and it was something that was running around and being free and not being a part of her self-induced, hell-bound screwball. She ripped the wheel sideways and she thought she could feel the entire car fighting her, telling her that the shoulder of the road is not where she wanted to be.
More scotch. She swore at the bottle, and it just echoed her four-letter sentiment.

A little but still really strong stuff here.

The word rebounded inside the green glass, reverbating, vibrating, shaking in and around the liquid. It reached the bottom of the bottle before it retired to silence, contented by its ability to be loud but entirely ineffective. It reminded her of the people around her. They could scream and cry and shout and kick down her front door because one of them happened to be a police officer, and so knew exactly where to kick, but they had never solved anything. They had helped put her behind this wheel, helped her pick exactly the right spot for the scotch bottle so that it wouldn't all spill at once.

She checked her phone. Pulled the wheel. Looked at the deer.
Scotch. Open door. Broken door. $450 for a new door.
Four hundred and fifty dollars she didn't have.
'Nails, hinges, a hammer, and a little bit of elbow grease,' someone had told her, as they pinched what used to be her arm muscles. They'd atrophied and had become a kind of running joke between her and the people that called themselves her friends. She would used the nails, the hinges, the hammer, and the elbow grease if she knew how. She didn't want to break the door frame and have to pay the super. She didn't want to pay the super at all; she didn't want to see him, didn't want to have to admit that she relied on someone else week in, week out. Her mother would be so proud.
Swerve. Deer. The deer jumped. She jumped. Panicked. The car bounced back onto the road, not wanting to skirt the forest any more. The relationship between the car and the forest was entirely platonic, and they both knew that, and they had had enough. Even the dirt rejected the car's wheels, and it shot skyward in twin jets of brown. The roar of an abused engine screamed out to the otherwise silent forest. The deer panicked. She panicked. The scotch panicked and jumped out of the bottle and stained another tiny spot on her once-white dress. Again, she swore. With more passion. More vindication. More energy. The words swirled in the bottle now, as if fighting the scotch for precedence. As if her words were trying to fight the liquid that someone had given her.
That she hadn't bought herself. That she hadn't earned.
She didn't entirely want to crash the car. She didn't want to die. She just wanted the deer to feel like she did; like the product of things she never earned. She didn't want the car to crumple into a fiery mess, but she wanted the bank that legally owned it to. She didn't want to stop breathing. Not entirely. Not forever. Not for longer than it took to breathe in cigarette smoke. She just wanted her scotch-breath to fade away for long enough that she felt like she was in control of her own life. She wanted to take a rope and wrap it around her neck and pull and not be able to breathe until she chose to breathe again. She wanted to give herself life.

I'd say this is pretty powerful. I prefer knowing a little bit about what events led to this and almost feel a little robbed when narrators dance around tangible issues. For instance, I can see why the death of someone else might be only described in passing, because people don't want to bring it up in the real world. But in this case, where she's contemplating suicide, I feel like among all the images of symbolism we must also see flashes of the truth even if we don't understand them completely, I wish I could see more of that in this story.

Closer to the forest. The trees. The car and the forest tried to split again. More dirt. The deer kept running, over to the one place that the car refused to travel; the actual road. Another swerve. A crunch as the whole car slides off the bitumen. She panics. The deer panics. In its eyes there was a tangible fear. Fear that could be smelled. Held. Cradled. Nurtured. In her eyes was that fear. Even as the car swept back across the road. Back towards the deer. She didn't think she was doing it. She was screaming at the deer to move.
'Get off the fucking road!'
Into the bottle. Swirl. Echo. Vibrate. Fight.
'Move!'
It moved. Quickly. Never stopped, its legs bashing down against the bitumen as if trying to crack and split it. Trying to break the unnatural. Trying to tear the new world apart. The car's wheels ripped the old world from its resting place and the heave of dirt was almost beautiful in the darkness.
She chased the deer. She had to. She couldn't not. She couldn't stop looking at it. Couldn't stop thinking that it was something that was not a part of her life, and that that was by choice. Couldn't stop wanting it to become involved in something that didn't belong in its life. Something that would surprise everyone. Something new and unexpected, and something that people would write stories and tell stories about. Stories that weren't about $450 doors, or nails, or hinges, or hammers, or elbow grease.
She didn't know that when her world ended, she saw Death. He stood softly off to the side of the tree, as the car and the deer become one and her life ended with a flash of red in the back of her eyes.

This part seems a little too romantic.

She didn't know he had been waiting, that her lights had played across his chest over and over. She was too busy thinking, too busy driving, too busy drinking, too busy earning. She died with her eyes wide open.

Of course, sometimes if you don't reveal the truth 'til the end you don't get to experience the cool reveal.

Was it that she had run over her husband?

Great job!

Would someone do a review for The Newgrounds Writing Anthology when it comes out?

Unfortunately, winter break means no ps3 for me. I left my system at college.

At 12/26/11 12:57 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote:

At 12/25/11 07:18 PM, Warforger wrote: Common is one thing NOT SHOWING IT ON SCREEN is another.

Given how overwhelmingly uncommon it is in real life, there's no reason to expect it to occur in movies unless they made a deliberate effort to include it.

Just how uncommon do you think it is? Especially in places in the South, white girls who hate their racist fathers always go for the black guy. And up in the north, it's just... well I wouldn't describe it as anything but "uncommon". People still tend to date within their own race/ethnicity but there's a huge difference in integrated and segregated communities.

No way, they're totally different actors. Rock is more sassy, whereas black is more stupid. They are most certainly not interchangable actors.

Why are they at all a good example? Chris Rock only cares about money, Jack Black cares about creative control. Chris Rock was paid $25 million (in advance) to be in Rush Hour 3. Jack Black has never been paid close to that amount for any single movie, including King Kong or the Kung Fu Panda movies.

..............You mean other than the hundreds of years of history? The Haitan revolution would be like mother fucking 300, it would be an easy block buster if the audience accepts that it has to do with revolting from slavery but again because they can't find a white protagonist it's a no-go.

Waitm you think that the average white person doesn't like anti-slavery themes? hahahahaha

I think you're caught up in a 90s audience mindset. People are more about "What makes us similar" like the themes (painfully) expounded upon in movies like Crash. When was the last "Amistad"?

You were saying however, "Hollywood" implying heavily funded mainstream movies, NOT indie movies who don't have commercial restrictions.

What does this have to do with bringing up stuff from over a century ago?

Yes? So was almost every Republican in that era and hell the vast majority of people of that era, hell one reason why they didn't grant blacks the right to vote right away was because in many Northern states they didn't have that right either, he was racist in the sense that he was less racist than those against him. Lincoln's stance was controversial and a step forward towards the equality, while he does not meet modern standards he helped start them.

There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. ~ Lincoln

Lincoln was not a moralist politician. He would say whatever was necessary from speech to speech. That's what bipartisanship compromise used to be.

I don't get it, what part of Marxism says "whites are evil"?

Marxists hold that race is a social construct, and so any differences in outcome of behaviour are the result of discrimination/injustice. Given that whites are the most wealthy/"successful" racial group, whites are responisble for the conditions "disadvantaged" races face, and so it must be shown that whites are responsible for injustice, even when in the real-life event the aggressor was black and the 'victim' white.

That sounds like Racial Formation Theory, which holds Racism was legitimized through superficial sciences like eugenics.

My only prediction is that Obama will be re-elected and one of two things will happen (this is both serious and light-hearted)

If Newt is the GOP candidate:

The republicans will be so disheartened that the face of 1990's conservatism was shot in awe that there will be no Republican resistance when Ron Paul runs in 1216.

If Newt is not the GOP candidate:

Then the second (failed) run of the Tea Party will begin.

What do you guys think about these two sites?

Throughout my high school education, I was taught that papers should be well-researched, based on hard evidence from trusted sources, and should be credited duly so that anyone who wants to can look up where I got the information.

These guys seem to embody that spirit in the real world. At the same time, I know that some people see these kinds of "fact-checking" sites as left-leaning since they scrutinize more statements by conservatives. On the other hand, maybe it's just that the left is more careful in their wording at the moment because there is a Democratic president, while the right needs to be as incendiary as possible so are more likely to stretch the truth to shock and anger their electorate.

??? Discuss ???

How many freaking games is this kid playing!?

Title: HIS NAME IS JAM!

When Jam was sixty years old his left leg stopped working. Jam didn't think of it much though, and just leaned to the right and tilted his head to keep the world level. In the back of his mind, he must've been thinking, "Keep it all up." So he kept it up. Kept the farm, the animals (soon to be animal after Thanksgiving), kept the friends in town. He lost the wife. She hadn't needed to go so soon. Only one thing needed to go and that was the apple tree.

Jim wore his crumpled hat, the one with the bent side that left one ear exposed to sunburn. His motion was automatic, and soon his hacksaw had eaten three branches from the trunk. The apple tree, Jam knew, was a tombstone for a few of his forebears. Though his father was buried in Arlington Cemetery, His grandfather and grandmother were buried here next to each other. They had been young to go, and probably would have thought the whole affair pretty romantic. No more a romantic than he was a petulant Catholic, Jam had been only interested in that trivia because of his time as a gravedigger. Graves were full of stories like that, stories that could be told to kids to make death seem not so goddamn lonely. Jam had no kids, he had no use to keep up those stories. The ground the apple tree stood on. It was good ground, but only good for Jam.

Then all that was left were the roots, which would need a different saw. Jam wiped some sun-stung tears from his eyes and tried to get up from his kneel. It came to him to get lower to the dusty ground, just to see if he could, amidst the other fading voices, hear his father. So he got lower to the ground, but heard only the rumble of Jenson's tractor a mile down the road and of course, that was only what he imagined it to be. Jam found it hard to turn his back away from the sky, and the corners of his mouth dipped like two of Christ's scars. He felt two drops of wet tap the back of his neck, the day got dark under clouds. Jam stood and walked back inside the house. He stopped in the doorway and turned again. He slowly walked down the stairs, to the small white-plastic table next to the railing. He lifted the cool metal of his wife's box in front of his chest and his words fell to the ground faster than the rain. "Tomorrow, then."

Well I mean, if everyone knew about Seal Team 6 before now, would Bin Laden be dead? Would it have been wise to make that information known before the fact?

Actually, Hollywood is more known for white-washing a cast. Especially when it comes to Asian influences like Dragonball Z, The Last Airbender, etc.

At 12/21/11 05:47 AM, TheMason wrote:

At 12/21/11 02:07 AM, EKublai wrote: There is NO non-political Reason for this to have Happened!

Actually there is: the bill would've been impossible to enact.

Not impossible to enact, but there is a lot of room for something to go wrong. the problem is not with the government bureaucracy but the companies themselves not having enough time to program these changes in time.

In the end I think this is a combination of two things:
1) The Senate (both parties) want to break on-time for the holidays and so voted on an ill-concieved piece of legislation. (Laziness and incompetence.)
2) Senate Democrats are playing politics and trying to make House Republicans look bad when they want to do the right thing and not go on vacation until their work is done.

Both sides are playing politics. But in the end, House Republicans arn't even talking about the practicality of the extension, and the "kick down the road" nature of their argument tells me they're trying their hardest to make it not look like a victory for democrats, which it wouldn't be anyway.

At 12/21/11 06:26 PM, TheMason wrote:

At 12/21/11 03:56 AM, BUTANE wrote: ...Also, they better add something about taxing the rich even more to pay for it...cause right now it's not in there and im pissed off about it.

I wonder if you're joking here...or the OWS kool aid has just made you that clueless.

Right now the "rich" are the ones funding everything.
* 40% of taxes are paid by the top 2% of earners.
* The lower 47% of Americans pay zero tax.
* The poorest tax filers have negative tax rates, in otherwords: they get more refunded to them than they paid in taxes.

Don't see the point you're making. Even if all Americans payed the same percentage for their income tax, the wealthiest Americans would still be paying more money. It doesn't make sense to raise taxes on anyone but the rich because we wouldn't get any revenue from those with less money. Plus, we need the greatest percentage of Americans to keep as much money as possible because they are the consumers.

There is NO non-political Reason for this to have Happened!

For once, we have a glimmer of bipartisanship in the senate through this payroll tax cut extension, and the House Republicans have to eff it up because they want a full-year extension now.... .WHICH WOULD HAPPEN LATER ANYWAY!!!

Here you go!
*chases after thrown hat*

Title: A Not So Splendid Shower

It was the pause of my morning, and the air between the drops of hot water made my hair stand on end. As per usual, I had not turned the lights on, so my perception of the space I occupied (if and when I had my eyes open at all) was limited to the winter's hesitant expression gazing through the frosted window and to the slice of my bedroom's yellow shadow pulling itself through from under the door.

I reached through the curtain and closed the pill cabinet so I could see my dripping self. Immediately, my interest in my appearance was supplanted by the reflection of the toilet and the sheer beauty of its whiteness. I suspect my friends would think it unusual that, given the lack of women in my life, I should always be so careful to leave the seat down, but then again I found the state of the sinks that married men like Roger use to be inconceivable.

I reached down for the soap, the holder for which was built into the wall. I had specifically measured the holder to be installed no higher than my shin, as I often took bathes. My inexperience at taking showers was betrayed by my wobbling knees, and my compulsion to lean and grab the glass rod my towel waited on.

Frantic worry crossed my mind and I wondered briefly if I should have picked bathroom tile of that particular shade of green. I should have looked at it in the dark, I thought. I didn't afford enough time to these things.

At 12/20/11 06:31 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: Has anyone else noticed that Bush's low approval ratings were, according to liberals, undeniable proof of the man's utter incompotency as a leader...but then when Obama's ratings fall even lower, this can be WHOLLY attributed to conservatives being dicks? Hilarious.

Note wholly, but essential you're right. That opinion is not without a basis. At the moment, who is leading the Republican polls right now? Newt Gingrich, the same man at the head of the conservative revolution during Clinton's second term. Even if it's to no avail, I would rather go with the candidate who promises vying for bipartisanship rather than the candidate whose job it once was to FOSTER partisanship.

You mean that thing that liberals would have been protesting in the streets and making death threats about if it had been Bush instead of Obama?

Except everything he tried doing, regardless of success or lack thereof, was bad, and essentially boiled down to either trying to reinfalte the housing bubble or quick jolts to the economy in order to temporarily boost employment figures before the next election.

Surprising you should say that since I would actually characterize Obama as having many more long-term goals regarding the economy than his predecessor, particularly regarding energy dependence, jobs, and healthcare. Temporary "jolts" as you call them, have been essential for keeping our economy from halting to a standstill, regardless of how effective they have been at pulling us OUT of recession (which apparently, they were).

He pursued and oversaw polices designed to restore the economy to the state it was in immediately prior to the begininng of the collapse, so of course it was terrible policy.

Could you give some examples of this?

Which part, exactly, of...stopping the wars, stopping torture, stopping the assasination of American citizens, closing of secret prisons, closing of guantanamo, stopping of spying on american citizens, ending of the patriot act, stopping indefinite detention, stopping the war on drugs, stopping corporate subsidies, opposing all bail-outs, ending multi-TRILLION dolalr deficits....is "retarded"?

I don't see alot that is "retarded" about Paul's policies. They show how ballsy he is to try (and with okay success) to run on the platform he has chosen. Unfortunately, I think Paul (or any candidate for that matter) is just as likely to fold and compromise as some see Obama as doing. Some of his umbrella goals, such as a smaller government, are simply impossible the way things operate currently. How can you have a smaller government when politicians rely on complex taxes to blackmail corporations and corporations rely on this blackmail to gain access to politicians through fundraising?

What got me to vote for Obama were the promises he made that I could see being seen through, through executive order. Things like the closing of Guantanamo Bay or the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. And the fact is, is that I am NOT completely satisfied with how some of those issues have played out.

But once I think about all of Ron Paul's goals outside of Guantanamo Bay, I either think "He's not stupid, he will listen to his generals." or "Well, that's not going to happen." To me, his goals aren't evolving with the issues facing the country.

I think the real disconnect here is that there is a difference of opinion as to what Christmas ultimately means.

For instance, I know a lot of Jewish people who laugh about Jewish holidays and say "Yeah, I'd rather celebrate Christmas". For a lot of people, Christians and non-Christians, Christmas is just a more meaningful tradition in today's world when taken out of its religious context. It's the natural result of commercializing Christmas.

On the other hand, people who maintain the religious identity of Christmas feel threatened. The popularity of Christmas as a consumer holiday has resulted in more people wanting in on the fun, regardless of the religious message. And the more popular Christmas becomes to the general messages, the more people are going to be surprised and offended when bringing up a religious identity contrary to their own.

oh yeah, btw gum, the anthology's still going, we should be finished in the next month or two.

At 12/8/11 10:55 PM, gumOnShoe wrote:

Frankly, I think Obama wasn't allowed to do enough thanks to this congress and as such isn't really responsible for anything other than stopping the free fall by implementing and overseeing bailouts/tarp/auto industry saving/ etc.

Thanks for making this point, gum, it's not said often enough.

The congress is comprised of 535 individuals worried over their own reelection campaigns, paying more attention to where their funders are going then whether they sincerely believe this is how the country is supposed to operate. That's a broad generalization, but I have YET to see a SINGLE volunteering effort from ANY congressman to convince me otherwise. Is there a single Buddy Roemer among them, a politician willing to only accept donations from the public as opposed to corporations? If the speech in this country were actually that of the people of this country, we wouldn't have the partisan pinchfight that goes on.

Just so I'm not spouting out of my ass, my example of this is the payroll tax holiday extension being negotiated right now.

Why is a pipeline even being mentioned? Isn't the pipeline it's own issue? Is politics like trading baseball cards? I'll trade you a payroll tax extension only if you give your rare pipeline approval?

I've seen the look of disappointment on Obama's face during his entire term and I feel like very few people actually consider why he does that.

As long as money influences the system, it will.

And I wouldn't want no trouble
from that dusty christmas bauble
hanging above the house my daddy built
before John Deere's Deer bled out and spilt
all the wine cellar spirits and ghosts and bones
in the crypt that sunlight has never called home

I wished for more than he could ever know
and I played it off like it wasn't a big deal

I had the Northeast steel running up my spine
and anonymous chills climbing up my thighs
I ate restaurant dinners with a silent pride
I said, "Waiter, I don't take tonic spritzer from the gun!"
said, "Dad, shit, I didn't mean to eat and run."
Daddy, look at my face, look at my face, look at my face, look at my face

I'm the face of the sun.

~ That's all I got right now.

Thanks. Look forward to seeing the changes.

If you're into single player games, ps3 is the one you should have. Also, Infamous and Infamous 2 are stellar games.

At 11/18/11 05:18 PM, FIGMENTUM wrote:

At 11/16/11 09:07 PM, 7794 wrote: = = = = = = = = = = = = + TROPHY LEADERBOARD UPDATE 73 + = = = = = = = = = = = =

s time White Knight Chronicles 2. Expect that +12 to be my highest for the next few weeks.

I'm working my way through Nier at the moment, which requires four playthroughs minimum to get all the trophies (I'm going to have to do five). You won't be turtling alone haha.

Kudos for playing Nier, I didn't feel like that was on anyone's radar when it came out.

Each to his own I guess, but SMB3 added an aesthetic appeal for me, a quality lacking previous games to the point where I have never completed any Mario game through except SMB3.

At 11/27/11 02:37 AM, 0ctopus wrote: I would ask him to delete and ban SamBakza's flashes

Yes, delete one of the most beloved and iconic newgrounds series of all time. Really? That's the ONE thing you've been waiting for?

Okay...

Anyway, realistically I'd just remind him that he owes me one, and that I could probably either be repaid by him hiring me as the admin for the new writing portal.

At 11/23/11 02:57 PM, AKACCMIOF wrote: Hey NG! :D I like poems that blur happiness and sadness, reflecting the beauty in loss and the vivaciousness of morality. So I wrote one! :D

AMARANTHUS

We walked, bare, through July's forests,
Hands entwined in the humid heat.
She was my guide, me her awkward aesthete,
And in the fractured light, her half blind palmist.
Bare skin on skin, touch my retreat.

Great opening stanza. Last three lines of this are inspired.

Above, the majesty of tall trees standing high above the fern,
The ecstatic grace of a Shikra soars
High above, chased by a whistle of its small
But feverously eloquent companion, as it dives and turns,
The waist high ferns shiver, and listen to its fleeting call.

stylistically, I think taking out "a" from the third line sounds better. Also, "feverously" is not a word. The word is "feverishly". I also can't picture "feverishly eloquent". What do yo u mean by that?

I could not say where or who
I was, if I was pressed.
But I was here,
Surreal, undressed.

I like that this comes after the animal/tree stanza. Good juxtaposition.

She led me forwards, and in the heat, my mind swimming,
Within the swelling colours we step among,
The Kachnar's proud pink and striking white tongues,
Her eyes deep into mine, with subtle euphoria, brimming,
Leading me into a circle of red running flowers.

As we danced, between so many leaves,
Bare skin on skin, two entwined dancers,
I had no questions, she had no answers,
Her hair flowing down, a burning bright red in the heat,
Like the running grace of amaranthus.

I don't really care for the repetition of dancers. It just distracts and seems like an overlooked detail. I like the last line.

Now, I am haunted by unrest,
Yearning for the same warm release,
In my chest, the memory burns,
My vision swims grey, but of that memory I'm sure.

This is where I get uneasy about the poem. Here you suggest that the lack of whatever it was that came before is lacking from the now. You're not really blurring happiness and sadness, but separating them.

The burning sun stays high, undimming,
Those once passing minutes relived as hours,
I can still hear the Shikra's two note song:

I like how you quantify the Shikra's song here, the narrator once would note ave cared how many notes made up the song.

It is now my song, and I will not walk free
Until my wordless question is answered.

The last line here is kind of cliche if you ask me.

I cannot say when or why
Ask for more, nor take less.
I yearn for release,
She replies "not yet".

I like this.

Anyone else write poems alike? Any crit? Any similar/ contrasting views?

great job.