Best Commercial for Cocoa Puffs Ever (dream)

So I met this beautiful girl with platinum hair and fell in love. We decided to take a trip to the mall. To our surprise, everyone was out of business except for the department store, which was having a going-out-of-business sale. The mall was very empty. We had some fun looking at advertisements in the department store, then she decided to give me a blow job.

It was specifically a "blow" job; she was very experienced in sex, and carefully weighed the options and decided that in this case actual "blowing" would be more fun than sucking. I honestly would've enjoyed it either way, but I left it up to her.

When we were done, we left the department store, and noticed all the cars were gone. In their place were advertisements. I was curious what they were about, and why society had suddenly gone all whacky. My platinum-haired girlfriend didn't want anything to do with them; she thought they were suspicious. But I was curious. They were interactive advertisements, so I interacted with one of them, and it spat out a radio.

I listened to the radio and it said, "Society is over. But come see our new movie by Steven Spielberg!"

I said to my GF, "Hey, apparently there's this new movie by Steven Spielberg. I don't really like Steven Spielberg, but this one might be interesting."

"Whatever," she said, still apprehensive of the advertisements.

We walked to the movie house, but in its place was a building with a series of rooms. We both went in to have a look around. They said, "Welcome to the new Steven Spielberg movie! But first we have to get to know you."

So they shuttled us from room to room asking us questions. It was rather annoying, but the real problem came when me and my girlfriend got separated. Then I decided, Okay, I've had enough. I asked them to be reunited with my girlfriend and to be shown the exit, and told them I was no longer interested in the movie, thank you very much.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure you're sure?"

"Yes."

"You'll miss the movie."

"Do what I asked dammit!"

So they did what I asked and I was satisfied, until I realized that they reunited me with the wrong woman! This woman was much older and had pink hair, not platinum hair. And furthermore, she seemed to form some kind of unnatural attachment to me, and I didn't like it one bit.

I immediately entered the building again and DEMANDED to be reunited with my girlfriend. Meanwhile, this other woman was hounding me about wanting to have children. I said, "No."

Finally, I found my girlfriend, and said, "Are you okay? I was worried about you!"

She was clearly upset, just like me. We decided to go to her house, which was nearby, and talk. She had had several of my babies while in the building. But since she'd only given me a blowjob, and not intravaginal sex, they were chocobo babies.

So I followed my girlfriend and the chocobos, who were all in a line running behind her as chocobos do. But the pink-haired lady was still following me. She demanded that I give her money. I told her "no," but she kept demanding. So I said, "I don't know why you want money, because society has disappeared. But fine. If you'll go away, I'll give you money." And I gave her money.

But it wasn't enough. Now she insisted she was hungry and wouldn't leave until I gave her something to eat. "Alright, fine. I'll give you something to eat."

Then she started chewing on me. "Not of my flesh!!" I said. But she didn't stop. Anyway, it turns out this woman wasn't a woman at all, but a flesh-eating alien from outer space.

Finally we got to the platinum-haired girl's house, and I said, "Look. If you stop chewing on me, I'll give you something to eat, and I'll promise you'll like it."

She shook her head "no," my calf still in her mouth.

I sighed and opened my girlfriend's refrigerator. I pulled out a leg of ham, and took the plastic off and waved it under her nose. She became enraptured by the scent.

"I told you!" I said.

She knawed on the ham for a while, then looked in the refrigerator and said, "Cocoa Puffs!!!!"

And it was all a big commercial for Cocoa Puffs.

Everyone in Power is an Anarchist

By definition.

If you're in power, that means you answer to no one in the context of that power. And therefore, in that context, you are by definition an anarchist.

Let us be clear here: anarchy doesn't mean chaos, violence, satanism, or anything of the like. It is a very simple concept: an- (lack of) archy (authority). In a state of anarchy, there is no authority to answer to but yourself and God.

Everybody wants to be an anarchist. They may not say it, or even believe it. But it's true. No one wants someone working over them jostling them around. Which brings me to the next point: The secret to happiness in life.

Sir Ken Robinson, an education reformist, believes the secret to happiness in life is finding the place where what you do well meets what you want to do. There's a trendy little concept called "The Secret" making rounds which suggests that the secret to happiness in life is having positive affirmations. You get what you put out for.

But I would humbly like to suggest, that from my own experience, the secret to happiness in life is secretly implied in both of these concepts. Note that they both involve the idea of wishing or wanting. However, one must adequately define the state of actually getting what you want, which is often skirted around.

When you get what you want, it is a more complex notion then just getting a birthday present that you asked for. It's a state of mind. The state of mind is free from obstructions, because you have what you want. There is no more searching. You're just living in the moment, present with whatever you want. And one can easily say that if you "answer" to someone, you're by definition giving them the ability to obstruct what you want.

The secret to happiness in life, therefore, is to find a state of anarchy. An open system. And it needn't be a lonely one. There is such a thing as a truncated pyramid—where there is room enough at the top for more than one person. Co-equal anarchy is the best way to live, do work, or do whatever you want.

And here's the beautiful part—we all want the same thing. So when you're in a state of anarchy, with other human beings, there is no need to worry about stepping on each other's toes, because you know you all are on the same team. This sense of honesty is how human institutions function.

If you're in a system that is not open, and people do step on each others' toes, I've found that one's actions do bear fruit, in some way, even if faint. I act as if the entire world is required to be ethical, and work toward that end. So far, it has not borne bad fruit. And in fact, it's borne some pretty amazingly good fruit. And there are many moments when I truly feel I'm no longer under someone else's thumb as a result.

Some Thoughts on an Age of Aquarius Part 5: Hacking vs. Lying

All parts include: Part 1: Ignorance; Part 2: Seduction; Part 3: Compassion; Part 4: Psychiatrists; Part 5: Hacking vs. Lying.

Hacking vs. Lying

In my opinion, this is the most interesting of the series because it involves a brief philosophical treatment of a very new concept. I am going to use the "programmer subculture" definition of "hacker," which is someone who manipulates computers in ways they weren't meant to be. I will distinguish this from "cracking," which is simply unlawful access to a computer.

Hacking is not cracking. Nevertheless, I feel there must be a little leeway given against the law in use of the term. If you do something online that's only a minor transgression of the law, but nevertheless have ethically praiseworthy or at least neutral motives, then I believe you are still "hacking."

How does this relate to lying? Well, it raises certain ethical issues. Hacking is essentially "gaming the system." It is a blatant misrepresentation of your motives. And we needn't be talking about computers here. We can talk about things like political maneuvering done in congress, or journalist misrepresentation in search of a story. The fact of the matter is, however, that it usually involves computers. And this is what makes hacking ethically neutral, as opposed to lying, misrepresentation, or "gaming the system" per se, which are all unethical.

So what's the difference? Hacking is done openly. Example: you're calling a company with an automated menu on the phone. You know you will have to misrepresent yourself in order to talk to a human. You're not cracking, because your motives are ethically sound—maybe you want to know the washing instructions for your kid's new sweater. If you were straight up misrepresenting and not hacking, you wouldn't ever want to tell anyone what you did. But that's not the case. You were hacking, because if someone asks what you did, you can tell them; it's not a big deal. If there are restrictions to who gets to know what you did and why, it's only because those people are the people you're hacking. It's not because you need to keep a secret from the general public.

Hacking is a product of the Age of Aquarius. It is an "open" act in my use of the term. (See my Principles of Openness for an explanation of my use of the term.) And furthermore, I believe that my outline of the notion of hacking is sufficiently concrete to be protected speech under the Constitution of the United States, as it should be.

Some Thoughts on an Age of Aquarius Part 4: Psychiatrists

All parts include: Part 1: Ignorance; Part 2: Seduction; Part 3: Compassion; Part 4: Psychiatrists; Part 5: Hacking vs. Lying.

Psychiatrists

In my opinion, psychiatrists are the single biggest threat to any open society in alignment with the principles of openness. They represent a perversion of every principle of openness. (I'm referring to my Principles of Openness.)

1. They appear not to, but they represent an undue extension of authority. They appear not to because anyone, presumably, can become a psychiatrist. And psychiatrists can change careers, move between jobs, etc. The position appears to be open. But. It's open to everyone except the most important person—YOU. YOU cannot become your own psychiatrist. YOU have no authority over what the psychiatrist diagnoses and prescribes. Psychiatrists affect you. But they have no formal accountability to you. By all rights, if you need to change psychiatrists, you should be able to, but all to often, you can't. And in cases where you can, like in Portland Oregon, psychiatrists actively oppose any peer-run psychiatry clinics on the fundamental belief that psychiatric patients should have no say in who gets to treat them.
2. They appear not to, but they represent closing off the ability to participate. Psychiatrists work under the common assumption that they're doing good science. And that their experiments are not a "black box" in any sense. "Black boxes" are strictly forbidden in any open system, and the institution of Western science is such a system. But. There are multiple black boxes in psychiatry. First, there's the black box of the observed. The observer can observe the symptoms, and describe them, but she has no idea what they signify. No psychiatric science ever has been able to describe what symptoms signify beyond subjective and arbitrary labeling, and the ASSUMPTION that this labeling represents a license to take complete control over all aspects of the patient's life. Then, there's the black box of the symptoms themselves. No one has any idea what theoretical basis drives the symptoms and their respective diagnoses. They're just arbitrary labels.
3. They appear not to, but they hold secrets. When you go into a psychiatrists office, since psychiatry is supposed to be a science, and medical, and approved by society, you'd expect no shady secrecy going on in your interactions with psychiatrists. But. Psychiatrists LIE as a normal part of their profession. As much as they may try to convince themselves otherwise, they know that there is no scientific basis for their diagnoses and prescriptions. So if a psychiatrist knows you have depression but no psychosis, and they want to prescribe you an anti-psychotic, they will LIE to the authorities to do so. And if they think you need to be hospitalized but they don't feel they have sufficient evidence to prove you're a danger to yourself or others, they will misrepresent, bullshit, and LIE to get you institutionalized. And most importantly of all, if they feel you don't deserve to know what they're deciding on your behalf, they will LIE to you to keep it secret.

I cannot stress enough how much psychiatry is the antithesis of openness. It is the biggest long-term threat to our democracy. Already, children are being medicated simply because they defy authority. They are being medicated under the pretext of an invented illness because they're bored. THESE are the change-makers, who are being snuffed out due to this travesty of science. And furthermore, since the institution of psychiatry seeks full autonomy in deciding whether to incarcerate or otherwise control people with "mental illness" on a whim, based on their "objective" (read: patently subjective) diagnoses, we can all expect key activists, politicians, and change-makers to be locked up for invented illnesses, just like they do in Russia, if we allow psychiatry any more legal leeway. Republicans already like to say Liberalism is a "mental illness." Surprise surprise. Psychiatry is an illegitimate institution—the product of Western obsession with control and a repressive and arbitrary suppression of the use of psychoactive drugs for psychological (and not psychiatric) purposes.

Some Thoughts on an Age of Aquarius Part 3: Compassion

All parts include: Part 1: Ignorance; Part 2: Seduction; Part 3: Compassion; Part 4: Psychiatrists; Part 5: Hacking vs. Lying.

Compassion

Due to the fact of the two previous points, particularly the first, it is necessary to insist on higher standards for compassion. Yes, that means compassion for murderers, rapists, adulterers, kidnappers, drug dealers, and so on and so forth. We all like to villainize people for certain things. But the fact of the matter is, you never know anymore whether the information is accurate, or whether the act was more pitiable than hateful. At the very least, I tend to think we should be even more careful not to judge. Cyberbullying is a terrible risk with the Internet.

Some Thoughts on an Age of Aquarius Part 2: Seduction

All parts include: Part 1: Ignorance; Part 2: Seduction; Part 3: Compassion; Part 4: Psychiatrists; Part 5: Hacking vs. Lying.

Seduction

This is the easy one. Everybody knows about this. There are two parts here: 1) You might be enticed to do things you don't want to do that will hurt you, and 2) you might be enticed to do things you do want to do that will hurt you.

In the first, I'm talking about pornography and death. An unmonitored child (and the fact is, whether you like it or not, every child is unmonitored at some point) WILL eventually access pornography and death. I did myself as a child. (Well, pornography. Not too fond of death.) I tend to think there are natural (or if not natural, cultural) barriers in humans against doing things that are evil, like having sex with young children or killing someone for sport. But the fact of the matter is, a couple of bozos out there will at some point decide to rape kids and kill people—and put it on the Internet. And as meticulous as Google is about weeding out the negative images out there, I myself, through no fault of my own, have come across fecal-play pornography and a corpse in the street with knives all over sticking out of him. I searched for completely unrelated terms, and those images popped up. You can't fight it: it will happen. Only you can figure out what to do.

In the second, I'm talking about scams. The Internet has ubiquitous access. This means you can use Google+ to access new friends and business contacts. However, it also means you may access a scam. Obviously, a scam will hurt you, even though you may want to participate. That's how scams work: They make you want to participate, then screw you and it hurts. The thing is, though, that at least partly due to the nature of the Age of Aquarius, these scams are becoming more insidious. I myself was part of one for a while. I saw an ad that advertised, "Free MacBook!" I knew it was probably a scam, of course. But the ad was in Facebook, and I found it hard to believe that Facebook would allow something illegal to enter their site. So I decided to check it out. I was clicking along, and it asked me if I wanted trial versions of products they had to offer. I clicked yes, thinking that "trial" implies "free." But I didn't read the fine print. The fine print said, essentially, that if I kept the product and did not act to cancel my contract, the site would send me monthly supplies of the same item, whether I asked for it or not, and charge my account the exorbitant prices they asked for the stuff—mostly useless crap like vitamins for pets laced with caffeine. I got myself out of the thing, but only after spending a good sum of money for no good reason except curiosity.

Curiosity may lead to disturbing things. Some may argue that it's better not to have access to any scams, pornography, or death, but I think the positive aspects of the Internet outweigh the negative. Ubiquitous access, when vetted properly, can be used to advance one's career and enrich one's life. Turning Art is a great way to access emerging artists. I love it, though it costs a lot. But hey, so does art.

Principles of Openness

A while ago I did some philosophical grunt work trying to nail down what it means to be "open" in the style of Occupy, open source software, the Internet, etc. Here's a paraphrase:

Everything should be open. Including all societies, groups, corporations, governments, etc.

What does it mean to be open?

• No undue extensions of authority
• Everyone has a chance to participate
• Nothing of substance is secret

What is an "undue extension of authority?" Any authority which violates the principles of open authority. Here are those principles:

• Either the authority must change,
• or the people in authority must change.
• And when a change is made, the choice must not be limited in any way.

What does this mean? It means that if you create a position of authority, like say, logo designer, it must be a temporary position. If it is an office like the presidency, not a temporary position but permanent, the person who fulfills that office must change. There must be some kind of formal mechanism for ensuring that change does occur when needed, for instance term limits, or votes of no confidence, etc.

In substance, if someone wants to be in a position of authority, that person must be allowed a reasonable pathway to do so. If the position of authority rules out anyone arbitrarily, that is an undue extension of authority and violates the principles of openness.

What does this rule out? It rules out monarchy, because the person in authority (i.e. the president) does not change frequently. Rather, he's allowed to serve for as long as he wants without any change.

It also rules out nepotism or the "revolving door" for congresspeople, because when a congressperson is hired as a lobbyist in return for policies of deregulation, for instance, that position of lobbyist is not open to anyone—it is offered specifically to the congressperson. Ideally, the position of lobbyist should be open to any person or group, so that all people get their voices heard in congress.

Some Thoughts on an Age of Aquarius Part 1: Ignorance

All parts include: Part 1: Ignorance; Part 2: Seduction; Part 3: Compassion; Part 4: Psychiatrists; Part 5: Hacking vs. Lying.

Ignorance

The Internet has to do with completely open information. There is no unopen information on the Internet, because even if you hide things, by virtue of being "on the Internet," it can be found. Unfortunately, this has it's problems.

For one thing, there are certain pieces of information which aren't true. I ran into this problem on Facebook just recently when my friend Gideon caught me in an untruth. I had shared a picture of an indigenous South American who was crying, purportedly because the Brazilian government refused to listen to him, and moved forward with a plan which would destroy his homeland. Actually, he was crying because it was his cultural practice to cry when visited by distant relatives. I had shared the picture assuming everything said about it was true, when in fact, it was not. Which brings me to a point about the age of Aquarius: information is everywhere, but it isn't vetted by any authority. Therefore, it unfortunately may be false. Thus there still needs to be some respect for the authority of facts, or information will become meaningless. This is ignorance of individual things.

There is another kind of ignorance at play on the Internet. Because you have access to ubiquitous information, you may be lulled into a kind of false sense of security and believe you know all the truth when you in fact are ignorant. This is a general kind of ignorance. This happened to me too.

Back when Fukushima melted down, I found a website with very studied and learned people who came to the conclusion that Fukushima was essentially a media lie. Meaning, Fukushima posed no danger to the public, while a corrupt Western media continued to repeat maliciously that it did. They went to great lengths to secure their own trusted media outlets, and stream several of them simultaneously, watching and taking notes. They also studied the blueprints of the Fukushima reactor in depth, and proved why a core meltdown would be completely impotent in terms of human danger. Needless to say, this was all wrongheaded. The facts came to light, and, of course, Fukushima is now known as one of the more serious nuclear accidents in history. The people, including myself, who participated in this orgy of fact finding were not wearing the condoms of skepticism.

Both these kinds of ignorance result directly from the democratic nature of ubiquitous information. One should be careful about aquarian information, and make sure it is in fact correct.