Rediculious, the city gets covered in snow but because spring is on the way grumblings are kept to a minimium. My shoes got so wet the other night that my socks bleed into them, there was no turnicate to put on the sock so I watched it slowly die. All the while learning about the agressive takeover of Mexico that the U.S. conducted justified by the mexican attack on texans who tried to declare themselves as a seperate country on Mexico's land, even though Mexico was the country who had originally given permission to settle the land.

A week or two ago it was so cold my roomate and I discussed skin sticking to cold things, predominately lips and tongue, that ice cube you wait hope have melt as it sticks to your tongue is always a frightening experience. But what do those players, ballers, rappers do with thier metal teeth in such cold weather, what if they made the mistake of getting stainless steel "grills". Could you imagine the Yin Yang twins (rappers) walking around with their lips stuck to their teeth yelling "Ch-yeah". Or them bleeding from the mouth because it did get stuch but instead of waiting to get it warmer they pulled away leaving their lips attached to the metal. I wonder what a cartoon of the rolling stones tongue would look like if it were attached to a metal pole.

During the snow storm I also discussed boots, my roomate andy and I jabbered about our red wing boots supplied to us by the U of M warehouse, they are by far the most expensive shoes I own and shall last me till death I suppose. But they are made with the ever glamourous steel toe to prevent things falling on your feet from breaking your foot. WE managed to divert this idea into a "what if they made all metal shoes .... what if they were just leather with steel molding around... what would Robo-Cop do if he went to the cobbler."
Robocop walks into 19th century cobbler shop.

Cobbler: well hello what can I do for you? WOuld you like me to fit you for a pair of shoes?
Robocop: Yes my dogs are killing me, I thought I almost got a blister last week.
Cobbler: What would you like you shoe made from?
Robocop: Metal
the cobbler looks confused
Robocop: Metal covered in the skin of all the criminals I have gunned down, Call it the Mcmurphy special.

The world has gotten smaller and more confusing as I have gotten older, trying to balance what you have learned previous to what you are learning now, trying to find purpose for the information or a goal for yourself or the world or humanity. I read a bit of THomas Kuhn's book last night "The Structure of scientific revolutions" it was pretty good, made me think.
http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/Kuhn.html a link to it's outline

It said how people perceive the world it typically not how it is and because we assume that science is the way to understand everything that we fail to come up with new science or something to break the strangle hold that tradition of the time has on us. He uses examples of scientist turning the world on it's head, the earth rotates around the sun... gravity causes movements on earth. things that seemed incomprehensible at the time. and now people may not be assuming that science is wrong, but it must be in some respects Kuhn argues for us to progress. The way we think we know things has to change, a "paradigm shift" so he calls it.

Also I have been much enamored with Joseph Campbell, his ideas that through all myths (Religious or otherwise) and folklore, that there are common themes, that somehow in every society there came stories and tales that had a similar message regardless of ethnicity or dialy customs. He tries to say that people must not fall prey to old myths, that unless we interpret our world with modern understanding of it that we will fail to realize our own state of being. If we analyze the world through old myths like many of the existing religions we tend to see them as truths, when there is no ability for the truth of many texts to be true under our modern understanding of the world. He claims that we have reached a "terminal moraine" in creating myths to explain today's world. That there are no modern myths that encompass the whole world, no unifying parables that say we must treat everyone in world equally.
But he argues there is an inner bliss that guides us all, and that we have to follow it, despite how new agey that sounds I kind of like it. That there is this bliss, this connection to the world, some inner spirit that we will never fully know or understand but is the common link among people in the world. And that nobody has the right to say what is wrong or right, but they should instead concentrate on following what they believe to be true, to focus on living their own lives.

more later