I just realized how much I miss Jake and Extinctor.

People who've been leaving messages on my chatboard, I apologize for the delay in replies. I'll call, I promise, if I have your number.

I'm too brain-asleep right now to write anything halfway meaningful, but not brain-asleep enough to go ahead and write something anyway. So, I'll leave you with the following. Trite as it might be, however much teenagers with pretensions to literacy point to it as their favorite poem, I like it. So bugger off.

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn’t he danced his did.

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn’t they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone’s any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hoe and then)they
said their nevers and they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt for forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

- e e cummings

So it's huge. Really huge. Monstrous. Possessing Gigantor-like proportions.

That's what she said.

Also, Logicmills. Oh. Em. Gee. It's expanded like some sort of ...expanding thing. A duck. It's expanded like a duck.

In other news, Singapore is awesome.

So I've been reading Crime and Punishment, probably in some subconscious attempt at a buffer for when I have to write my paper on continental philosophy. I can see why Ted loves it so much, but I find myself oddly unsympathetic to the plight of the protagonist (if he's even such). The struggles he faces, the torment and the guilt and the bewilderment - it's hard to determine if it's right and good to feel such things.

Should a good person ever feel regret, or guilt, or mental anguish? The Nietzschean ubermensch probably never does. The Randian Roark probably doesn't either. The Catholic saint probably lives an entire life characterized by alot of it. A Buddha transcends it. It's probably not even relevant to a Utilitarian or a Deontologist. What about Aristotle's virtuous man?

I suppose the issue is mired (or quagmired, as it were) in so many other thorny problems that it is hard to get a hard clean look at just what is involved. The large part of this mire seems to me to lie in just how to fit a picture of what is good into an imperfect world, or an imperfect life. It's easy enough to see that a perfectly virtuous man (assuming the relevant moral agent is a space-time worm rather than a slice or point) would never feel regret, because he would do nothing that would be the target of regret. But, what if he does? If you commit an evil act, what happens? Does regret mitigate the evil, or should you let it go, casting it aside as something no longer having power over your character? Or is a virtuous life no longer possible once an act of evil has been performed?

I should go read more. Raskolnikov is fascinating, even if he is alien.