Thursday, December 14th, 2006 Excerpts from Noush's Journal and conversations with really smart people like her mom

I believe, I firmly believe:
It Is the Individual's Duty Not to be an Asshole.

Rest assured, there is no room for assholes in my Utopia.

If I Ruled the World (a work in progress):

Cars would only be for weekends
We could all bike to work
We would use horses for transport
We would all have gardens and porches
Smoking would become a communal, social activity again
People would take pride in the trades
We could cook our lunches at work

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There's been a bull in my china-shop-brain. Pieces of porcelain thought try to glue together to make sense again. Where once was a cup that could hold an idea is now an origami that resembles the shape of shame. I've gotten tiny cuts from handling these pieces of new understanding, and my fingers are tired out now. So I think I'll just let this mess remain.

Whoa man, that rhymes. I think I'm basically trying to say: those films last week hit home. I'm left with a lot of questions:

I saw people who would put their lives on the line, to fight for what they believed was right. I'm an over-analyser: for every conclusion I arrive at, I know that there's a flip-side of the coin (mostly because my mom keeps telling me there is and I believe her because MY MOM IS ALWAYS RIGHT, goddamit) ... what that means is that I am hardly ever so convicted of an idea to fight for it. Because I can always understand the opposition's point of view. Makes for a pretty lame protestor: Blah, Blah, So-and-So, You are Evil, You must Go but wait, you do give a lot of people jobs and stuff and if you left then people be unemployed and that's not good, so maybe you should just stop being so evil, please? Pretty please?

So what would I fight for? Is there any fight worth dying for? Or is life too short to waste on conflict? Yet, what is my life worth to exist within boundaries? What if the time comes to choose: what will I choose? To merely breathe, or to live feeling the driving force behind every breath?

Ah, to be or not to be, that is the question. To be free or to die, is a better question. I think Mel Gibson was dead wrong (as usual) when he said, "They can take our lives, but they can never take our... FREEEEEDOOOMMMMM" indeed they can. They can take your life, or your freedom or your freedom and leave you to take your own life.

I don't know what I would choose. My mom said that I wouldn't have to decide in advance, that I would respond instinctively at the appropriate time. I'd sure has hell feel more like a hero to be willing to fight for what I believe. But at the same time (flipside:) I somehow don't believe that if someone is pushing, you should push back. If someone is pushing, I think you should stand back quickly, let them fall over from their own momentum and then walk on top of them and do a little jig. I think I'm going to read up more on Gandhi's reactions to violence, because that dude had it going on. Maybe the whole world can march in a non-violent protest again the WTO, IMF, Pepsi-Cola and the other evil-doers of neoliberalism global colonialism ismMcisms. On that note, I'm going to go smoke a marlboro and drink some 7up and kick a homeless person if I can find one.