If you ever get a disease, it's your fault.
These people list a few, which I'll use to demonstrate the validity of my theory.
10
Gulf War Syndrome
Stay the fuck out of the Middle East, dummy.
9
Twentieth-Century Disease
Also known as multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS).
You shouldn't be touching things.
8
Stiff Person Syndrome
Never try to do shit.
7
Morgellons Disease
Morgellons disease is characterized by symptoms including crawling, biting, and stinging sensations. You have crabs or bed lice. Dirty fucker.
6
Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome
Lay off the booze and burritos, amigo.
5
Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity
You said yes to the aliens.
4
Nodding Disease
Kiss ass.
3
Peruvian Meteorite Illness
Stay the fuck out of PERU and don't fuck with meteors.
2
The Sweating Sickness
Lose weight and stop eating fried food, fatty.
1
Exploding Head Syndrome
LSD will do that, you know. So will a lot of other drugs.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Coming Soon...
The return of the most offensive man on the internet.
After a planned extended cooldown of Dr. Murk's blog and his mind, and with the recent run on his sanity almost completed (ending in madness, assuredly), I will be making my triumphant return to teh interwebs with all sorts of really terrible and insulting gimmicks.
This blog is almost dead (what 2 readers) and so I'll be making a grand opening somewhere else. This blog will serve as an adendum or like an appendix for people who need clarification or wish to comment on the other blog.
And, because you're lazy, most of it will be 1 minute audio and video clips that play right in your browser or links to you tube posts etc. All will be Murk originals or Murk Cheap Rip Offs, or literally, just crap with commentary. So, buckle up America and Sudan. This time, it's my job.
Mr. President Head
After a planned extended cooldown of Dr. Murk's blog and his mind, and with the recent run on his sanity almost completed (ending in madness, assuredly), I will be making my triumphant return to teh interwebs with all sorts of really terrible and insulting gimmicks.
This blog is almost dead (what 2 readers) and so I'll be making a grand opening somewhere else. This blog will serve as an adendum or like an appendix for people who need clarification or wish to comment on the other blog.
And, because you're lazy, most of it will be 1 minute audio and video clips that play right in your browser or links to you tube posts etc. All will be Murk originals or Murk Cheap Rip Offs, or literally, just crap with commentary. So, buckle up America and Sudan. This time, it's my job.
Mr. President Head
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Mind Shark
I'm reading a book. The Raw Shark Texts. It's odd, but a lot of the ideas in it are mine. The author could not have known this. I have yet to speak of them or write them down. The way that the human mind works is in concert with its environment and within society. So, it's no surprise that in the information age, two people had the same idea that information itelf might be alive and possibly conscious.
In the book, the information takes on a sort of physical body to do its work. Bad work. Evil work. Leeching off the minds of people, eating their personalities and memories. My idea, though no less sinister, is more psychological in nature.
Take the song that gets stuck in your head. It's in your neurons. It's lodged there, somehow. Phrases in language become part of the lexicon, sticking in our minds and taking over space in our reality. Even our wants and needs are ideas. We don't spend most of our day hunting and gathering anymore, and so the needs become more materialistic or cerebral. They're in our head.
Addiction is a physical need coupled with a psychological fixation on some object of desire. Everyone is mildly addicted to something. They answer a deep seated craving that they believe will fill a need by seeking their object of desire. A drink. A new gadget. A victory in a sport or game.
In many of us, we become slave to this desire, this addiction.
Sometimes, it's not an addiction, but an ideology that gets stuck in our heads. We believe in one way of living or thinking or acting and we stick to it. Sometimes, we defend it or fight for it. We start wars for them.
In the age of information, a curious new form of fixation has come. Ideas and concepts that mean very little, but occupy our minds as fiercely as any addiction. Memes. Not th corney 50 question memes, but the weird viral packets of self replicating information we pass along.
They work like jokes. You hear a joke, you tell it to another. But these aren't jokes. They're bits of information, easily spread through the open media sources like the internet or text messages or phones. Some are true, some are false. Some survive and breed, some don't and there's not much but informational darwinism that decides which make it and which don't.
Advertisers have taken advantage of this for close to 50 years. Bombard a population with messages until one stick. Ba da ba ba ba! I'm lovin' it! HUH??? Why that?
But the new form of meme is not designed with a product in mind. It's not even designed. Someone pits a bit of information up on a site and people get infected with it. LOL Catz, for instance.
Some are more dangerous. Snopes, the debunking site, is filled with page after page debunking some of these memes. Rumors, medical warnings, political sabotage, urban legends, lifestyle warnings. Dure, these things have always existed, but...
It used to be for a meme to take hold it had to spread person to personin daily contact. Only the strongest ones survived and lasted. Things like "It's every person's dream to get married and own a house."
Now, anyone can write something or film something and put it up on the internet and it can spread. This new informational medium allows alternet informational viruses to spread and find spots in our brain.
The danger is real. It might have already happened. The right combination of ideas, visuals and words might be enough to infect a population. I'll leave that open for your interpretation.
In the book, the information takes on a sort of physical body to do its work. Bad work. Evil work. Leeching off the minds of people, eating their personalities and memories. My idea, though no less sinister, is more psychological in nature.
Take the song that gets stuck in your head. It's in your neurons. It's lodged there, somehow. Phrases in language become part of the lexicon, sticking in our minds and taking over space in our reality. Even our wants and needs are ideas. We don't spend most of our day hunting and gathering anymore, and so the needs become more materialistic or cerebral. They're in our head.
Addiction is a physical need coupled with a psychological fixation on some object of desire. Everyone is mildly addicted to something. They answer a deep seated craving that they believe will fill a need by seeking their object of desire. A drink. A new gadget. A victory in a sport or game.
In many of us, we become slave to this desire, this addiction.
Sometimes, it's not an addiction, but an ideology that gets stuck in our heads. We believe in one way of living or thinking or acting and we stick to it. Sometimes, we defend it or fight for it. We start wars for them.
In the age of information, a curious new form of fixation has come. Ideas and concepts that mean very little, but occupy our minds as fiercely as any addiction. Memes. Not th corney 50 question memes, but the weird viral packets of self replicating information we pass along.
They work like jokes. You hear a joke, you tell it to another. But these aren't jokes. They're bits of information, easily spread through the open media sources like the internet or text messages or phones. Some are true, some are false. Some survive and breed, some don't and there's not much but informational darwinism that decides which make it and which don't.
Advertisers have taken advantage of this for close to 50 years. Bombard a population with messages until one stick. Ba da ba ba ba! I'm lovin' it! HUH??? Why that?
But the new form of meme is not designed with a product in mind. It's not even designed. Someone pits a bit of information up on a site and people get infected with it. LOL Catz, for instance.
Some are more dangerous. Snopes, the debunking site, is filled with page after page debunking some of these memes. Rumors, medical warnings, political sabotage, urban legends, lifestyle warnings. Dure, these things have always existed, but...
It used to be for a meme to take hold it had to spread person to personin daily contact. Only the strongest ones survived and lasted. Things like "It's every person's dream to get married and own a house."
Now, anyone can write something or film something and put it up on the internet and it can spread. This new informational medium allows alternet informational viruses to spread and find spots in our brain.
The danger is real. It might have already happened. The right combination of ideas, visuals and words might be enough to infect a population. I'll leave that open for your interpretation.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Fear
“Fear is the mind killer.”
- Frank Herbert
We live in a culture of fear. We are paralyzed by it. Corporations design advertisements that show us how we should look, how we should dress and what we should eat. The implied message is that if we don’t buy, we’ll be less than those around us. Does a person need a large plasma TV if they can see the screen on the current one just fine? No, but commercials subtly imply that every important person has one.
The government uses fear to rally support. The news media use fear to boost ratings. Social groups and businesses use fear to influence and motivate. Families use fear to control behaviors and interactions. Every corner of our lives is filled with it.
There’s always talk about reducing stress. The root of stress is fear. Fear of failure. Fear of humiliation. Fear of not being loved. We should be talking about reducing fear. Some would have us believe that bravery conquers fear. No. A brave person is one who is afraid, but continues on in the face of that fear. That is one way to continue on. Bravery, like all virtues, is only attained through practice. We are not all brave, but we could all practice bravery. Even still, some would never achieve it.
It is our firm belief that all people deserve to live free of fear. Since we cannot all become brave, another solution is called for. So, in order to eliminate fear, we must find the root of fear.
In the past, people struggled to meet their basic needs: food, shelter and safety. This sort of fear is instinctive and necessary. If you are starving, or out in the cold, or in physical danger, your primary focus needs to be on meeting the basic needs.
Once the basic needs are met, other, more complicated needs arise. The needs for friendship, love, acceptance and fulfillment are all relevant to our happiness. The attainment of friendship, love, acceptance and fulfillment occupies most of our thoughts. Sometimes, we even act rashly or recklessly in order to have these things. And other times, we are downright vicious and cruel in the name of love, friendship, acceptance and fulfillment. These are powerful needs.
When our needs are not met, we become desperate. That’s when we fear. We fear that these needs will not be met unless we act! Any action, even a devious or hurtful one is better than doing nothing. If we do nothing, it will slip away, right? Well, consider for a moment that you are not the only one that knows you act desperate when you are afraid. They know. The use it to use you all the time! Their solution? Buy it, vote for it, work for it, worship it or kill for it. So, you do. And afterward you’re still no closer to your goal.
What’s our solution? First, realize there is no action necessary to attain that level of friendship, love, acceptance or fulfillment. Chances are, you already have it.
Quick story: A friend of ours wanted to be in a romantic relationship with a particular person. He was already friends with her. He wanted so badly to be with her, that he didn’t realize that he was already with her. He was so caught up in making her fall in love with him, that he forgot to do all the things that make women fall in love with me. Things like making her laugh, or politely complimenting her, or even just listening to her. These were all the things he imagined himself doing with her, but he didn’t realize that all he had to do was do them and enjoy them! He was too busy wallowing in fear of never having that special relationship to build that relationship. All he had to do was to continue doing the things that made them friends in the first place. Even if they had never become intimate, at least he would have enjoyed every aspect of her that he could have. But even more than that… There were probably fifteen girls at the time that did want to have a romantic relationship with him. No. He wouldn’t even give them a chance. It’s a shame, one of them might have been his future wife, but he was blinded by the fear of losing that particular girl.
The moral is that we are usually given what we need. When we aren’t, we find the strength to get what we can and survive without the rest. Every human being should be able to boil their desires down to one sentence. You’d be surprised how similar all our sentences would be if we did. Once we have a good handle on our desires, our fear will lessen. Without needless desires, there are no more needless worries. Eliminate needless desire. Write the one sentence that defines your needs and ignore the rest of the bullshit. You’ll find that what you really need is neither bought nor sold, neither legislated nor fought for nor worked for etc. Realizing this is the end to needless fear.
Picture fear as a lever. You are standing on the low end of a seesaw, and they are going to push down on the high end to launch you off. You can clutch at the ground or hand on to your end for dear life. Perhaps, you could just step off the seesaw. Once their lever is gone, they have no way of moving you. Once they no longer can move you, you will move yourself. That leap off is the first step. It’s the only step.
The two final fears to be conquered are the fear of death and the fear of the unknown. Those fears are quite different and are not within the scope of this article. Suffice to say that fearing death or the unknown prepares you for neither. Unknown things will happen, and we can prepare for them by training our minds and our bodies. Death is, as of yet, unavoidable. We prepare for death first by accepting our temporary nature, then by training our soul.
The culture of fear we live in can only be overcome by constant vigilance on our part. Whenever we feel anxious, we must first remember what it is we really need, and then slowly realize that our anxiety is not related to those true needs, but usually something insignificant. We must remind ourselves that ‘sweating the small stuff’ literally saps our energy to deal with true crises. Not only does our anxiety make us fell bad in the present, but it leave us under prepared and over tired in the future. Focus on your true needs. Write down that sentence again and again until you really get it. It is only when we conquer fear that the true part of our work in this life can begin.
- Frank Herbert
We live in a culture of fear. We are paralyzed by it. Corporations design advertisements that show us how we should look, how we should dress and what we should eat. The implied message is that if we don’t buy, we’ll be less than those around us. Does a person need a large plasma TV if they can see the screen on the current one just fine? No, but commercials subtly imply that every important person has one.
The government uses fear to rally support. The news media use fear to boost ratings. Social groups and businesses use fear to influence and motivate. Families use fear to control behaviors and interactions. Every corner of our lives is filled with it.
There’s always talk about reducing stress. The root of stress is fear. Fear of failure. Fear of humiliation. Fear of not being loved. We should be talking about reducing fear. Some would have us believe that bravery conquers fear. No. A brave person is one who is afraid, but continues on in the face of that fear. That is one way to continue on. Bravery, like all virtues, is only attained through practice. We are not all brave, but we could all practice bravery. Even still, some would never achieve it.
It is our firm belief that all people deserve to live free of fear. Since we cannot all become brave, another solution is called for. So, in order to eliminate fear, we must find the root of fear.
In the past, people struggled to meet their basic needs: food, shelter and safety. This sort of fear is instinctive and necessary. If you are starving, or out in the cold, or in physical danger, your primary focus needs to be on meeting the basic needs.
Once the basic needs are met, other, more complicated needs arise. The needs for friendship, love, acceptance and fulfillment are all relevant to our happiness. The attainment of friendship, love, acceptance and fulfillment occupies most of our thoughts. Sometimes, we even act rashly or recklessly in order to have these things. And other times, we are downright vicious and cruel in the name of love, friendship, acceptance and fulfillment. These are powerful needs.
When our needs are not met, we become desperate. That’s when we fear. We fear that these needs will not be met unless we act! Any action, even a devious or hurtful one is better than doing nothing. If we do nothing, it will slip away, right? Well, consider for a moment that you are not the only one that knows you act desperate when you are afraid. They know. The use it to use you all the time! Their solution? Buy it, vote for it, work for it, worship it or kill for it. So, you do. And afterward you’re still no closer to your goal.
What’s our solution? First, realize there is no action necessary to attain that level of friendship, love, acceptance or fulfillment. Chances are, you already have it.
Quick story: A friend of ours wanted to be in a romantic relationship with a particular person. He was already friends with her. He wanted so badly to be with her, that he didn’t realize that he was already with her. He was so caught up in making her fall in love with him, that he forgot to do all the things that make women fall in love with me. Things like making her laugh, or politely complimenting her, or even just listening to her. These were all the things he imagined himself doing with her, but he didn’t realize that all he had to do was do them and enjoy them! He was too busy wallowing in fear of never having that special relationship to build that relationship. All he had to do was to continue doing the things that made them friends in the first place. Even if they had never become intimate, at least he would have enjoyed every aspect of her that he could have. But even more than that… There were probably fifteen girls at the time that did want to have a romantic relationship with him. No. He wouldn’t even give them a chance. It’s a shame, one of them might have been his future wife, but he was blinded by the fear of losing that particular girl.
The moral is that we are usually given what we need. When we aren’t, we find the strength to get what we can and survive without the rest. Every human being should be able to boil their desires down to one sentence. You’d be surprised how similar all our sentences would be if we did. Once we have a good handle on our desires, our fear will lessen. Without needless desires, there are no more needless worries. Eliminate needless desire. Write the one sentence that defines your needs and ignore the rest of the bullshit. You’ll find that what you really need is neither bought nor sold, neither legislated nor fought for nor worked for etc. Realizing this is the end to needless fear.
Picture fear as a lever. You are standing on the low end of a seesaw, and they are going to push down on the high end to launch you off. You can clutch at the ground or hand on to your end for dear life. Perhaps, you could just step off the seesaw. Once their lever is gone, they have no way of moving you. Once they no longer can move you, you will move yourself. That leap off is the first step. It’s the only step.
The two final fears to be conquered are the fear of death and the fear of the unknown. Those fears are quite different and are not within the scope of this article. Suffice to say that fearing death or the unknown prepares you for neither. Unknown things will happen, and we can prepare for them by training our minds and our bodies. Death is, as of yet, unavoidable. We prepare for death first by accepting our temporary nature, then by training our soul.
The culture of fear we live in can only be overcome by constant vigilance on our part. Whenever we feel anxious, we must first remember what it is we really need, and then slowly realize that our anxiety is not related to those true needs, but usually something insignificant. We must remind ourselves that ‘sweating the small stuff’ literally saps our energy to deal with true crises. Not only does our anxiety make us fell bad in the present, but it leave us under prepared and over tired in the future. Focus on your true needs. Write down that sentence again and again until you really get it. It is only when we conquer fear that the true part of our work in this life can begin.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Whither the Murk?
I've been absent. It's a strange feeling you get every once in a while where there are no relevant thoughts to share. Oh, there were thoughts... not formed enough yet. Stuff about brainwashing and informational diseases. The good paranoid stuff. But why even post that crap on the internet? That's what we have wackos for right?
So I figured I'd tell you a joke.
Joy woke up one morning in a great mood and decided she wanted to share it with the world. So, she spent the day planning a huge party, open invitation with one small catch.
It was to be a costume party, and anyone who wanted to get in would have to dress up as their mood.
The time came to swing wide the doors of the party hall and admit the guests. Joy wited at the door, admiring the costumes. There were a few she did not immediately get.
She walked over to Steve, a young, uptight Pakistani American dressed in steel belted radial rubber parts.
"Steve!," she said, "What sort of mood is that???"
"I'm tired," Steve said.
"Awwww," she smiled and kissed him on the forehead. She saw Lucy, a slender Asian typist from work, dressed all in tattered clothes and wearing a washcloth for a hat and very nice clean sneakers.
"Lucy!" she said, "What kind of a mood is that????"
"I'm run ragged," Lucy said.
"Awwwww," Joy patted her head.
Then she saw Carl, a large nubile African American janitor who worked very hard but always got picked on by the boss... and he was naked. Naked as hell and he had his penis stuck in a bowl of custard.
"Carl," Joy began but stuttered, "What the hell emotion are you?" He pointed at his penis and leaned in close and said...
"I'm fuckin' discustid!"
So I figured I'd tell you a joke.
Joy woke up one morning in a great mood and decided she wanted to share it with the world. So, she spent the day planning a huge party, open invitation with one small catch.
It was to be a costume party, and anyone who wanted to get in would have to dress up as their mood.
The time came to swing wide the doors of the party hall and admit the guests. Joy wited at the door, admiring the costumes. There were a few she did not immediately get.
She walked over to Steve, a young, uptight Pakistani American dressed in steel belted radial rubber parts.
"Steve!," she said, "What sort of mood is that???"
"I'm tired," Steve said.
"Awwww," she smiled and kissed him on the forehead. She saw Lucy, a slender Asian typist from work, dressed all in tattered clothes and wearing a washcloth for a hat and very nice clean sneakers.
"Lucy!" she said, "What kind of a mood is that????"
"I'm run ragged," Lucy said.
"Awwwww," Joy patted her head.
Then she saw Carl, a large nubile African American janitor who worked very hard but always got picked on by the boss... and he was naked. Naked as hell and he had his penis stuck in a bowl of custard.
"Carl," Joy began but stuttered, "What the hell emotion are you?" He pointed at his penis and leaned in close and said...
"I'm fuckin' discustid!"
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