Well so this is one of those things

So this will more than likely end abruptly. My original plan was to spend the entire day more or less writing. I will still do this but I will make a brief decor home to pick up my power cord. This will either go very very well or I will realize that my power chord isn't at home and then I will legitimatly freak out. I hope I don't freak out though because it is my day off and I am good for the most part, except that now I have to make a pit stop home which I dun't wanna do. After I leave TBS I guess I will switch venues to Books a Million or something I don't really know. What will more than likely happen is that I will get disracted by my house and forget everything I wanted to do.

So lets get this started shall we? I was going to write about the Instructions but a couple of articles I've read recently has given me food for thought.

It is about China. I think the young man in "Life During War Time" put it best when he said, "In a few years China will take over and none of this will matter". If you saw that in context you would be both crying and laughing. This seems like a good thing but it actually really hurts.

The fear of China comes from a lot of things and I think it is incredibly important to maintain a sense of perspective about the whole thing. So lets get some perspective going yes?

First and foremost China presents a unique problem for us as Americans because for the first time in our history we have to "deal" with a country that is fundamentally alien to our way of thought. By "deal" I mean that we are damn close to an equal footing. Their country is huge and fighting a land war in their boarders would suck. They are ecconimcally powerful enough so that if the entire western world decides to levy economic sanctions against a country, china can pick up the slack. I am not just saying that either this is about what is going to happen in Iran. The Teleran government has been a source of irritation for us for a very long time. Despite the fact that they are sitting on some of the world's largest untapped oil fields and lots of natural gas they aren't doing to well finacially. Paritially this is their fault. More importantly this is partially the west's fault due to heavy economic sanctions, refusal to share technology, and tarrifs preventing independent buisnesses from starting up there. As a result they can't liquify their natural gas, or even refine the oil they have. This means that they need to import most of their gas. Currently pretty much 1/3 of all of Iran's imports, including gas is China. This allows Iran to run around doing all the things that piss the west off.

Now before we get doom and gloom Iran has problems dealing with things so they regularly do things with irritate china causing them to have a strained relationship. However, it raises a compelling puzzle. Our sanctions are now only kinda working, and we are offering china nearly free, unrestricted acess to one of the world's largest oil fields. We don't really want them to have that, both for the oil, and because they are supporting Iran. However, if Iran makes all its changes then we remove sanctions and China looses its monopoly. If we get China on board with the sanctgions China looses its monopoly. We could get China on board, then make Iran reform, then allow china the same level of access but they really leaves us where we are right now. We would like to stabalize Iran for the same reason why we want to stablalize the whole rediculous region and so far the only real winner here is china and even they aren't doing so well because Iran can be really annoying to deal with. Just recently they declared hundreds of products beneith the dignity of the Iranian consumer. Guess how many of them were manufactured in China?

I don't have an answer to this whole situation. I am just pointing out that China has the ability to challenge our authority. It is also important to realize that they aren't doing this just to piss us off. Think of it like a game. You are second best, up and coming, and one of the world's most valuable resources is up for grab and the most powerful country in decline, is refusing to deal with them. So why on earth wouldn't they deal with them? In case you are curious it is because the region is volitile and they tend to lash out. But more on that at another time.

Another problem is the upcoming WAR with china. To be honest neither one of us wants this. China doesn't paticularly have a great deal of imperialist desires. You need to remeber that they built the great wall twice, once was an actual wall, and the other time to keep the internet out. China doesn't want to take over america or several other things. The thing that China desires most is secutiry, specifically security for China. They are willing to let the rest of the world burn. They do not want to become the world's watch dog, they don't want to become the world's next bank, they don't care about other repressive regimes, they don't even seem to be that concered about North Korea being all pissy about everything. They want to get lots of matierals and play real life MineCraft. So we can relax for a bit. The biggest problem we have is that some day down the line we will more than likely conflict over resources. Again that is quite a bit down the road. So for the most part I was relaxed.

Then someone wrote an article about how we have a lot of security interests in that area of the world, specifically Japan, South Korea, and Tiawan. Man I don't know how to spell that last one. While china isn't really imperialistic in terms of meddling with the rest of the world they do like their little chunk of the world. As a result we might end up drawn into something if they move in on one of the Koreas or something like that. Oddly enough North Korea is serving as a nice buffer state because no one fucking wants it. Again it is a problem. How would we respond if China starts threatening one of our allies? That is going to cause us to make some hard choices, after all the last time we fought a war for Japan we ended up in Vietnam and that sucked.

I have a little bit more on this subject but the battery is gonna die so I'll get back to it someday. I want to do a little bit more reading on a couple of things and re read some other things, then collate some more information, which is what I was doing here, and this I should be able to get something larger together. For now I just have a lot of dissasociated ideas.

All these issues when combined become even more troubling when we factor in the idea that we as a country no idea how to deal with them on a cultural level. They don't see anything like we do and that is the thing we need to get over first and foremost.

Month In Review

Well... alright then that could of gone better. Things got off to a pretty demoralizing start with a work schedule from hell and then my baby laptops battery charger died.

All in all things didn't quite get off to the start I had planned. One thing I realized is that I was very focused on writing projects when I conceived of the whole list thing in particular with NA25. So when the lap top was no longer functional the whole thing kinda fell apart for me. I realize now that this was a mistake and that I need to be more flexible with what it is I plan to do. One laptop death should not derail this entire project and hopefully it won't happen again.

The other thing I need to do, and this one will be hard, is to clean and organize my house. I've come to realize that while I like a messy environment, and I feel comfortable in a messy environment it isn't at all conducive to getting things done and I want to get things done. Ergo some changes are going to have to be made and that is a biggie. However, if I get the list thing down and regimented then I'll be better at keeping up with it than when I was living free form. Once I do that I need to get myself a card table from somewhere and I should be good to go. It is something I need to do anyway. Once I clean up I know for a fact that my house will get cluttered again but I think I need to keep it far closer to a more managble level than it is right now. The reason for the card table is so that I can have a nice workspace for me to get things done on because craming everything onto two tv trays is kind of rediculous and I plan on starting clearing out room as soon as I finish this post. I won't get very far tonight because it is already midnight but I'll get somewhere and that is what's important.

This way I will be able to just pick up my baby lap top and physically move it into my work area and not have to worry about fucking around with things or getting overly distracted. I still definetly plan on doing lots of work and books a million and such but being compleatly unable to work at home is a sign that something is wrong so off we go with that.

Yeah just typing this on the desk top has not gone very well at all. God I get randomly distracted easily.

On the upside I did get several things done and what little of my weekly lists I did do have served their purpose.

I did get most of my Malifaux figures painted and I am pretty proud of some of those paint jobs if I do say so myself. I want to paint the rest up soon but I need to hit up tbs and pick up some green stuff to fill in the gaps. I just haven't really been over there at all this month, mostly because my baby lap top is dead and partly because some of the people in there make me want to kill myself. There is this one guy in paticular who I really want to shut down. However, arguing with him is like arguing with the internet it is tedious and pointless. Besides I really do have better things to do than bother with him.

I also tend to think more and more about little experimental fiction projects I want to sling around, disjointed scenes and lots of NA25 stuff and all of this is good! This is the main thing I wanted the project to do. So hopefully it will work out. This week's goal is to get massive amounts of things cleaned up and better sorted out. Once I do that I'll grab a card table and be on my way to a more productive, happier self.

I am not to disapointed in last month's failures. I've identified some problems, made some progress, and I had a good time. Now this month all there is to do, is to do better. Starting NOW!