Setsuled's Journal

I spent nearly all day yesterday reading about conservative philosophy. I thought I might write a huge journal entry about it, but now it seems hardly worth the time. Mostly what I found, I think, was best summed up by a quote from Benjamin Disraeli I saw in Wikipedia's entry on conservatism; "A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy."

You see, I wanted to defend my statement from a few days ago, that neocons aren't very much different from regular conservatives, which was a bit of a reaction to people like Ron Paul who seem to feel the havoc wrought by Bush and Cheney derives from a secret plan of theirs to create Big Government instead of respecting individuals property rights and states rights that right wingers seem to hold sacred above all else. It's a pretty naïve and self-contradictory system of thought, really; the idea that everyone pursuing their own self interest will somehow work out to the common good. It explains two things about the Bush administration; how the government got bigger under them, and how they didn't seem to plan it. They didn't think about whether or not invading Iraq would be good for the American people--they thought it would be good for their own interests.

Anyway, I may yet post about it. I don't know, I've kind of tired myself out on the subject, but I did reaffirm my fondness for Nietzsche.

So what else have I to talk about? Using the computer is a little uncomfortable right now--I have the monitor set up on a table about two feet from the foot of my bed, which is a slender but oddly tall thing. I sit between it and the table, looking up at the monitor because there's no room for a chair and sitting on the bed is uncomfortable because of the altitude and the tiny font size I prefer. But I'm still enjoying a house to myself. Oddly enough, it's made me want to read more because I feel less of a need to blot out the presence of other people with loud music and movies--reading's just not something I can do with music playing. Music contaminates the mood of a book too much for me.

I'm really not so great at separating music from what I'm doing while listening, and sometimes associations become permanently bound to certain albums or artists. For example, I can't listen to Tori Amos' Boys for Pele or Jane's Addiction without thinking about Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.

Fortunately, I've managed to start listening to music while writing lately. It's a barrier I broke in myself while doing the Lord of the Rings fanfiction thing. Unfortunately, I haven't been in a good place for writing lately, and even less of a good place for artwork. It'd be nice if things settled down around here soon . . .