Ptyl

I have this online pal from Israel I talk to now and then. He pops up when I'm unfortunate enough to be on facebook. We have these weird, deep conversations. He speaks good english, though American idioms go right over his head and he ends up getting confused by them, so I avoid them when talking to him. Ptyl is one of those people who kinda just..hates everything. Moved to Germany for awhile...hated Germans and Berlin. Went back to Israel...hated it in Israel. I kept working on him, telling him he's intense, because Israel is freaking intense. I invited him to come kibbutz with me for awhile, but he ended up in Arizona with some people he knew online. After a while, he was like "America sucks too, I'm moving back to Israel". (Face:Palm) I was like, Ptyl, dude...you were in ARIZONA, what did you expect? I said, go to Philly or Seattle or even here, Florida. Don't move from desert to...desert. No getting through to Ptyl, most stubborn guy on earth. But he is strangely endearing.

He chain smokes, he drinks alot, he's moody & brooding, he posts these loooong videos where he kinda rambles, he's a huge nihilist...and he also makes some of the most amazingly intense music ever. With practically NOTHING. Just a microphone, a 15-year-old software program most people would scoff at, and an acoustic guitar. I was one of a handful that bought his album. I HAD to. He's one of the best sampling artists I've witnessed in action. Some people are mash-up artists, like Girl Talk or Moldover. Ptyl is a pure Data Raper. He can take a guitar riff, and turn it into something entirely different. He can take a few samples and have a verse-chorus-verse-bridge song within a week or so where you can't even recognize the original samples. I can only imagine what he could do if he were a happier person. Imagine Trent Reznor if he wasn't a rich boy from Pennsylvania, but a grousey broke Israeli with more to be jaded about.









One of the last lengthy conversations I had with Ptyl, he was bumming me out big time. I asked him "do you think you maybe act so nihilist as a way of keeping anyone from getting close to you"....."Yes. yes, I think you may be right". First time I've ever heard him admit I might have a point, but, it was just Ptyl throwing me a bone. Ptyl, I think, read too much Nietzsche. Nietzsche is the biggest boor. Kierkagaard or Goethe or just about anyone is better. I flipped through "The Antichrist" once...it meanders and really has no point, guy flips around all the time, comes off like a heartless miscreant. I guess it's good in that "smite & crush your enemies, hear da lamentations of da womenz" way, but it always seemed like Nietzsche had issues with basic human emotions. Would confuse pity for sympathy and compassion. And he'd rail on about Christianity, but...what he was actually bitching about was messianics. A belief that everything can be handed to someone else, and the backseat beckons. A belief in some great reward in the hereafter for behaving good in this one. Well, it seems to me that good behavior IS its own reward in this life. Anytime there's a president, we vote them in and expect them to be some sort of messianic figure. But power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Everyone's always afraid to elect someone that has solid, extreme positions..like they wouldn't have to compromise too. They'd end up adjusting too. Checks and balances.

Ptyl does hit on a good point about the United Nations. That's pretty accurate.."here ya go Israel".."OH, you took us seriously on that? Hahaha. Now you're our favorite scapegoat nation, suckers! But we'll appoint Iran to head women's rights, and bring on Zimbabwe as a leader in economic development". EVERYONE GETS A GOLD STAR!! I think Israel has pretty much given up on the peace process, because the process doesn't seem to be leading to peace. Everytime there's some concession, Philistia (I'll save my opinion of the arab nationalist front group called the Palestinians for another time) pulls some shit. European xenophobia & evil created that situation, now they look to throw the J's down a well again. Au contraire, mon frere. Psalm 83. I know who my friends are. Even when my friends don't know. Who mourns for the loss of my modest inheritances, my identity, even the loss of my gender role? I never robbed anyone. I never owned any slaves, nor did any of my ancestors, they came with nothing. I acted ethically. When it was IMPOSSIBLE to act ethically, I made amends to restore balance. I paid from my own wages for what many are HANDED. I never bought anything on money I didn't have. I've never lived in nor aspired to live in a McMansion I was not entitled to. I've done plenty for the little guys, it's supposed to be an exchange, not one losing so another can "win". What is it they are winning other than EVERYTHING at my expense? Tsk tsk, I am hardly the only one who refuses to lie down and take it up the ass. I've lived minimally. I'll continue to do so, and those who won't...into the pit. No more FALL GUY crap. I'll kick every person who thinks like that into a pit, then sit there and laugh at them as they try to climb the slippery walls.

In just about every modern prolonged catastrophe, I see the hand of the UN. I doubt there would have been a World War 2 if not for the precursor to the UN, the League of Nations. The League of Nations saddled all the blame for WW1 on Germany, when Germany was hardly the only antagonist in that war. The result was economic ruin and exhorbitant reparations forced on the former Weimar Republic. I find the UN to not just be irrelevant, but a major source of strife around the world. It's the biggest joke of an organization, a huge unecessary bureaucracy. There is nothing the UN does that smaller organizations and individual diplomats can't do themselves. The UN is irrelevant. It's a hall of smoke and mirrors.

My philosophy: act locally, fuck globally. At least from the perspective of the UN & one world government...I'm all for NON-UN organizations flying over medical supplies and sitting on top of them in an African village or something. Need mercenary organizations to contract to them, or it'd just be Somalia or "Live Aid" & Mengistu all over again...maybe that would be a better use of Blackwater. That doesn't mean ya gotta go around acting like a jerk in other people's countries, but...laconic wit: "want to bring democracy to the world? First start with your own family." There is no global village, that would be like having Osama Bin Laden, Mother Theresa, Gandhi, and Ted Turner on a co-op commune. Might make for a good show, but...er...sounds like an episode of Family Guy or something. "This is worse than the toim Hitlah and Gandhi shared pirogis at the farming co-op..."