Neonicotinoids are a great type of chemical that would be irreplaceable if we were under attack from a deadly insect scourge. However, 'neonics' (as they're often named to avoid confusing the majority) are actually not even used to destroy mosquito and botfly populations, and instead do a great job of accumulating in the environment and killing the real terrors of the insect world: bees. Yeah those bastards won't be pollinating any harvests any time soon, as if their decimations at the hands of mites and disease weren't enough, we added a chemical that makes them even weaker and more susceptible to death. Why? To protect the most vulnerable among us: the hard-working farmer (read: multinational incorporated agribusiness).
From now on, I guess, every keystone species we destroy by our extremely clever ignorance will be replaced with some kind of robot substitute. That's a pretty fantastic way to provide public welfare for anyone who majored in mechatronics. Furthermore I think it's a great way to cover up our culpability, our wastefulness, and our immense capacity for destruction and self-destruction and wounded innocence (check out the screeds from defenders of neonics for the latter). I always thought Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was implausible but with each passing year certain background elements of the story get more and more realistic. Soon, maybe even next year, some multinational will build an emotion-controlling app and the crowd will go absolutely wild, then very calm, then really happy, then annoyed for a millisecond, then wild again with rapturous applause.
I mean, with that device/app we won't even need to feel bad about where all our mistakes have led us, and we can finally accept the tone-deaf happiness of being a casually murderous and purely scientific species, we won't need to feel aghast at the inefficiency of our lifestyles or the mountains of redundant waste they create, the genocides playing out in the natural world will no longer be a cause for concern, the seas will die but we will go on. We will simply use our abilities in the scientific realm to stitch together nigh-forgotten lengths of DNA and voila - a salmon mixed with a mackerel that can spawn anywhere! A cow mixed with an elephant that produces eleven or more tons of flesh and over a hundred gallons of milk a day. What's that? You want wings? 1.8 million dollars and a few rounds of painful and dangerous gene therapy/surgery and you will have an haphazard pair.
First, obviously, we'll need to do the robot thing to ensure that our food supply doesn't collapse in flames, and also to keep honey on store shelves (Who doesn't love honey? Maybe only the chemical mastermind who invented neonicotinoids). As usual, when the story dawned that neonics were killing bees, it took roughly until the first report that profits may be affected and businesses ruined for anyone to give a fuck. Listen, I like honey more than anyone and always have, but I won't accept robo-made honey. That's weak. For millions of years there's been an animal making honey, we didn't have to make it, we could even co-operate with them for other benefits, and that's still cool to me. I kind of wonder what other cool animals might have arisen in the absence of homo sapiens industrialis: vast cuttlefish capable of spaceflight, a naturally three-legged dog, an ant species that writes novels.
But fuck all that. We're gonna finish what we started when we exterminated the neanderthal, except this time it's not even personal. This time it's even worse: it's business as usual.
And I get it. Nature is resilient and our survival is paramount - life will go on either way. Only hippies will get worried about this. Farmer Joe needs neonics to ensure he gets to harvest 85%+ of his crops. It's not like we're the stupid ones for planting big fields of food and being annoyed that animals will eat them. Poisoning them for their arrogance is exactly the ticket. Despite what the left-wing, envirofascist hippies say, this is good. There are no links or chains in nature - it's fight or flight, survival of the fittest, each to his own. Pesticides keep wildlife from becoming addicted, welfare-like, to what's rightfully ours. Nevermind how it all kept going without us, or what's going on now, this is how it must be. God. Law. Money. Private property. Et cetera, bitch, and this isn't an ongoing disaster or a sign of anything pathological - so don't even start with that. Plus robots are cool and drones will never become problematic.
11/5/14
Young? Canadian? Out of work? Work for free! No, not for me.
As if it isn't already easy enough to hire someone to work without paying them or even the intention of doing so, well fuck it... who gives a fuck what a rich privileged person has to say about it... basically you're fucked anyway. The job market in Canada for young people is hyper-competitive and relatively small, and most get to circle the drain of uselessness working shitty jobs and part-time just to get by, many others live 'in their parents' basements', and prospects are such shit that even the head of the national bank is telling kids to join the Peace Corps or whatever organization will take their unpaid work. Even stacking up degrees is less useful than it was. You'd pray for an unpaid overworked internship now, and if you don't know how to network: get ready to belong to the underclass.
Soon enough it won't be enough to be willing to help out a charity with anything but money, and they already generally like money better than people. You'll need 1-5 years' experience just to volunteer at a soup kitchen, and the police will be called on you just for walking down the street looking suspiciously unemployed, show your volunteer card please. Capitalism is hell, actually, and it keeps proving it more succinctly than any ignorant campus marxist ever could. Impure Capitalism like we have now is even worse, it's simply a bunch of cancerous money tumors that fuck everyone over while their collaborators twiddle their thumbs and tell a chronically underemployed generation to get over it and toughen up, then thumb their noses at them on their way out. The crab bucket is so full that nobody even knows if the ones getting out have qualifications or anything, the sheer volume of jobless fucks and underemployed losers is beginning to reach critical mass, and no amount of start-ups will solve what may well be a systemic problem.
Meanwhile the immensely profitable banking sector in Canada, the ones who used to be purely profitable banks but now also offer 'financial services' and sell boneheaded products to the gullible and afraid masses, is laying off every greasy wage-earner they can find so their profits don't get sullied by collusion with normal working people. I think the question on everybody's mind is "Where is this hellscape leading us? Will things improve?" The answer is maybe, but more importantly: why don't you just go volunteer somewhere for a whole year so you can demonstrate that you are using your post-secondary bachelor's degree properly and gaining experience? Learn to be a good worker before you become a paid worker. They're gonna have to cut the bottom out of the crab bucket, and all signs indicate they're sure as hell willing to.
The only upside is that maybe everyone who is young and unemployed or even underemployed will go volunteer and somehow that will result in... more jobs? More experienced jobseekers? The betterment of society seems more likely. Maybe it's time those sitting in big comfy corner offices start doling out some of that experience they've been hoarding in their corporations, and actually hire and train people, instead of pontificating from the position of material and professional comfort. Until then, they're a bunch of callous, insincere windbags making judgments on a situation they can only pretend to fully understand – one they likely never had to face when they were in your shoes.
This is all starting to seem so parodical.
Soon enough it won't be enough to be willing to help out a charity with anything but money, and they already generally like money better than people. You'll need 1-5 years' experience just to volunteer at a soup kitchen, and the police will be called on you just for walking down the street looking suspiciously unemployed, show your volunteer card please. Capitalism is hell, actually, and it keeps proving it more succinctly than any ignorant campus marxist ever could. Impure Capitalism like we have now is even worse, it's simply a bunch of cancerous money tumors that fuck everyone over while their collaborators twiddle their thumbs and tell a chronically underemployed generation to get over it and toughen up, then thumb their noses at them on their way out. The crab bucket is so full that nobody even knows if the ones getting out have qualifications or anything, the sheer volume of jobless fucks and underemployed losers is beginning to reach critical mass, and no amount of start-ups will solve what may well be a systemic problem.
Meanwhile the immensely profitable banking sector in Canada, the ones who used to be purely profitable banks but now also offer 'financial services' and sell boneheaded products to the gullible and afraid masses, is laying off every greasy wage-earner they can find so their profits don't get sullied by collusion with normal working people. I think the question on everybody's mind is "Where is this hellscape leading us? Will things improve?" The answer is maybe, but more importantly: why don't you just go volunteer somewhere for a whole year so you can demonstrate that you are using your post-secondary bachelor's degree properly and gaining experience? Learn to be a good worker before you become a paid worker. They're gonna have to cut the bottom out of the crab bucket, and all signs indicate they're sure as hell willing to.
The only upside is that maybe everyone who is young and unemployed or even underemployed will go volunteer and somehow that will result in... more jobs? More experienced jobseekers? The betterment of society seems more likely. Maybe it's time those sitting in big comfy corner offices start doling out some of that experience they've been hoarding in their corporations, and actually hire and train people, instead of pontificating from the position of material and professional comfort. Until then, they're a bunch of callous, insincere windbags making judgments on a situation they can only pretend to fully understand – one they likely never had to face when they were in your shoes.
This is all starting to seem so parodical.
10/22/14
10/22/2014: Shots Fired in Ottawa, Pt.1
Tragedy, death, chaos. Nobody could have seen it coming or imagined that a normal midweek day in Ottawa would come to this, with MPs scattering and running from something more real than bad press. However, the unthinkable has happened. Just before 10 A.M. on October 22, a soldier standing guard at the War Memorial in Ottawa was shot by a man with a long gun - reports indicate a shotgun, and also the soldier's later death in a hospital. After an unknown number of shots the man got into a car and traveled just up the street to Parliament Hill, where he gained entry to the centre block of Canadian Parliament where he was shot dead by the sergeant-at-arms, police and security forces in a pitched and very one-sided gunfight. There is video of the event that took place inside.
Meanwhile, the surrounding city is under lockdown as two other suspects are sought. Details are rather scarce and a few false alarms have already been defused, including one at the downtown Westin hotel. A large cordon around Parliament Hill has been set up and Canada's elite counter-terrorist division, JTF2, is on scene. Police are telling people to get away, get inside, and stay away from windows. Nobody is taking any chances, and civilians have been evacuated from nearby buildings as the search continues for two other suspects.
Usually when people get shot in Ottawa, there's a clear criminal motive - it's typically violence related to the drug trade. A major political figure, D'Arcy McGee, was shot to death by an assassin in 1868, on Sparks St. (near Parliament) so there is some precedent, but an assassination is much different than a shooting spree. Terrorism has been invoked as a cause for the shooting, mostly because nobody can think of a better reason for such a senseless act of violence.
The act is contrary to what Canada stands for - the inclusiveness and openness of Parliament Hill, a place thousands of people pass through each year, where hundreds of pot smokers gather each April, could only have aided the gunman. It is tempting to say that is an effect of naivete on the part of Canadians, but it is considered rather a sign of strength and surety, a calmly rational decision to not give into fear. All that might change in the coming weeks. The attack has already sidelined a meeting between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai.
This is the second attack on a Canadian soldier in a week (two were struck by a car in Montreal - one died) and they've been warned by officials to stay out of uniform in public. The violence is alleged to be the highly trendy 'lone wolf' attacks, committed at the urging of ISIS leaders, in response to Western aggression. My question is how the usual RCMP teams on the Hill missed the attacker, there are usually a number of cars and officers around, plus cameras - fairly good security but the sleepiness of Ottawa can lull anyone into a sense of security. The twenty-four hour news cycle will on this for the next 12 hours at least. An intensification of the security state apparatus seems almost inevitable, even at this early point in time.
The fallout from this will be interesting, and many will be watching. However the story has entered a fallow mid-life lull of repetition and speculation - the facts as known are only that one soldier was shot and later died, that at least one gunman carried out the attack and was shot dead in Centre Block of Parliament, and that downtown Ottawa is locked, and everything around Parliament cordoned off while searches are made for further suspects. One thing is certain: the official response was not lackluster.
Meanwhile, the surrounding city is under lockdown as two other suspects are sought. Details are rather scarce and a few false alarms have already been defused, including one at the downtown Westin hotel. A large cordon around Parliament Hill has been set up and Canada's elite counter-terrorist division, JTF2, is on scene. Police are telling people to get away, get inside, and stay away from windows. Nobody is taking any chances, and civilians have been evacuated from nearby buildings as the search continues for two other suspects.
Usually when people get shot in Ottawa, there's a clear criminal motive - it's typically violence related to the drug trade. A major political figure, D'Arcy McGee, was shot to death by an assassin in 1868, on Sparks St. (near Parliament) so there is some precedent, but an assassination is much different than a shooting spree. Terrorism has been invoked as a cause for the shooting, mostly because nobody can think of a better reason for such a senseless act of violence.
The act is contrary to what Canada stands for - the inclusiveness and openness of Parliament Hill, a place thousands of people pass through each year, where hundreds of pot smokers gather each April, could only have aided the gunman. It is tempting to say that is an effect of naivete on the part of Canadians, but it is considered rather a sign of strength and surety, a calmly rational decision to not give into fear. All that might change in the coming weeks. The attack has already sidelined a meeting between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai.
This is the second attack on a Canadian soldier in a week (two were struck by a car in Montreal - one died) and they've been warned by officials to stay out of uniform in public. The violence is alleged to be the highly trendy 'lone wolf' attacks, committed at the urging of ISIS leaders, in response to Western aggression. My question is how the usual RCMP teams on the Hill missed the attacker, there are usually a number of cars and officers around, plus cameras - fairly good security but the sleepiness of Ottawa can lull anyone into a sense of security. The twenty-four hour news cycle will on this for the next 12 hours at least. An intensification of the security state apparatus seems almost inevitable, even at this early point in time.
The fallout from this will be interesting, and many will be watching. However the story has entered a fallow mid-life lull of repetition and speculation - the facts as known are only that one soldier was shot and later died, that at least one gunman carried out the attack and was shot dead in Centre Block of Parliament, and that downtown Ottawa is locked, and everything around Parliament cordoned off while searches are made for further suspects. One thing is certain: the official response was not lackluster.
10/21/14
Meeting Cool People in Your 20s
It's a daunting prospect because many cool people in their 20s are probably traveling between one cool place and another, or one interesting life event and the next, and your only chance to meet them – unless by some accident you're going to a cool place and you're in your 20s – is to travel with them and be more personable, good looking, and cleverer than the rest. However, when they find out you're simply traveling for life reasons and not to TRAVEL like a cool 20 something everything will fall apart as they suss out just how uninteresting you are, after they realize you're not actually an unreadable human cypher, but rather (pick one of many appellations - I'm going with 'lousy deadbeat').
You've got no stories, you've simply worked to stay alive, your academic papers won't turn undergrad heads and will fail to impress even highschool kids - both under and overachievers will probably laugh at you. They've traveled extensively and wonder about people who settle down, but they don't even know there are people who intentionally hobble themselves and live in flyover cities nobody cares about, with real friends and real intrigues that still fail to fully ameliorate the truth of a dismal reality with nothing dynamic, no progress, and no aims. You've basically shot yourself in the interesting part of your head.
Upon the moment of self-reflection and awareness, you can actually watch the interest on that cool young person's face drain away, and harken to this: they will begin to tell good stories more often than they will ask you about yourself, and when you volunteer information about yourself, they will give a nice response and continue moving the entire discussion away from a chance for you to explain yourself.
Why? Because there's no explaining to be done: you failed to take interesting risks. Instead of flying by yourself to a place where you didn't know the language and hadn't memorized the liquor prices and internalized the laws, you stayed at home and on Friday you went and got drunk with some friends. You probably complained about something. Instead of meeting a bunch of people in your hostel, hating some and really enjoying others, and having hazy chaotic heartfelt discussions with complete strangers where you disburdened yourself of existential problems that troubled you for a decade, and maybe getting laid by a righteous intelligent beauty, you washed the dishes and looked out of the shitty grimy window of your 20-something's rat shit warren and laughed humorlessly about the big mystery of why you're not happy. You realize that, in your 30s, you might make a passably good bitter comic, but the tradeoff is likely not worth it.
You done fucked up, and the only way to proceed now is to try and make as much fast money as possible and then fly to Thailand and follow the young mostly-white westerner migration unto Bali, Australia, and all the rest, maybe unto wherever the new Phi Phi is unfurling, where you will bask in good times and tough lessons. And if you fail to do that, you might just end up marrying someone a lot cooler than yourself, and the discrepancy will haunt you until you die... you will warn your children not to be diffident, not to value knowledge over experience, but they will fail to listen and instead live according to their whims, and it will haunt you then and every day, as it does now, because in truth you have nothing, less than nothing... people with nothing might have a good story, but nothing comes to your mouth when the time for a good story arrives, and you can't ace the telling anyway. Your mind is full of tedium and despair and grim stories about being poor and aimless and drunk, and it has set you apart from your peers forever. You have probably broken it.
You have turned yourself into nothing and start to doubt anyone could overcome it, but as you tell a sure to be interrupted story about your most recent uninteresting and static days, or some mild anecdote about your sterilized and irreal existence, you will realize it doesn't matter. You could even try to explain the consolations of being an anchorite in an apparently boring and lifeless city, try to get them to have a beer with you, but the idea will immediately fill you with revulsion, and you may vomit from stress and grief. Why would a normal person want to have a drink with a broken subhuman like you? Why make it totally awks by even trying? Why would anyone, anyone at all who wasn't related to you, ever give the tiniest shit? Your life achievements and goals can be summed up by the image of a late autumn puddle with a couple of dead rotting leaves in it - it might be weirdly beautiful, but mostly it's just sad. Just rewrite your resume, you boring boneheaded fuck, and try not to think of all the fun other people just like you are having, all of which goes to show, really, that a bad attitude is a real disability, and possibly the worst.
You've got no stories, you've simply worked to stay alive, your academic papers won't turn undergrad heads and will fail to impress even highschool kids - both under and overachievers will probably laugh at you. They've traveled extensively and wonder about people who settle down, but they don't even know there are people who intentionally hobble themselves and live in flyover cities nobody cares about, with real friends and real intrigues that still fail to fully ameliorate the truth of a dismal reality with nothing dynamic, no progress, and no aims. You've basically shot yourself in the interesting part of your head.
Upon the moment of self-reflection and awareness, you can actually watch the interest on that cool young person's face drain away, and harken to this: they will begin to tell good stories more often than they will ask you about yourself, and when you volunteer information about yourself, they will give a nice response and continue moving the entire discussion away from a chance for you to explain yourself.
Why? Because there's no explaining to be done: you failed to take interesting risks. Instead of flying by yourself to a place where you didn't know the language and hadn't memorized the liquor prices and internalized the laws, you stayed at home and on Friday you went and got drunk with some friends. You probably complained about something. Instead of meeting a bunch of people in your hostel, hating some and really enjoying others, and having hazy chaotic heartfelt discussions with complete strangers where you disburdened yourself of existential problems that troubled you for a decade, and maybe getting laid by a righteous intelligent beauty, you washed the dishes and looked out of the shitty grimy window of your 20-something's rat shit warren and laughed humorlessly about the big mystery of why you're not happy. You realize that, in your 30s, you might make a passably good bitter comic, but the tradeoff is likely not worth it.
You done fucked up, and the only way to proceed now is to try and make as much fast money as possible and then fly to Thailand and follow the young mostly-white westerner migration unto Bali, Australia, and all the rest, maybe unto wherever the new Phi Phi is unfurling, where you will bask in good times and tough lessons. And if you fail to do that, you might just end up marrying someone a lot cooler than yourself, and the discrepancy will haunt you until you die... you will warn your children not to be diffident, not to value knowledge over experience, but they will fail to listen and instead live according to their whims, and it will haunt you then and every day, as it does now, because in truth you have nothing, less than nothing... people with nothing might have a good story, but nothing comes to your mouth when the time for a good story arrives, and you can't ace the telling anyway. Your mind is full of tedium and despair and grim stories about being poor and aimless and drunk, and it has set you apart from your peers forever. You have probably broken it.
You have turned yourself into nothing and start to doubt anyone could overcome it, but as you tell a sure to be interrupted story about your most recent uninteresting and static days, or some mild anecdote about your sterilized and irreal existence, you will realize it doesn't matter. You could even try to explain the consolations of being an anchorite in an apparently boring and lifeless city, try to get them to have a beer with you, but the idea will immediately fill you with revulsion, and you may vomit from stress and grief. Why would a normal person want to have a drink with a broken subhuman like you? Why make it totally awks by even trying? Why would anyone, anyone at all who wasn't related to you, ever give the tiniest shit? Your life achievements and goals can be summed up by the image of a late autumn puddle with a couple of dead rotting leaves in it - it might be weirdly beautiful, but mostly it's just sad. Just rewrite your resume, you boring boneheaded fuck, and try not to think of all the fun other people just like you are having, all of which goes to show, really, that a bad attitude is a real disability, and possibly the worst.
10/6/14
What the Rich Know that You Don't
You have to be rich to 'get' rich, if you know what I'm saying, and if you don't, you're probably a poor person. Here's some tips and ideas to get you started on becoming rich, because there is definitely enough for everyone on earth to be super annoyingly wastefully wealthy, and anyone telling you otherwise is a communist or loser.
How they're different from you: They're different, in qualitative ways, from people who are not wealthy, such as the middle class. Why is this? Read the linked article and get back. I can wait... So the point is obviously that the rich are simply a different breed, not plagued by the fear and uncertainty and the mentally-sapping contretemps of poverty.
You see, the world is actually quite fair if you're rich, so you can afford to make big gambles, wake up every day feeling confident, and do things that would make lesser mortals quiver with poverty-related fear and incompetence. It's not a function of exceptionalism written by a wanker kiss-ass, the article is trying to help you understand that you're poor because you're not as good.
They're different, end of story. The naysayers are a bunch of anxious and impecunious babies who like having their hands held by oversized governments and loudmouth hippies. Some day, hopefully, private security armies will give them what-for, and they'll realize they have to work and strive to be wealthy, and not spend their money frivolously.
Join the Culture: Do your time, immerse yourself in the culture, and be prepared to fight for your profits. Before long you'll be salivating at the announcement of layoffs and mergers, certain that the money being gouged out of the wealth of your country (nationalism is an outdated concept that only the middle class poor believe in) will end up in your bank account, ready to be moved offshore as soon as Big Brother turns his back. Information is your best ally, and you want the RIGHT information.
The mentality of fear is one that belongs to the underclasses, anyway. When you've got a yacht more than 60 feet long and a helicopter, do you really think some schmuck in a Corolla is going to be able to touch you? Not unless you get your town car snared in midtown traffic, and unless a big account is at stake, you shouldn't be there to begin with.
Do Your Research: You gotta help yourself first. You gotta understand certain things that poor people just don't seem to get, even after multiple applications of crippling poverty, minimal prospects, and curative destitution. Imagining that the cards are stacked against you is a fearful response not worthy of those worthy of riches. Seriously, if people just stopped being lazy and afraid, everyone could be wealthy. It's astoundingly simple and there are lots of books about it that were not written by snake-oil salesmen.
But, hey, you'll probably just sit there on the couch feeling sorry for yourself and imagining there's a certain way the world's run where decent living conditions are magically withheld from %80+ of all of humanity. Okay there, you red marxist fuck, why don't you go post on Tumblr about the %1 being a bunch of pathological parasites. See where that gets you, while the smart get going on a fantastic journey to wealth, power, and respect.
How they're different from you: They're different, in qualitative ways, from people who are not wealthy, such as the middle class. Why is this? Read the linked article and get back. I can wait... So the point is obviously that the rich are simply a different breed, not plagued by the fear and uncertainty and the mentally-sapping contretemps of poverty.
You see, the world is actually quite fair if you're rich, so you can afford to make big gambles, wake up every day feeling confident, and do things that would make lesser mortals quiver with poverty-related fear and incompetence. It's not a function of exceptionalism written by a wanker kiss-ass, the article is trying to help you understand that you're poor because you're not as good.
They're different, end of story. The naysayers are a bunch of anxious and impecunious babies who like having their hands held by oversized governments and loudmouth hippies. Some day, hopefully, private security armies will give them what-for, and they'll realize they have to work and strive to be wealthy, and not spend their money frivolously.
Join the Culture: Do your time, immerse yourself in the culture, and be prepared to fight for your profits. Before long you'll be salivating at the announcement of layoffs and mergers, certain that the money being gouged out of the wealth of your country (nationalism is an outdated concept that only the middle class poor believe in) will end up in your bank account, ready to be moved offshore as soon as Big Brother turns his back. Information is your best ally, and you want the RIGHT information.
The mentality of fear is one that belongs to the underclasses, anyway. When you've got a yacht more than 60 feet long and a helicopter, do you really think some schmuck in a Corolla is going to be able to touch you? Not unless you get your town car snared in midtown traffic, and unless a big account is at stake, you shouldn't be there to begin with.
Do Your Research: You gotta help yourself first. You gotta understand certain things that poor people just don't seem to get, even after multiple applications of crippling poverty, minimal prospects, and curative destitution. Imagining that the cards are stacked against you is a fearful response not worthy of those worthy of riches. Seriously, if people just stopped being lazy and afraid, everyone could be wealthy. It's astoundingly simple and there are lots of books about it that were not written by snake-oil salesmen.
But, hey, you'll probably just sit there on the couch feeling sorry for yourself and imagining there's a certain way the world's run where decent living conditions are magically withheld from %80+ of all of humanity. Okay there, you red marxist fuck, why don't you go post on Tumblr about the %1 being a bunch of pathological parasites. See where that gets you, while the smart get going on a fantastic journey to wealth, power, and respect.
10/5/14
The Interstitial Garbage Dump
Download the album automatically and don't listen to it at all and chuckle at the ensuing media firestorm sinking an irrelevant brand.
Pick a new role for yourself online, let the psychosis of the internet really get to you, really inhabit its odd corners, muttering constantly about incredible things with an awesome potential to alienate others while also alienating you. Get really huffy about something like everyone else is doing!
The newest sensation is a good way to get views and followers. Yet there is a way to do it properly and it may only be to create some bot account twitter, where you are the bot, retweeting an oblivious feed via buzzy logic and reimagining news stories in the naive or Socratic mode.
You ramble about the newest sensation. There is the Rob Ford Saga, pt. 6, and many others. Or work on the themes: What the Hell, vol. 1; Wild Internet XXI; My Fat Twitter Diary; Fail-o-sphere 2.5; LOLNET... the internet possibilities are endless. If you want success, stick to the sensations and try and become as media literate as you can in the broadest sense. Make a vid or two. Don't use memes stupidly and try not to play irrelevant or annoying ones unless you're really good, memewise.
No it doesn't need to make sense. It only needs to make sense interstitially and occasionally. The savvy user reads between the lines anyway.
Whatever happened to Nerd Culture? It got really quiet and samey, growing like a benign tumor on the cultural wasteland of 2014, a cyst overfull of information and inflated by its handlers. The newest game is all design and art, game be damned. The digital grindstone. "Only moonlighting in reality these days."
The dramatic currency wars. Fading economies. The thriving era of Cannibal Orphan Globalism. Violence signalling like flares in the dark that something is still terribly wrong and broken, help is needed, and the constant fear that everything else will get dragged in again leading to some monstrous cataclysm. Orphans of the species make further orbits for a couple of hardscrabble years, looking hungrily at a succession of pure nights.
We have a responsibility to do what we can and not let it get to us, try though it might. Is it our responsibility to look into things, risking mental corrosion and flights of fancy? Who can say? This blogger certainly can't. Casual self-reflection is probably a good habit unless it leads one too far inside. Introspection is only half the story at best. What seems impossible is always categorical: do all questions lead somewhere?
The internet provides a constant potential to feel extremely negative and anxious about everything, a literal bottomless pit that only exists insofar as what exactly? Personalized algorithmic experience, digital rat maze, the netscape, first and last frontier; possibly the end is in sight.
What the wreck of news journalism reveals is a world still running amok. Things are in some ways better, but things are worse at least existentially for all and are really not that great for most in any case. In the best case a global society awakens, ignores its differences, and forces the start of a new era divorced from as many of the ignorant sins of the past as possible. But realistically a continuation and intensification of the recent past is most likely, for at least a few more decades, by which time it may truly be too late.
The net decline of genetic diversity correlates to a net decline in the value of Earth, beyond merely a pruning of the tree of life as some non-alarmists would argue. If people were as carefree about their dollars everyone would be a millionaire, economists would be philosopher kings, and there would be no world hunger. Funny how more or less pure capitalism, either way, could solve a few problems. The law of mediocrity is by definition only fair to a small percentage. If we made it, could it rule us? What does it matter when the toxic cloud is already here, and has been for dozens of years?
The realist perspective is not individualistic, but there will always be the allure of a heroic self-narrative and/or other fantasies. There is not enough realism left, as if the horrors of the 20th century exhausted our ability or willingness to see things as they are. How will we advance beyond being troops of apes? Will we? Is the criticism even valid? We cannot truly say things are purely otherwise yet. The symbolists can prove it.
It is best to ramble about things awhile. Puzzle them over over a beer or so with a friend or friends who are looking to ruin your line of thought by thrusting their own into a collision with it. Whatever, anyways, right? Whatever...
Pick a new role for yourself online, let the psychosis of the internet really get to you, really inhabit its odd corners, muttering constantly about incredible things with an awesome potential to alienate others while also alienating you. Get really huffy about something like everyone else is doing!
The newest sensation is a good way to get views and followers. Yet there is a way to do it properly and it may only be to create some bot account twitter, where you are the bot, retweeting an oblivious feed via buzzy logic and reimagining news stories in the naive or Socratic mode.
You ramble about the newest sensation. There is the Rob Ford Saga, pt. 6, and many others. Or work on the themes: What the Hell, vol. 1; Wild Internet XXI; My Fat Twitter Diary; Fail-o-sphere 2.5; LOLNET... the internet possibilities are endless. If you want success, stick to the sensations and try and become as media literate as you can in the broadest sense. Make a vid or two. Don't use memes stupidly and try not to play irrelevant or annoying ones unless you're really good, memewise.
No it doesn't need to make sense. It only needs to make sense interstitially and occasionally. The savvy user reads between the lines anyway.
Whatever happened to Nerd Culture? It got really quiet and samey, growing like a benign tumor on the cultural wasteland of 2014, a cyst overfull of information and inflated by its handlers. The newest game is all design and art, game be damned. The digital grindstone. "Only moonlighting in reality these days."
The dramatic currency wars. Fading economies. The thriving era of Cannibal Orphan Globalism. Violence signalling like flares in the dark that something is still terribly wrong and broken, help is needed, and the constant fear that everything else will get dragged in again leading to some monstrous cataclysm. Orphans of the species make further orbits for a couple of hardscrabble years, looking hungrily at a succession of pure nights.
We have a responsibility to do what we can and not let it get to us, try though it might. Is it our responsibility to look into things, risking mental corrosion and flights of fancy? Who can say? This blogger certainly can't. Casual self-reflection is probably a good habit unless it leads one too far inside. Introspection is only half the story at best. What seems impossible is always categorical: do all questions lead somewhere?
The internet provides a constant potential to feel extremely negative and anxious about everything, a literal bottomless pit that only exists insofar as what exactly? Personalized algorithmic experience, digital rat maze, the netscape, first and last frontier; possibly the end is in sight.
What the wreck of news journalism reveals is a world still running amok. Things are in some ways better, but things are worse at least existentially for all and are really not that great for most in any case. In the best case a global society awakens, ignores its differences, and forces the start of a new era divorced from as many of the ignorant sins of the past as possible. But realistically a continuation and intensification of the recent past is most likely, for at least a few more decades, by which time it may truly be too late.
The net decline of genetic diversity correlates to a net decline in the value of Earth, beyond merely a pruning of the tree of life as some non-alarmists would argue. If people were as carefree about their dollars everyone would be a millionaire, economists would be philosopher kings, and there would be no world hunger. Funny how more or less pure capitalism, either way, could solve a few problems. The law of mediocrity is by definition only fair to a small percentage. If we made it, could it rule us? What does it matter when the toxic cloud is already here, and has been for dozens of years?
The realist perspective is not individualistic, but there will always be the allure of a heroic self-narrative and/or other fantasies. There is not enough realism left, as if the horrors of the 20th century exhausted our ability or willingness to see things as they are. How will we advance beyond being troops of apes? Will we? Is the criticism even valid? We cannot truly say things are purely otherwise yet. The symbolists can prove it.
It is best to ramble about things awhile. Puzzle them over over a beer or so with a friend or friends who are looking to ruin your line of thought by thrusting their own into a collision with it. Whatever, anyways, right? Whatever...
9/23/14
Cyber Menace
In shitty apartments all over the world, one thing is law: you get the internet and you let your friends use it( unless you are very suspicious of them; in which case, why are you hanging out with them?). You don't even need a public terminal (say, for instance, a hilarious, very poignant, and svelte circa 1998 laptop you bought from an IT guy for a bag of weed) because almost everyone carries with them an internet capable phone now. So there's no question at all that there's some kind of cyber menace... and, check this out: it has already claimed lives!
It just makes sense that in a society so ill that it sometimes creates psychiatric disorders at almost the same rate as it creates landmark celebrities, there would be a cyber element. The internet is everywhere and still spreading. Some people can't look away from it or live without it. Being without it is missing out, but being part of it is not always what you want. Some, the wild or wise, might even call the contemporary situation one involving significant levels of Cyber Menace.
It just makes sense that in a society so ill that it sometimes creates psychiatric disorders at almost the same rate as it creates landmark celebrities, there would be a cyber element. The internet is everywhere and still spreading. Some people can't look away from it or live without it. Being without it is missing out, but being part of it is not always what you want. Some, the wild or wise, might even call the contemporary situation one involving significant levels of Cyber Menace.
"This ain't your granddad's Neuromancer, kid."
Sure, it's easy to pish posh the point away by citing the unreal possibilities of the incipient cyber-era, which is so different from even what Nostradamus saw it was (due to relativistic drift and/or other variables) that contempory people are still trying to say what the hell is going on with no recognizable degree of accuracy. It's all... you know... dust in the wind kind of shit. Typos of the blogosphere business.
The internet business: the potential is awesome but the reality is also very convincing in another direction than what is classically termed hopeful. I don't really need to cite anything, I feel. Pretty much everybody has or has heard a fantastically gut-wrenching and uncomfortable internet story by this point. Facebook is turning some people into wrecks and offering hilarious insights into human nature to others. It's a fact of life, even: you play with the internet and you get burned. You get played. Or you get an okay laugh or chuckle while you shake your head. #SMGDH with a side of #LOL, please, and don't overdo it.
People's day-to-day living and actual worlds are all affected by the digital world. Well, not mine, but then again I'm a blogger and nobody cares, so I can actually sit down and look and see people get affected by the internet media they consume. It's a weird era, and unfortunately it's not always fun YouTube videos weird. I find it all very strange and I can feel its draw as much as the next human. Still, everybody should have to admit: a reality check is in order.
Beyond the hype, the laughter, the outrage, the trolling, the well animated distractions, and the jargon lie actual problems. Let's see what the impossible potential of the Cyber Menace can do about that, before we consider it a friendly necessity.
9/7/14
The Irreal Era Continues
Heartless, heartbreaking times with chaos as the watermark. Memes and viral underpinnings for charity projects. It's brilliant. Chug a hot coffee, cure cancer – post the vid, go to social media heaven. Drink a venti latte for social justice. Post passive-agressive political screeds on facebook, and again in twelve parts on twitter. Walk at least four dogs at once to solve depression once and for all. Wait, what's that I hear? Is it the ghost of hope? What is it pretending to be today?
The character of hope is changed by digital media into a great big throbbing lump of aspirations and counterpoints. Tell everyone about how you feel about it. It's a singularity of hope and everyone's invited to discuss it impotently on the internet. Your savior and redeemer bathed in LCD glow in a dark room past midnight, this time definitely getting the words right on a screed that will change people's minds forever. No discussion of powerlessness or the futility of washing oneself in concentrated ideology.
Confident consumers. Hollow outrage. Adamantine charity. Lonely people alone in rooms 'connecting' over social media. Right... right. No that makes sense to me, I am not an atavist, thank you. It goes beyond the fears any individual might have, nobody can see the big picture as it is now, and in ten years there will be hundreds of deep thinkers telling us exactly what happened, armed with statistics and the works of others. Until then even the most schizoid collective fears are just whispers in the dark, convoluted night. Truth of the matter is the supposed wise men of the era are either pissing their pants or filling their pockets, or looking greedily askance at something we can't see, but everybody has a pretty good guess what it might be. Most of them are probably the pedigreed descendants of snake oil salesmen.
The pessimists of yesteryear seem insane or quaint. The worryworts of today are just white noise, minor problems crudely blown up to serve as distractions from underlying issues and developing crises. The public announcements of this era are all ugly and sterile constructions meant to convey (mis)information as efficiently as possible (the diametric opposite of the low points of pretentious wankery from 1210 to 2014), which makes everyone a computer with predictable responses to calculated inputs. Of course thought will likewise degrade, but for the great majority of people that's not even something to worry about or consider. As long as the algorithms keep working, right? We don't need to know where they came from. We got everything we need, right now... it's perfectly nihilistic.
The character of hope is changed by digital media into a great big throbbing lump of aspirations and counterpoints. Tell everyone about how you feel about it. It's a singularity of hope and everyone's invited to discuss it impotently on the internet. Your savior and redeemer bathed in LCD glow in a dark room past midnight, this time definitely getting the words right on a screed that will change people's minds forever. No discussion of powerlessness or the futility of washing oneself in concentrated ideology.
Confident consumers. Hollow outrage. Adamantine charity. Lonely people alone in rooms 'connecting' over social media. Right... right. No that makes sense to me, I am not an atavist, thank you. It goes beyond the fears any individual might have, nobody can see the big picture as it is now, and in ten years there will be hundreds of deep thinkers telling us exactly what happened, armed with statistics and the works of others. Until then even the most schizoid collective fears are just whispers in the dark, convoluted night. Truth of the matter is the supposed wise men of the era are either pissing their pants or filling their pockets, or looking greedily askance at something we can't see, but everybody has a pretty good guess what it might be. Most of them are probably the pedigreed descendants of snake oil salesmen.
The pessimists of yesteryear seem insane or quaint. The worryworts of today are just white noise, minor problems crudely blown up to serve as distractions from underlying issues and developing crises. The public announcements of this era are all ugly and sterile constructions meant to convey (mis)information as efficiently as possible (the diametric opposite of the low points of pretentious wankery from 1210 to 2014), which makes everyone a computer with predictable responses to calculated inputs. Of course thought will likewise degrade, but for the great majority of people that's not even something to worry about or consider. As long as the algorithms keep working, right? We don't need to know where they came from. We got everything we need, right now... it's perfectly nihilistic.
8/18/14
Fuck You, Logitech
Yeah I'm done with your shit here, guys. I realize I sound like an angry idiot, but it has to be said...
Despite carefully designing pretty good peripherals, you decide to use the world's shittiest microswitches, from OMRON, with flimsiest metal contacts and springs I have ever seen, meaning that eventually, the user has to open up the mouse, tinker the little switch enclosures open, and then adjust the tiny metal plates that have become too weak to enable continuous contact, AKA 'click-dragging'. And eventually, after a couple of these procedures, the metal piece snaps off, and I find it was soldered onto the switch (despite older models of the same switch sliding in and out of a frame) and now the whole thing is broken, since I don't have an iron or anything (I'm not an electrical engineer or even a hobbyist) and that M-500 I was so happy to use (even though both the right and left buttons began to fail all the time), is a write-off because I'm not going to buy and solder new microswitches to replace the shitty, terrible ones you so casually throw into your mice. Oh and they're situated in such a finnicky little manner it's almost as if you expect them to work forever and people will never have to do home repairs on them. If you used your own products you would see differently. Fuck you very much.
After this heartbreak, I will never buy another Logitech mouse. I will return to bargain mice and terrible scroll wheels and bad ergonomics, and I will lament the 40 dollar mouse that lasted just a bit longer than two years when it is traveling to the dump with the rest of the garbage - compromised as it was by a tiny and central component. Months of annoyance and little procedures and really, they have no excuse because far shittier mice ($5-10 bargains) have lasted so much longer, with contacts that didn't fail until the actual plastic bits gave out... but sure, Logitech'll keep making pretty sweet, $40 dollar mice with 5 cent components, because quality means higher than average prices and worse than average components. It's not rocket science to test how many millions of times a microswitch can operate before failure, and it's simple logic (tech logic even) to ensure they can last – after all, nobody is paying that much for a mouse who is going to use it only casually.
While I'm at it, in an era of optical mice that use lasers instead of the ancient system of balls in a rolling enclosure, why have the mechanics of the switches not changed at all? I get that there is a bottom line... you know that's basically all that matters, come to think of it. Still I don't think most companies intentionally hamstring their products so blatantly... years of complaints and no specific response says plenty about your business.
People, if you use a mouse more than an hour a day, and you need it to be good, and you want it to last, just don't make it a Logitech and it should keep working for at least four years. Theirs was the first mouse I'd ever used where the buttons failed in such an annoying and prompt manner, only to precipitate such a discouraging incident where I am forced to play technician (this way it can be claimed that my actions caused the product to stop working as intended, disregarding the fact that the product no longer functioning as intended caused my actions). In fact just use the mouse you got with the that tower you bought in the mid-2000s, despite being basically free it will outlast a 'quality, ergonomically sound, easy to use' Logitech mouse. Or just get a used ball mouse out of the garbage dump - it'll probably still work and when you're done with it the little ball can be used as a projectile.
Most peripherals in the computer world are shit. The more they cost - the dumber the buyer. That seems to be the law all the big players operate by. You either buy really cheap things or really expensive things, and everything in the middle is a big risk... like the $40 Logitech M-500, which will stop clicking correctly long before your computer is obsolete, and which has probably the best scroll wheel of all time, which you can actually take out of the old mouse and, if you know enough or intend to learn, jury rig onto another mouse.
So ends the saga of the computer mouse.
Despite carefully designing pretty good peripherals, you decide to use the world's shittiest microswitches, from OMRON, with flimsiest metal contacts and springs I have ever seen, meaning that eventually, the user has to open up the mouse, tinker the little switch enclosures open, and then adjust the tiny metal plates that have become too weak to enable continuous contact, AKA 'click-dragging'. And eventually, after a couple of these procedures, the metal piece snaps off, and I find it was soldered onto the switch (despite older models of the same switch sliding in and out of a frame) and now the whole thing is broken, since I don't have an iron or anything (I'm not an electrical engineer or even a hobbyist) and that M-500 I was so happy to use (even though both the right and left buttons began to fail all the time), is a write-off because I'm not going to buy and solder new microswitches to replace the shitty, terrible ones you so casually throw into your mice. Oh and they're situated in such a finnicky little manner it's almost as if you expect them to work forever and people will never have to do home repairs on them. If you used your own products you would see differently. Fuck you very much.
After this heartbreak, I will never buy another Logitech mouse. I will return to bargain mice and terrible scroll wheels and bad ergonomics, and I will lament the 40 dollar mouse that lasted just a bit longer than two years when it is traveling to the dump with the rest of the garbage - compromised as it was by a tiny and central component. Months of annoyance and little procedures and really, they have no excuse because far shittier mice ($5-10 bargains) have lasted so much longer, with contacts that didn't fail until the actual plastic bits gave out... but sure, Logitech'll keep making pretty sweet, $40 dollar mice with 5 cent components, because quality means higher than average prices and worse than average components. It's not rocket science to test how many millions of times a microswitch can operate before failure, and it's simple logic (tech logic even) to ensure they can last – after all, nobody is paying that much for a mouse who is going to use it only casually.
While I'm at it, in an era of optical mice that use lasers instead of the ancient system of balls in a rolling enclosure, why have the mechanics of the switches not changed at all? I get that there is a bottom line... you know that's basically all that matters, come to think of it. Still I don't think most companies intentionally hamstring their products so blatantly... years of complaints and no specific response says plenty about your business.
People, if you use a mouse more than an hour a day, and you need it to be good, and you want it to last, just don't make it a Logitech and it should keep working for at least four years. Theirs was the first mouse I'd ever used where the buttons failed in such an annoying and prompt manner, only to precipitate such a discouraging incident where I am forced to play technician (this way it can be claimed that my actions caused the product to stop working as intended, disregarding the fact that the product no longer functioning as intended caused my actions). In fact just use the mouse you got with the that tower you bought in the mid-2000s, despite being basically free it will outlast a 'quality, ergonomically sound, easy to use' Logitech mouse. Or just get a used ball mouse out of the garbage dump - it'll probably still work and when you're done with it the little ball can be used as a projectile.
Most peripherals in the computer world are shit. The more they cost - the dumber the buyer. That seems to be the law all the big players operate by. You either buy really cheap things or really expensive things, and everything in the middle is a big risk... like the $40 Logitech M-500, which will stop clicking correctly long before your computer is obsolete, and which has probably the best scroll wheel of all time, which you can actually take out of the old mouse and, if you know enough or intend to learn, jury rig onto another mouse.
So ends the saga of the computer mouse.
8/8/14
Why I am Fucking Tired of Things
A bunch of people in conflict are dying and the first, most natural response is to pick your side and demonize the other. That was cool in World War II when there was a 'right' side to pick, but World War II and the weird days that followed set the world up for a lot of misery. It's pretty surprising to me as well, but one of the big takeaways from studying history is that humanity is great at holding grievances and using them as twisted and sick raison d'etre. So I'm pretty fucking tired, not of the people who see themselves as wronged and want to find the most violent and counterproductive solutions (though they are as exasperating as crying children on a flight, or schoolyard bullies, or Jihadis, or Zionists - what's the diff, really?), but of the commentators for whom it is a sport to make one side seem more wronged and the other more evil. Ignorant people step into this and even the wisest among us can only look on sadly and wish for a speedy return to normalcy, where only 50-90 people die every year from this particular shitshow.
Nobody's right, everyone's a goddamn asshole, and if I had any power at all I would salt the more contested parts of the Levant so liberally that everybody had to get the hell out, and napalm would discourage the hardier dissenters, followed by low flybys with extremely dilute chlorine gas until every living thing had caught the idea. Then I would build a wall around it and keep everyone out, and if I caught people sneaking back in I would irradiate the whole thing so that it would have to be abandoned, and people would have to give up their crazy, outdated, offensively made up shit which tells them it's okay to pitch fits, murder others, and basically act like it's 1359 B.C.
If we can't have nice things like myths, and big old useless cities filled with the bloody residue of bible stories and twisted histories that turn us into murderous savages, then it is time to destroy the myths. If Millenialists get angry, so much the better. If it's considered anti-Zionist than I don't know what to tell you except oy-fucking-vey. If it's anti-Muslim I am going to pretend it's not ludicrous for THAT to be the breaking point in the struggle. Maybe I'm a zionihadi for peace and there is no better option than to take away the toy the kids are fighting over and getting hurt about. It's time that this species grows the fuck up, and lately we've been very extremely fucking ignorant about a lot of important things, and very greedy, and very uncooperative, and extremely self-centered (unless we're unthinkingly demonizing whole groups of people on others' behalf). If you think this is O.K. then I have a whole world of misery and hatred and slavery to show you. Selling the dumbest possible reactionary narratives is the new game, but it's actually the old game, and whether you're lib or con (believing in these arbitrary and distracting dramas, ignoring truth to feel self-fulfillment - I really hate that) there should be a certain level of decency so that we don't all degrade into shouting matches and talking over each other with factoids and anecdotes.
I really hate the commentators. Not all of them, but the worst of the bunch are so malicious and so invested in explaining the situation as if they were there, are omniscient, and really understand what's going on. We all understand WHY but we do not know HOW/WHAT quite as well, and anyone who pretends otherwise is either a senior Hamas or Israeli official, or a fucking goddamned piece of shit who ought to shut the fuck up and go back to commentating on why an effective tax rate is a burden on capitalism, or why factory farming is excusable, or why exceptionalism is healthy for national character. While we're at it: fuck nationalism of all kinds, that has literally never ended well and if we don't learn from that... we'll have to learn that expensive and wasteful and stupid lesson again, I guess, because we're not good students of anything that doesn't make us rich or respected. Well leave me out of it. Go back to hell and let this world slip into doom without your misleading bullshit turning friend against friend, turning me against almost everyone with an opinion who doesn't have family in the game, and making me want to commit felony level libel on everyone with a big & ignorant mouth. Shut up and stay shut up, because nothing you do is even trying to be helpful.
You can't even call it news anymore. Just shut the fuck up. Let them ruin it further... after all what the fuck did anyone ever do for Syria? Fuck.
Nobody's right, everyone's a goddamn asshole, and if I had any power at all I would salt the more contested parts of the Levant so liberally that everybody had to get the hell out, and napalm would discourage the hardier dissenters, followed by low flybys with extremely dilute chlorine gas until every living thing had caught the idea. Then I would build a wall around it and keep everyone out, and if I caught people sneaking back in I would irradiate the whole thing so that it would have to be abandoned, and people would have to give up their crazy, outdated, offensively made up shit which tells them it's okay to pitch fits, murder others, and basically act like it's 1359 B.C.
If we can't have nice things like myths, and big old useless cities filled with the bloody residue of bible stories and twisted histories that turn us into murderous savages, then it is time to destroy the myths. If Millenialists get angry, so much the better. If it's considered anti-Zionist than I don't know what to tell you except oy-fucking-vey. If it's anti-Muslim I am going to pretend it's not ludicrous for THAT to be the breaking point in the struggle. Maybe I'm a zionihadi for peace and there is no better option than to take away the toy the kids are fighting over and getting hurt about. It's time that this species grows the fuck up, and lately we've been very extremely fucking ignorant about a lot of important things, and very greedy, and very uncooperative, and extremely self-centered (unless we're unthinkingly demonizing whole groups of people on others' behalf). If you think this is O.K. then I have a whole world of misery and hatred and slavery to show you. Selling the dumbest possible reactionary narratives is the new game, but it's actually the old game, and whether you're lib or con (believing in these arbitrary and distracting dramas, ignoring truth to feel self-fulfillment - I really hate that) there should be a certain level of decency so that we don't all degrade into shouting matches and talking over each other with factoids and anecdotes.
I really hate the commentators. Not all of them, but the worst of the bunch are so malicious and so invested in explaining the situation as if they were there, are omniscient, and really understand what's going on. We all understand WHY but we do not know HOW/WHAT quite as well, and anyone who pretends otherwise is either a senior Hamas or Israeli official, or a fucking goddamned piece of shit who ought to shut the fuck up and go back to commentating on why an effective tax rate is a burden on capitalism, or why factory farming is excusable, or why exceptionalism is healthy for national character. While we're at it: fuck nationalism of all kinds, that has literally never ended well and if we don't learn from that... we'll have to learn that expensive and wasteful and stupid lesson again, I guess, because we're not good students of anything that doesn't make us rich or respected. Well leave me out of it. Go back to hell and let this world slip into doom without your misleading bullshit turning friend against friend, turning me against almost everyone with an opinion who doesn't have family in the game, and making me want to commit felony level libel on everyone with a big & ignorant mouth. Shut up and stay shut up, because nothing you do is even trying to be helpful.
You can't even call it news anymore. Just shut the fuck up. Let them ruin it further... after all what the fuck did anyone ever do for Syria? Fuck.
7/24/14
User Comment Rodeo: Lazier and Funnier than Ever!
Highly potent stuff. Hahahahaha. I can definitely see why the UCR 3000 or whatever picked this up. Great shit. Hahha. Not a waste of twenty thousand dollars.
Ahahaha holy shit somebody got owned [for teh internet savvy browsers: 'pwned'] pretty hard in the comment section that day... goddamn that's some serious incest.
Damn look at this guy who can see through the facade of lowered violent crime rates and other liberal mumbo-jumbo hexapentatonic voodoo to the truth: ancient biblical cities that were destroyed for lawlessness and immorality are essentially the same as the modern United States. Obozo, good shit dude... betcha didn't come up with something that good yourself.
Hell yeah that's got me spinning in the chair, spitting out my tea/coffee/beer, and laughing all the way to the bank!
In twelve years the above user commentary will be cited in a study conclusively proving that video games promote mental illness on a level at least equivalent to marginalization, drug use, or genetics. I don't know what the hell is going on, but people live like that... imagine their internal monologues and all the stupid shit they get excited about... mental illnesses and neurological problems... seriously hilarious shit.
Climate science is the lowest target besides almost everything else an unthinking buffoon commentates on. Let's see what might or might not happen (much like we as a species do with earth and climate science).
You see? Hippie shit.
Oh, and highly reasonable responses that lead one to question why the commentator is wasting potential arguing with people in the user comment section. Why not go to school? Or use your time responsibly... maybe these saints have bigger plans than any of us know, and don't mind getting mired in incredibly stupid and wasteful arguments with hardened skeptics. Maybe they don't even get hopeless or angry or wracked by belly laughs when they engage the user comment sections of the internet... and there's a lot of those.
7/21/14
"I'm Amateur Poet Ross Heffi, and I Love Reading!"
[Note: Due to problems with contracting an actual poet to write this entire post in hexameter, this blog post has been delayed and in development hell for nearly six months. the author presents it as is and refuses to accept any liability whatever for this piece, which is offered on a pro bono basis, or any derivatives thereof. This piece is fictional and is not meant to disparage any lazy and numbskull idiots (hereafter referred to as 'poets') living or dead, nor does it purport to represent any veritable person, as a work of fiction is not libelous or slanderous. The poetry and prose herein is the intelluctual property of Ross Heffi, M.F.A. and should not be reproduced in any way.]
Hey everyone, glad you're reading words my fingers put into the computer realm, my name is Ross Heffi, I currently live in Ithaca, New York, and my darkest secret is that if reading as a concept and practice was made corporeal in the form of a human, I would marry it. or, failing that, stalk it relentlessly and passionately. My favorite medium is Poetry, because Poetry allows me to expound in an unusual manner, offering many possibilities that prose doesn't. My favorite poet is Wallace Stevens, for reasons that should be obvious to even neophytes of Art. I don't ape him because I'm not a fool, and know that I could never match him in his element.
Reading is, to me, the highest and most noble pastime. The illiterate and semi-literate confuse and sadden me. I believe I was born in the wrong era, and I must tearfully admit I consider this an age of philistinery. These are lurid times, when the flashy draw hooks many minds and leads them to ruin, to ignorance, and to laziness. Without thoughts, wise men, and the dreams of peaceful minds, the world will be robbed of promise and hatred will continue to spread. Wealth will turn to ash without us, and our voices are still strong, still awaiting the return of the audience.
My favorite poem (of my own making) 'Destiny's Argot' concerns a man whose fear for the world drives him mad, and into the arms of the muses (as well as other mysterious forces) and nearly eighty high quality lines (probably the best work I ever succeeded in doing) detail his altered state and journey through a supermarket/drug store, and interactions with shoppers. If you, the reader, are interested in Ross Heffi, or simply adore poetic endeavor, I would recommend reading 'Destiny's Argot' which is available on a trial basis from Wattpad, and also on Goodreads, where you can add me as a friend. You may be inspired to make a purchase of my first and only collection Hell is Pieces of my Heart on Hot Asphalt (digital and paper copies available), for which I would be very, but not eternally (I do not believe the immortal soul), grateful.
@HeffiTymes. Ross Heffi is on Tumblr, as well, serving fresh, daily compositions ,and accepting commissions. Yeah that just happened, my dear reader, and many more adventures await and I will give it my all to produce and curate some of the best poetry of this era, comparable perhaps to the masters of old, and the ancient demigods of poetry, the most learned and exquisite and legendary figures. Of Sappho and Homer you have doubtless heard much, but there are others I can name, which you probably could not. In any case, my list of most admired poets is too long and probably too confusing to list here, so I do invoke the ancients and humbly request they invoke the Muses for me. This latest poem is entitled 'Forever is a Distant Laughing Brook' and is dedicated to the unpopular and much disliked blog P u b l i c a t o and was written at the request of Anonynimous Bosch for a reasonable fee, which is charged for most commissions except at the request of true lovers, lost souls, dedicated fans, certain members of the media, and under-14 poetry fanatics.
Hey everyone, glad you're reading words my fingers put into the computer realm, my name is Ross Heffi, I currently live in Ithaca, New York, and my darkest secret is that if reading as a concept and practice was made corporeal in the form of a human, I would marry it. or, failing that, stalk it relentlessly and passionately. My favorite medium is Poetry, because Poetry allows me to expound in an unusual manner, offering many possibilities that prose doesn't. My favorite poet is Wallace Stevens, for reasons that should be obvious to even neophytes of Art. I don't ape him because I'm not a fool, and know that I could never match him in his element.
Reading is, to me, the highest and most noble pastime. The illiterate and semi-literate confuse and sadden me. I believe I was born in the wrong era, and I must tearfully admit I consider this an age of philistinery. These are lurid times, when the flashy draw hooks many minds and leads them to ruin, to ignorance, and to laziness. Without thoughts, wise men, and the dreams of peaceful minds, the world will be robbed of promise and hatred will continue to spread. Wealth will turn to ash without us, and our voices are still strong, still awaiting the return of the audience.
My favorite poem (of my own making) 'Destiny's Argot' concerns a man whose fear for the world drives him mad, and into the arms of the muses (as well as other mysterious forces) and nearly eighty high quality lines (probably the best work I ever succeeded in doing) detail his altered state and journey through a supermarket/drug store, and interactions with shoppers. If you, the reader, are interested in Ross Heffi, or simply adore poetic endeavor, I would recommend reading 'Destiny's Argot' which is available on a trial basis from Wattpad, and also on Goodreads, where you can add me as a friend. You may be inspired to make a purchase of my first and only collection Hell is Pieces of my Heart on Hot Asphalt (digital and paper copies available), for which I would be very, but not eternally (I do not believe the immortal soul), grateful.
@HeffiTymes. Ross Heffi is on Tumblr, as well, serving fresh, daily compositions ,and accepting commissions. Yeah that just happened, my dear reader, and many more adventures await and I will give it my all to produce and curate some of the best poetry of this era, comparable perhaps to the masters of old, and the ancient demigods of poetry, the most learned and exquisite and legendary figures. Of Sappho and Homer you have doubtless heard much, but there are others I can name, which you probably could not. In any case, my list of most admired poets is too long and probably too confusing to list here, so I do invoke the ancients and humbly request they invoke the Muses for me. This latest poem is entitled 'Forever is a Distant Laughing Brook' and is dedicated to the unpopular and much disliked blog P u b l i c a t o and was written at the request of Anonynimous Bosch for a reasonable fee, which is charged for most commissions except at the request of true lovers, lost souls, dedicated fans, certain members of the media, and under-14 poetry fanatics.
7/16/14
The End Times are Ever-Present
The alarmists have always been wrong about this one, but if you read Revelations correctly and ignore the hallucinogenic business of the end of time, you'll notice that in alluding to wars and rumors of wars, pestilence, famine, and intense interfamilial disrespect it is basically telling the reader to keep eyes peeled, because then as now those four things are raging. So the world is always about to end, which makes heartening sense anyway, since nobody knows if we're going to be enslaved by hyper-advanced space aliens or vaporized by a rogue solar flare or ninja quasar.
What could be worse than the end of the world? How about the sufferings, frustrations, and injustices of the world continuing to exist? That's a pretty rough deal, but I guess something is better than nothing, and let's face it: the world is definitely a happening place full of things. So there's nothing worse than the end of the world, since what the end of the world really means in its lazy modern usage is the end of humanity, the cessation of civilization as we know it. Few people use it to describe a cataclysm that destroys the earth. Doomsday is the last day of routine in which the adaptive abilities of all animals are tested, and because of natural tenacity, some life will probably escape it, get thrown into Titan or another watery moon and come back in a twisted form in a couple billion years.
There is only the anthropological doomsday, really, in the popular imagination. For many, perhaps rightfully so, there is nothing after our extinction. It's a purely hypothetical question not really worth thinking about. For some it is a most interesting topic. Lots of good literature about it, or inspired by its idea, and a good deal of nonfiction that asks the question. In a couple of years there will probably be a cross-discipline course offered about post-human topics and lots of people will take it and imagine it to be worthwhile... I'll probably enroll in it for kicks if I'm going to have the time. I want to know the secrets of the future, I want to call myself an expert and get on TV and give out a few useless answers to basic questions and make sure to tweet about the appearance.
It doesn't take an expert to realize that, statistically speaking, this very minute in which I am hastily writing is the end time for at least one hundred people across the world, having died at this point, and in the next minute it will happen again. It's the relativity of doom, a sort of morbid relativity that nobody can really stand to think about for any length of time, or even imagine. The end times roll on, and the alarmists keep selling the long con where we explode the world or destroy the universe, because we're definitely capable of that. There is a true and verifiable process of slow self-destruction in effect that gets ignored every time someone sells the story that we are all fifty years away from horrible hunger, violence, or pathogen-related deaths. Most likely we will slowly sink beneath the waves of genetic drift a couple thousand years after peaking, and some upstart group of rebellious aliens will stomp the lot of us into the dirt before making the same mistakes after translating and slowly accepting our extinct but futuristic hyper-metaculture. (Note to filmmakers and authors: portrayed obviously as some kind of cool and sneaky download scene like in Independence Day).
Anyway I am pretty certain a world-shaking even won't end my lifetime. I am more worried about my personal end-time which fate has set, hopefully in the future, but one can never rule out terrible and humorously dark luck, like getting shot by a cop due to hilarious misidentification, or falling in love with death disguised as a beautiful and warm paramour, or adopting a haunted dog, or getting a crippling affliction by smoking cigarettes, or choking on a delicious and highly expensive meal at the peak of your life after getting signed for a three-book multi-million dollar contract with a highly esteemed publisher. Drug overdose (can be funny), suicide (heheh), or vehicular manslaughter. Gun shit,. Death by bareknuckle brawling wild animals no smaller than one hundred pounds. Frozen on a supposedly 'tropical' vacation. Possession by depressed spirits. Inexplicable combustion. Hate crimed to death on a Friday night!
What could be worse than the end of the world? How about the sufferings, frustrations, and injustices of the world continuing to exist? That's a pretty rough deal, but I guess something is better than nothing, and let's face it: the world is definitely a happening place full of things. So there's nothing worse than the end of the world, since what the end of the world really means in its lazy modern usage is the end of humanity, the cessation of civilization as we know it. Few people use it to describe a cataclysm that destroys the earth. Doomsday is the last day of routine in which the adaptive abilities of all animals are tested, and because of natural tenacity, some life will probably escape it, get thrown into Titan or another watery moon and come back in a twisted form in a couple billion years.
There is only the anthropological doomsday, really, in the popular imagination. For many, perhaps rightfully so, there is nothing after our extinction. It's a purely hypothetical question not really worth thinking about. For some it is a most interesting topic. Lots of good literature about it, or inspired by its idea, and a good deal of nonfiction that asks the question. In a couple of years there will probably be a cross-discipline course offered about post-human topics and lots of people will take it and imagine it to be worthwhile... I'll probably enroll in it for kicks if I'm going to have the time. I want to know the secrets of the future, I want to call myself an expert and get on TV and give out a few useless answers to basic questions and make sure to tweet about the appearance.
It doesn't take an expert to realize that, statistically speaking, this very minute in which I am hastily writing is the end time for at least one hundred people across the world, having died at this point, and in the next minute it will happen again. It's the relativity of doom, a sort of morbid relativity that nobody can really stand to think about for any length of time, or even imagine. The end times roll on, and the alarmists keep selling the long con where we explode the world or destroy the universe, because we're definitely capable of that. There is a true and verifiable process of slow self-destruction in effect that gets ignored every time someone sells the story that we are all fifty years away from horrible hunger, violence, or pathogen-related deaths. Most likely we will slowly sink beneath the waves of genetic drift a couple thousand years after peaking, and some upstart group of rebellious aliens will stomp the lot of us into the dirt before making the same mistakes after translating and slowly accepting our extinct but futuristic hyper-metaculture. (Note to filmmakers and authors: portrayed obviously as some kind of cool and sneaky download scene like in Independence Day).
Anyway I am pretty certain a world-shaking even won't end my lifetime. I am more worried about my personal end-time which fate has set, hopefully in the future, but one can never rule out terrible and humorously dark luck, like getting shot by a cop due to hilarious misidentification, or falling in love with death disguised as a beautiful and warm paramour, or adopting a haunted dog, or getting a crippling affliction by smoking cigarettes, or choking on a delicious and highly expensive meal at the peak of your life after getting signed for a three-book multi-million dollar contract with a highly esteemed publisher. Drug overdose (can be funny), suicide (heheh), or vehicular manslaughter. Gun shit,. Death by bareknuckle brawling wild animals no smaller than one hundred pounds. Frozen on a supposedly 'tropical' vacation. Possession by depressed spirits. Inexplicable combustion. Hate crimed to death on a Friday night!
6/8/14
Obligatory Blog Post to Demonstrate Publicato is Alive
Holy shit since the last post there has been a lot to discuss, but the internet spent so long discussing it, most often through the lens of tunnel vision, that I am actually too disgusted and confused to really bring anything worthwhile into the, aha, 'discourse'.
The big story in Canada is the political race to become premier of the 300 billion dollar baby, also known as the province of Ontario. What's going on? Well some observers have remarked that it's the saddest race of all time. It's a lost cause province and none of the candidates seem to be worth a damn, none of them have really outlined reasonable or fully-formed ideas, and the incumbent party had blown $1,000,000,000 dollars (CDN) on absolutely nothing at all. That's a small slice of the debt, but it is a legitimate reason to throw Dalton McGuinty out of the province and possibly out of Canada entirely, as well as flattening the pesky suburbs that helped fuck everything up.
Basically the terrible, tear-stained, barely competent, unthinking political creatures that are eligible for premiership according the laws of the province are:
Tim Hudak - This guy's making waves by promising to cut everything he can get his hands on, dismantle public services and outsource them to contractors, and somehow create a million jobs. As you might expect, he is actually relatively popular and seen by many as the best of four terrible, province-destroying candidates. He looks like a church deacon who works as a used car salesman. About as charismatic as Stephen Harper, possibly even more conservative. Works for the Progressive Conservatives, moneyed interests, and the fine upstanding people of Niagara-West/Glanbrook.
Kathleen Wynne - This lady inherited a provincial government somehow more hated than Mike Harris'. Look that one up and you will see that her work was cut out for her from day one, when her cowardly, incompetent and wasteful predecessor resigned in full knowledge that he would be pilloried and quite possibly impeached for gross uselessness. But Kathleen opposes any actions taken against public unions and somehow basically wants things to stay the same, emphasizing that the status quo which put Ontario deeper in the hole than California could potentially also rescue the province. She works for the Liberal Party, moneyed interests, and the fine, upstanding people of Don Valley West.
Andrea Horwath - I don't actually know if it's possible to go on, but Andrea is a bit like Tim or Kathleen, but more in favor of public unions. If she was a billionaire she would likely get elected, but as it is she is not likely to win anymore than a token amount of votes. She works for the NDP, unionized workers, moneyed interests, and the fine, upstanding people of Hamilton Centre.
Mike Schreiner - I think this guy is running as more of a joke, but he seems rather chill. He works for the Green Party, nature, hippies, and hasn't actually won any seats with his party. If the vote is split, as it should be in times of extreme hopelessness, this guy would ensure that not too much of Ontario's natural wealth and beauty is knocked down for Wal-Marts, gravel pits, and strip malls.
Split the goddamn vote, Ontario. If Rob Ford were running in this race you'd probably vote for him, but you don't have that option. You don't actually have any attractive options, so good luck and may you fare well.
In the rest of the world all kinds of crazy stuff has been going on, but don't get me wrong there were probably hopeful and heartwarming things as well. But. The Front Nationale won something for France, in the E.U. parliament, a good sign for plurality. Multiple shootings and stabbings, insanity, public comment meltdowns, a few bombs, rumors of war, Ukrainian distress, and nobody found that Malaysia Air jet. Yep. The conspiracy nuts are getting plenty of fodder for the next wave of crazy. I'd go into it but I don't have the time at the moment, but any of those subjects are ripe for some mistakenly satirical posts later. A bunch of 'huh, no shit' kind of malarky, but it never does turn out right when I do it. Keep keeping on, I'll do my best towards that end as well.
The big story in Canada is the political race to become premier of the 300 billion dollar baby, also known as the province of Ontario. What's going on? Well some observers have remarked that it's the saddest race of all time. It's a lost cause province and none of the candidates seem to be worth a damn, none of them have really outlined reasonable or fully-formed ideas, and the incumbent party had blown $1,000,000,000 dollars (CDN) on absolutely nothing at all. That's a small slice of the debt, but it is a legitimate reason to throw Dalton McGuinty out of the province and possibly out of Canada entirely, as well as flattening the pesky suburbs that helped fuck everything up.
Basically the terrible, tear-stained, barely competent, unthinking political creatures that are eligible for premiership according the laws of the province are:
Tim Hudak - This guy's making waves by promising to cut everything he can get his hands on, dismantle public services and outsource them to contractors, and somehow create a million jobs. As you might expect, he is actually relatively popular and seen by many as the best of four terrible, province-destroying candidates. He looks like a church deacon who works as a used car salesman. About as charismatic as Stephen Harper, possibly even more conservative. Works for the Progressive Conservatives, moneyed interests, and the fine upstanding people of Niagara-West/Glanbrook.
Kathleen Wynne - This lady inherited a provincial government somehow more hated than Mike Harris'. Look that one up and you will see that her work was cut out for her from day one, when her cowardly, incompetent and wasteful predecessor resigned in full knowledge that he would be pilloried and quite possibly impeached for gross uselessness. But Kathleen opposes any actions taken against public unions and somehow basically wants things to stay the same, emphasizing that the status quo which put Ontario deeper in the hole than California could potentially also rescue the province. She works for the Liberal Party, moneyed interests, and the fine, upstanding people of Don Valley West.
Andrea Horwath - I don't actually know if it's possible to go on, but Andrea is a bit like Tim or Kathleen, but more in favor of public unions. If she was a billionaire she would likely get elected, but as it is she is not likely to win anymore than a token amount of votes. She works for the NDP, unionized workers, moneyed interests, and the fine, upstanding people of Hamilton Centre.
Mike Schreiner - I think this guy is running as more of a joke, but he seems rather chill. He works for the Green Party, nature, hippies, and hasn't actually won any seats with his party. If the vote is split, as it should be in times of extreme hopelessness, this guy would ensure that not too much of Ontario's natural wealth and beauty is knocked down for Wal-Marts, gravel pits, and strip malls.
Split the goddamn vote, Ontario. If Rob Ford were running in this race you'd probably vote for him, but you don't have that option. You don't actually have any attractive options, so good luck and may you fare well.
In the rest of the world all kinds of crazy stuff has been going on, but don't get me wrong there were probably hopeful and heartwarming things as well. But. The Front Nationale won something for France, in the E.U. parliament, a good sign for plurality. Multiple shootings and stabbings, insanity, public comment meltdowns, a few bombs, rumors of war, Ukrainian distress, and nobody found that Malaysia Air jet. Yep. The conspiracy nuts are getting plenty of fodder for the next wave of crazy. I'd go into it but I don't have the time at the moment, but any of those subjects are ripe for some mistakenly satirical posts later. A bunch of 'huh, no shit' kind of malarky, but it never does turn out right when I do it. Keep keeping on, I'll do my best towards that end as well.
5/7/14
Death by Misclick
Have things gotten to the point where this is possible? It seems funny to me, like a bit Charlie Chaplin would have done in a silent film send-up of the Internet. It's probably not possible yet, I have to say... yet when that PR lady tweeted about AIDS her job ended and she faced the scorn of both the twittersphere and the blogoverse, not to mention the brutal comment board nebulae. Could the death of her relations with the cyber-public been caused by a simple misclick? Is it safe to laugh at her now that the dust has settled? What was her favorite album of 2011?
Here's my wild idea: she was typing out the post as some sort of perverse joke, and instead of properly screenshotting it for transmission to a few friends, she brushed the screen with her manicured pinky, inadvertently tweeting it. I know, it's so outrageous to think that someone wouldn't tweet ridiculous or hateful things that this particular example has no real value at all. Maybe it was part of a rebellious act after years of PR repression had tangled the psyche, and something offensive and sharp was needed to express frustration. A cry for help.
Well in any case it is easily possible a misclick can cost someone their job, since there are actual employers who are hysterical enough about indiscretion and deviance to fire or discipline you for shit they dig up about you on facebook, let alone the things you actually mean to showcase. This is why in real life there is the unspoken code of workplace civility, or workplace confidentiality (common in livelier, uninhibited workplaces): why people usually only express ignorant or fucked up ideas in speech, a safe distance away from recording devices, the offendable, and awkward or unexpected silences. You lose your job, next thing you know your credit is dead because you were too depressed about burning your own digital effigy to find a new job (plus the internet ruined your social credit and made you borderline unemployable, and you didn't capitalize on your pariah status), then your social life is dead because you have no money and are either couch surfing or on the street, or maybe at your parents' house. Next thing you know you're dead.
Death by misclick, but then you awaken from death as an online-only ghost, or get reincarnated as a future Social Media Expert. Really, I bet misclicks have cost a lot of people something over the years, and I'm not just talking about rounds of near-professional-level Starcraft. Of course nobody should use a misclick as an excuse, because it's a poor one, but outside of crazy hypothetical situations I am certain there is plenty of danger in them Worse on some level than a social misstep or faux pas or gauche seizure. And it's kind of crazy to think that something as small as the twitch of a finger could ruin your life, without even killing you or getting you pregnant. Or I guess that's crazy and says something about the internet era. I don't even know. I don't misclick. Not even when I post this article, or when I go most of a month without posting one. I've got to keep the reader hungry for new Publicato 'shzzt' and never admit that I am drying out, failing the exercise of writing and maybe worst of all... my faith in blogging shaken to the core.
Here's my wild idea: she was typing out the post as some sort of perverse joke, and instead of properly screenshotting it for transmission to a few friends, she brushed the screen with her manicured pinky, inadvertently tweeting it. I know, it's so outrageous to think that someone wouldn't tweet ridiculous or hateful things that this particular example has no real value at all. Maybe it was part of a rebellious act after years of PR repression had tangled the psyche, and something offensive and sharp was needed to express frustration. A cry for help.
Well in any case it is easily possible a misclick can cost someone their job, since there are actual employers who are hysterical enough about indiscretion and deviance to fire or discipline you for shit they dig up about you on facebook, let alone the things you actually mean to showcase. This is why in real life there is the unspoken code of workplace civility, or workplace confidentiality (common in livelier, uninhibited workplaces): why people usually only express ignorant or fucked up ideas in speech, a safe distance away from recording devices, the offendable, and awkward or unexpected silences. You lose your job, next thing you know your credit is dead because you were too depressed about burning your own digital effigy to find a new job (plus the internet ruined your social credit and made you borderline unemployable, and you didn't capitalize on your pariah status), then your social life is dead because you have no money and are either couch surfing or on the street, or maybe at your parents' house. Next thing you know you're dead.
Death by misclick, but then you awaken from death as an online-only ghost, or get reincarnated as a future Social Media Expert. Really, I bet misclicks have cost a lot of people something over the years, and I'm not just talking about rounds of near-professional-level Starcraft. Of course nobody should use a misclick as an excuse, because it's a poor one, but outside of crazy hypothetical situations I am certain there is plenty of danger in them Worse on some level than a social misstep or faux pas or gauche seizure. And it's kind of crazy to think that something as small as the twitch of a finger could ruin your life, without even killing you or getting you pregnant. Or I guess that's crazy and says something about the internet era. I don't even know. I don't misclick. Not even when I post this article, or when I go most of a month without posting one. I've got to keep the reader hungry for new Publicato 'shzzt' and never admit that I am drying out, failing the exercise of writing and maybe worst of all... my faith in blogging shaken to the core.
4/10/14
Canadian Political Update: Death of a Legend
This is Jack Layton all over again. The honorable Jim Flaherty was pretty much the only guy in the entire CPC (the much maligned party of the machine-like Stephen Harper administration) who was well liked and at least as competent as he was respected. In terms of fiscal policy he was a latter day Paul Martin, holding together a country with a problematic and potentially dim economic future. Here's to Jim Flaherty, the man who killed the penny, kept a large and diverse country from falling apart during a deep and cutting recession, and who wasn't afraid to lash his raft to a ridiculous flotilla of egoistic idiots and domineering mutants as long as it allowed him a chance to do what was right and important to him: balancing the books. If you've not heard yet: he died earlier today. Cue elegies.
It is a sobering thing that came out of the blue, happening just as Canadian politics were ripe for wagers, with staffers getting kicked out the back door of parliament in the dead of night, victims of failed power-grabs. A new reason for MPs to cry openly in the streets and alleyways of Ottawa. A real downer, reminding the people of Canada that there is always a cost, that happy endings can be few and far between amidst the cocaine and scandal of the political class. Without a likeable character or strong finance minister, the Conservative Party of Canada will be frantic – moreso than usual – to grasp at some kind of legitimacy, even as it comes to light that just about everyone in the party (with the exception of the late Mr. Flaherty, and maybe Prime Minister Harper) was wasting taxpayer money, scheming corrupt acts, contemptuous of the public, or doing anything other than being constructive or humble.
I want to pay my respects to the man who was really the hallowed minority of likeable Canadian Conservatives, one who put duty above ideology, and the only one who transcended the ingrained curmudgeonliness of the role to be a real public servant without flogging any personal brand or becoming self-righteous or mad with power. Whatever else his shortcomings, he didn't fuck up the country and its people will be universally thankful for his service and sorry for his early and sudden passing. He did his work as well as he could, and balanced the budget against all odds, leaving an improved situation for his successors. Three weeks ago, when he stepped down as finance minister, the word on the street was his decision was prompted by bad news or bad health, or maybe the coming apocalypse. Likely it was a combination of the former two issues, and he understandably took it as a sign that he had to take time for himself while he could.
I'm no expert and I didn't know the him,. I'm a sloppy blogger from an indeterminate but probably English-speaking area of the world. I only knew a few things about him because of his role in the awesome political landscape of Canada, and I draw my conclusions from that scenery. I get the sense he enjoyed his job, and he certainly did it credit. I don't want to be mawkish, because he was a committed and diligent realist and probably scoffed at mawkishness. Still, it must be said that the silver lining of a cloudy era has died with him; an entire country is left a little poorer in both the literal and figurative sense of the word. However it must also be said that economic solvency came at the price of personal well-being – he was at least in part the victim of overwork at the altar of the system he served – a warning, perhaps, that all that glitters is not gold, even in the kingdom of the complacent consumer. It couldn't have been a stress-free run, though: it could've been any combination of things but that.
As the media goes on about him, others' condolences and heartening anecdotes about him, the life story of a fiscal champion, etc, the ultimate message, one that even Flaherty might've missed, will likely slip by under the radar. Anyway, that's my meandering, steaming, obligatory mess of an article, which I felt was necessary given this event, which will be overblown and played out by the Canadian media anyhow (and generally cursorily reported or underreported by international media), and I spinelessly contribute white noise for digital cyber-hit numbers which justify my likely sad existence, but that's how it is when you have ideas about a great HST-esque return to political analysis and the rug gets pulled out from under you and there hasn't been anything posted to the old blog in a while.
(Dimitri Soudas being kicked unceremoniously out of the PMO, and his ex-pageant wife being a bit of an entitled, selfish bitch is funny news that could make for some great analysis, but the planned article on that might never come to light after today.)
It is a sobering thing that came out of the blue, happening just as Canadian politics were ripe for wagers, with staffers getting kicked out the back door of parliament in the dead of night, victims of failed power-grabs. A new reason for MPs to cry openly in the streets and alleyways of Ottawa. A real downer, reminding the people of Canada that there is always a cost, that happy endings can be few and far between amidst the cocaine and scandal of the political class. Without a likeable character or strong finance minister, the Conservative Party of Canada will be frantic – moreso than usual – to grasp at some kind of legitimacy, even as it comes to light that just about everyone in the party (with the exception of the late Mr. Flaherty, and maybe Prime Minister Harper) was wasting taxpayer money, scheming corrupt acts, contemptuous of the public, or doing anything other than being constructive or humble.
I want to pay my respects to the man who was really the hallowed minority of likeable Canadian Conservatives, one who put duty above ideology, and the only one who transcended the ingrained curmudgeonliness of the role to be a real public servant without flogging any personal brand or becoming self-righteous or mad with power. Whatever else his shortcomings, he didn't fuck up the country and its people will be universally thankful for his service and sorry for his early and sudden passing. He did his work as well as he could, and balanced the budget against all odds, leaving an improved situation for his successors. Three weeks ago, when he stepped down as finance minister, the word on the street was his decision was prompted by bad news or bad health, or maybe the coming apocalypse. Likely it was a combination of the former two issues, and he understandably took it as a sign that he had to take time for himself while he could.
I'm no expert and I didn't know the him,. I'm a sloppy blogger from an indeterminate but probably English-speaking area of the world. I only knew a few things about him because of his role in the awesome political landscape of Canada, and I draw my conclusions from that scenery. I get the sense he enjoyed his job, and he certainly did it credit. I don't want to be mawkish, because he was a committed and diligent realist and probably scoffed at mawkishness. Still, it must be said that the silver lining of a cloudy era has died with him; an entire country is left a little poorer in both the literal and figurative sense of the word. However it must also be said that economic solvency came at the price of personal well-being – he was at least in part the victim of overwork at the altar of the system he served – a warning, perhaps, that all that glitters is not gold, even in the kingdom of the complacent consumer. It couldn't have been a stress-free run, though: it could've been any combination of things but that.
As the media goes on about him, others' condolences and heartening anecdotes about him, the life story of a fiscal champion, etc, the ultimate message, one that even Flaherty might've missed, will likely slip by under the radar. Anyway, that's my meandering, steaming, obligatory mess of an article, which I felt was necessary given this event, which will be overblown and played out by the Canadian media anyhow (and generally cursorily reported or underreported by international media), and I spinelessly contribute white noise for digital cyber-hit numbers which justify my likely sad existence, but that's how it is when you have ideas about a great HST-esque return to political analysis and the rug gets pulled out from under you and there hasn't been anything posted to the old blog in a while.
(Dimitri Soudas being kicked unceremoniously out of the PMO, and his ex-pageant wife being a bit of an entitled, selfish bitch is funny news that could make for some great analysis, but the planned article on that might never come to light after today.)
3/29/14
The Verge of Uncanny Valley
Facebook but with a dislike button. Twitter but you get to throw tweets into a virtual shredder and retweet the results. Youtube but comments cannot be prohibited and confer privileges based on amount of likes or coherent length. More review systems and as much user based content as possible, and also there must be media sensationalism. Soundcloud but with a built in editor and sampler, and a healthy amount of effects. Reddit but with upvote XP systems. RPG social media events, with PR interlacing and exciting, meaningful marketing opportunities. Viral IRL games arrays, spanning years and maybe even decades. Pure madness. The distance from one to another is growing, and getting in the middle is the biggest business of all; get in on the ground floor of the first business to dictate human thought, which will be bought by Google for billions. Log in and meet the new gods. There's an app for that. Material world a quaint place peopled by the offline troglodytes, infants, and the non-digital elderly.
Deeper into the collective subconsciousness all the while assured of individuality and rugged independence. Too good to give it up and too obviously fucked up to care. Living in the shadows of an ever-twitching and surreal world. Spastic shadows and half-formed exclamations. People who can't take jokes and people who can't stop making them, both uniting to ruin the moment. Uneasy words from agitated people. More data every second than can be processed in a human lifetime. Everything is under control, believe us. There is a number too big to fit into the known universe, and we are chasing it for no other reason than to crowd ourselves out. We are edging towards an eternal dream state, towards a hyped self destruction, into the darkness of the final delusions.
Pretentious shit from idiots, too, and pretty much absolutely as far as the eye can see or ear can hear. Why won't the voices stop, right? They don't appear to even consider your objections for a moment before saying some other thing, or a thing related to it logically. Or is it the appearance of logic, worn as a cloak over a disingenuous appeal to base instinct? Then, to add injury to insult, other voices begin to chatter nonstop about the things the first order voices said. A chorus grows in the uncanny valley of the present, a maelstrom of misinformation and ignorance grows and risks everything and stupefies the remainder. Dangerous ideas curl in the air like toxic smoke. Plumes of oil, plastic, radiation and particulates in the air will sustain the next apex lifeform... our Frankenstein will sail among the stars and tell exaggerated tales about its creators.
Deeper into the collective subconsciousness all the while assured of individuality and rugged independence. Too good to give it up and too obviously fucked up to care. Living in the shadows of an ever-twitching and surreal world. Spastic shadows and half-formed exclamations. People who can't take jokes and people who can't stop making them, both uniting to ruin the moment. Uneasy words from agitated people. More data every second than can be processed in a human lifetime. Everything is under control, believe us. There is a number too big to fit into the known universe, and we are chasing it for no other reason than to crowd ourselves out. We are edging towards an eternal dream state, towards a hyped self destruction, into the darkness of the final delusions.
Pretentious shit from idiots, too, and pretty much absolutely as far as the eye can see or ear can hear. Why won't the voices stop, right? They don't appear to even consider your objections for a moment before saying some other thing, or a thing related to it logically. Or is it the appearance of logic, worn as a cloak over a disingenuous appeal to base instinct? Then, to add injury to insult, other voices begin to chatter nonstop about the things the first order voices said. A chorus grows in the uncanny valley of the present, a maelstrom of misinformation and ignorance grows and risks everything and stupefies the remainder. Dangerous ideas curl in the air like toxic smoke. Plumes of oil, plastic, radiation and particulates in the air will sustain the next apex lifeform... our Frankenstein will sail among the stars and tell exaggerated tales about its creators.
3/25/14
Morning Show Blues
Yeah, one of those situations where there is at least one radio going on at all times, with the attendant morning radio personalities... I have been thinking and I must say it is even worse than I remember it. Morning radio is like the ugly older sibling of late night television. Radio - not only do they play the same song at least five times a day until you hate it with a more intense passion than you ever loved it (and gain the power of recognizing it immediately even faintly heard from a distance), but they've got the terrible idea of hiring sycophantic dickweeds to blabber excitedly and laugh (at me, the underemployed schlub? Go on talking about your coffee and cream, your wife's ass, why you hate winter) for a 6 - 9 or whatever morning show.
I'm sure there have been radio morning shows that are not completely oppressive and distressing for non-morning people. You know the kind of person I mean: coffee or not they are unlikely to smile, form a coherent sentence, or laugh for the first hour they're awake and working. To some varieties of them (for instance myself) the sounds of morning show hosts going on and on between ads and eerily upbeat music is worse than static, or any aggressively unremarkable or annoying song.
My brain, even when it is still half in the realm of sleep, does not approve of a bunch of modestly personable DJs doing their annoying and useless job while I add value to the region by trading my labour power for a ridiculous and mildly depressing pittance. Cognizant of the fact they earn more than me (and get to laugh out loud all the time, come up with groovy insider jokes, great phone interactions, crazy stunts, far-out contests, and yawn level jokes), I do feel a mild bit of resentment as well as annoyance. Change the station? Why risk it? You'd be surprised at the intensity with which some folk despise public radio, the music of the great canon of composers, and silence (my personal top choice for morning vibes). So what is left to me?
Answer: The annoying squawking of overpaid manchildren, combined with a hellish interplay of blaring advertisements and generally non-morning music. I don't do a line of coke or a bunch of trucker pills when I wake up, so their braying hijinks and high-energy excitedness is completely jarring to me. It is even mildly painful to the very core of my soul. I don't get pumped up by their dreary and doctrinaire choice of songs either. I don't enjoy these audio clowns, and even if they were funny, had material worth listening to, I would be hard-pressed to listen to them. Plainly put, I've only ever heard one or two radio morning shows I didn't hate, and even those were most often kind of boring.
Most stations advertise their appreciable web presence. So I wondered, who in the hell would go to the website of a radio station and check up on the blogs, latest news, and pictures from the morning DJs? I can only come up with a few major sources of traffic: intensely lonely, credible, or bored people, and the mentally ill. Otherwise incomprehensible. Plainly put, it always astounds me how much effort is put into the background of the world, where we while away our mortal hours generally enduring things we don't like. I mean, hell, I write a pretty non-important blog generally about non-topics... I add white noise to the internet. There's at least some difference between me and the morning DJ with laughter in his voice and more energy than anyone needs at that hour.
Generally I turn the radio down to reasonable limits and grit my teeth and do my work quickly so I can move elsewhere and do something else somewhere there is nobody pretending that the morning is a great or funny time (unless you stayed up all night, or are waking up to do something other than be underemployed in a mostly stagnant economy). Even the mildly funny shit, which is scarce, is run into the ground faster and deeper than a solid gold locomotive dropped from orbit. I don't know how people can stand it... you can get used to it, sure, but it is specifically just an unpleasant feature of life to me.
I've been listening to radio for years, when I was really uncritical none of this mattered to me as long as a good song came on, like the one by Aaliyah or that other one by L.E.N., or that later RHCP song about taxis or something. The era-defining hits of yesteryear were also generally overplayed and eventually annoying, and I ought to remember that, but they stuck with me, and some of your old favorites and mine are still being overplayed. I used to spend a lot of time in the company of radio, but have lived without it for many years now in the future, so coming from silence or chosen tracks to the hilarious cacophony of jokes and marketing and grut rock just adds a small element of objection to my day. Gotta blog about those awkward things, unavoidable things, and heartwarming things.
Now, if you're a morning show DJ and you're reading this and you are saying to yourself things like, "This fussy little internet geekblogger doesn't understand my dedication and verve, or the pain which I know as a morning show host, or that my slightly exaggerated manner is meant to help others deal with the pain of morning workaday life. A venerable and hallowed tradition. The skill of talking too much for minutes at a time was one I inherited from my father, who was himself a morning show DJ." Nah, man, this isn't personal and I'm not a geek... I acknowledge it's my problem I find you annoying. That you dessicate my environment with your wireless sonic depredations is just my perception of it, and I am the wrong kind of judge in this instance. In the end, I keep listening out of apathy, a perverse and ironic joy of laughing at your base shitness, and obviously for a chance to hear myself on the airwaves and win that hundred dollar wacky trivia question. Play those canned sounds again – you know the ones – and teach me how to lose my self-awareness... does your laughter taste like ashes to you?
I'm sure there have been radio morning shows that are not completely oppressive and distressing for non-morning people. You know the kind of person I mean: coffee or not they are unlikely to smile, form a coherent sentence, or laugh for the first hour they're awake and working. To some varieties of them (for instance myself) the sounds of morning show hosts going on and on between ads and eerily upbeat music is worse than static, or any aggressively unremarkable or annoying song.
My brain, even when it is still half in the realm of sleep, does not approve of a bunch of modestly personable DJs doing their annoying and useless job while I add value to the region by trading my labour power for a ridiculous and mildly depressing pittance. Cognizant of the fact they earn more than me (and get to laugh out loud all the time, come up with groovy insider jokes, great phone interactions, crazy stunts, far-out contests, and yawn level jokes), I do feel a mild bit of resentment as well as annoyance. Change the station? Why risk it? You'd be surprised at the intensity with which some folk despise public radio, the music of the great canon of composers, and silence (my personal top choice for morning vibes). So what is left to me?
Answer: The annoying squawking of overpaid manchildren, combined with a hellish interplay of blaring advertisements and generally non-morning music. I don't do a line of coke or a bunch of trucker pills when I wake up, so their braying hijinks and high-energy excitedness is completely jarring to me. It is even mildly painful to the very core of my soul. I don't get pumped up by their dreary and doctrinaire choice of songs either. I don't enjoy these audio clowns, and even if they were funny, had material worth listening to, I would be hard-pressed to listen to them. Plainly put, I've only ever heard one or two radio morning shows I didn't hate, and even those were most often kind of boring.
Most stations advertise their appreciable web presence. So I wondered, who in the hell would go to the website of a radio station and check up on the blogs, latest news, and pictures from the morning DJs? I can only come up with a few major sources of traffic: intensely lonely, credible, or bored people, and the mentally ill. Otherwise incomprehensible. Plainly put, it always astounds me how much effort is put into the background of the world, where we while away our mortal hours generally enduring things we don't like. I mean, hell, I write a pretty non-important blog generally about non-topics... I add white noise to the internet. There's at least some difference between me and the morning DJ with laughter in his voice and more energy than anyone needs at that hour.
Generally I turn the radio down to reasonable limits and grit my teeth and do my work quickly so I can move elsewhere and do something else somewhere there is nobody pretending that the morning is a great or funny time (unless you stayed up all night, or are waking up to do something other than be underemployed in a mostly stagnant economy). Even the mildly funny shit, which is scarce, is run into the ground faster and deeper than a solid gold locomotive dropped from orbit. I don't know how people can stand it... you can get used to it, sure, but it is specifically just an unpleasant feature of life to me.
I've been listening to radio for years, when I was really uncritical none of this mattered to me as long as a good song came on, like the one by Aaliyah or that other one by L.E.N., or that later RHCP song about taxis or something. The era-defining hits of yesteryear were also generally overplayed and eventually annoying, and I ought to remember that, but they stuck with me, and some of your old favorites and mine are still being overplayed. I used to spend a lot of time in the company of radio, but have lived without it for many years now in the future, so coming from silence or chosen tracks to the hilarious cacophony of jokes and marketing and grut rock just adds a small element of objection to my day. Gotta blog about those awkward things, unavoidable things, and heartwarming things.
Now, if you're a morning show DJ and you're reading this and you are saying to yourself things like, "This fussy little internet geekblogger doesn't understand my dedication and verve, or the pain which I know as a morning show host, or that my slightly exaggerated manner is meant to help others deal with the pain of morning workaday life. A venerable and hallowed tradition. The skill of talking too much for minutes at a time was one I inherited from my father, who was himself a morning show DJ." Nah, man, this isn't personal and I'm not a geek... I acknowledge it's my problem I find you annoying. That you dessicate my environment with your wireless sonic depredations is just my perception of it, and I am the wrong kind of judge in this instance. In the end, I keep listening out of apathy, a perverse and ironic joy of laughing at your base shitness, and obviously for a chance to hear myself on the airwaves and win that hundred dollar wacky trivia question. Play those canned sounds again – you know the ones – and teach me how to lose my self-awareness... does your laughter taste like ashes to you?
3/4/14
Canadian Politics Update: Justin Trudeau wants to Sell Marijuana to Your Children
If I were more of a bettor and actually had money to risk, the current political atmosphere of Canada would be the most entertaining and fruitful place for small bets on unexpected outcomes. For about a year now things have been less depressing than usual and... well that's not strictly true but there's an awful lot of shit going on. From the Rob Ford crack scandal and his chances of winning the mayoralty again, to the number of days until 'Justin Trudeau' robocalls go out to Canada's Children with probably the best deals on weed outside of B.C.
Then there's the odds of Canada getting politically motivated enough to do something more courageous and insightful than perpetuating a natural-resources based economy which has been the de-facto source of jobs and state monies since the fur trade, since even the fishing of cod by vikings in ~700 A.D. Of course, after more than a thousand years of viking-related overfishing, those cod stocks look worse than Thomas Mulcair's chances of becoming Prime Minister. In springtime, when winter psychosis has set in firmly with most of the population, Canada gets a bit squirrely and a bit speculative, small parts of it go on to smash all comers at Olympic Hockey, and still more Canadians in the Winter Olympics put on great, and often heartwarming, showings.
Economically, the Branch Plant Bet (also referred to in some circles as NAFTA) has managed to keep Canada in the black without solving the problem of the Rust Belt, or the overreliance on natural resources, or the productivity and skills gap. Unemployment is such a problem that many larger corporations have had to bring in foreign workers in order to have anyone to heartlessly terminate. The Canadian banking sector is 'the envy of the world' (their words – not mine), and experts estimate a Citigroup-level superbank to form in Canada in the next twenty years, which ought to make quite the splash in international banking. Why are Canadian banks international superstars? Easily, by being diligent businesses and selling only the finest and least dangerous financial services to their customers. That and sitting on large piles of money... I mean seriously, how was anyone surprised that Canadian banks did OK in the recession? They get money from the public for free, with less grumbling than the tax man faces, and they charge service fees sometimes. It's basically a foolproof industry anywhere it's not run by pure-strain greed (and even then the profits flow, as they must).
Then there's the odds of Canada getting politically motivated enough to do something more courageous and insightful than perpetuating a natural-resources based economy which has been the de-facto source of jobs and state monies since the fur trade, since even the fishing of cod by vikings in ~700 A.D. Of course, after more than a thousand years of viking-related overfishing, those cod stocks look worse than Thomas Mulcair's chances of becoming Prime Minister. In springtime, when winter psychosis has set in firmly with most of the population, Canada gets a bit squirrely and a bit speculative, small parts of it go on to smash all comers at Olympic Hockey, and still more Canadians in the Winter Olympics put on great, and often heartwarming, showings.
Economically, the Branch Plant Bet (also referred to in some circles as NAFTA) has managed to keep Canada in the black without solving the problem of the Rust Belt, or the overreliance on natural resources, or the productivity and skills gap. Unemployment is such a problem that many larger corporations have had to bring in foreign workers in order to have anyone to heartlessly terminate. The Canadian banking sector is 'the envy of the world' (their words – not mine), and experts estimate a Citigroup-level superbank to form in Canada in the next twenty years, which ought to make quite the splash in international banking. Why are Canadian banks international superstars? Easily, by being diligent businesses and selling only the finest and least dangerous financial services to their customers. That and sitting on large piles of money... I mean seriously, how was anyone surprised that Canadian banks did OK in the recession? They get money from the public for free, with less grumbling than the tax man faces, and they charge service fees sometimes. It's basically a foolproof industry anywhere it's not run by pure-strain greed (and even then the profits flow, as they must).
2/25/14
The Rhetoric of the Damned: Will Most of Us Die as Losers?
To be quite honest the Ancien Regime never really died, and its mutant legacy is currently busy snorting coke and fucking up the social, political, ecological, and economic systems of the world. The guillotines might have had a few busy years in the 1790s, but the next hundred years showed little improvement for the average European, Asian, African, or American (until slavery was abolished and new systems of degradation, fear-mongering, and suffering needed to be invented). Let's not even get into sub-geographical realities, reference imperialism, or do anything in fact. From this slightly more aware and gentler age, the past should look like utter barbarism and chaos, a time when suffering was life for the now much-ballyhoed "99%" without much amelioration of any sort. If anything, they were encouraged to be proud of their ability to endure by people much softer and wealthier than them. Back in the glory days, children were still widely exploited as little slaves and their parents were stuck in wage traps or servitude-by-any-other-name that make modern wage slavery in a midwestern McDonald's look like a paid vacation.
What is funny is that people look to the past as this time of glory, and some purveyors of history have repeatedly tried to whitewash the immense and crushing misery that the average human had to endure for thousands of years, and injustices and genocides and slaughters that went into it. To this day, there are people who would insist that World War 1 was just and necessary and not at all a mindless waste of millions of lives and tonnes of material, that taught the world no lessons at all. Every year we fail to learn from the past, and the few voices exhorting us to give a shit are ignored because modern culture is not about reflection or realistic undistorted perceptions, and especially not about revolution. Modern society is primarily about selling two things: distraction and delusion, which unite in blessed complacency and indifference. There are no alternatives, and Marcuse was right (not in any base or political 'Marxist' sense but logically) to say that postmodern society was one dimensional. Today we would be lucky to have one dimension instead of our kaleidoscopic non-dimension. Let's not even talk about the history we have of psychotic and irrational wastage of natural resources, or the insane and ruthless extermination of multiple species throughout history – which makes the current semi-apologetic/apathetic model of habitat destruction and ecological rape look almost benign.
What is funny is that people look to the past as this time of glory, and some purveyors of history have repeatedly tried to whitewash the immense and crushing misery that the average human had to endure for thousands of years, and injustices and genocides and slaughters that went into it. To this day, there are people who would insist that World War 1 was just and necessary and not at all a mindless waste of millions of lives and tonnes of material, that taught the world no lessons at all. Every year we fail to learn from the past, and the few voices exhorting us to give a shit are ignored because modern culture is not about reflection or realistic undistorted perceptions, and especially not about revolution. Modern society is primarily about selling two things: distraction and delusion, which unite in blessed complacency and indifference. There are no alternatives, and Marcuse was right (not in any base or political 'Marxist' sense but logically) to say that postmodern society was one dimensional. Today we would be lucky to have one dimension instead of our kaleidoscopic non-dimension. Let's not even talk about the history we have of psychotic and irrational wastage of natural resources, or the insane and ruthless extermination of multiple species throughout history – which makes the current semi-apologetic/apathetic model of habitat destruction and ecological rape look almost benign.
2/11/14
Februrary 2014: I Will Not Miss You
Jay Leno left the Tonight Show earlier this week. Could've been yesterday but I have been inundated with reports about Sochi 2014 - most of them concerning a little thing called the Winter Olympic Games. Already, the biggest opponents have attempted to hijack a plane in order to put some heat on the organizers... the odds of some kind of crazy shit happening in the open (let alone the stories we won't hear till March or later) are high enough to keep everyone placing money on the most outrageous tragedies, disruptions, and events. The Vancouver 2010 luge death might end up looking like a mild sprain, when all is said and done in Sochi.
An entire unit of the Russian Army is patrolling the Georgia/Russia border, and the stuff those guys are getting up to is no doubt quite interesting and compelling, but their opponents have sworn to engage in the sort of chaos-terrorism that military action has not yet been able to completely prevent. I am not reporting this to be gleeful or glib, but dozens of years of military retribution have only managed to stoke the flames of resentment. Even the Cossacks have been called in. While the hijacker/bomb-threat guy is getting beaten up by security personnel and interrogated to within an inch of his life, and incarcerated in a post-gulag gulag, the games must go on. Bookies are refusing to take bets on terrorist activity, citing a worldwide surveillance apparatus and generally bad odds of anything major going wrong (the latter excuse seems questionable to me).
Surely they will, but there is more trouble than just the threat of violence and bomb blasts. There is also bad press, blistering social media output, and international confrontation. A major ideological schism has haunted the Sochi Olympics since last year, and that is the spectre of Russian homophobia, which is not quite so much a regional thing in Sochi. For a while, in late 2013, it seemed as if a few countries might boycott the games, but abandoning the athletes on human rights principles was ultimately considered unthinkable. I am not an expert and I have not been following the issue closely, but I don't think a single country ended up boycotting the games for the beaten and dead gays of Russia.
An entire unit of the Russian Army is patrolling the Georgia/Russia border, and the stuff those guys are getting up to is no doubt quite interesting and compelling, but their opponents have sworn to engage in the sort of chaos-terrorism that military action has not yet been able to completely prevent. I am not reporting this to be gleeful or glib, but dozens of years of military retribution have only managed to stoke the flames of resentment. Even the Cossacks have been called in. While the hijacker/bomb-threat guy is getting beaten up by security personnel and interrogated to within an inch of his life, and incarcerated in a post-gulag gulag, the games must go on. Bookies are refusing to take bets on terrorist activity, citing a worldwide surveillance apparatus and generally bad odds of anything major going wrong (the latter excuse seems questionable to me).
Surely they will, but there is more trouble than just the threat of violence and bomb blasts. There is also bad press, blistering social media output, and international confrontation. A major ideological schism has haunted the Sochi Olympics since last year, and that is the spectre of Russian homophobia, which is not quite so much a regional thing in Sochi. For a while, in late 2013, it seemed as if a few countries might boycott the games, but abandoning the athletes on human rights principles was ultimately considered unthinkable. I am not an expert and I have not been following the issue closely, but I don't think a single country ended up boycotting the games for the beaten and dead gays of Russia.
2/5/14
Solve Ten Highly Important Problems by Tweeting!
You know, I always appreciate the effort when a corporation tries to solve a problem by involving its customers or other individuals. It's not like that company is already making pretty good money off of their customers, and it's not like executives could easily put $20,000+ each to a good-deeds project (not with most of their $140,000+ salaries in mortgages, leases, and other sundry investments). Shit: why not appeal to the conscience of the guy making barely $30,000/year and take the charitable donations out of him, and others like him? I mean, there's more of him than there are executives, right? It's economies of scale, not entitlement or greed, and nothing more... I've already talked about the pure wretchedness of asking people for charity money in a check-out line, but I'd like to rephrase some of my ideas about modern charity in general:
1. No Money? No Deal.
If I wanted to give money to a charity I would walk around a city until a charity salesperson cornered me and asked me if I had 'a couple minutes' to stand around and learn why what they do is important and worthy of my money. I'd listen, they'd pitch me a donation/month level, then they'd get angry while I tried to extricate myself from paying them money, trying to offer my time or effort (which nobody accepts because, evidently, I'm a useless piece of shit best employed as a wallet for special interests) in lieu of the money I need to live the barest simulacrum of an adult life. They wouldn't even treasure the fact that I stopped to give a sympathetic ear to their cause. To crown the experience, if I stayed strong and refused to pledge $5-50 a month (because I'm underemployed and all) they would get angry at me, the guy who promised only to hear them out patiently, uncomfortable on a downtown street. All because I don't want to pledge $25 a month when I don't really have $300 a year to pay to the Duck Saviors or the Eco-watch or the Gay Angel division of Premature Heroes dot com.
That's all completely painful bullshit. Seeing a young idealist go from thinking I'm an easy mark and a way to fill the day's quota to thinking I'm just a heartless waste of time hurts me, especially when they're so earnest and clearly involved, and I really don't have the money to spare, but the whole gambit is up. I don't want to sign up to pay a certain amount of money a month and be locked into that, when I could be back to being unemployed in a month's time. Compare their attitude when I'm walking away to their positive sales pitch and smile at the start. Yikes, all about a charity. That to me is one of the ugliest scenes imaginable, it's hard for me to say no to people my age who have to stand in the street and sling these good causes, but years of grinding near-poverty have made my heart very hard about charity. I only toss a bum a dime (or a dollar) on a few special occasions a year. I give monthly to the Red Cross already, because one time I just couldn't shake the charity salesperson, no matter how evasively I talked of good deeds and dollar-to-aid ratios. More than that I will not give until society gives me five figures wrapped up in a cushy salaried position.
1. No Money? No Deal.
If I wanted to give money to a charity I would walk around a city until a charity salesperson cornered me and asked me if I had 'a couple minutes' to stand around and learn why what they do is important and worthy of my money. I'd listen, they'd pitch me a donation/month level, then they'd get angry while I tried to extricate myself from paying them money, trying to offer my time or effort (which nobody accepts because, evidently, I'm a useless piece of shit best employed as a wallet for special interests) in lieu of the money I need to live the barest simulacrum of an adult life. They wouldn't even treasure the fact that I stopped to give a sympathetic ear to their cause. To crown the experience, if I stayed strong and refused to pledge $5-50 a month (because I'm underemployed and all) they would get angry at me, the guy who promised only to hear them out patiently, uncomfortable on a downtown street. All because I don't want to pledge $25 a month when I don't really have $300 a year to pay to the Duck Saviors or the Eco-watch or the Gay Angel division of Premature Heroes dot com.
That's all completely painful bullshit. Seeing a young idealist go from thinking I'm an easy mark and a way to fill the day's quota to thinking I'm just a heartless waste of time hurts me, especially when they're so earnest and clearly involved, and I really don't have the money to spare, but the whole gambit is up. I don't want to sign up to pay a certain amount of money a month and be locked into that, when I could be back to being unemployed in a month's time. Compare their attitude when I'm walking away to their positive sales pitch and smile at the start. Yikes, all about a charity. That to me is one of the ugliest scenes imaginable, it's hard for me to say no to people my age who have to stand in the street and sling these good causes, but years of grinding near-poverty have made my heart very hard about charity. I only toss a bum a dime (or a dollar) on a few special occasions a year. I give monthly to the Red Cross already, because one time I just couldn't shake the charity salesperson, no matter how evasively I talked of good deeds and dollar-to-aid ratios. More than that I will not give until society gives me five figures wrapped up in a cushy salaried position.
1/27/14
Explain Yourself, or Don't, Nobody Cares
Expostulatory blogging is kind of a dead thing. The overreaching narrative of the times is outrage and discord, with a healthy mix of disinterest and distraction thrown in. For good measure, sometimes there is added a aggrandized sense of injury or unopposed wrongs. In this environment blogging to do anything but maybe get a good line in is a waste of time – engaging the stories and constructively analyzing them is best left to 'the adults': paid journalists, high profile bloggers, and the generally execrable morons with weekly columns.
For anyone wanting to blog for anything but niche topics or absurdly obtuse generality (or 'comedy' options such as the way stale top 10/12/15/25 lists, or 'jokes') the field is intensely competitive. Aggregators have created a system in which maybe 10% of all internet users bother to go beyond the internet's collective front pages. Even linking seems quaint and mildly outdated. The only real blogging left is niche blogging about the outrages and abuses of modern society, or being political, or getting paid to blog to sell something.
It helps explain the rise of people who have absolutely zero self-awareness: people who never think past the snappy one-liners and one-dimensional politics of the internet. These kinds of people, even when well-intentioned, only serve to hurt their own causes. 'Misogyny' becomes a sort of mantra that progressive dudes bray mindlessly whenever simple OR complex issues regarding women emerge from the amoral fracas of the modern media environment. People on the fence see nothing but a faceless horde of shmucks wanting to prove their progressivism and decide, Hell, why not start trolling these point-seekers en masse? You can't blame them. Aggrieving the crowd is as righteous a battle for some as fighting for the oppressed is for others.
For anyone wanting to blog for anything but niche topics or absurdly obtuse generality (or 'comedy' options such as the way stale top 10/12/15/25 lists, or 'jokes') the field is intensely competitive. Aggregators have created a system in which maybe 10% of all internet users bother to go beyond the internet's collective front pages. Even linking seems quaint and mildly outdated. The only real blogging left is niche blogging about the outrages and abuses of modern society, or being political, or getting paid to blog to sell something.
It helps explain the rise of people who have absolutely zero self-awareness: people who never think past the snappy one-liners and one-dimensional politics of the internet. These kinds of people, even when well-intentioned, only serve to hurt their own causes. 'Misogyny' becomes a sort of mantra that progressive dudes bray mindlessly whenever simple OR complex issues regarding women emerge from the amoral fracas of the modern media environment. People on the fence see nothing but a faceless horde of shmucks wanting to prove their progressivism and decide, Hell, why not start trolling these point-seekers en masse? You can't blame them. Aggrieving the crowd is as righteous a battle for some as fighting for the oppressed is for others.
1/10/14
North America's Ice Clusterfuckmas: A Retrospective, A Remembrance, a Reverie; pt. 1
Transformers were blowing up, lighting the dark with that eerie blue glow, as if very slow and quiet lightning was striking. Giant and even perfect storms were inbound. Even staunch winter people were feeling dread in the pits of their stomachs. Ice was everywhere, and Christmas was around the corner.
When all was said and done tens of thousands in Ontario were without power for Christmas and nobody was talking much about Rob Ford, who was insisting it was not a state of emergency kind of thing. Really, on that point, I would agree with him. In Canada snowfall, and even ice leading to power outages, is generally considered as not exactly a cause for paralysis and gnashing of teeth. It's considered a good occasion to grouse good-naturedly and take one's time getting to work or anywhere else, if going is even worth it. When the power goes out it's considered good green-energy policy, or used to, before the country filled up with the kind of people who simply refuse to wear coats to bed. Those kinds of people can move to New York, as the saying goes.
Lots of countries would be strangled with hundreds of deaths and immense chaos, but in Canada – even on Christmas and with ridiculous weather – it is merely good hours for road crews, bad news for travelers, obviously a few deaths and varying degrees of discomfort. For some it is probably even an excuse to politely skip an uncomfortable gathering. Generally it can be agreed upon that a non-electric Christmas is a worst case scenario for the ~70,000 people who had to deal with it. The rest of Southern Ontario got the first 'white Christmas' in years, and the coldest, and the most beautiful.
Some news outlets even reported that some people were enjoying the blackout as a challenge of their ability to rough it. Others asphyxiated trying to heat their homes with charcoal fires, or were overcome by fumes they brought upon themselves by running generators indoors without ventilation. It was quite a thing to hear about and quite sad. The 'bad weather' then continued into January, disrupting entire days worth of flights and disorganizing other travel situations as well. There was all kinds of talk about frustration as people waited days to get into a plane. Others went skiing and gave up on a trip to the Bahamas.
All of which sidesteps the (presumably) immense social media bitchfest, which a dedicated blogger may dig up, but I will summarize it quickly as a bunch of flimsy complaining ninnies. Not worth my time or yours, dear reader. It was the first real winter some people faced, absolutely, but who cares about how you're cold and stop complaining, please. Winter is Canada, and Canada ought to be shaming its federal government to the highest degree allowable by law because a couple of United States legalized marijuana first, after lengthy and fractious efforts to bring Canadian laws into the more logical 21st century. What is a winter storm compared to a government so adamant in its refusal that it threw a 150 year old document (among other things) into the trash just to spite environmentalists?
Meanwhile 2014 is likely going to be full of extremely big stories. 80's revivalism is going to fail. The Nerd Bubble may pop, leaving millions without a retirement strategy for their collectibles, consumer electronics, and childish knick-knacks. China is going to be a big name again, so get ready for that. That's not all, of course: geopolitical skulduggery is likely to create new extremists in, according to my calculations, a first world country. I always knew the Dutch were just pretending to be tolerant and objective, but I fear nobody else will see this coming and they will do a lot of damage before the truth comes out. That's just the tip of the proverbial 2014 iceberg.
One thing's for sure: the news will continue to make a huge deal out of small potatoes for as long as it's profitable or can cover up their intellectual, journalistic, and conceptual bankruptcy. I am currently debating doing a Predictions 2014 list, but it may have to wait, until I'm done trashing news media. I bet you Gawker, Huffington Post, TMZ, et al will say some shit and probably have employees make regrettable mistakes this year... so will traditional news media, and that's really all they do when they're not taking political money and supporting various agendas, filling the minds of otherwise undamaged people with the unhinged ideation of partisan politics (in which anyone is supposed to have a clue). That is: when it's not, you know, complaining about weather.
When all was said and done tens of thousands in Ontario were without power for Christmas and nobody was talking much about Rob Ford, who was insisting it was not a state of emergency kind of thing. Really, on that point, I would agree with him. In Canada snowfall, and even ice leading to power outages, is generally considered as not exactly a cause for paralysis and gnashing of teeth. It's considered a good occasion to grouse good-naturedly and take one's time getting to work or anywhere else, if going is even worth it. When the power goes out it's considered good green-energy policy, or used to, before the country filled up with the kind of people who simply refuse to wear coats to bed. Those kinds of people can move to New York, as the saying goes.
Lots of countries would be strangled with hundreds of deaths and immense chaos, but in Canada – even on Christmas and with ridiculous weather – it is merely good hours for road crews, bad news for travelers, obviously a few deaths and varying degrees of discomfort. For some it is probably even an excuse to politely skip an uncomfortable gathering. Generally it can be agreed upon that a non-electric Christmas is a worst case scenario for the ~70,000 people who had to deal with it. The rest of Southern Ontario got the first 'white Christmas' in years, and the coldest, and the most beautiful.
Some news outlets even reported that some people were enjoying the blackout as a challenge of their ability to rough it. Others asphyxiated trying to heat their homes with charcoal fires, or were overcome by fumes they brought upon themselves by running generators indoors without ventilation. It was quite a thing to hear about and quite sad. The 'bad weather' then continued into January, disrupting entire days worth of flights and disorganizing other travel situations as well. There was all kinds of talk about frustration as people waited days to get into a plane. Others went skiing and gave up on a trip to the Bahamas.
All of which sidesteps the (presumably) immense social media bitchfest, which a dedicated blogger may dig up, but I will summarize it quickly as a bunch of flimsy complaining ninnies. Not worth my time or yours, dear reader. It was the first real winter some people faced, absolutely, but who cares about how you're cold and stop complaining, please. Winter is Canada, and Canada ought to be shaming its federal government to the highest degree allowable by law because a couple of United States legalized marijuana first, after lengthy and fractious efforts to bring Canadian laws into the more logical 21st century. What is a winter storm compared to a government so adamant in its refusal that it threw a 150 year old document (among other things) into the trash just to spite environmentalists?
Meanwhile 2014 is likely going to be full of extremely big stories. 80's revivalism is going to fail. The Nerd Bubble may pop, leaving millions without a retirement strategy for their collectibles, consumer electronics, and childish knick-knacks. China is going to be a big name again, so get ready for that. That's not all, of course: geopolitical skulduggery is likely to create new extremists in, according to my calculations, a first world country. I always knew the Dutch were just pretending to be tolerant and objective, but I fear nobody else will see this coming and they will do a lot of damage before the truth comes out. That's just the tip of the proverbial 2014 iceberg.
One thing's for sure: the news will continue to make a huge deal out of small potatoes for as long as it's profitable or can cover up their intellectual, journalistic, and conceptual bankruptcy. I am currently debating doing a Predictions 2014 list, but it may have to wait, until I'm done trashing news media. I bet you Gawker, Huffington Post, TMZ, et al will say some shit and probably have employees make regrettable mistakes this year... so will traditional news media, and that's really all they do when they're not taking political money and supporting various agendas, filling the minds of otherwise undamaged people with the unhinged ideation of partisan politics (in which anyone is supposed to have a clue). That is: when it's not, you know, complaining about weather.
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