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...

Another Cool Thing from 2010

Most of the time I look at all the gadgetry for sale around the world and I remain unimpressed. Wireless, touch screen, 4G, Macintosh – none of these keywords really hook me. YouTube is filled with videos of possibly real people telling me how cool Kinect is or why I should get a better phone or how excited I should be about the endless possibilities of the not-so-modern obsession with gadgets. People actually make videos of themselves unpacking the completely superfluous things they buy, the neuroticism of which I'll get into in a later blog post.

I'm sure an iPhone is useful, but nationalism decrees that I should buy a Blackberry. I myself think, of course, that a Samsung cellphone with no special features is good enough for me. It even flips open, the battery life is a dream, and it can take a picture if I make it. However, I have a camera to take pictures, and a computer to waste my time on, so I don't need to focus on how many games are available for my cellphone, how sensitive the onboard camera is, or how fast it connects to the internet.

The only cool thing I've been informed about is the critically underhyped Logitech K750, the world's first (so far as I know) solar-powered wireless keyboard. Let me make an ignorant statement: wireless peripherals do not impress me. Wires are a small price to pay for not having to buy batteries or deal with delayed input. Most of the time the hassles of wires are just replaced by other, high-frequency hassles that I do not even like to think about. Wires were good enough for me...


...until I heard about a solar powered keyboard. The thing looks like a dream, and is the only gadget I've been excited about or thought about buying. It seems like Logitech, who have always been making quality peripherals, are actually interested in limiting the amount of hassles their products create. I haven't bought a single new peripheral in years. My current keyboard is indestructible: I've spilled wine, beer, and other things on it and it works like new. It's just loud, kind of clunky, and has a wire and doesn't work off solar power.

Reality check: my optical mouse is from some no-name brand and has put more costly mice to shame in online games frequented by professionals. It is also indestructible. I have tried to crush it when the world of computers has frustrated me, and it has survived falls, tumbles, tosses, flips, and jumps as if it is a skateboarder. Because my peripherals haven't failed me, I haven't ever had to look for new ones, but that K750 seems so cool, so useful, that it should almost be standard for new gadgets to have such features.

I can face the facts: keyboards are not interesting. That is true, but they are necessary and it helps if they can be moved around a lot. For a writer, a good keyboard is indispensable - and while all keyboards are dependable because of their simplicity, never before has anyone made a wireless keyboard that could be indefinitely useful and actually make more sense than a comparable wired unit. I guess if you hate the sun, nature, and Logitech, the new 'eco-friendly' keyboard won't matter to you, but I intend on getting one as soon as they're available in my ass-backwards country.