I find the springtime bug has bit. I am cleaning and rearranging, reorganizing the nest. I've applied for work, hopeful that I might gain employment. Some might say I've suffered another birthday, but it actually wasn't all that bad, a pretty decent day itself.
Knowing my ancestry I could've done an entire blog devoted to my personal wellbeing and details of my health (or lack thereof.) But since I've outgrown the urge toward such milquetoast subject matter, I'll instead opine on what's transgressed recentlike.
I've dusted off the craigslist bargain I found last summer, the M-Audio Keystudio USB keyboard. I plug it into the usb hub and fire up garageband and it plays. But my hard drive needs replacing with a larger one. I can't keep any decent amount of music AND the overbearingly large libraries GB wants on my widdle stock HDD.
It's a constant game of pick-n-choose what I want to remain on that little shoehorn of a hard drive, and it's by-design that apple screwed me out of the proper amount of space to run their bloatware. So whenever the loot allows, I'll snatch up nothing less than a 250gb 2.5in sata laptop drive, perhaps up to 500gb, and drop it in there with my own two hands (and toolbox, of course.)
Till the loot allows such an admittedly minimal purchase, I've taken to training myself to mimic the earworm melody of the ending of Super Mario Bros. 2. The first video game in that series I actually beat by myself.
Among the dozens of useful sources of help at youtube, I found this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58NBfxeSFEM and began training my typist's fingers to learn to step over each other on a different kind of keyboard.
More on these developments as time permits. If I might be permitted a slight Stephen-King-ism, even if it is a throwback to writers of a previous century...I think often of thee, dear reader. I will not be away for long...
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
i think too much
So if the quake and such in Japan affected the whole Earth, its tilt and thus its path through the solar system, has anyone re-ran the calculations for our interstellar near-misses and other trajectories?
I've said to several people now that I imagine there are interns deep inside some institution somewhere running these numbers. None of them report to me, of course. I wonder about it and then guess that I think too much, and try to put it out of my head.
I have a topical juggernaut as-yet-unwritten but warming up in the mental/intellectual bullpen, wreaking bloggish and opinional about how Rachel Maddow is quantitatively different than the television commentators she gets compared to regularly.
Guess you could say that I've been politely witness to right-wing friends of family and distant relations waxing goofily partisan about how Ms. Maddow is no different than their favorites, the Sean Hannitys and Michelle Bachmanns - bottom dwellers in the shallow end of the gene pool.
I keep feeling a strange flavor of silent horror when seeing the huge zombie fandom surrounding Sarah Palin. Intellectual lightweights making their logic-free views a choice that they think everyone, everywhere should have a right to hear about everyday.
Bearing any shred of critical thinking skills in such anti-intellectual times gives anyone with half a mind, aware of how little they know in the scheme of everything that their brief time at college had to offer, shivers of a somehow hopeless, mentally disturbing kind.
Oh mankind, humanity, everything sacred in the great landscape of truth and light, I bear the science-fiction gene that lets me imagine better tomorrows. But there are times when you all do not make it very easy.
I've said to several people now that I imagine there are interns deep inside some institution somewhere running these numbers. None of them report to me, of course. I wonder about it and then guess that I think too much, and try to put it out of my head.
I have a topical juggernaut as-yet-unwritten but warming up in the mental/intellectual bullpen, wreaking bloggish and opinional about how Rachel Maddow is quantitatively different than the television commentators she gets compared to regularly.
Guess you could say that I've been politely witness to right-wing friends of family and distant relations waxing goofily partisan about how Ms. Maddow is no different than their favorites, the Sean Hannitys and Michelle Bachmanns - bottom dwellers in the shallow end of the gene pool.
I keep feeling a strange flavor of silent horror when seeing the huge zombie fandom surrounding Sarah Palin. Intellectual lightweights making their logic-free views a choice that they think everyone, everywhere should have a right to hear about everyday.
Bearing any shred of critical thinking skills in such anti-intellectual times gives anyone with half a mind, aware of how little they know in the scheme of everything that their brief time at college had to offer, shivers of a somehow hopeless, mentally disturbing kind.
Oh mankind, humanity, everything sacred in the great landscape of truth and light, I bear the science-fiction gene that lets me imagine better tomorrows. But there are times when you all do not make it very easy.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
untweetable
Anti-women’s rights & anti-abortion groups want to be called “pro-life”?? Disgusting. Wish to make Christianity irrelevant? This is exactly how.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
untweetable
unposted tweet #fmjk039
the phrase "make no mistake" is a idiotic collective social tic same as "frickin'" once was. will you all please stop using it now? #kthxbye
the phrase "make no mistake" is a idiotic collective social tic same as "frickin'" once was. will you all please stop using it now? #kthxbye
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
dumpster-diving through life
I don't really get much out of doing anything the average way. When I can afford to purchase something at the retail price, I often will attempt to find the "deal" regardless of the time of year. I have friends who inherited the bargain hunter gene, but will only indulge their gift the same days every year when everyone else is taken over by the deal-zombie within us all.
But when I was working regularly enough to get paid enough to have a couple twenties left from the last payday when the next one finally made it around...those times I might splurge, as grandma would say, and buy myself something "new." The few times I've done that, I usually end up feeling hustled. By corporate America, or capitalist Japan, Taiwan or China, regardless I regret buying something manufactured to be replaced within three years. I don't use my devices endlessly, leave them on everyday for dozens of hours, and let my toddlers feed them PB&J sammitches. So my stuff lasts longer than the warranty.
Game consoles are sold below cost, so the first and often yet the third iterations of their hardware are flawed and easily broken, overheat or malfunction at a high rate. Fony had the issues with their initial ps2s. The xbox360's first model became notorious for overheating and getting the "red ring of death" when a design flaw unseated the processor chip from the board at high temps.
Your toiling author here fetched himself a repairable unit for a fraction of the retail price of a new one, paid a competent local to repair said unit, and have a grand total of ONE title to play on the deck. It might have been tweeted that the 360 sounds like somebody left a hairdryer on. Hyperbole or not, it's louder than the ps2 with a hard drive in it. And that's without a hard drive in the 360.
All totaled the expenditure for the experience of playing Portal on something far less laggy than the Intel GMA 950 excuse for a video card, with a wee trade-in at the game store, a shave over $100 with a wired controller and more if I figure in the $11 I spent over 2 years ago on my 1GB memory stick, the only one of several I own that fits in the deep-seated 3rd usb port on the back of the 360 near the ethernet port.
It's noteworthy that the deck in question here for solo offline gaming whenever the whim takes me, has a broken 2nd USB port in the front, no doubt caused by someone knocking the thing over or yanking out a controller cord. I tried to press the usb stick in that port next to my controller and found there's only two prongs left of the port and the middle wafer of the usual female plug is entirely snapped off, absent. Ah the wonders of craigslist dumpster-diving and thrifty methods.
Then after being monumentally unimpressed with the corporate prices imposed and fixed, no doubt, for the wireless controller from macrohard for their console, a deal was nonetheless found for half the retail price and no shipping costs, so grudgingly we lemming'd up to fetch one. The prices they seem to think they're entitled to charge for the games are pretty absurdly high. No game is ever worth more than $20, kids. Anything more and you're just paying premium prices to beta-test it for them.
Onward to teach myself how to make this new piece of property sit, stay, roll over and beg, maybe even do some pretty neat tricks I've read about.
But when I was working regularly enough to get paid enough to have a couple twenties left from the last payday when the next one finally made it around...those times I might splurge, as grandma would say, and buy myself something "new." The few times I've done that, I usually end up feeling hustled. By corporate America, or capitalist Japan, Taiwan or China, regardless I regret buying something manufactured to be replaced within three years. I don't use my devices endlessly, leave them on everyday for dozens of hours, and let my toddlers feed them PB&J sammitches. So my stuff lasts longer than the warranty.
Game consoles are sold below cost, so the first and often yet the third iterations of their hardware are flawed and easily broken, overheat or malfunction at a high rate. Fony had the issues with their initial ps2s. The xbox360's first model became notorious for overheating and getting the "red ring of death" when a design flaw unseated the processor chip from the board at high temps.
Your toiling author here fetched himself a repairable unit for a fraction of the retail price of a new one, paid a competent local to repair said unit, and have a grand total of ONE title to play on the deck. It might have been tweeted that the 360 sounds like somebody left a hairdryer on. Hyperbole or not, it's louder than the ps2 with a hard drive in it. And that's without a hard drive in the 360.
All totaled the expenditure for the experience of playing Portal on something far less laggy than the Intel GMA 950 excuse for a video card, with a wee trade-in at the game store, a shave over $100 with a wired controller and more if I figure in the $11 I spent over 2 years ago on my 1GB memory stick, the only one of several I own that fits in the deep-seated 3rd usb port on the back of the 360 near the ethernet port.
It's noteworthy that the deck in question here for solo offline gaming whenever the whim takes me, has a broken 2nd USB port in the front, no doubt caused by someone knocking the thing over or yanking out a controller cord. I tried to press the usb stick in that port next to my controller and found there's only two prongs left of the port and the middle wafer of the usual female plug is entirely snapped off, absent. Ah the wonders of craigslist dumpster-diving and thrifty methods.
Then after being monumentally unimpressed with the corporate prices imposed and fixed, no doubt, for the wireless controller from macrohard for their console, a deal was nonetheless found for half the retail price and no shipping costs, so grudgingly we lemming'd up to fetch one. The prices they seem to think they're entitled to charge for the games are pretty absurdly high. No game is ever worth more than $20, kids. Anything more and you're just paying premium prices to beta-test it for them.
Onward to teach myself how to make this new piece of property sit, stay, roll over and beg, maybe even do some pretty neat tricks I've read about.
Friday, December 3, 2010
this, that & the other / looking forward
Finished NaNoWriMo after several stretches of getting behind in word count, but sorta sprinting to catch up. Then did 5,000 words the last day as a kind of tip of the hat.
Doing 1,667 words at day for 30 days didn't seem too much of a challenge. I started amateur journalistic tendencies in Junior High, so putting words in a row has been automatic for years now.
Still, it's hard to imagine getting together several of my friends who may or may not be working part time or not at all, attempting to get one post per week from them, and slap 'em up on a communal wiki/forum/etc in the semi-public webspace.
I can run these scenarios in my fiction all I like, but try and bundle my connections into an opinion hub or a writing site, hell nobody gets along on frakking facespace, why would they bother slapping even a link a week up on a communal place?
I can't keep from imagining our own private subnet, bbs on the web-ternet, whatever. Several friends have done their own version of the same over the years. I remember them testing dial-up bbs setups over the landlines in the dorms, before Halo and Quake when it was Doom blowing minds.
Finally got wireless printing working in the house. Stupid little details kept me from getting it going before. Read up on it today in spite of a monster headache and finally got the pages to spit out from across the room. These days we take the feeling of triumph wherever it comes from.
Whether it's writing 5-7k words in a day, and few in-between the longer ones, 55k words in a month, or finally getting the danged thing to print the way it's supposed to.
Finished the first Jack Reacher novel, obtained the second. Reading the first posthumous Michael Crichton novel, and after the involved and convoluted plot of the former, a different kind of gritty realism amuses in the Crichton title Pirate Latitudes.
It's been amusing reading commentary about him being a right-wing tool for having written a novel ostensibly 'against' global warming. I read that one, too, and fail to have seen overwhelming evidence it was positioned any particular way on the issue.
Looking forward to Tron Legacy, confused by disney's refusal to reissue the original movie on dvd before the sequel comes out. That's just stupid, the special brand known as corporate dumbth. Nothing would've kept them from giving it a "Tron Legacy collectable slipcover" or something with updated graphics, the frakking n00bs.
Also in December comes the new double-album from "Ryan Adams and the Cardinals" who from what I understand/understood actually preferred to just be called "The Cardinals" and they call the new album "III/IV", which by virtue of the players on it alone should kick all kinds of ass.
Doing 1,667 words at day for 30 days didn't seem too much of a challenge. I started amateur journalistic tendencies in Junior High, so putting words in a row has been automatic for years now.
Still, it's hard to imagine getting together several of my friends who may or may not be working part time or not at all, attempting to get one post per week from them, and slap 'em up on a communal wiki/forum/etc in the semi-public webspace.
I can run these scenarios in my fiction all I like, but try and bundle my connections into an opinion hub or a writing site, hell nobody gets along on frakking facespace, why would they bother slapping even a link a week up on a communal place?
I can't keep from imagining our own private subnet, bbs on the web-ternet, whatever. Several friends have done their own version of the same over the years. I remember them testing dial-up bbs setups over the landlines in the dorms, before Halo and Quake when it was Doom blowing minds.
Finally got wireless printing working in the house. Stupid little details kept me from getting it going before. Read up on it today in spite of a monster headache and finally got the pages to spit out from across the room. These days we take the feeling of triumph wherever it comes from.
Whether it's writing 5-7k words in a day, and few in-between the longer ones, 55k words in a month, or finally getting the danged thing to print the way it's supposed to.
Finished the first Jack Reacher novel, obtained the second. Reading the first posthumous Michael Crichton novel, and after the involved and convoluted plot of the former, a different kind of gritty realism amuses in the Crichton title Pirate Latitudes.
It's been amusing reading commentary about him being a right-wing tool for having written a novel ostensibly 'against' global warming. I read that one, too, and fail to have seen overwhelming evidence it was positioned any particular way on the issue.
Looking forward to Tron Legacy, confused by disney's refusal to reissue the original movie on dvd before the sequel comes out. That's just stupid, the special brand known as corporate dumbth. Nothing would've kept them from giving it a "Tron Legacy collectable slipcover" or something with updated graphics, the frakking n00bs.
Also in December comes the new double-album from "Ryan Adams and the Cardinals" who from what I understand/understood actually preferred to just be called "The Cardinals" and they call the new album "III/IV", which by virtue of the players on it alone should kick all kinds of ass.
Monday, November 15, 2010
playing hooky from nanowrimo
Like most of life's lessons, the moments I'm dwelling on up in my brainbox today are best examined and learned from with plenty of perspective.
I remember writing my own ham-handed amateur's bridge piece between Weezer's Pinkerton album and Kevin Smith's film Chasing Amy, which hit my life right around the time a couple of close friends came out as gay or bi, and I found myself just a boring old straight person.
Not narrow enough to find dykes unattractive, but unmoved by the prospect of dick even when I didn't have to look far for a male who constantly threw softball come-ons my direction.
So here I am today reading one person's ultra personal dissection of Chasing Amy over here:
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2010/11/15/jay-silent-bob-live/
and then a history of Pinkerton over here:
http://www.altpress.com/features/entry/this_is_beginning_to_hurt_a_woefully_incomplete_oral_history_of_weezers_pin/
and it all leaves me wanting to dig out the last few copies of that poem I wrote back then and burn them in a pile in the backyard.
Then I'll go write something BETTER...
I remember writing my own ham-handed amateur's bridge piece between Weezer's Pinkerton album and Kevin Smith's film Chasing Amy, which hit my life right around the time a couple of close friends came out as gay or bi, and I found myself just a boring old straight person.
Not narrow enough to find dykes unattractive, but unmoved by the prospect of dick even when I didn't have to look far for a male who constantly threw softball come-ons my direction.
So here I am today reading one person's ultra personal dissection of Chasing Amy over here:
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2010/11/15/jay-silent-bob-live/
and then a history of Pinkerton over here:
http://www.altpress.com/features/entry/this_is_beginning_to_hurt_a_woefully_incomplete_oral_history_of_weezers_pin/
and it all leaves me wanting to dig out the last few copies of that poem I wrote back then and burn them in a pile in the backyard.
Then I'll go write something BETTER...
Monday, November 1, 2010
I like tea, you're ruining it...
I bit into a bright wonderful orange up in my headspace listening to 89.3 the Current, MPR’s populist station. Itself an I.O.U. for the promise of once-great Rev105 Revolution Radio station in Minneapolis, the Current played me a great song.
Conventional Wisdom, by Built to Spill
I love the soaring, swirling guitar on this track. Everything else I was doing when it came on just stopped happening, and I rode the groove like a rollercoaster. Afterward I sought out the who and what, knowing it sounded vaguely familiar but not who it was. I ended up later that afternoon buying it on itunes. The rest of that story isn’t as important. The song’s title is a catchphrase.
Privately, up in my brainbox, I pride myself on seeing ahead of the curve. Whenever possible, I try to see what’s coming, stay informed, sniff the dirt, get the gist, read voraciously, and earn myself a feel for who’s worth their weight and who should do a lot more thinking before they speak.
I watched the last presidential election with sharp memories of the hopeless haze left after the previous two. Then myself along with the rest of the masses felt a fresh splash of water on our faces when something else happened this time.
Setting aside for a moment the frothing furor of the tea party racists and how egregiously John McCain failed his first Presidential decision when he couldn’t find someone more awe inspiring than him, and chose a flake of a spokesmodel from Alaska as his running mate when Barack Obama chose Joe Biden. I utterly disdain Biden’s association with the deep pockets of the old money running the old media machinery, but I can see what Bill Clinton meant when he said a candidate’s first Presidential Decision is picking a running mate. And Biden is a home run, certainly compared to the failed bunt of Sarah, plain and dumb.
I believe that the conventional wisdom being sold this midterm election cycle is clearly slanted to most people, regardless of where they stand. I’ve been stunned to have my feelings about the AP honed to a point this cycle, when I watched them cover democrats tepidly when they opposed Bush, but are covering every single race this year as if the opposition gets top billing every single time. Everywhere I look, the old guard seem to have lost their way, are predicting massive defeat of democrats in this midterm.
I haven’t believed it and I won’t. Doesn’t really matter what happens tomorrow night. I’m confident that there will be a serious revision of the power and solidarity of the opposition party in this country. Their media outlets will fail to cover it, the rest of the confused, jittery chatterbox of cable news, cowardly corporate networks, and puffy chested self-important fishwrappers.
If the best this widdle tea potty can muster is Sharon Angle, Carl Paladino, and Christine O’Donnell, failed businesspeople with more money than brains like Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, incredulity is the only rational reaction. The most enlightened person on the GOP side of the spectrum is Jon McCain’s daughter Meghan, from this irrational liberal’s point of view. Thank Goddess we’re not feeding her to the machine that churns out these generic, soundbite spewing bobbleheads.
I see a lot of bright young stars on the democrat side of things. Jersey, New Orleans, New York all have fascinating candidates and people already elected and serving. Al Franken makes me proud every time I hear him, honestly he’s a far better prepared politician, astute speaker and writer than he ever was as an SNL-type improv-ish comedian.
The numbers have been clear all along the way, and I doubt that things will change much beyond what fivethirtyeight predicts. Republican governors may see some gains, but senate and house aren’t gonna change nearly as much as people wish to think they will. The change comes from the movement, the President, and the rest of the democratic groundswell that promises to fix what 8 years of Bush did. Bush’s wars, Bush’s deficit made from a democratic surplus.
America can do better, together, than we do under Republican Presidents. This is established fact among everybody at the bottom, struggling to get by, and the Union members who are just beginning to break above the poverty line by becoming skilled workers. We The People know these things. Them With All the Money, they pay to convince anybody otherwise. This is how it’s been. But everything changes. Projected gains this year for the party opposing the President will be far slimmer than the blowhards want you to think.
The difference between the tea pawty and the party of hope and change is centrally that you want your country back, but you want it without us, any way you can get it. We’re taking America forward, and we’re taking you with us, in spite of these embarassing and uninformed digressions you take us on.
Conventional Wisdom, by Built to Spill
I love the soaring, swirling guitar on this track. Everything else I was doing when it came on just stopped happening, and I rode the groove like a rollercoaster. Afterward I sought out the who and what, knowing it sounded vaguely familiar but not who it was. I ended up later that afternoon buying it on itunes. The rest of that story isn’t as important. The song’s title is a catchphrase.
Privately, up in my brainbox, I pride myself on seeing ahead of the curve. Whenever possible, I try to see what’s coming, stay informed, sniff the dirt, get the gist, read voraciously, and earn myself a feel for who’s worth their weight and who should do a lot more thinking before they speak.
I watched the last presidential election with sharp memories of the hopeless haze left after the previous two. Then myself along with the rest of the masses felt a fresh splash of water on our faces when something else happened this time.
Setting aside for a moment the frothing furor of the tea party racists and how egregiously John McCain failed his first Presidential decision when he couldn’t find someone more awe inspiring than him, and chose a flake of a spokesmodel from Alaska as his running mate when Barack Obama chose Joe Biden. I utterly disdain Biden’s association with the deep pockets of the old money running the old media machinery, but I can see what Bill Clinton meant when he said a candidate’s first Presidential Decision is picking a running mate. And Biden is a home run, certainly compared to the failed bunt of Sarah, plain and dumb.
I believe that the conventional wisdom being sold this midterm election cycle is clearly slanted to most people, regardless of where they stand. I’ve been stunned to have my feelings about the AP honed to a point this cycle, when I watched them cover democrats tepidly when they opposed Bush, but are covering every single race this year as if the opposition gets top billing every single time. Everywhere I look, the old guard seem to have lost their way, are predicting massive defeat of democrats in this midterm.
I haven’t believed it and I won’t. Doesn’t really matter what happens tomorrow night. I’m confident that there will be a serious revision of the power and solidarity of the opposition party in this country. Their media outlets will fail to cover it, the rest of the confused, jittery chatterbox of cable news, cowardly corporate networks, and puffy chested self-important fishwrappers.
If the best this widdle tea potty can muster is Sharon Angle, Carl Paladino, and Christine O’Donnell, failed businesspeople with more money than brains like Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, incredulity is the only rational reaction. The most enlightened person on the GOP side of the spectrum is Jon McCain’s daughter Meghan, from this irrational liberal’s point of view. Thank Goddess we’re not feeding her to the machine that churns out these generic, soundbite spewing bobbleheads.
I see a lot of bright young stars on the democrat side of things. Jersey, New Orleans, New York all have fascinating candidates and people already elected and serving. Al Franken makes me proud every time I hear him, honestly he’s a far better prepared politician, astute speaker and writer than he ever was as an SNL-type improv-ish comedian.
The numbers have been clear all along the way, and I doubt that things will change much beyond what fivethirtyeight predicts. Republican governors may see some gains, but senate and house aren’t gonna change nearly as much as people wish to think they will. The change comes from the movement, the President, and the rest of the democratic groundswell that promises to fix what 8 years of Bush did. Bush’s wars, Bush’s deficit made from a democratic surplus.
America can do better, together, than we do under Republican Presidents. This is established fact among everybody at the bottom, struggling to get by, and the Union members who are just beginning to break above the poverty line by becoming skilled workers. We The People know these things. Them With All the Money, they pay to convince anybody otherwise. This is how it’s been. But everything changes. Projected gains this year for the party opposing the President will be far slimmer than the blowhards want you to think.
The difference between the tea pawty and the party of hope and change is centrally that you want your country back, but you want it without us, any way you can get it. We’re taking America forward, and we’re taking you with us, in spite of these embarassing and uninformed digressions you take us on.
Friday, October 15, 2010
tucked into shadows, my blowfish collapses
Some of the more esoterically minded souls I've had the pleasure of debate and discussion with have suggested to me that the human mind is vast. The mind, the soul each dwelling in their own abstract plane where either can be several times the size of the person's actual physical body. (If so, mine just blowfish-ed up, blew its stack and posted, now I'm shrinking back down to normal size.)
I've always treated these ideas as cute extensions of the god complex most humans must flirt with, giving us the promise of something beyond this life - however mundane or godlike - to make up for the questions this existence forces to the center of your consciousness. Fun to play with like chess pieces, these ideas are, but offer little comfort in the harshest moments of your life.
What makes this post more than just another episode of talk soup, brain babble gone rudderless? An additional experience to throw on the heap; finally finding myself unable to stop posting a clear, lucid thought with my fellow forum-goers. Pointing out something nobody else has said. Standing up for something just before running away to hide from the inevitable fallout for having done so. Sigh.
I've done this little act on several different bands/artists fora and mailing lists over the last 15 years.
•A rant how "poop loggy logg" sucks on a Prince mailing list - motivated by the fact that my dorm was ablaze with shitty synth-centric gangster rap all year long.
•Get in a flame war about Courtney Love on a Tori Amos mailing list.
•Defy the Zappa-ites on a Ween message board.
•Admit you're not utterly obsessive about the Replacements on a Soul Asylum board.
This sort of reflection doesn't come as any surprise. Sometimes there's no fallout because you're genuinely understood. But what do we remember? The understanding or the big flameout trollfest?
I suppose if you can have that many years in a row doing anything, you're bound to notice changes - if not in thyself then in the circumstances surrounding you and the rest of the audience.
The online experience has changed a good deal. How many of the born-with-a-cellphone generation can remember before wireless internet? Having to get up and GO to the computer lab? Dorms without ANY internet? In spite of all these immense advances in convenience, it seems that the vibes rolling off the rabble here online are just as chaotic and selfish as they have ever been.
Didn't William effing Shakespeare serve as the first example of multiplexed-at-once writing? Wasn't he trying to play a grandiose story for his regular theater-going patrons up in their box seats, while at the same exact moment playing goofy clowning jester tactics for the unwashed rabble at ground level?
I learned to wish to be invisible, want to tuck myself into the shadows to escape the shitty attitudes of the disinterested and unintelligent - just to survive high school, and it's no real surprise that the experience left lasting effects.
Dan Savage began an anti-bullying campaign for gay, bi, and gender-confused youth, to let them know in no uncertain terms that "It Gets Better." I sincerely thank the man for saving the kids of today that would've been my friends back in the day. I can't help but wonder if there'll ever be any such words of encouragement for the rest of the crowd that gets the same shite and doesn't even have the obvious to "blame" it on. When you're getting picked on because your classmates are the ones with the defects, the bigotry, the fear-of-different behind their gleeful cruelty.
The only holes I can poke in It getting Better are that people are selfish, rude, boorish dicks everyday in all walks of life, from the Bank to the Butcher Shop. High school is a place where it's sort of implicit that we're still incubating, unfinished works of personhood. Mistakes still feel hugely embarassing there, but it's understood that everybody's gonna have at least one while they're there.
How much whingeing from the Ben Glecks of the world are we gonna have to put up with if nobody in any high school ever learns that their fellows are harsh, cruel, selfish dickheads and that a thick skin is all we ever have to defend ourselves? If nobody ever learns to thicken and toughen up before leaving high school, America is about to be overrun with whiners. (As if She weren't already...)
Did I ever make it from thin-skinned target-for-abuse to thicker-skinned non-whiner?? /lol
I've always treated these ideas as cute extensions of the god complex most humans must flirt with, giving us the promise of something beyond this life - however mundane or godlike - to make up for the questions this existence forces to the center of your consciousness. Fun to play with like chess pieces, these ideas are, but offer little comfort in the harshest moments of your life.
What makes this post more than just another episode of talk soup, brain babble gone rudderless? An additional experience to throw on the heap; finally finding myself unable to stop posting a clear, lucid thought with my fellow forum-goers. Pointing out something nobody else has said. Standing up for something just before running away to hide from the inevitable fallout for having done so. Sigh.
I've done this little act on several different bands/artists fora and mailing lists over the last 15 years.
•A rant how "poop loggy logg" sucks on a Prince mailing list - motivated by the fact that my dorm was ablaze with shitty synth-centric gangster rap all year long.
•Get in a flame war about Courtney Love on a Tori Amos mailing list.
•Defy the Zappa-ites on a Ween message board.
•Admit you're not utterly obsessive about the Replacements on a Soul Asylum board.
This sort of reflection doesn't come as any surprise. Sometimes there's no fallout because you're genuinely understood. But what do we remember? The understanding or the big flameout trollfest?
I suppose if you can have that many years in a row doing anything, you're bound to notice changes - if not in thyself then in the circumstances surrounding you and the rest of the audience.
The online experience has changed a good deal. How many of the born-with-a-cellphone generation can remember before wireless internet? Having to get up and GO to the computer lab? Dorms without ANY internet? In spite of all these immense advances in convenience, it seems that the vibes rolling off the rabble here online are just as chaotic and selfish as they have ever been.
Didn't William effing Shakespeare serve as the first example of multiplexed-at-once writing? Wasn't he trying to play a grandiose story for his regular theater-going patrons up in their box seats, while at the same exact moment playing goofy clowning jester tactics for the unwashed rabble at ground level?
I learned to wish to be invisible, want to tuck myself into the shadows to escape the shitty attitudes of the disinterested and unintelligent - just to survive high school, and it's no real surprise that the experience left lasting effects.
Dan Savage began an anti-bullying campaign for gay, bi, and gender-confused youth, to let them know in no uncertain terms that "It Gets Better." I sincerely thank the man for saving the kids of today that would've been my friends back in the day. I can't help but wonder if there'll ever be any such words of encouragement for the rest of the crowd that gets the same shite and doesn't even have the obvious to "blame" it on. When you're getting picked on because your classmates are the ones with the defects, the bigotry, the fear-of-different behind their gleeful cruelty.
The only holes I can poke in It getting Better are that people are selfish, rude, boorish dicks everyday in all walks of life, from the Bank to the Butcher Shop. High school is a place where it's sort of implicit that we're still incubating, unfinished works of personhood. Mistakes still feel hugely embarassing there, but it's understood that everybody's gonna have at least one while they're there.
How much whingeing from the Ben Glecks of the world are we gonna have to put up with if nobody in any high school ever learns that their fellows are harsh, cruel, selfish dickheads and that a thick skin is all we ever have to defend ourselves? If nobody ever learns to thicken and toughen up before leaving high school, America is about to be overrun with whiners. (As if She weren't already...)
Did I ever make it from thin-skinned target-for-abuse to thicker-skinned non-whiner?? /lol
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