a customer speaks to you with words they would not use if they met you ninety five feet away and you know it for a fact because you stood up from the cash register and they realized (very quickly) that you were very able to drag and throw them through the sliding door toward the wrong end of pelletized glass over a difference of two dollars.
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label culture. Show all posts
9/10/21
7/26/14
The Changed Landscape of Warfare, Want, and The Spacefarer's Bible
I won't say I will not continue to try to make myself happy. That's foolish and, honestly, a little bit petty and a lot of bit lie no matter whose mouth it comes out of. I do and will (most of the time). Sometimes I completely screw it up and ruin everything for all of us. Life is about that sometimes. Let's begin and find our ending and hopefully put a bow on it so we can assault the next stronghold.
We're a consumer organism. Advancement, the byproduct. That's easy to yank out of the air because it's been floating around there since I was a kid. "We don't make stuff anymore!" "We export everything!" "We import everything!" And on and on and on. It's very easy to get lost in macro markets and who owes whom X amount of ... have you ever watched a history show?
A show where they talk about ancient constructs or modern constructs or ancient economies or modern economies or ancient populations or modern populations? Have you ever watched a speculative show where they talk about what could be at X time in Y space if A and B happen or if C continues to happen or if D changes to a ridiculous extent and ceases to be or metastasizes into some sort of creature all it's own? Have you ever watched the news or an informative program or a program garbed as one that is vested in speculation or sometimes vested in pure facts?
If you have not laughed, laugh the next time you watch one. Not because what they're saying is true or false. Not because what they're saying could be true or could be false and massive death or infinite life may be just around the corner. Not because what they're saying is a ridiculous analogy or because what they are saying makes no damn sense at all given what we know about the world, given how long human beings have been recording information and analyzing information and the fact that even the people that were completely off were still right by a few degrees and it's largely been a war of precision and infomatic attrition.
Laugh because it is hilarious when they tell you the heart pumps enough blood in your life time to fill an olympic swimming pool. Okay, that's not that outlandish. Bad example. Are you laughing yet? Laugh when they tell you the sun produces as much energy as two billion nuclear power plants over the course of their lifetimes in a single second. Laugh when you hear the Hoover dam can power 900,000 refrigerators for ten days with one day of it's output. Laugh when you know a bullet packs the same punch from a .357 as 200 horse power driving a single 30 cm diesel piston pushing a ten mile rod one inch into glacial ice. The scales get insanely arbitrary, but sound impressive.
We're not a consumer organism. Advancement is the byproduct. Want does make excellent bedfellows, though. Maybe it's just the people I know, or choose to know and the ones I choose to not associate with. Yeah there are a lot of consumers. It gets me down. Who doesn't it get down? Silly question. Programs and users. It get's depressing. On this little operating system. It does. I'm not going to lie and even if I did, you'd know. Consumers give the rest of 'Merica a bad rap.
Where you going to put it? What's your percentage of consumer to user? Well, if you must know and you must because we must... 30% - 70%. The thirty percent gets all the play though. Eventually the 70% become dull eyed. The economy does love the 30%, but some of them, many of them keep the seventy employed or at least in cummed.
The other best two words in the English language? You guessed it: "I'm cumming." And no, that's still not three words. Niggler. I'm on to you and your detail oriented cant.
I came to this point what for was for this: (partly to make a cup of tea and nod off to sleep knowing my books are clear for whatever's next but also the following point) driving through an upscale neighborhood, enclave, everything was out for display in the mid afternoon light. Every garage had a car parked outside of it. Every garage was parked outside of high square footage whatever you want to call it, shoulder to shoulder with the one beside it. Parked outside each was a fit human being. Parked beside them was a fit child or bicycle or motor bike or domesticated animal. Parked beside them was a very well attended tree, beside it a clean swatch of cement and occasionally a glittering sign or hydrant. Parked between them was a fine manhole cover. All of it a strange display.
All of it begging to be wanted. Not to be contrarian. All of it unreal. All of it horribly unreal. All of it violently upsetting at it's worst and unsettling at it's least. Who want's to live in a gift shop? Do you really want to know those people? Do you really want perfect? Do you really want to consume that violently? By all means, take care. Take care and maintain and perform and do not give in to kipple. Kipple only breeds more kipple. It's disconcerting.
Yes, my kingdom is of sand and tied together bits, but they're well taken care of bits. That, I do not mind. When you want me to want yours because someone informed you that it is something to be wanted because someone taught them that it is something to be wanted it get's a little gross and wretchworthy. It get's a little arson worthy because I wonder what you'd be without it. If you'd still be you. Ostentaaaaaaaaaaagh! -tatious. Fueling the economy with your fanned feathers.
My own hang up. I know we're a country of makers, producers, writers, painters, builders, organizers, innovators, capturers, battlers, warriors, sportsmen and women, communicators, grifters, flippers, destroyers, and outright creators. Why are the consumers the most flagrant?
I feel bad taking money sometimes. Earned money. I can't remember the last time I outright stole something from someone and didn't tell the person I stole it from what I did and why within 48 hours. That doesn't count as stealing. Especially when I give it in it's original state or better than I left it, right back to them. It's aggravating. I would be so much further ahead if I could steal better. I would like to think. I dunno if that would work out. I don't believe so. I feel bad taking money sometimes and I have to remember why I had to convert to pay for play a couple years ago. Allow me to relate it briefly. It's a very short, kind of funny story.
One day someone asked me to help them move furniture. After another round of my long standing slug fest with who is and who is not a friend, I realized I could not continue to accept a hug and a few beers for my services. The first time I did it, it was a great time and chummy and sexy and kind of fun to laugh and live and love and help build a new space. It was fantastic. It was downright fantastic. The second time was the same. The second, too. The third, as well. The four, you guessed it, the same.
A sensation began to creep in. A very woeful sensation. As I filled the gas tank and counted bruises and counted unvitations to normal events and counted invitations to things I could not attend for lack of fuel and bodily integrity it dawned on me that myself and my peers were no longer fighting the same war.
One of the great equalizers is college. University. Call it what you will. We're all, more or less, fighting the same battles: studying, trying to eat, trying to have money on the side for fun, trying to pay for housing, trying to connect, (some of us) trying to work too, trying to keep up with family. The war has changed and it took me years and years afterwards to identify the change.
I was doing too many favors. Far too many favors. Far far too many favors. My peers and I are not in the same trenches anymore. Not nearly as close as they were. When they fire their rifle their elbow does not knock my shoulder. When I miss a beat and drop my canteen it does not land near their boot heels at all. When I want a smoke I cannot shout for one and catch their ear. When I slop lunch at the mess hall they do not hear my fork and I do not hear theirs when they do the same. We're on entirely different fronts altogether. Not that we're not still friends, bunk mates, and lifers. We're not all infantry anymore.
What I would and have done for them for free, nearly without asking, no longer applies. Changing watch shifts means little to them and the world to me still. An extra half apple means the world to me. To them, it's something to throw in a pocket for later, ya know, just in case. An extra magazine is the world to me. To them, it's something to leave at home because they're operating beneath air superiority and, hell, the whole god damn squad will be resupplied at the push of a button if need be. The war has changed for many and damn near all of them. Not for me, though. Not yet. When a comm line has been shelled to hell I have to army crawl out to fix it, but they don't.
So now, when they ask me to, it's not a favor anymore. It's mercenary work. I hope it doesn't distance them. I hope they understand. If anything, I hope they are amazed I am only now realizing it. Realizing that "smoke em if you got em" still applies, but now, if you ask me for one of mine I will ask you if you have my back when we get back home after we've shared the same trench because when you get shot you get to go back to the forward base and when I get shot, I get to sit down with a bowie knife and a lighter and a rag and a few minutes, and hope it doesn't get infected.
We're not nearly as close as we used to be. I miss those days. I miss loaning out clean dishes with the only caveat being you had to return them. It's pay for play now. On the big stuff. The little stuff, as long as you can promise I will not get shot, I'll still do for you. May not be the same war, but as long as your fighting, I'll fucking see what I can do and keep my own chatter to do or die please and thank yous.
Do not get offended if I flip out because you spent $250 dollars on a fucking chair. A fucking chair!? Are you kidding me? Different theaters, I know, but that could have kept me and my unit supplied for two months. Just saying, mickey.
A clean ship is a very happy ship. Returning to kipple. It really does breed. Kipple makes it difficult to wake up. More difficult even to think once you are awake. It breeds violence too. They never spoke about that part of it. Kipple particles that flake off of the kipple and get breathed in and become a part of your insides and work their way into your nerves like heartworms. The effect isn't the same as a neurological disorder that causes you to lose motor control and not like the effect (if they existed) of ingesting some sort of nanobot that takes over your musculature or even the effect (I would assume) of incorporating some sort of particulate life form or virus that forced signals. Breathing in kipple dust provokes a profound loss of fidelity. It is very important to keep a clean ship.
More importantly, in the vacuum of space, it is critically important to know what is wrong exactly, or as close to exactly, to diagnose the problem effectively and come to a solution quickly. The margin for error is thin. Part way out of the necessity for distance and part way out of the necessity for the fact that calls for support will take a lot of time to travel to the nearest waypoint or planet or orbital station that you happen to be near and an answer will not, regardless of distance, be able to be assumed available before your ships integrity has been completely compromised and you have to either float until you are picked up or hope the entire structure was lost somewhere close enough to another grave yard to piece something back together. The bonus of being a ship builder and engineer by trade and everything else by passion. It gets hairy sometimes.
Whatever planet I'm on, whatever city I occupy, whatever vessel I visit, whatever waypoint I frequent, when I talk about going home, I'm talking about my ship in orbit and my airlock with my key code and my pressure settings and o2 mix. Sometimes I leave I leave the radio on because it's nice to come home to tunes banging through the tunnels.
Admittedly, we've learned to entertain ourselves. There is no slight to the galaxy outside ourselves or Sol. We just don't get along. I remember the shit times and the good times dragging around the inner system. It was pretty fun sometimes. It was pretty hell too. There's a disconnect. I understand that. I'm not going to stage a war against it. The book taking precedence over the rest is the composition of the Spacefarer's Bible. Not to be confused with the Hitchhiker's Guide. It will be a handbook (so I have to keep it short) on how to not screw up when you are responsible for every single last little thing that happens to and for and within your ship. It's taking some precedence. Should I even be talking about it here? I don't know how that shit works. Let's stop cussing so fucking much. How about that?
I woke up yesterday with the realization that since the cessation of communication with my birth parents life has been a very pax by comparison. I had to remind myself not to forget new memories while running from the blacked out ones. I was going willy nilly, erase that one, and that one, n'at, n'at, n'at!!!! I think everything that should be glass is finally glass and god damn I feel pretty nice about it. I will not say mission accomplished just yet, but almost. Not 'til they're dead and I can move freely. Then, yes. Camo theory. The double fake. The triple fake? Off grid: suspicious. On grid: innocuous. Off grid: hello. On grid: hello. Who has the discipline for that?
Do not forget to look up. Every summer I think about and pain over how hard summer is going to hurt me. It's hot. It's bright. It's humid. The days are long. The nights are too short. The world is busy. Kids run everywhere screaming. Teens judge you and you want to knock them down with a well placed baseball to the teeth and then beat their ears in with rocks for having the nerve to say shit to someone they do not fucking know. And the little children run around bewildered at how green everything can be and you want to spin around in circles with them too and pick flowers and the littler ones just scream and cry because they're too hot and the pool is too cold and you want to scream too because it seems like good fun and one hell of a way to get to a good nap for a few hours until it cools off enough to sleep alright if you want to or run around alright if you want until you're too tired to run around and then take a good long nap under the stars or maybe go fishing and start a fire and find some dumb ass tweens to beat to death with a rock you found at the river while they're getting high and being rebels in the woods behind your fishing spot or find the guy who lives there each year or open your mouth in the 10 A.M. sun shower and just look up at the sky and the thunderheads and the moon all up at once and see lightning at ten in the morning. Don't forget to look up when the air is hot and thin at night and the stars come clearer.
I know I'm not a write off or disposable. Scratch that, I am disposable. That I do know. I'm okay with that. The challenge is making yourself indisposable for stretches. Making yourself available. Laying out the factory floor. Not changing the blueprint for the map's sake, but changing it because you've changed. Because we've changed. "WHO DO YOU WORK FOR" shaken by the collar. I work for you. Don't you remember me? I came in during operation sea hawk midway through mission wolf noose. You don't remember me?
Save things for a good time. Save nothing for a perfect time.
///Django Django - "Zumm Zumm" sometimes you yawn and realize you still have 8 bit roots
We're a consumer organism. Advancement, the byproduct. That's easy to yank out of the air because it's been floating around there since I was a kid. "We don't make stuff anymore!" "We export everything!" "We import everything!" And on and on and on. It's very easy to get lost in macro markets and who owes whom X amount of ... have you ever watched a history show?
A show where they talk about ancient constructs or modern constructs or ancient economies or modern economies or ancient populations or modern populations? Have you ever watched a speculative show where they talk about what could be at X time in Y space if A and B happen or if C continues to happen or if D changes to a ridiculous extent and ceases to be or metastasizes into some sort of creature all it's own? Have you ever watched the news or an informative program or a program garbed as one that is vested in speculation or sometimes vested in pure facts?
If you have not laughed, laugh the next time you watch one. Not because what they're saying is true or false. Not because what they're saying could be true or could be false and massive death or infinite life may be just around the corner. Not because what they're saying is a ridiculous analogy or because what they are saying makes no damn sense at all given what we know about the world, given how long human beings have been recording information and analyzing information and the fact that even the people that were completely off were still right by a few degrees and it's largely been a war of precision and infomatic attrition.
Laugh because it is hilarious when they tell you the heart pumps enough blood in your life time to fill an olympic swimming pool. Okay, that's not that outlandish. Bad example. Are you laughing yet? Laugh when they tell you the sun produces as much energy as two billion nuclear power plants over the course of their lifetimes in a single second. Laugh when you hear the Hoover dam can power 900,000 refrigerators for ten days with one day of it's output. Laugh when you know a bullet packs the same punch from a .357 as 200 horse power driving a single 30 cm diesel piston pushing a ten mile rod one inch into glacial ice. The scales get insanely arbitrary, but sound impressive.
We're not a consumer organism. Advancement is the byproduct. Want does make excellent bedfellows, though. Maybe it's just the people I know, or choose to know and the ones I choose to not associate with. Yeah there are a lot of consumers. It gets me down. Who doesn't it get down? Silly question. Programs and users. It get's depressing. On this little operating system. It does. I'm not going to lie and even if I did, you'd know. Consumers give the rest of 'Merica a bad rap.
Where you going to put it? What's your percentage of consumer to user? Well, if you must know and you must because we must... 30% - 70%. The thirty percent gets all the play though. Eventually the 70% become dull eyed. The economy does love the 30%, but some of them, many of them keep the seventy employed or at least in cummed.
The other best two words in the English language? You guessed it: "I'm cumming." And no, that's still not three words. Niggler. I'm on to you and your detail oriented cant.
I came to this point what for was for this: (partly to make a cup of tea and nod off to sleep knowing my books are clear for whatever's next but also the following point) driving through an upscale neighborhood, enclave, everything was out for display in the mid afternoon light. Every garage had a car parked outside of it. Every garage was parked outside of high square footage whatever you want to call it, shoulder to shoulder with the one beside it. Parked outside each was a fit human being. Parked beside them was a fit child or bicycle or motor bike or domesticated animal. Parked beside them was a very well attended tree, beside it a clean swatch of cement and occasionally a glittering sign or hydrant. Parked between them was a fine manhole cover. All of it a strange display.
All of it begging to be wanted. Not to be contrarian. All of it unreal. All of it horribly unreal. All of it violently upsetting at it's worst and unsettling at it's least. Who want's to live in a gift shop? Do you really want to know those people? Do you really want perfect? Do you really want to consume that violently? By all means, take care. Take care and maintain and perform and do not give in to kipple. Kipple only breeds more kipple. It's disconcerting.
Yes, my kingdom is of sand and tied together bits, but they're well taken care of bits. That, I do not mind. When you want me to want yours because someone informed you that it is something to be wanted because someone taught them that it is something to be wanted it get's a little gross and wretchworthy. It get's a little arson worthy because I wonder what you'd be without it. If you'd still be you. Ostentaaaaaaaaaaagh! -tatious. Fueling the economy with your fanned feathers.
My own hang up. I know we're a country of makers, producers, writers, painters, builders, organizers, innovators, capturers, battlers, warriors, sportsmen and women, communicators, grifters, flippers, destroyers, and outright creators. Why are the consumers the most flagrant?
I feel bad taking money sometimes. Earned money. I can't remember the last time I outright stole something from someone and didn't tell the person I stole it from what I did and why within 48 hours. That doesn't count as stealing. Especially when I give it in it's original state or better than I left it, right back to them. It's aggravating. I would be so much further ahead if I could steal better. I would like to think. I dunno if that would work out. I don't believe so. I feel bad taking money sometimes and I have to remember why I had to convert to pay for play a couple years ago. Allow me to relate it briefly. It's a very short, kind of funny story.
One day someone asked me to help them move furniture. After another round of my long standing slug fest with who is and who is not a friend, I realized I could not continue to accept a hug and a few beers for my services. The first time I did it, it was a great time and chummy and sexy and kind of fun to laugh and live and love and help build a new space. It was fantastic. It was downright fantastic. The second time was the same. The second, too. The third, as well. The four, you guessed it, the same.
A sensation began to creep in. A very woeful sensation. As I filled the gas tank and counted bruises and counted unvitations to normal events and counted invitations to things I could not attend for lack of fuel and bodily integrity it dawned on me that myself and my peers were no longer fighting the same war.
One of the great equalizers is college. University. Call it what you will. We're all, more or less, fighting the same battles: studying, trying to eat, trying to have money on the side for fun, trying to pay for housing, trying to connect, (some of us) trying to work too, trying to keep up with family. The war has changed and it took me years and years afterwards to identify the change.
I was doing too many favors. Far too many favors. Far far too many favors. My peers and I are not in the same trenches anymore. Not nearly as close as they were. When they fire their rifle their elbow does not knock my shoulder. When I miss a beat and drop my canteen it does not land near their boot heels at all. When I want a smoke I cannot shout for one and catch their ear. When I slop lunch at the mess hall they do not hear my fork and I do not hear theirs when they do the same. We're on entirely different fronts altogether. Not that we're not still friends, bunk mates, and lifers. We're not all infantry anymore.
What I would and have done for them for free, nearly without asking, no longer applies. Changing watch shifts means little to them and the world to me still. An extra half apple means the world to me. To them, it's something to throw in a pocket for later, ya know, just in case. An extra magazine is the world to me. To them, it's something to leave at home because they're operating beneath air superiority and, hell, the whole god damn squad will be resupplied at the push of a button if need be. The war has changed for many and damn near all of them. Not for me, though. Not yet. When a comm line has been shelled to hell I have to army crawl out to fix it, but they don't.
So now, when they ask me to, it's not a favor anymore. It's mercenary work. I hope it doesn't distance them. I hope they understand. If anything, I hope they are amazed I am only now realizing it. Realizing that "smoke em if you got em" still applies, but now, if you ask me for one of mine I will ask you if you have my back when we get back home after we've shared the same trench because when you get shot you get to go back to the forward base and when I get shot, I get to sit down with a bowie knife and a lighter and a rag and a few minutes, and hope it doesn't get infected.
We're not nearly as close as we used to be. I miss those days. I miss loaning out clean dishes with the only caveat being you had to return them. It's pay for play now. On the big stuff. The little stuff, as long as you can promise I will not get shot, I'll still do for you. May not be the same war, but as long as your fighting, I'll fucking see what I can do and keep my own chatter to do or die please and thank yous.
Do not get offended if I flip out because you spent $250 dollars on a fucking chair. A fucking chair!? Are you kidding me? Different theaters, I know, but that could have kept me and my unit supplied for two months. Just saying, mickey.
A clean ship is a very happy ship. Returning to kipple. It really does breed. Kipple makes it difficult to wake up. More difficult even to think once you are awake. It breeds violence too. They never spoke about that part of it. Kipple particles that flake off of the kipple and get breathed in and become a part of your insides and work their way into your nerves like heartworms. The effect isn't the same as a neurological disorder that causes you to lose motor control and not like the effect (if they existed) of ingesting some sort of nanobot that takes over your musculature or even the effect (I would assume) of incorporating some sort of particulate life form or virus that forced signals. Breathing in kipple dust provokes a profound loss of fidelity. It is very important to keep a clean ship.
More importantly, in the vacuum of space, it is critically important to know what is wrong exactly, or as close to exactly, to diagnose the problem effectively and come to a solution quickly. The margin for error is thin. Part way out of the necessity for distance and part way out of the necessity for the fact that calls for support will take a lot of time to travel to the nearest waypoint or planet or orbital station that you happen to be near and an answer will not, regardless of distance, be able to be assumed available before your ships integrity has been completely compromised and you have to either float until you are picked up or hope the entire structure was lost somewhere close enough to another grave yard to piece something back together. The bonus of being a ship builder and engineer by trade and everything else by passion. It gets hairy sometimes.
Whatever planet I'm on, whatever city I occupy, whatever vessel I visit, whatever waypoint I frequent, when I talk about going home, I'm talking about my ship in orbit and my airlock with my key code and my pressure settings and o2 mix. Sometimes I leave I leave the radio on because it's nice to come home to tunes banging through the tunnels.
Admittedly, we've learned to entertain ourselves. There is no slight to the galaxy outside ourselves or Sol. We just don't get along. I remember the shit times and the good times dragging around the inner system. It was pretty fun sometimes. It was pretty hell too. There's a disconnect. I understand that. I'm not going to stage a war against it. The book taking precedence over the rest is the composition of the Spacefarer's Bible. Not to be confused with the Hitchhiker's Guide. It will be a handbook (so I have to keep it short) on how to not screw up when you are responsible for every single last little thing that happens to and for and within your ship. It's taking some precedence. Should I even be talking about it here? I don't know how that shit works. Let's stop cussing so fucking much. How about that?
I woke up yesterday with the realization that since the cessation of communication with my birth parents life has been a very pax by comparison. I had to remind myself not to forget new memories while running from the blacked out ones. I was going willy nilly, erase that one, and that one, n'at, n'at, n'at!!!! I think everything that should be glass is finally glass and god damn I feel pretty nice about it. I will not say mission accomplished just yet, but almost. Not 'til they're dead and I can move freely. Then, yes. Camo theory. The double fake. The triple fake? Off grid: suspicious. On grid: innocuous. Off grid: hello. On grid: hello. Who has the discipline for that?
Do not forget to look up. Every summer I think about and pain over how hard summer is going to hurt me. It's hot. It's bright. It's humid. The days are long. The nights are too short. The world is busy. Kids run everywhere screaming. Teens judge you and you want to knock them down with a well placed baseball to the teeth and then beat their ears in with rocks for having the nerve to say shit to someone they do not fucking know. And the little children run around bewildered at how green everything can be and you want to spin around in circles with them too and pick flowers and the littler ones just scream and cry because they're too hot and the pool is too cold and you want to scream too because it seems like good fun and one hell of a way to get to a good nap for a few hours until it cools off enough to sleep alright if you want to or run around alright if you want until you're too tired to run around and then take a good long nap under the stars or maybe go fishing and start a fire and find some dumb ass tweens to beat to death with a rock you found at the river while they're getting high and being rebels in the woods behind your fishing spot or find the guy who lives there each year or open your mouth in the 10 A.M. sun shower and just look up at the sky and the thunderheads and the moon all up at once and see lightning at ten in the morning. Don't forget to look up when the air is hot and thin at night and the stars come clearer.
I know I'm not a write off or disposable. Scratch that, I am disposable. That I do know. I'm okay with that. The challenge is making yourself indisposable for stretches. Making yourself available. Laying out the factory floor. Not changing the blueprint for the map's sake, but changing it because you've changed. Because we've changed. "WHO DO YOU WORK FOR" shaken by the collar. I work for you. Don't you remember me? I came in during operation sea hawk midway through mission wolf noose. You don't remember me?
Save things for a good time. Save nothing for a perfect time.
///Django Django - "Zumm Zumm" sometimes you yawn and realize you still have 8 bit roots
5/3/14
You Need To Vibrate Higher and The Good News (and the bad news)
I want to get the bad news out of the way first, but the bad news is also the good news. Let's do that first. The good news is we've made some changes, but they will not stick. Self doubt. The results were not at all to expectation. The expectation was, through dropping metaphor, there could be achieved a clearer stage of communication between people, but it only introduced severe complications. We're going to go ahead and burn that solution so hard it leaves shadows against the walls of my head.
It was a spirited effort and executed to the best of our abilities, but ultimately a failure. Well intentioned though. It introduced an incredible amount of doubt in meaning and second guessing, even more so than the use of extended metaphor. "Is now the time to be blunt?" "Are you being blunt enough?" "Who are you speaking for because I know for damn sure you are not speaking for me." There was an excessive amount of hate and miscommunication circulating because of the effort and action to connect A to D effectively. It was a worthy pursuit. Always diagnose actionable thoroughfares. ADAT.
ADAT is a friendly reminder to carry with you. When confusion eats in, the best way back toward organization is through ADAT. Understand, however, there is only so much to be gained in terms of growth through deviation from the path best traveled. It's not about volume or trail blazing. Select what will allow you to travel and utilize your abilities to the best of their purpose. What good is the path less traveled if you're not equipped to attack it? What good is the path most traveled if you're not equipped to attack it? Destruction.
I'm not going to put on my sage hat because I don't have one. Mostly, I could really go for some coke right now. I think I already told you, but every time I hear the Coca Cola commercial that ends with "smile because it's coke" I snicker a little because I know other people have caught it too. We're all people. Some of us are more people than others.
I have to remind myself that I am not spinning my wheels. If I was it would be, easily, the show stopper of all burn outs at the muscle car convention. I am not marking time (I am). I am side tracking myself, but still tracking.
Anyway, the good news is we are making some changes. The bad news is we are making some changes. What has been added cannot be subtracted because it will tirelessly and quietly shred my insides with abandon. There's is no doubling back. There is, but I will not forgive myself if I do. I am not looking forward to changes. I will still ask questions because I have the memory capacity of a goldfish when it comes to current events that do not scar hard enough to wake up the following day and demand investigation. Which is fine. That, we can do. You don't have to punch me in the brain pan, you just have to make sure I will ask myself about it later and get some answers. The latter half of that being key.
You need to vibrate higher. As unpleasant as it sounds, it must be done. Not in the spirit of further development or outside tracking or productivity or any multi-syllabic word. In terms of exorcising the engine. The engine has been well breathed of late, but needs exorcised. Far too many misfires. What was accomplished recently could have been accomplished four weeks ago if not for the misfires. Those should be remedied.
Remediation through vibration. Knocking and being quiet enough to hear the knock back. It's not easy. It is very easy to allow distraction. It's not easy to be quiet enough to hear the knock back loud enough to know whereabouts to knock next. That's the hard part. I think that's where I've been dropping the ball. Forgotten how to navigate silence. Not entirely forgotten, but locked the skill away for reasons I do not clearly remember, but looking at it from the outside I suspect it had something to do with trying to actively connect with people. A holdover from a submission that failed or succeeded (hell if I know) that was still being invoked to the detriment of the rest of us.
There is nothing in the desert. And no man needs nothing. Aberrations, hallucinations, and oasis's and dry docks aside... that was a mistake. Actually, not aside, but in hand. It was a mistake and poorly executed operation. S'ok though, don't mug yourself. Mistakes are made to learn repair. You're going to jam it up again. We both know this.
The good news is we're going to make changes. The bad news is we're going to make changes. We will vibrate higher. Hibernation is not an option. Do not convince yourself otherwise. Get mad. You know what you are. Stop talking yourself out of it. Stop fighting it.
Things have been a bit upside down. It's very difficult to connect with people and continue to maintain the routine that is so desperately needed. I have not been so outwardly frustrated with how clearly against the grain of normal I am than I have been through this last month. It's like getting hit in the teeth with a metal ruler on full spring. My head keeps screaming "GET AWAY FROM ME OR I WILL RUN!" and I don't know what to do about it.
I think that's why I cherish and despise free time at once. Free time is too much time to think and work is too much work to create. It would be different if it was a mixture of the two. It would be different if I could handle a tincture of the two. I cannot. It has to be one or the other. And still, atop that, is the difficulty, the pain of emotion that keeps coming stamped "on pain of death" if not exercised. I want to feel, as much as you do. I want to feel and not force. I do not understand why they must force me. Sometimes the forcing is enjoyable. It wakes me up where I would otherwise fall dead, emotionless. I cannot take it all of the time though. Why can they not understand that? I want to say no. My body tells me no. My head tells me no. My heart tells me no. So where is this motor coming from?
Am I an extension of you? Not again. Not again. Not again! Yes, again. I'm not. I don't love many people. Not in terms of justifying existences or anything near that cosmic in scale. More important, I don't trust many people. I'm not sure where I'm going with it.
Collecting.
I wish we spoke the same language instead of crying.
Crying being universal and cross dimensioned, but all too simple to express the depths to which we go.
///Massive Attack & David Bowie - "Nature Boy"
It was a spirited effort and executed to the best of our abilities, but ultimately a failure. Well intentioned though. It introduced an incredible amount of doubt in meaning and second guessing, even more so than the use of extended metaphor. "Is now the time to be blunt?" "Are you being blunt enough?" "Who are you speaking for because I know for damn sure you are not speaking for me." There was an excessive amount of hate and miscommunication circulating because of the effort and action to connect A to D effectively. It was a worthy pursuit. Always diagnose actionable thoroughfares. ADAT.
ADAT is a friendly reminder to carry with you. When confusion eats in, the best way back toward organization is through ADAT. Understand, however, there is only so much to be gained in terms of growth through deviation from the path best traveled. It's not about volume or trail blazing. Select what will allow you to travel and utilize your abilities to the best of their purpose. What good is the path less traveled if you're not equipped to attack it? What good is the path most traveled if you're not equipped to attack it? Destruction.
I'm not going to put on my sage hat because I don't have one. Mostly, I could really go for some coke right now. I think I already told you, but every time I hear the Coca Cola commercial that ends with "smile because it's coke" I snicker a little because I know other people have caught it too. We're all people. Some of us are more people than others.
I have to remind myself that I am not spinning my wheels. If I was it would be, easily, the show stopper of all burn outs at the muscle car convention. I am not marking time (I am). I am side tracking myself, but still tracking.
Anyway, the good news is we are making some changes. The bad news is we are making some changes. What has been added cannot be subtracted because it will tirelessly and quietly shred my insides with abandon. There's is no doubling back. There is, but I will not forgive myself if I do. I am not looking forward to changes. I will still ask questions because I have the memory capacity of a goldfish when it comes to current events that do not scar hard enough to wake up the following day and demand investigation. Which is fine. That, we can do. You don't have to punch me in the brain pan, you just have to make sure I will ask myself about it later and get some answers. The latter half of that being key.
You need to vibrate higher. As unpleasant as it sounds, it must be done. Not in the spirit of further development or outside tracking or productivity or any multi-syllabic word. In terms of exorcising the engine. The engine has been well breathed of late, but needs exorcised. Far too many misfires. What was accomplished recently could have been accomplished four weeks ago if not for the misfires. Those should be remedied.
Remediation through vibration. Knocking and being quiet enough to hear the knock back. It's not easy. It is very easy to allow distraction. It's not easy to be quiet enough to hear the knock back loud enough to know whereabouts to knock next. That's the hard part. I think that's where I've been dropping the ball. Forgotten how to navigate silence. Not entirely forgotten, but locked the skill away for reasons I do not clearly remember, but looking at it from the outside I suspect it had something to do with trying to actively connect with people. A holdover from a submission that failed or succeeded (hell if I know) that was still being invoked to the detriment of the rest of us.
There is nothing in the desert. And no man needs nothing. Aberrations, hallucinations, and oasis's and dry docks aside... that was a mistake. Actually, not aside, but in hand. It was a mistake and poorly executed operation. S'ok though, don't mug yourself. Mistakes are made to learn repair. You're going to jam it up again. We both know this.
The good news is we're going to make changes. The bad news is we're going to make changes. We will vibrate higher. Hibernation is not an option. Do not convince yourself otherwise. Get mad. You know what you are. Stop talking yourself out of it. Stop fighting it.
Things have been a bit upside down. It's very difficult to connect with people and continue to maintain the routine that is so desperately needed. I have not been so outwardly frustrated with how clearly against the grain of normal I am than I have been through this last month. It's like getting hit in the teeth with a metal ruler on full spring. My head keeps screaming "GET AWAY FROM ME OR I WILL RUN!" and I don't know what to do about it.
I think that's why I cherish and despise free time at once. Free time is too much time to think and work is too much work to create. It would be different if it was a mixture of the two. It would be different if I could handle a tincture of the two. I cannot. It has to be one or the other. And still, atop that, is the difficulty, the pain of emotion that keeps coming stamped "on pain of death" if not exercised. I want to feel, as much as you do. I want to feel and not force. I do not understand why they must force me. Sometimes the forcing is enjoyable. It wakes me up where I would otherwise fall dead, emotionless. I cannot take it all of the time though. Why can they not understand that? I want to say no. My body tells me no. My head tells me no. My heart tells me no. So where is this motor coming from?
Am I an extension of you? Not again. Not again. Not again! Yes, again. I'm not. I don't love many people. Not in terms of justifying existences or anything near that cosmic in scale. More important, I don't trust many people. I'm not sure where I'm going with it.
Collecting.
I wish we spoke the same language instead of crying.
Crying being universal and cross dimensioned, but all too simple to express the depths to which we go.
///Massive Attack & David Bowie - "Nature Boy"
5/28/13
Sex Sells, and Tolerance Versus Promotion
Sex sells. Everybody know's that. America is becoming a more tolerant place, probably more tolerant than ever before when it comes to homosexuality. It's becoming a little more tolerant when it comes to smoking weed, but that's something for another time. Still, though, a soused conversation I had, a quick back and forth really if not for doing it through twitter drawing it out over a couple hours (if we were speaking face to face it would have been maybe a two minute conversation), brought back to mind that actual tolerance is a long way off and it's kind of annoying.
Sex does sell. Everyday, everywhere you go, everything you watch on television, every fourth commercial on the radio, hetero sex is promoted. It's fired into you constantly. It can't be avoided and as a gay person I don't really have a problem with it. Sure sometimes it gets particularly awkward or annoying when I'm hanging out with straight friends and they want me to comment and I'm completely blank faced because it has nothing to do with me or what actually tips my scales or fires me up. For the most part though, I'll make something up or laugh or do whatever to move on and just like that, it's done and I'm fine and they're fine and the world turns on and everyone is okay. Sex sells. It is promotion of the hetero relationship and it's not the end of the world. I'm tolerant. I don't go grab pitch forks and torches and raise a mob every time some couple gets married or a guy and girl get all kissy touchy feely in front of me. I'm okay with it and it doesn't hurt me, but I also don't go out of my way to express the fact that I could care less.
Back handed tolerance is different. The back handed tolerance is the kind where people do go out of their way to express that "hey, whatever, I don't care, that's your business" sentiment to the point where it becomes obvious that they do care, and it does irritate them, but they are saying what they're supposed to say because they're supposed to say it because it would be a million times worse for their image and relationships with others around them if they did express whatever hate or revulsion they felt. It's better than nothing, but when it happens it makes me want to roll my eyes, yawn, and just walk away from the crap coming out of the person's mouth.
Back handed tolerance comes in other flavors too. It also comes in the "I'm okay with gay people, but you don't have to promote it, come on" flavor. Which is simply silly. If the world is to become a more tolerant place you can't say tolerance and "shut the hell up about it" in the same sentence. That's just asinine. Obviously there is going to be some degree of promotion. There has to be. Sex sells. If sex sells you can't just say you refuse to sell to an entire segment of the population. If you did simply black out promotion that would be pretty intolerant. That sort of behavior would also reduce people's exposure to homosexuality as a normal thing or at least damage their ability to observe and understand it as a normal thing. It's aggravating. It's annoying. And it's pretty back handed.
What does that even mean? To be okay with gay people, but intolerant of them talking about their lives the same way other people do because it's promoting a gay lifestyle? Didn't America finally more or less get beyond the "is it a choice or not debate"? What are these people even worried about? Promoting homosexuality is not going to turn people away from heterosexuality. It's not going to magically revolutionize someone's long held beliefs or belief system. What are they possibly afraid of? If anything it would make life more comfortable or normal for homosexuals. Could you imagine seeing commercials with gay couples selling things like lawn mowers, dinners, dating websites, concerts, and credit cards. Are these promotion haters afraid they'll see a commercial for something they like and refer to it to their straight friends and be made fun of because it was a gay commercial? If they are, I could understand. How hilarious would it be if the major hang up was feeling that tiny pang of discomfort I feel throughout a day, that I'm so used to it barely raises a blip in my mind most of the time.
I don't understand what the big deal is, but I do understand back handed tolerance and I do understand that sex sells. Maybe it's not a bad thing. It's a step in the right direction for people and I'm happy for that. I just wish people walked a little faster. It makes life a little more comfortable for me and people like me to at least know if someone were to openly persecute us, there would be massive support for us, not them. It's tiring and annoying knowing that the newer intolerance is this whole anti-promo sentiment, but at least no ones telling me I'm going to straight to hell and should be killed for my sexual orientation. Don't be scared 'merica, sometimes a little discomfort is part of life.
///Grimes - "Genesis" gots to start somewhere
10/5/12
Musicality
I'm trying to find the music in common sense. Not just that, but I'm trying to find the fun. I believe one of my greatest fears is writing ending being an occupation. Do what you love and everything else will come is largely a lie. Taking bobby pins out of my hair.
I don't know what I want to be, but I know I can't be an astronaut or a race car driver or a stuntman. Well maybe stuntman. Childhood dreams still haunt me, but at least I know (my third pick) I can be a writer given the right circumstances. I can be a bass junkie. That works too.
I know we had a lot of conversations about this
so I will stop there.
All we ever wanted to be was loved. That's a lie. Trying to find a good way to coda this. And I can't find one. The scrap yard has been busy today. Train noises. Bright lights. I feel I am aging inside beyond my years and I don't like it. Precipitation begging the clouds, but sometimes you have to look up
My condition is getting worse. Ghosts in the back room. And all I have to look forward to is the worsening of my schizophrenia. Fuck. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It hurts. I just want others around me to be happy and to kill them at the same time. I suppose in another life things worked out slightly differently because at this point it is a game of edges. I cannot imagine how things would have worked out otherwise. If I got the help I needed when I needed it instead of, no offense, Jesus.
the highs keep getting higher and the lows lower. There's only so much equipment a frame can carry. But all in all you just try to stay on the human side of things.
Double tracks pending.
///DJ? Acucrack - "In Yer Mind" all the pills
I don't know what I want to be, but I know I can't be an astronaut or a race car driver or a stuntman. Well maybe stuntman. Childhood dreams still haunt me, but at least I know (my third pick) I can be a writer given the right circumstances. I can be a bass junkie. That works too.
I know we had a lot of conversations about this
so I will stop there.
All we ever wanted to be was loved. That's a lie. Trying to find a good way to coda this. And I can't find one. The scrap yard has been busy today. Train noises. Bright lights. I feel I am aging inside beyond my years and I don't like it. Precipitation begging the clouds, but sometimes you have to look up
My condition is getting worse. Ghosts in the back room. And all I have to look forward to is the worsening of my schizophrenia. Fuck. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It hurts. I just want others around me to be happy and to kill them at the same time. I suppose in another life things worked out slightly differently because at this point it is a game of edges. I cannot imagine how things would have worked out otherwise. If I got the help I needed when I needed it instead of, no offense, Jesus.
the highs keep getting higher and the lows lower. There's only so much equipment a frame can carry. But all in all you just try to stay on the human side of things.
Double tracks pending.
///DJ? Acucrack - "In Yer Mind" all the pills
5/7/11
Stand Up Act 3 (the sex chapter part 1)
Act 2
So I'm stumbling around myself at this point, now that we've formally met, so I figure now is probably the optimal time to get the sex diatribe out of the way, because every comic with some semblance of an edge has a short few thoughts on the matter. I feel a bit reserved here even beginning to begin about something so taboo and my main concern is to keep it from becoming your typical open mic gutter ball nonsense.
Let's begin by observing that every single magazine toting 100 sex moves to get your man off is patently not worth buying for the following reasons:
I'm kidding. Do I really have to go into how 95 of the things those editors tell you to do in the privacy of your own home are things you don't have to do to please a person of the opposite sex? Or maybe they are. I've never been married. I suppose perhaps if your life becomes something like opening up a refrigerator and already knowing what's in there, but gotdamnit a man's gotta eat, maybe you do need 100 tips so that you can discard 99 of them and try one and feel like you're some sort of wild animal because if you were a decent person you wouldn't follow tips outlaid in a magazine distributed nationally and vetted by a committee of people whose only goal in life is to produce something so inoffensive that their jobs would not be jeopardized by its dissemination. I'm crazy. I just followed the advice of something published in the cosmopolitan and it told me to finger my husbands bung hole because that would drive him wild... or something. Hopefully you understand the absurdity of that so I don't have to go backward and break it down. Hopefully you don't read Cosmo because I mean, after all, you're here and I would like to think of myself as very uncosmo by default which is what would have attracted you to an open mic in the first place. Very uncosmo thoughts.
So I have it in my head to lay this out in three parts. Why three parts, you ask? Mainly to give people the opportunity to walk out before things get too hot and heavy for them, as hot and heavy as things can get at an optional survey of sound and life things. I forgot where I was going to begin with in this iteration though so fuck it. Be careful though. Eventually I will stumble on this thread again and have something to say about something and then the jig will be up and not all the tea in China will save you from what is read. What has been seen cannot be unseen. At least not yet, but I hear there's an app for that coming soon. Not as great as zombie edition Playstation 12, but almost as awesome. I was thinking it might be called Iwipe, but that is just way too easy. Maybe Iblack, if African Americans get over themselves by then and see the word play there for getting your game face on in the face of oncoming, body crushing, defeat on the field of verbal mental sport.
I was considering that I will live to see the hundredth anniversary of the Holocaust though. Very unsexy, but I'm sure there will be many an observance and remembrance for something as world changing and visible, because let's face facts it wasn't the absolute worst holocaust to blight mankind and it won't be the last, but it was the most visible and stirring human crisis that I can remember learning about (that has for the shear depth of information blotted out many a closer more painful and relevant crisis since), and that's a lot of qualifiers and hedges in a string. Basically I struck upon the remembrance of the beginnings of American slavery and I wondered why that is not on it's three hundredth or four hundredth or I don't know and don't really care all that much iteration of anniversarial celebration or remembrance. And then I remembered that our diaspora joined us to the fabric of our nation and our world much more closely than theirs because we didn't have a unifying culture, but a diversifying one and then I felt like I was being a racist and then I laughed because I mean really, am I going to live for another forty years anyway? Probably not.
It did make me wonder what the equation for the production, direction, and Cannes entry of Holocaust films was. I think the time is fast approaching when the more current world changing cultural near extinctions will fade into irrelevant obscurity in the face of modern day challenges and changes. Time scars all wounds or something to that effect.
At any rate, sex will still be around so some segment of the car drivin sex havin populace will still be quite content to do what it does and to hell with history. But seriously genocide is bad so I'll make an effort to be sexier and more hilarious because I'm pretty sure I'm depressing myself and that is not funny. Or is it? Cue Sex and the City segue music.
So I'm stumbling around myself at this point, now that we've formally met, so I figure now is probably the optimal time to get the sex diatribe out of the way, because every comic with some semblance of an edge has a short few thoughts on the matter. I feel a bit reserved here even beginning to begin about something so taboo and my main concern is to keep it from becoming your typical open mic gutter ball nonsense.
Let's begin by observing that every single magazine toting 100 sex moves to get your man off is patently not worth buying for the following reasons:
I'm kidding. Do I really have to go into how 95 of the things those editors tell you to do in the privacy of your own home are things you don't have to do to please a person of the opposite sex? Or maybe they are. I've never been married. I suppose perhaps if your life becomes something like opening up a refrigerator and already knowing what's in there, but gotdamnit a man's gotta eat, maybe you do need 100 tips so that you can discard 99 of them and try one and feel like you're some sort of wild animal because if you were a decent person you wouldn't follow tips outlaid in a magazine distributed nationally and vetted by a committee of people whose only goal in life is to produce something so inoffensive that their jobs would not be jeopardized by its dissemination. I'm crazy. I just followed the advice of something published in the cosmopolitan and it told me to finger my husbands bung hole because that would drive him wild... or something. Hopefully you understand the absurdity of that so I don't have to go backward and break it down. Hopefully you don't read Cosmo because I mean, after all, you're here and I would like to think of myself as very uncosmo by default which is what would have attracted you to an open mic in the first place. Very uncosmo thoughts.
So I have it in my head to lay this out in three parts. Why three parts, you ask? Mainly to give people the opportunity to walk out before things get too hot and heavy for them, as hot and heavy as things can get at an optional survey of sound and life things. I forgot where I was going to begin with in this iteration though so fuck it. Be careful though. Eventually I will stumble on this thread again and have something to say about something and then the jig will be up and not all the tea in China will save you from what is read. What has been seen cannot be unseen. At least not yet, but I hear there's an app for that coming soon. Not as great as zombie edition Playstation 12, but almost as awesome. I was thinking it might be called Iwipe, but that is just way too easy. Maybe Iblack, if African Americans get over themselves by then and see the word play there for getting your game face on in the face of oncoming, body crushing, defeat on the field of verbal mental sport.
I was considering that I will live to see the hundredth anniversary of the Holocaust though. Very unsexy, but I'm sure there will be many an observance and remembrance for something as world changing and visible, because let's face facts it wasn't the absolute worst holocaust to blight mankind and it won't be the last, but it was the most visible and stirring human crisis that I can remember learning about (that has for the shear depth of information blotted out many a closer more painful and relevant crisis since), and that's a lot of qualifiers and hedges in a string. Basically I struck upon the remembrance of the beginnings of American slavery and I wondered why that is not on it's three hundredth or four hundredth or I don't know and don't really care all that much iteration of anniversarial celebration or remembrance. And then I remembered that our diaspora joined us to the fabric of our nation and our world much more closely than theirs because we didn't have a unifying culture, but a diversifying one and then I felt like I was being a racist and then I laughed because I mean really, am I going to live for another forty years anyway? Probably not.
It did make me wonder what the equation for the production, direction, and Cannes entry of Holocaust films was. I think the time is fast approaching when the more current world changing cultural near extinctions will fade into irrelevant obscurity in the face of modern day challenges and changes. Time scars all wounds or something to that effect.
At any rate, sex will still be around so some segment of the car drivin sex havin populace will still be quite content to do what it does and to hell with history. But seriously genocide is bad so I'll make an effort to be sexier and more hilarious because I'm pretty sure I'm depressing myself and that is not funny. Or is it? Cue Sex and the City segue music.
4/12/11
Po Mo Meta Strikes Again and Lost Keys
I've been busy. Trying to keep up my end of 7 straight days of growing pains and metallurgy and using my brain hard enough to make it cry uncle and develop traumatic locker room bully memories of its own. This is not to say that I haven't had a few moments of quiet and also a few moments of utter emotional seizure that sent me running for cover to ball up under my blanket and rock myself to sleep. Yeah, that happened. But it's okay. We can't all be that bad ass from that one movie all the time. Or even some of the time. I have my flashes.
In one of those moments I was out in the park with a friend (good company is one of the few things that can get me out of my apartment. That and having nothing edible. And even then, that's enough to get me like 150 yards away. Just far enough to nab some eggs and cheese from the store. Good company is rare though. I'll go far for that. Sometimes run. Well we were talking and what I've realized is that the bubble is very large. No wait. The world outside the bubble is very large. I was referencing college and the sheer massiveness of the world outside of a campus and the interlocking experiences and attendant frameworks of interpersonal exchange.
12 hours later was when the brick I threw up came back down and broke my skull open and the idea came running down the side of my face. I'm not free. Still not free. Not even close. In fact I am so deeply chained, what I have understood to be freedom has practically blinded me. I'm not talking about the retarded discussion of citizen's rights, or what it means to be an American, or the bondage of physiological death marching on, or determinism, or fatalism, or any of that super global ridiculously wide in scope stuff. I mean in terms of things as simple as "I want to go to X place at Y time to do Z. So I will." I guess it's been so long since I even had the space to collect and exercise free will at all I lost sight of the scope ... not the scope... the spectrum of freedoms.
It's a different kind of bubble. I'm still learning what I can do. It's like when I have to figure out how to walk again some days except it's a bit bigger than that. Like learning how to make a fist or teaching your left hand to do things to make your right hand's life easier. No, it's not even that. A little bit bigger. When that thought hit I realized that I'm still interned. Still incarcerated. It's just that I'm out of the torture and modification wing of the center and I've broken a window (with a little help) and now I'm in the yard, but there's still a massive gate and fence around the yard and on the other side of that fence are more cells and then a visitors yard. Now I can get access to that visitors yard and its nice to see familiar faces, but I've got so long to go.
It's post modern slavery. Or maybe just meta jail. Kind of like super jail except nothing hilarious or awesome happens. Everyone starts out in meta jail. That's why kids hate being kids. I'm sure part of them knows they're basically post pre modern slaves. The original slave. The adolescent. But eventually as they get older their parents give them the keys, sometimes right off the bat (and then they run out and do a shit load of meth and die and self correct the problem... haha no, just kidding. that's awful. and also not self correcting), to the cell doors and then the yard and then the rec rooms and the visitor center and the white trailer with the rose tinted curtains and the kids keep the keys. I never received my keys. They're lost. Permanently. So by the time I'm supposed to be 40 and in possession of all the sets of keys a 40 year old should have, I will instead have a pair of bolt cutters and a cloth wrapped shiv and maybe a few pilfered i.d. badges and a square of carpet to throw over barbed wire. I'm still in fucking meta jail and I didn't even realize it.
It was a depressing thought. A depressing realization. But that's what industry is for. I just have to keep digging and cutting. Maybe if I do gain actual freedom before this is over I won't shut myself down. I don't know yet. I still have a ways to go on this record before it's complete anyway. Plenty of time to think about it while I work. I thought about people that get to enjoy the luxury of doing what they love so much that they end up hating it some days. That must feel nice. Better than doing what they could care less about so much that that... I just wish I had my fucking keys. It's not that I think things would be different. It's that I know they would.
///Bjork - "Domestica" ... where have I put my keys? Beautiful song. Beautiful lyric. Beautiful time to get some rest and try not to worry too much. The mirrored mirror of po meta anything can be quite claustrophobic sometimes. Which is why you should always keep a brick in your back pocket.
In one of those moments I was out in the park with a friend (good company is one of the few things that can get me out of my apartment. That and having nothing edible. And even then, that's enough to get me like 150 yards away. Just far enough to nab some eggs and cheese from the store. Good company is rare though. I'll go far for that. Sometimes run. Well we were talking and what I've realized is that the bubble is very large. No wait. The world outside the bubble is very large. I was referencing college and the sheer massiveness of the world outside of a campus and the interlocking experiences and attendant frameworks of interpersonal exchange.
12 hours later was when the brick I threw up came back down and broke my skull open and the idea came running down the side of my face. I'm not free. Still not free. Not even close. In fact I am so deeply chained, what I have understood to be freedom has practically blinded me. I'm not talking about the retarded discussion of citizen's rights, or what it means to be an American, or the bondage of physiological death marching on, or determinism, or fatalism, or any of that super global ridiculously wide in scope stuff. I mean in terms of things as simple as "I want to go to X place at Y time to do Z. So I will." I guess it's been so long since I even had the space to collect and exercise free will at all I lost sight of the scope ... not the scope... the spectrum of freedoms.
It's a different kind of bubble. I'm still learning what I can do. It's like when I have to figure out how to walk again some days except it's a bit bigger than that. Like learning how to make a fist or teaching your left hand to do things to make your right hand's life easier. No, it's not even that. A little bit bigger. When that thought hit I realized that I'm still interned. Still incarcerated. It's just that I'm out of the torture and modification wing of the center and I've broken a window (with a little help) and now I'm in the yard, but there's still a massive gate and fence around the yard and on the other side of that fence are more cells and then a visitors yard. Now I can get access to that visitors yard and its nice to see familiar faces, but I've got so long to go.
It's post modern slavery. Or maybe just meta jail. Kind of like super jail except nothing hilarious or awesome happens. Everyone starts out in meta jail. That's why kids hate being kids. I'm sure part of them knows they're basically post pre modern slaves. The original slave. The adolescent. But eventually as they get older their parents give them the keys, sometimes right off the bat (and then they run out and do a shit load of meth and die and self correct the problem... haha no, just kidding. that's awful. and also not self correcting), to the cell doors and then the yard and then the rec rooms and the visitor center and the white trailer with the rose tinted curtains and the kids keep the keys. I never received my keys. They're lost. Permanently. So by the time I'm supposed to be 40 and in possession of all the sets of keys a 40 year old should have, I will instead have a pair of bolt cutters and a cloth wrapped shiv and maybe a few pilfered i.d. badges and a square of carpet to throw over barbed wire. I'm still in fucking meta jail and I didn't even realize it.
It was a depressing thought. A depressing realization. But that's what industry is for. I just have to keep digging and cutting. Maybe if I do gain actual freedom before this is over I won't shut myself down. I don't know yet. I still have a ways to go on this record before it's complete anyway. Plenty of time to think about it while I work. I thought about people that get to enjoy the luxury of doing what they love so much that they end up hating it some days. That must feel nice. Better than doing what they could care less about so much that that... I just wish I had my fucking keys. It's not that I think things would be different. It's that I know they would.
///Bjork - "Domestica" ... where have I put my keys? Beautiful song. Beautiful lyric. Beautiful time to get some rest and try not to worry too much. The mirrored mirror of po meta anything can be quite claustrophobic sometimes. Which is why you should always keep a brick in your back pocket.
9/15/10
The Farce of Human Interest
The upside of funemployment is free time. The downside of funemployment is day time television. I won't come out with a blanket statement about the demographic that watches or is available to watch daytime television on a regular basis, but what I will do is call out the insanity of the supposed human interest story featured on daytime television.
In its thinnest guise it is the paternity specials on talk shows and the daily freak shows created from people with actual problems who somehow think taking their children or families on talk shows will provide some kind of lasting solution to whatever it is that ails them on the inside or maybe just to make a buck and get a tv special pitched at them from TLC. In its thicker, more elaborate manifestations it's the two day back to back experience of the "half ton mom" and the expose' on teenage fight club sex parties and alarmist programs highlighting manufactured cultural tensions and real ones.
And I guess I'm just sick of people calling it human interest. Human interest, the term itself, seems to ask a little more of itself than to simply raise emotion and sympathy and "wow" from the viewer. Human interest should denote a desire or interest to view and understand human-ness or humanity. A term as charged as human interest shouldn't stoop to the ridiculous shallows of daytime television for any reason. Human interest should be about introspection and reflection and I guarantee you the people watching human interest stories are as interested in taking in introspection and reflection as a red head at the beach is interested in taking in an afternoon of sun bathing. Having to be around people purporting to enjoy watching human interest stories is like going to a meeting with 30 yes men. All they're doing is soaking up reaffirmation of their pre-existing beliefs. In the end though, I'm sure that's why the shows are on tv. That and to illicit all of the "wows" and "oh my Gods" from the people that are watching purely for the floor show.
Personally I like to take my entertainment from sports arenas and sit coms. Wow, that sounds snooty. You know what, I'm saying it anyway. It only sounds snooty in the context of the ridiculousness of this modern day reversal. So human interest is an enormous farce that people watch so they can say things and feel connected to problems they don't have and feel a conscience they never acknowledge for the other 130 hours of their week and feel reassured that drugs are bad and teens are dangerous and gangs live in every dark corner of every city and know that they're not so bad because "look at the tv, there're worse people than me." So what.
I don't know. I feel dumber for having brought it up. I suppose the takeaway is: at the end of the day, I just wish we could all stop conveniently naming and pretending and applying euphemisms and have lived with a smidge more awareness of ourselves. I guess it grates me to have to listen to the people that talk to each other and while one rests all they say is "yes" "oh yes" "you know, that's what they say" and then they talk and the other turns into the yes man and by conversation's end no one has actually said anything and no ideas or information has been exchanged. The thing that unnerves me the most is that as personal awareness erodes so does creativity and imagination until the person becomes part of the reciprocating cultural wheel, the ultimate feedback loop, and they're lost as though they never existed.
///Amon Tobin - "Straight Psyche"
In its thinnest guise it is the paternity specials on talk shows and the daily freak shows created from people with actual problems who somehow think taking their children or families on talk shows will provide some kind of lasting solution to whatever it is that ails them on the inside or maybe just to make a buck and get a tv special pitched at them from TLC. In its thicker, more elaborate manifestations it's the two day back to back experience of the "half ton mom" and the expose' on teenage fight club sex parties and alarmist programs highlighting manufactured cultural tensions and real ones.
And I guess I'm just sick of people calling it human interest. Human interest, the term itself, seems to ask a little more of itself than to simply raise emotion and sympathy and "wow" from the viewer. Human interest should denote a desire or interest to view and understand human-ness or humanity. A term as charged as human interest shouldn't stoop to the ridiculous shallows of daytime television for any reason. Human interest should be about introspection and reflection and I guarantee you the people watching human interest stories are as interested in taking in introspection and reflection as a red head at the beach is interested in taking in an afternoon of sun bathing. Having to be around people purporting to enjoy watching human interest stories is like going to a meeting with 30 yes men. All they're doing is soaking up reaffirmation of their pre-existing beliefs. In the end though, I'm sure that's why the shows are on tv. That and to illicit all of the "wows" and "oh my Gods" from the people that are watching purely for the floor show.
Personally I like to take my entertainment from sports arenas and sit coms. Wow, that sounds snooty. You know what, I'm saying it anyway. It only sounds snooty in the context of the ridiculousness of this modern day reversal. So human interest is an enormous farce that people watch so they can say things and feel connected to problems they don't have and feel a conscience they never acknowledge for the other 130 hours of their week and feel reassured that drugs are bad and teens are dangerous and gangs live in every dark corner of every city and know that they're not so bad because "look at the tv, there're worse people than me." So what.
I don't know. I feel dumber for having brought it up. I suppose the takeaway is: at the end of the day, I just wish we could all stop conveniently naming and pretending and applying euphemisms and have lived with a smidge more awareness of ourselves. I guess it grates me to have to listen to the people that talk to each other and while one rests all they say is "yes" "oh yes" "you know, that's what they say" and then they talk and the other turns into the yes man and by conversation's end no one has actually said anything and no ideas or information has been exchanged. The thing that unnerves me the most is that as personal awareness erodes so does creativity and imagination until the person becomes part of the reciprocating cultural wheel, the ultimate feedback loop, and they're lost as though they never existed.
///Amon Tobin - "Straight Psyche"
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