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| Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 | | 12:24 pm |
Holy War Is On The Phone
I swear to God. If fuckhole cuts my water *one* *more* *time* without giving me prior notice, I'm gonna go old testament on him. | | Friday, January 25th, 2008 | | 2:08 pm |
Just As Every Cop Is A Criminal And All The Sinners Saints
That's two days in a row. Two days in a row that find me in an incredibly good mood. The sort of mood where you feel like dancing your way down the street all Gene Kelly-like. Which obviously means I got a tumor in my brain or something. Now, back to singing along loudly to Sympathy for the Devil. | | Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008 | | 12:41 pm |
| | Saturday, April 7th, 2007 | | 1:59 am |
Mama raised an 'ellraiser
Tell me Lord can ya feel me? Show a sign. Damn near running outta time, everybody's dyin'. Mama raised a hellraiser. ... | | Friday, March 9th, 2007 | | 2:17 am |
| | 2:06 am |
I think part of the reason why I find it difficult to wrap my head around is that it seems to be geared around end results (seemingly a common theme for post modern/post structuralist thinking) whereas I am more interested in the begining of the road. The destination is marked with inevitability, so why should I care? It doesn't matter if it is only a matter of time. I am much more interested in the genesis. Probably because I have the non-thought instinctual impression that by understanding the original whys and hows, you'll understand and perhaps control the result. I understand the concept that beginings and ends exist in parralel. I'm just not sure that it really breaks cause and effect. Obviously, there is the matter of reality and perception thereof. But that brings up the entire argument about objective reality versus subjective reality and I don't want that can of worms right now. Besides which I'd probably end up paraphrasing Descartes and no one needs that. For the sake of the argument, let's just accept that whatever will happen already exists in the process itself and that, therefore, beginings and ends do exist simultaneously in some fashion. This part, I think, is rather strong. But if we accept this as fact, then does it not follow that the virtual will always reflect the original? That's where hyper-reality falls down for me. Because the idea behind simulacra is, as far as I understand it, based on the lack of reality. Let me backtrack and throw in the Borges short that served as the original illustration. "...In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigours of sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography." (The map is not the territory?) (Borges also says "The inventions of philosophy are no less fantastic than those of art: Josiah Royce, in the first volume of his work The World and the Individual (1899), has formulated the following: 'Let us imagine that a portion of the soil of England has been levelled off perfectly and that on it a cartographer traces a map of England. The job is perfect; there is no detail of the soil of England, no matter how minute, that is not registered on the map; everything has there its correspondence. This map, in such a case, should contain a map of the map, which should contain a map of the map of the map, and so on to infinity.' Why does it disturb us that the map be included in the map and the thousand and one nights in the book of the Thousand and One Nights? Why does it disturb us that Don Quixote be a reader of the Quixote and Hamlet a spectator of Hamlet? I believe I have found the reason: these inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictions." I wikied "the map is not the territory" because I could not remember who said it and found this interesting bit. Gotta remember to read up on it.) To get back to it, simulacra. The argument is that we are so saturated by images and signs of all kinds that simulate and recreate reality that we are, in fact, removed from reality and moved into an hyper-reality. Further we get into the idea that this recreation of reality is not actually a recreation of reality but a recreation of successive copies and recreations of reality. Until we are left with only the hyper-real which, in fact, is not reality. That we believe the map is the world. Whereas a copy has meaning because it references an original by seeking to represent it, the simulacrum has taken the signs of reality but seeks only to simulate more simulacra (more real than real, more human than human). On some level, I have to agree with that as I find myself confronting the artificiality of the world I live in and, within that, the artificiality of the bubble I isolated myself in. The Real has long been buried and there is truth in the image having become the new reality. Faster and faster, history becomes fiction and fiction becomes history. But, again, we get trapped in this obsession over the end instead of my own obsession over the beginning. See, I can accept that the result of the endless simulacra that seek to emulate each other is the disappearance of reality. A convincing image that has basically nothing to do with the original. Fine. I can also accept that this is the current state of affairs. I just don't think that's the important part of the equation. At some point, it must have referenced reality, didn't it? If so, then at which point does the static of successive generations overtake the reality? The idea that beginings contain their own end works but I don't feel that it destroy the progression. Though the idea of 2 (and every other number) is contained in 1, there is a definite progression to reach 2. Likely I am missing some concept of obscure math that would help explain why this is not true and that I could then apply to make sense of all this. Because, as I see it, if there was at any point a reference to reality then it should be possible to go back and find it. No matter how complex the house of mirrors, there was a original before the reflections. We might can mistake the reflection for the original but that doesn't mean that it isn't there, does it? What's the part that I'm missing? | | Thursday, November 16th, 2006 | | 2:13 pm |
Zomg! I'm so much more e-mature than everyone around me! Today's question: Why does the internets feature so many individual microcosms that have only a passing similarity to reality? Is it because it is an environment that facilitates isolation from the real living, breathing world while giving off the illusion of human contact and meaningful involvement with a community? Is it the medium? Or does it, by its nature, attract people who are already prone to separation from reality? People who create their own mythology and drama in a desperate attempt to find validation for their empty lives? Personally, I'm leaning more towards the second possibility. I think the majority of people walk around thinking of themselves as the hero of their own movie. They think the world is happening to them. I think the internet exacerbates these tendencies and validates every neurotic narcissistic impulse with *hugs* and attention. It reinforces the idea that the world is all about *you*, you unique and wonderful snowflake. And therein the walls of reality are breached. The fact that 2+2=3 on the internet is pretty fascinating. | | Friday, October 20th, 2006 | | 7:45 pm |
Well, it was a very nice wedding. It rode the thin line between traditional and casual. It was formal and classy while not feeling stuffy and overly serious. That's a tough one to pull off. And they pulled it off admirably. The bride was beautiful, the groom was James Bond-ish and the food was excellent. Though I don't give much thought to marriage myself, I think that if I were to get married, I'd like to do something like that. The kareoke sunset (or whatever the official drink was called), however, packed a kick like a mule beneath that pineapple-lychee sweetness. Make that a mule with steel-shod hoof. Ouch. And on a school night too. Well, hopefully I didn't make too much of an ass of myself. Though I do think I ended up parading around in a lampshade for a while. After all, no matter how hard you try, how classy can anything be with me around? | | Friday, October 6th, 2006 | | 10:51 pm |
W3ird
I just posted a link to a video in someone's journal yet my post doesn't seem to have shown up. Weird. I hope I didn't just accidentally post a link to the South Park/World of Warcraft episode in the wrong LJ by mistake because I wasn't paying attention. With my luck, I just put up a funny video under someone LJ entry about their cat dying. | | Monday, October 2nd, 2006 | | 9:58 am |
Note To Self:
Dear me, What the fuck are you doing drunk on a monday morning? Have you no shame?! Act your age! With love, Super-Ego. Dear Super-Ego, Go fuck yourself in the eyesocket. Just for that, I'm going to drink turpentine. HateHateHate, Id and the gang. | | Wednesday, July 5th, 2006 | | 4:50 pm |
Tom
" Iconoclast and reclusive touring artist TOM WAITS is [...] taking his always unpredictably stunning live show on the road"Tour dates are as follows: DATE CITY/STATE VENUE Tues, Aug 1 Atlanta, GA Tabernacle Wed, Aug 2 Asheville, NC Thomas Wolfe Auditorium Fri, Aug 4 Memphis, TN Orpheum Theatre Sat, Aug 5 Nashville, TN Ryman Auditorium Mon, Aug 7 Louisville, KY Palace Theatre Wed, Aug 9 Chicago, IL Auditorium Theatre Fri, Aug 11 Detroit, MI Opera House Sun, Aug 13 Akron, OH Akron Civic So, who can tentatively put me up on friday 11th in Detroit? | | Wednesday, June 28th, 2006 | | 3:56 am |
A dimming experience
Can't sleep. Computer is busy doing stuff. Bored. Turn on TV. "Hey, wrestling's on. I wonder if it's still terrible?" There was, I kid you not, a painted up black guy wearing a leopard loincloth accompanied by his Great White Hunter handler. He went through this "savage" dance routine and started wrestling some other guy. The commentator: "Oh, my! I hope [other guy] doesn't end up in [black guy]'s belly!" ... What the fuck? It's not like I think racism doesn't exist but I thought this particular sort of horseshit died in the 40s or 50s. It makes me feel ashamed for breathing the same air as the morons who run this shit and the fans who eat it up. I don't think I've been this disgusted in a long time. If I ever see Vince MacMahon, I'm kicking him right in the cock. | | Saturday, June 3rd, 2006 | | 8:48 pm |
FLQ
Do you remember a time when the government was willing and able to debate unpopular decisions with the press? Do you remember them being able to argue with intelligence? Do you remember when the government didn't go hysterical to promote national security? "Just watch me." | | Thursday, March 23rd, 2006 | | 6:47 pm |
Old News
So Erik from sadly defunct Old Man Murray just won a Best Writing Developper's Choice Award for a game called Psychonaut. You heartless yobs might not care but, in honor of his achievement, here's a classic bit of OMM. Asheron's Call Beta | | Tuesday, March 14th, 2006 | | 2:13 pm |
| | Thursday, December 29th, 2005 | | 5:13 pm |
Freakonomics
For Axel and any others who might have been interested in our conversation last night: "The results we show in this new table are consistent with the impact of abortion on crime that we find in our three other types of analyses we presented in the original paper using different sources of variation. These results are consistent with the unwantedness hypothesis. No doubt there will be future research that attempts to overturn our evidence on legalized abortion. Perhaps they will even succeed. But this one does not." Full entry here. So, as it turns out, there were mistakes in the published tables. However, it seems they did not invalidate the theory. It's an interesting read. ***EDIT*** As an aside, the comments in the link are pretty whacked. "And is that the last word in data sets? I strongly doubt it. For example, America’s most dangerous criminals were performing “selective post-natal abortions” on each other at an unprecedented clip in the gang wars of the early 1990s. AIDS was also taking a toll on criminals then. Levitt hasn’t adjusted for how many criminals died during this period. Nor has he adjusted for “object lesson” impact of the sorry end of so many criminals in the early 1990s had on their younger brothers, who grew up to be better behaved." Yeesh. | | Monday, December 26th, 2005 | | 5:02 pm |
Happy Boxing Day
Too much wine and way too much food. We're heading back to town with a brisket the size of a small poney. Might even share some. Merry Christmas to some and joyous non-denominational holiday to others. I hope you all got things you wanted and are having happy times. | | Sunday, December 18th, 2005 | | 3:46 pm |
Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) made good on her promise to put forth federal gaming legislation today, as she and fellow Senators Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and Evan Bayh (D-IN) unveiled the Family Entertainment Protection Act. The Act is intended to put teeth in the enforcement of game ratings, fining the managers of retail outlets who are caught selling games rated M for Mature, AO for Adults Only, or RP for Ratings Pending to children under the age of 17. "Video games are hot holiday items, and there are certainly wonderful games that help our children learn and increase hand and eye coordination," Clinton said in a statement. "However, there are also games that are just not appropriate for our nation's youth. This bill will help empower parents by making sure their kids can't walk into a store and buy a video game that has graphic, violent and pornographic content." Store managers would be fined up to $1,000 or 100 hours of community service for a first offense, and $5,000 or 500 hours of community service for each subsequent offense. Retailers can escape such fines if they were shown identification they believed to be valid or if their stores "have a system in place to display and enforce" the ratings system. Full article here.For the record, figures still show that, in the US, parents are present during purchase or rental of videogames 92% of the time. The average age of the most frequent game purchasers is 37 years old. I'm curious. How much money does a US senator get paid each year to fight such important non-problems? | | Saturday, December 17th, 2005 | | 10:02 pm |
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
So, I wanted to mention this the other day but I completely forgot. Skilljam is sponsoring a worldwide videogame tournament in which the Grand Prize is 1 million dollars. And it is, in fact, truly worldwide. Except for Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Vermont and Maryland. Check it out.It's interesting, I think. Skilljam has more or less cornered the casual gamer market with games like Bejeweled (who hasn't tried it?) and made a bundle with it and their tournament concepts. Of course, if one of you ends up being some sort of Solitaire or Bejeweled savant and wins the cash, I think I deserve a beer for pointing this out. | | Friday, December 16th, 2005 | | 9:07 pm |
If you ever needed proof that Gamespot is complete horseshit, look no further than their Best and Worst of 2005 list.That, of course, is the list of contenders for the available honors since the brilliant "7 days of christmas" style of article writing they've decided to go for won't crown the winners until, yes, christmas eve. I think my favorite category is Best Xbox 360 game. Must've been tough. There's what? 16 games released for the 360? It's also nice to see that a game's Best/Worst status has absolutely nothing to do with the score it received in their reviews. A much more cynical person might cough something about kickbacks but I, of course, am a firm believer in the reviewers' integrity. |
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