Wally sent me a most interesting article on the failure of symbolic thought. I haven’t finished reading it but it’s full of good quotes already:
We seem to have experienced a fall into representation, whose depths and consequences are only now being fully plumbed. In a fundamental sort of falsification, symbols at first mediated reality and then replaced it. At present we live within symbols to a greater degree than we do within our bodily selves or directly with each other.
…
We succumb to objectification and let a web of culture control us and tell us how to live, as if this were a natural development. It is anything but that, and we should be clear about what culture/civilization has in fact given us, and what it has taken away.
Yep, a long and tricky read but it seems to be worth it.
She sat across from me at Saffrons
wearing my 10 year old jacket
drinking the last half of my beer
I thought to myself, I want nothing more
than to be that jacket, across her arms,
to be that beer, pressed against her lips
Jealousy towards inanimate objects
is a new emotion for me
But these things were touching her soft skin,
tasting her sweet mouth in open defiance
of my own desire
and yet I said nothing.
As we sat in her living room one night
reading through her diaries, talking and laughing
drinking wine and enjoying each other
I thought to myself I want nothing more
than to be her diary, object of affection
to be the paper on which her soul pours
She sat beside me and read intimate moments
of her lovers, past lives
And I stared at her beauty, both outside and in
and wondered what twist of fate put me there
to want her so badly
and yet I said nothing.
As I sat in my room after a night of beers
with her and her friends and my unspoken desire
plans astray, my life in turmoil
I thought to myself I want nothing more
than to call her up, tell her my feelings
to ease the burden of my silent lips
this I did, but to no avail.
two weeks too late to share my thoughts
she’d found someone else, I was a loss
My heart ached with each word as it poured into me
It hadn’t occurred to her I wanted more
as I had only ever said nothing
I’ll make one prediction, and I hope I’m right. Google will not allow public sign up for their gmail service – they only want to let friends of friends in. If you don’t get a gmail invite, you’re not going to get a gmail account. There’s a number of really excellent reasons to do it this way, too. First of all, now they instantly know who is connected to who. Why are those social network programs like Friendster and Orkut so popular? The value the link between people as the highest metric for classifying individuals. By rolling out the gmail service with invites only, they build the database backend which allow them to introduce the next generation of social software – something that combines a vast storage of personal net space with a messaging, file sharing and social networking backbone. Eventually they’ll eliminate spam: Only emails from other gmail accounts are trusted, everything else (except perhaps trusted partners) is disregarded as junk. So the next evolution of the Internet begins, but here’s the problem – the only way this can properly work is if we hand over a lot of our privacy into the hands of one company. How trustworthy is Google?
I checked in on the ol’ Internet tonight and saw that it was abuzz with the recent beheadings. I followed a thread to comment when it was at 3 pages, when I had finished composing it had grown to 11. I love how the Internet localizes the attention of the wired world at certain points when particularily shocking events occur. The forum I linked to seemed awash with condemnation of Islam and the Eastern philosophy in general. I felt compelled to post a comment about tolerance and messages of peace and love because gosh darn it, I’m a fricking hippy.
Sometimes I wonder why I’m so easily duped. I like to think I have critical thought processes, that I can separate the wheat from the chafe. The last couple of days a meme has been bouncing around in my head like a frenzied piranha, feeding on all of my fears and anxieties about the future of our world. The whole debacle started while looking to whore out the new website I started, WinnipegForums.ca. I only knew of a couple of Winnipeg-centric forums on which to announce the new bastion of Winnipeg discussion, one of them from having read forums for a local lan party. I set out to investigate All your base cafe to post a welcome message to anyone who was interested in talking about politics. There, glowing on my screen like a beacon of finality, lay a thread entitled “end of the world is coming? (smells like bs)”. Clicking and following the ether trail I found myself at a religiously tilted pro bush site proclaiming that the end of the world was upon us, that on June 19th the first meteor would strike.
Introductions
Hi. You don’t know me. Keep reading and you will. I’m a Winnipegger much like yourself, and I’ve lived here nearly my entire life. I’ve travelled overseas but my heart will always lie in this forgotten city. There’s just something about it. The mosquitoes, the winters, the road construction – I’m a glutton for punishment. Still, sitting back on a warm spring evening cracking a beer and enjoying the clear skies – you’ll never fully appreciate it unless you’ve been through one of our bitter winters.
Right now you’re probably thinking, “What’s this guy on?” I admit; I’m a bit of a nutjob. I do have an idea though and I think it’s a good one. As Winnipeggers, we understand the power of community; the strength of unity and communication. We can use the Internet to get to know each other better, to reinforce our unique society. I’ve started a website, WinnipegForums.ca, where we can all get together and chat. That’s the beauty of the Internet – it’s the great equalizer. Everyone has a voice and nobody can speak louder than anyone else.
Ok, Wally has made up some posters that we’re going to spreading around town. I think we’ll try and put these on the streets and at the intersections, but I’ve got another idea for the bus stops. Hopefully Wally reads this tomorrow and starts putting one together. 😉 I’m going to put the post below as one giant poster, so if you’re reading this imagine that you’re a Winnipegger waiting for a bus with the hint of elections in the air. Let me know what you think.
Well, the probability of getting everything ready to go for tomorrow is hovering around 5% as of this moment. I’m not too concerned – I’m getting better vibes off a Sunday evening launch. I’ve got some new ideas for the forums which I have to put in effect and I still have a lot of data compilation to do. I guess I’m going to have to start treating this like homework soon or I’ll never get it done.
I can envision teams of two ninjas, prowling the dusk, jumping out of bushes and surprise postering bustops. Perhaps there’s be a competition to see who postered fastest. I know that I’m going to have to have a small party afterwords or I’ll never confirm any volunteers. I’m excited but nervous as I can see this project failing miserably, but at the same time there seems to be a possibility that it’s the right place at the right time. I don’t know, we’ll see soon enough.
Well, progress was a little slow today. I’ve got the site up and running, but I haven’t started doing the necessary research for the initial setup. As opposed to heading home and doing some hardcore surfing / research, I got pulled into seeing Super Size Me, a documentary about a guy who eats nothing but McDicks three times a day for 30 days straight. I’ll just say for the record that I’m never eating from the golden arches again.
So I’m behind schedule. What else is new? I have to dig deep and compile a list of all the ridings and the candidates for each party in said ridings. Then I have to put together a list of issues, and finally I must start some arguments in order to make it a little bit interesting before I launch.
Probability of successful completion of all tasks: 80%
Politics have once again come to Canada, and I’ve become involved in the Conservative party because a long time friend is running for the federal government. I’ve been doing his webpage and I feel pretty bad about it as I don’t agree with anything his party stands for. I realized that I have to balance out this ‘evil’ I’m doing, so I’m going to be starting a non-partisan web forum for Winnipeggers to discuss the politics that are coming up. Along with the federal election we also have a mayoral election as our old mayor (Glen Murray) has stepped down to run for the Liberal party (and of course he’s running in the same riding as my friend).