Thursday, November 29, 2007

Minmei fan club

This will make no sense to you if you don't know what Robotech is and/or find the cartoon unwatchable.

Why the hell does Minmei only have 3 crappy songs in her repetoire? It's maddening.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Our collective brain

What the hell am I going to do if the internet ever goes away? I had a random thought just now wondering if there was any video of the hindenburg disaster, considering I had only seen stills or very short clips up until this point. It took me under a minute to find the original film, complete with commentary. How crazy is that? I pulled random information from our collective digital memory and experienced it in under 3 minutes. Are there any negative consequences to our thinking patterns as a result of this? For instance, the urge to memorize certain categories of information? Why bother, when I can pull it up in under a minute?

Digression: The reporter was interesting. He struggles to remain professional and ends up breaking down as it happens in front of him. He came across as a human being, who is a reporter, reacting honestly to a tragedy. Conversely, modern talking heads on TV come across as reporters/anchors, who imitate human life, reacting eagerly with ghoulish hunger to a tragedy. Homework: What is bullshit about this perceived dichotomy?

Returning to main point: What the fuck are we going to do when we can't google text and video knowledge anymore? I predict rioting in the streets.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Musical Fixations

My new favorite band. You may enjoy or dislike them as you see appropriate. You may or may not have to get over the fact that their band name is the ditty bops.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

scattered and streaming

I don't do a lot of things to edify myself.

The first mention of self-edification I recall came through my religious education in my pre-teen years. Various authority figures asserted, in writing or verbally, that studying the Bible every day was the preferred and approved method of edifying myself [Edify: To instruct or improve, especially in moral or religious knowledge]. Of course, reading the definition as an emphasis on religious self-improvement, there's nothing wrong with that assertion. If my religion is indeed Christianity, then reading the the Bible is the best way of improving myself spiritually.


But let's not get hung up on that word. I usually take it to mean "general improvement of self in knowledge or character", which is suppose is my own murky, but similar definition. In any case, assume that's what I mean by edify.

In any case, I never really bought the assertion presented. In essence, I cannot now, and could not then, understand how delving deeper into religious abstraction made me a better person. True, by pursuing a daily ritual of study of the Bible and reflective thinking I would form habits of discipline and careful thought, but couldn't I do that by reading and thinking on many other non-religious philosophical, scientific and other-wise instructive tomes? It seemed that the hidden assumption there was that by studying the Bible, God was going to magically align my thinking into clearer and deeper patterns, whereas he would refuse to do so should I decide to study works of a secular nature. And so I rejected the idea that the Bible was the thing I needed to study in order to edify myself. I could edify myself just fine on my own thank you.

But let's not get hung up on whether studying the Bible is really, truly self-improvement. The funny thing here, is that while I was averse to Biblical study to improve myself, it turns out I was also averse to almost ANY OTHER FORM of self-improvement.

Why? Starting mid-way through college, I finally had some money and a lack of parental oversight and could finally start supplying myself with all the things I had been forbidden or could not afford as a child. Namely video games and comics. Now, I am not blaming video games and comics for anything per se, I will continue to enjoy them greatly in the future. What I am saying is this: Using video games, comic books and movies as my only focus outside of work and friends has not strengthened me in mind or body. Again, it's not that these things are bad, or should be discarded, but I focused on them to the exclusion of everything else. I have spent 11 or so years viewing work as "that thing I have to do until I can go back to playing games or reading comics." It's true, the other 3 contributers to this blog enjoy those things as well, but while they would play games and read comics, they were also teaching themselves to program, editing and writing for the school newspaper, and playing in bands. And while they were doing that, I was playing through starcraft again, wondering why I was so inept socially and had such a hard time meeting girls.

My sleep doctor would tell me that I've probably had apnea since I gained weight in college, and because of that have not had a decent nights sleep since college which has led to scattered, ADD type thinking patterns which lend themselves naturally to video games and comic books. Actually, he did kind of argue that with me a little bit. And there may be something to the fact that these revelations are starting to sink in after I've been on a breathing machine that enables me to have R.E.M sleep again. But I don't think my lack of self-edification can entirely be the result of outside forces. In other words, choices were made in regards to how and when to improve myself.

Please understand, this is not intended to be some sort of angst-ridden confession. It's just that I look back at the last decade or so, and I realize I've done very, very little to edify myself. Yes, I got my Bachelor of Science, and then my Master's degree. Yes, I have a great job where I am appreciated. But I think I could have done all of them much more rigorously and impressively. If you'll pardon the massive white-boy ego, I am looking back on the last decade of my life and realizing I have fallen far short of what I believe I am capable of. It feels like I have put 90% of my energies into memorizing the changing dynamics of the X-men over 400 issues (and other similar projects) and about 10% of my energies into my school, work and learning new fun and/or useful skills. And that disturbs me. So I'm thinking that with my thinking patterns emerging from the no-sleep cocoon, I should probably re-consider how I spend my time. Not to cut the things I like out, just maybe to put them in their proper proportion.

What I've also realized, is that as interactive as a video game is, it's not really a creative outlet. And due to all the other crap going on with my life now, I'm starting to realize I need to really develop a creative outlet. One of the edifying things I wanted to do over the last ten years, but never did of course, is write. So for now, I'm going to start by doing more of that. Not that it needs to be good, just that I want to do it. The most perverse consequence of this re-awakened ambition has been the urge to write poetry. Really, godawful poetry similar in nature and design to those that I used to torture others with in high school. I probably won't be torturing the blog with it, but should it appear, now you know why.