Vacuous Mumbling

For myself and a few others I know (for them and I), originality is a pursuit above all others, a goal to be reached, a success beyond measure. Synthesizing, creating, weaving together new ideas is our craving. It is, ultimately, our downfall, as we analyze ourselves and analyze our work and realize that everything we do is ultimately derivative of something, leading to a personal dissatisfaction and an unnecessary negative self-esteem feedback loop. "Why?" we ask ourselves, why can't we write like Melville, paint like Van Gogh, play music like Barry Manilow? Why can't we develop entirely new things, like they did? Why can't we revolutionize our field of creativity like them? Ultimately the secret, the things we forget to tell ourselves, the part of life that we ignore is that none of these artists were original themselves. No artist is. No person is. We are the sum of our experience, the output of our own lives. We are kaleidoscopes, twisting and repurposing everything we take in as our creative source. The concept of "the starving artist" or the "tortured soul" of an artist stem from an understanding of our kaleidoscopean natures. If we as people experience suffering or loss in an emotionally profound way, our art reflects the profundity of our emotions likewise. If we as people do not suffer, if we do not have any real depth of emotion to draw upon, our art demonstrates a lack of depth. It's not to say that tragedy (or bliss) is a necessary component of a good artist. What is to say is that emotions are a necessary component of good art. The stronger the emotion, the stronger the art.

Culture, specifically modern American culture, creates the drive for originality that plagues us, and to a larger extent plagues my entire generation. Originality is a marketing hook, a way to sell a product. Buy these shoes and express your individuality. Wear this hat, you'll be the most original on the block. Dang. I'm having trouble focusing on writing this, so It's about to get a bit looser.

Despite this common perception, however, culture (at least, pop culture, the culture sold on television) is a reflection of society and the individuals in that society. No one would try to sell originality if no one wanted originality. While there is certainly a large streak of people who want originality because they're told that people should want originality, the source (the egg) of the problem ultimately comes from people (rather, artists) themselves. Why would we become so driven by this concept? What changed between now and say, 100 years ago? Technology did. More people are yet again exposed to more art in more places than ever before. We preserve art in such vast quantities that it becomes impossible to honestly say "I've never heard of that" of anything in any field. The sheer amount of data is overwhelming and intimidating and ultimately the source of this anxiety. A thousand, even hundred years ago, the only music you heard was music made in the few places you could afford to travel. The only books you read (assuming you could read) were the ones that your local rich man or clergy or (if you were very lucky and lived near one) place of learning happened to possess. Ideas that were inimical to any of those sources were often kept hidden and relatively inaccessible. The only paintings you saw were again the ones in wealthy hands or in church. It was entirely possible to be original because every existing idea in the world wasn't more or less available to you for whatever purpose. As human beings are constantly driven towards novelty and invention, being shackled with the knowledge of every idea and being unable to develop anything new is a legitimate psychic fear. Who are we as people if we are simply re-iterating previous paths? How do we reconcile ourselves as having worth if all that we create is obsolete upon creation. It's no mistake that we're driven towards "consumerism" and defining ourselves by what we buy, because what we buy is one of the few things we have left to ourselves as expression. At least I can buy different things from everyone else, if I can't draw something different than all of them.

Have you ever visited tvtropes? Odds are, yes. It's a website with a reputation for addicting explorations in the categorization of "tropes" or themes represented in fiction. It's a great read, because it inspires a lot of the sort of knowing "aha!" that comes from making connections between works. Ultimately, though, it is damaging to our collective artistic psyches, because it emphasizes the salient point that nothing you come up with will ever have its own individual tv trope. Your creative output will be measured and analyzed and slotted into the website as an amalgam of all that has come before. Here, too, are the tools to unnecessarily analyze your own work even as you attempt to create it. May you never live free from your own insecurity. This is the reality we live in today; an endless spiral of feelings of inadequacy inspired by nothing larger or more significant than our own brains.

The only way artists will escape the whirlpool is through a tacit ability to ignore your self when creating art. To escape the need to innovate by escaping one's own mind. It's an attitude, ultimately. It's a state of mind that is wholly focused upon the creation and not even partially on the creator. The state of mind is often referred to as "being inspired" or "inspiration." Some people never feel this a single moment of their lives. Others are so frequently inspired that they're locked up in a facility for fear of them doing harm to themselves or others. It is yet another component of creating art, and one that has become all the more vital with the conscious brain achieving such greater heights in insecurity. Other than that, the only option is to either become so sheltered that every idea becomes innovative to you, or to be intellectually uncurious, so that the exploration of other's ideas becomes uninteresting and ultimately is avoided. There are other options, but none that escape the insecurity entirely. Some artists embrace the insecurity and self-deprecate to the point of absurdity, essentially becoming depressing vacuums of depression that are suspicious in that they've yet to simply kill themselves because they are clearly not happy and in the attitude they're in, they only promulgate further unhappiness by continuing to exist. It is to the point where you wonder whether or not they're sincere in their self-deprecation and why they continue to put themselves forth before the public if they really have that bad an attitude of themselves. Never believe and actor who claims they can't stand themselves, because there they are, in the limelight, on the big screen, pretending to be other people only so they can be seen. Certainly, they are other people, but in reality, it's still them, and so much them that they are recording them and showing them to everyone they can. Even further, don't listen to the people who claim to be honest and that their honesty somehow makes them that much better than those other guys who don't tell you that they're just selling a product. They're still selling a product, they're just smiling sweetly and informing you that their dick is in your ass while they screw you.

Well, ultimately I've come to the point in this essay where my internal voice insists that I balance it out by saying "I could be wrong. Maybe no one cares about originality but me. Maybe originality is actually sold by marketers and is not particularly prevalent in the populace. Maybe I'm just obsessive about this and the "human drive for novelty" is something that I and other obsessives created to feel good about ourselves. Maybe people in the past had just as much access to ideas, either through simple neighbors or just word of mouth proliferation. Maybe inspiration doesn't exist, and maybe art doesn't need emotions of particular depth to express something. I don't know. And ultimately it's because I don't know that I write. I'm trying to describe what I feel like a situation is. I'm trying to express a point of view. Ultimately, every part of my point of view could be wrong, but it still exists. Arguing against it does not destroy the viewpoint and will probably not change the viewpoint.

That is my method of evading my constant internal stream of argument. That is the only way I evade the stings of realizing that nothing I believe is founded in reality. I believe in the inherent worth and existence of every viewpoint, and I disregard claims of their disfactuality by emphasizing the inherent worth of every viewpoint as being interesting and relevant to the environment the viewpoint came from.

I can't really think of where to go from here, and I just read my last sentence and it seems pretty incoherent, so I'm going to stop. Baring the internal processes of my writing has more to do with me attempting to give my writing relevance by hoping that they help you, the reader, relate to me, the author, or at least me, the author at the present time I'm writing this. Hopefully that makes the work readable and relatable on some scale beyond the simple (extraneous, multisyllabic, imaginary) words in it.

The Dao of Jake

I'm feeling restless tonight, so I'm going to write up some self-affirming, biased "aphorisms" or possibly "moral standards" or maybe a "coda." To emulate the rather annoying trend of people using the word Dao literally (see: The Daos of Wu and Pooh), I'll call it the Dao of Jake, incidentally my name on twitter. (thetaoofjake)

These are things that I try and often fail to live by, and not necessarily things that have worked or will always work or will work for you. Ultimately it's yet another of my ongoing attempts at self-description, of understanding how and why I function while still functioning.

1. The first step in being able to do anything is to believe that you can do anything. The moment you tell yourself "I cannot do this" is the moment you are not able to do this. This is not to say that you can actually do anything. That would be impossible. But you can do nothing if you do not believe you can. Do not listen to those who would tell you that you cannot do something because until you try, you don't know and neither do they. Remember, until you prove otherwise, I can fly and shoot lasers from my eyes.
   
2. Don't be afraid of what other people think of you. People are always going to dislike you no matter what you do. Literally. There is no legitimate way to get everyone to like you if they actually know anything about you. There are simply too many people to reasonably manage an entirely successful public image. So many politicians and celebrities have tried, but all it takes is one person who can't stand either to ruin it for them. So accept it. Embrace it, and do whatever you feel is best without the fear of what other people might think is best. Inhibition is just society's way of trying to control you, but you know the secret, society is just a perception of reality independent of actual people. Remember: the people who think you're an asshole or a weirdo or a nut are not the sort of people you would want to hang out with anyway and if you meet enough people, you're certain to find plenty that support you in every aspect simply because you're you.
   
3. Everything is transitory. This is the "this too shall pass" line. Nothing is permanent. It's not a reason for concern, but a cause for celebration! All sorrow, all hurt, all wounds do heal over time. Or they don't because people nurse them and feed them and turn them into purposes for existence. Letting go (see: detachment) is the most important part of transcending pain or sadness. It really is no coincidence that the "wise holy words" of nearly every popular religion happen to mention this. It's the point and focus of Buddhism, which takes it to a bit of an extreme. It's mentioned a few times in the Judeo-Christian bible. It's sort of mentioned in a somewhat indirect way (the direct way follows) in the Dao De Jing. I tend to summarize it in "sooner or later we're all going to be dead. There's no point in wasting time on that sort of thing anyway."
   
4. Don't take anything personally. Nothing is really personal anyway, because no one else can really understand you (cue linkin park) because their perceptual reality is entirely different than yours. Ten times out of ten, when someone insults you or insults something you cherish, it's more out of a reaction to something that bothered them than an actual assessment of your character. To take it to an absurdist extent, when someone calls you a motherfucker, they really don't mean that you go out and fuck mothers. They're just using terms that the disembodied "society" point of view labels as "vulgar" and "crude" in an attempt to irk your societal appreciation portion of your brain. (no, I refuse to mention Freud) If they're yelling it at you, then they're also trying to irk the threat elimination portion of your brain and cause you to back down and flee or escalate into a conflict which they hope they'll win. Again, they don't actually think you're a motherfucker. And this applies to everything, even stuff that sounds like legitimate criticism. The key to this entire section is detachment. In order to successfully avoid falling into the trap of reacting on instinct, you need to approach a situation from a non-emotional level. Emotions are great and fantastic and a big portion of being human, but in many cases they cripple people's ability to work together effectively and harmoniously. Detaching in these situations is the difference between, for example, thinking of an entire population of people versus a few people. Morally, or specifically socio-morally, detachment occupies a weird oscillating viewpoint of either being bad or good depending on the event, the time of day, the economic climate, whatever. Often detachment is viewed as a negative approach to life and considered being essentially inhuman. Robots are often presented in movies and novels as being essentially monsters for lacking compassion or remorse or a sense of horror that society tends to assume would strike the average person. Characters in fiction are rather often presented with a choice between who lives or dies; a loved one and, say, an entire planet. The heroes always (e-mail me with exceptions, I'll read/view them) choose the particular survival of the few or the one over the greater whole or the many. It's an essentially selfish choice based primarily on emotions, but the hero is always lauded for his strong moral compass and his ability to choose what's most important (themselves) and incidentally they manage to save everyone else too. A detached, rational analysis would posit that given the choice of the two with no likely alternative and no guarantee that you're living a Hollywood movie, the logical answer (and honestly, the legitimately moral answer) would be to sacrifice that which is important to you so that others can live and have things that are important to them. Sometimes, the opposite is presented, as a character can prove his/her moral triumph through sacrificing themselves so that others may succeed, but never are the characters asked to sacrifice someone they love or, say, their family. (again, exceptions emailed to thejakeman16ATgmailDOTcom) So overall, it's a fuzzy space to be in. It's really one of those things that will make people either love you or hate you, which ties back in with the not caring what other people think of you. Personally, I don't think that detachment necessarily entails a lack of compassion. I just think it means that at the moment in time when you are detached, you are letting your (brain) pre-frontal lobe think things through rather than letting your (heart) hypothalamus think things through. If you are truly compassionate, your brain will consider that first, without having to go through the emotional turmoil where you feel sorrow and remorse and anger and fear wracking your brain and insisting on a choice that may not actually be compassionate or at least considerate. Of course if you're already a dick, your brain will be working out how to benefit from a situation with or without emotions. It really depends on where your loyalties lie and not on whether you're detaching from your emotions.
   
5. Love everyone. Everyone else is a living being, something that is so rare and so extraordinary that somehow we ended up with a staggering number of us and it's now considered mundane. Some crazy underwear-on-the-outside stuff when you think about it. Each of these living people has their own perspective, too. They're all out there, experiencing a version of the world that you will never experience yourself because you are too busy experiencing your own version of reality that no one else can share. Sometimes this concept is considered tragic and ultimately dividing and separating us all in our own little words so that no one can truly understand us (cue: linkin park and heavy doses of neon genesis evangelion), but that ignores the reality of the situation and places reality in a WIIFM ("what's in it for me?" thank you Ms. Merlin and DECA marketing) situation. What's really important here is that there are this many other people and they do have entirely different experiences and worldviews and this is amazing and you should love them all merely because they exist and are so different and are unable to understand us. Marvel at the concept of culture and the idea that despite ostensibly the same language being spoken between you and another English speaker, each word means something different to them. It's a crazy and poorly-understood-and-often-overlooked facet of life. Wasting your time hating or disregarding or ignoring these other points of view is the real tragedy here.
   
6. No one is wrong. Factually, someone can be wrong. A person can be demonstrated to be wrong about certain things, like the claim "the earth is flat" by being sailed around the world going more or less one direction and shown that the earth is in fact a globe. However, most people don't have that point of reference because they've never experienced for themselves whether or not the earth is a globe. All they know is that a lot of people say that the earth is a globe, so they take it on faith that the earth is a globe. Even having sailed around the world does not grant a person the knowledge that the earth will always be a globe. Because reality is entirely unpredictable, perhaps the earth becomes flat for a fraction of a fraction of a smaller fraction of a second every year without anyone noticing. Perhaps the earth is physically a globe, but behaves in two-dimensional space as a cube for some inexplicable reason. There really is no logical way to disprove these claims. In fact, there is no logical way to disprove anything. All people really go on is faith, either in their own experiences, or in other people's assertions of reality. And that's everything. Even the concept of the words I'm supposedly typing on a computer is entirely subjective to my own assumption that I'm experiencing this and not, in fact, dreaming it or imagining it or simply a mindless automaton trained to believe that I'm expressing myself but I'm actually slaving away for Big Government/Corporation/Boss. I cannot say for certain any of these experiences are real. There's a popular Phil 101 concept wherein the universe was created last Thursday, with everyone suddenly having all of the memories and ideas and belongings that they assume they always had and there's no way to disprove it, which should also prove that it's pretty much pointless to take any further philosophy classes. I'm a practical man and the practical application of this isn't to despair at the entire uncertainty of existence, but to apply it to the appreciation of differences in existence from one person to the next. It is entirely true, for example, for a devout man in Kabul that Allah is the lord and the only lord and he insists upon the rules that he gave to his prophet Mohammed, just as much as it is true for me to believe that all of us are a part (specifically, tiny reflections) of a greater being that is comprised of the entire universe and the source of all things. There is no real way to logically disprove either of us, and our views are entirely contradictory, but neither of us is wrong, because our perceptions, our very versions of reality are different. Extend this to every other belief (which is everything) and you should understand.
   
7. Rules are made by people. This one is a tad less philosophical and much more practical. We live in a world full of rules. We actually live in a world full of exponentially increasing rules, because rules have become pretty popular these days. I saw a news report on some new device that will allow parents who purchase a new Ford set limits not only on the speed their teens can drive the car, but on the specific Sirius radio stations they can listen to. Honestly, horrifying, but followed by a report on new rules for teens to earn a full license, which is literally a license to follow more rules. Also I keep misspelling license "liscense" because I can't spell. (Secretly I'm not literate either. I just read magazines and porn novels.) Rules are actually important, though, because they define reality and give it a sense of legitimate predictability. Rules are enforced upon children in hopes of instilling some sense of discipline or moral values on them by granting the universe a sense of legitimate consequence for being a little jerkface. It doesn't matter that the consequences are totally unrelated (take candy from your brother and you'll be made to stand in the corner for five minutes), what matters is instilling the vague sense that reality itself (id est: your parents) will punish your transgression. All of this is an amazing sort of abstraction created by people to obscure the ultimate truth that people are making the rules. Ignore the man behind the green curtain, focus only on the razzle-dazzle of applied karma. It doesn't matter that the consequences are usually out of whack with the actual actions (Anyone feel like rolling on E for 30 years of imprisonment? Maybe you can get caught three times and be put away for life in California), what matters is that reality is defined and controlled. The practical application of this knowledge is (surprise) not anarchy, but understanding that talking to the right person and not being afraid of the rules goes a lot farther towards getting you through "the system." A lot of the time, it won't work. There are probably a thousand people who are totally bought into "the system" for every one reasonable person. What's important, though, is that you don't give up on something just because the rules say you can't do it, which hopefully ties back to my first point and wraps this damn thing up.
   

I'm not perfect (though I believe the first step towards being perfect is believing that you can be) and these might not be the best things to do for you (though in my version of reality, they totally are). I don't always follow them and they don't always work for me, but I think just defining and describing them says something more about me (I'm pretty egocentric) than before, and I hope they way you react or interpret what I said helps you understand a little more about yourself.

Happy New Year.

Damn. I should write a self-help book. Watch the fuck out, The Power.

War on the Internet

Earlier this year, I wrote an essay (more a press release, really) on the Wikileaks release of documents concerning the Afghanistan war. I was (and am) elated that the leak occurred, as it demonstrates to me the part and parcel purpose of the internet, the free dissemination of information to all those with access. As I'd hoped, Wikileaks has only grown in notoriety since. The timing of the arrest of Wikileak's founder Julian Assange coming shortly after his organization's release of embarrassing diplomatic cables is not a coincidence, especially when the circumstances surrounding his arrest are so suspect. How does it happen that a man who is called to be executed by a former U.S. presidential candidate is arrested mere days after such a release.

How does it come to be that he is charged with sexual assault that may or may not constitute rape by two women who admit that the sex was consensual and in fact bragged about it on Twitter and Facebook? Two women who had not actually accused him of anything, instead following a Swedish procedure of asking for "police advice," which does not constitute an accusation in case the accusation itself is wrongful. Why is he in prison when the actual case against him was charged, then dropped, then charged again be three separate prosecutors. Why is he in an Interpol warrant for this situation, where Swedish authorities only want to question him about the allegations? Why did Swedish authorities refuse to use any of the proposed alternate methods of communication to achieve such questioning? Most importantly, why was he imprisoned and denied bail in Britain despite turning himself in and not being formally charged with a crime? I'm really not claiming there's any sort of conspiracy here. This IS the authority, and this IS what they do. There's no cover-up of motive here, it's bald and plain for anyone to see.

The man is a political target, and he's made enemies with some surprising people. Sarah Palin wants him dead. Despite being a popular media figure and the host of an absurd pseudo-reality TV series about how to backpack with a lot of money and people with you, she's willing to call for this man's blood, in a move that would seem politically expedient for the entire "right" spectrum of politics. This is disregarding the fact that there really is no U.S. law this man is breaking, nor has anyone actually come to harm because of his organization. It is, of course, points in a political game. The right wants to convince people that Obama is incapable of defeating Julian Assange for one reason or another, and that by voting Republican, you can elect someone who can/will. Palin for president; She always gets her man. No one has yet pointed out that this is the same organization that exposed her own corruption through her e-mails.

The scope of this conflict, however, is much larger than the petty partisanship of politics in P'america (Couldn't break the combo). This is truly a war about democracy and what role the people have in shaping their own government. The concept of democracy does not include the concept of the government keeping secrets from its populace, as the populace is indeed the government, as per the intent of the founding fathers. By claiming security interests in keeping secrets, the government has managed to divorce itself from the people and become an entity unto its own. Here at last, the capability of the people to share information with one another instantly and for such little cost demonstrates the ultimate folly of attempting to keep state secrets. What was once a matter of determined investigative reporters is now a matter of simply finding a hole in the system, an inevitable hole because no system comprised of people can truly be completely secure. The government failed to keep these documents secret for the same reason that conspiracies are almost universally unlikely: Humans are the weakest link. Giving anyone the authority to view this information is a risk. What if they disagree with your findings? What if they have a moral change of heart? There will always be leaks, whether or not there's someone there to report them. And here, now, with Wikileaks, not only is there someone to report them, but someone with the capability of disseminating these leaks instantaneously to everyone with access to the web. The same system that has everyone worried about their privacy and well being through outlets like Facebook has also inevitably destroyed the privacy of the U. S. Government.

The problem here is that the government should never have had that privacy in the first place. The word "private" connotes "separate, confidential, personal," adjectives that should have nothing to do with a public institution. If the government is truly made of the people, why don't the people know what the government is doing?

This is the internet at its best. This is ultimately what it was made for, the dissolution of borders and nations and governments. This is an entity that is too large for the nations to simply shut it off. This is an entity without state borders, except its own. This is, at last, an entity who has no political agenda but its own agenda of sharing everything with everyone at all times. It heartens me to see the usually nebulous and poorly aimed Anonymous banding together to defend what is ultimately going to be the first war on the internet through attacks on the corporations that have decided that their allegiance to the systems in place are more important than the services they provide. It heartens me that in response to the shutdown of the main Wikileaks website, not one or two, but hundreds of mirror sites sprang up overnight in defiance. Go internet. I'm right behind them. And if you care at all for our freedom, not as citizens of the United States, but our freedoms as people, so are you.

Analyzing Your Surroundings

I need to put together a list of things a person should never study if they want to ever view the world in anything like a normal fashion ever again. The color wheel, for one. Studying the way color relationships work gives you a pretty thorough ability to understand why certain things are certain colors (at least when it comes to human-created objects). You pretty go from thinking "oh, that looks nice," to thinking "Aha, what an interesting use of a vibrant triadic relationship in that purple and green bus logo with the yellow highlights," like the total pretentious douchebag you are.

Another thing not to study: how gender is performed and presented. Twisted pixel literally just announced a sequel to their "'Splosion Man" game, titled "Ms. 'Splosion Man" as a homage to Ms. Pac-Man. The picture announcing the release is this:

So, take a look at that. This is a female version of a male character (more or less) and despite being a freakish being of non-organic origin and thus without any meaningful physical markers of sex (as a creature whose sole purpose is to create violent explosions, it's probably wise to leave out a function for it to reproduce by), here we have a very clearly female character. Take a look (you probably already did) at dat ass. It literally bulges. You can also catch a glimpse of side cleavage. Clearly all of the scientists are madly in love with her/it (note little hearts) with the exception of the evil looking characters up top, who seem indifferent. Note the female evil character in the upper right (as marked by the pronounced lips and longer hair) appears to be angry. Jealous? Upset? Who knows.

Besides the very obvious assets of the character, notice a few other details marking her/its femininity. The bow on it/her head, the eyelashes long and curved, and her pink color. All additional and non-physiological symbols of femininity. More importantly, notice the fingers and the way her/its hands are splayed. That's a very feminine pose to put a figure in. When I was a kid in elementary school, I was subject to a somewhat absurd assertion that there was a "right" and "wrong" way for a guy to look at his fingernails. The correct way was to look at them with fingers folded over an upright palm, halfway to a fist. The wrong way was to view them extended from the back of the hand. Viewing your fingernails from this position meant you were gay, just as much as a limp wrist or a tongue in your cheek. I'm sure there are a bunch of interesting psychological reasons that having your fingers out and strangely arrayed is considered weaker. I think the simple fact hat it is not a fist probably suffices.

The teaser image isn't the only expression of femaleness, either. Check out the logo for the new game.

Notice how again, the character has her/it's fingers splayed in a strange and feminine manner. Also notice that her feet are, besides being more shapely than regular 'splosion man's, positioned like a ballerina doing a leap. Also note the cleavage and protruding butt. For proper comparison, here's the first game's logo:

Notice that unlike Ms. 'Splosion Man, regular 'Splosion Man's hands are balled into fists and his gait clearly denotes running in a fairly masculine manner. Even the angle at which he is viewed is different, as he's/it's demonstrated from a profile angle, while Ms. 'Splosion Man is viewed from a quarter angle, which according to this website with too many ads on it, is a more intimate and emotionally charged angle to view things by. Bonus thing to note, the shade of fuchsia or lavender or whatever that Ms. 'Splosion Man is is complementary to the shade of yellow that her bow is. Same with the logo.

Ultimately the result is otherwise perfectly enjoyable things becoming exercises in analysis where the struggle to understand a work supersedes the actual consumption and enjoyment of the work. I sometimes worry that if I learn too much about the world and its processes, I'll become completely unable to appreciate anything and only capable of recreating the exact creative steps that went in to building an expression. Eventually I will become so wrapped in referential icons and indices that I'll somehow morph into a postmodernist writer who can't write a damn word without referring to half a dozen other things within or without his own work.

Eye Smasher

I hate being busy almost as much as I hate not being so. I am still here in New Orleans, and one way or another I'm still alive. All this really guarantees is that I'm still here being opinionated and irascible. For one reason or another, my apartment I live in has been home to one person or another nearly nonstop for the last 3ish weeks or so. This coincides with a great deal of activity for me, searching out a job lead or meeting people or just in general doing things. It's been stressful, at the least. It's not been the fault of the guests themselves, but rather the situation as a whole. Compound that with an intense 50 hour work week for April and an intense series of events for myself (12 hour days at conventions, volunteering, babysitting) and you have something of a difficult period of time. I don't know how to properly express it. It's just been exasperating and exhausting.

Our first houseguest was a friend of a friend who is currently in flux at this point of her life. She's a single mom (well, she's in a relationship, but they're not married and he's not the father, so I'm not sure what that falls under) who got evicted with her boyfriend after he lost his job. She's a pretty nice person, and we agreed to have her for a while before she moved on to another friend of hers.

Next we had (for one night) a co-worker of April's who lives out in Metarie and was going to volunteer at the superdome but didn't want to take the eight buses (well, four) necessary to get there in the morning. She's pretty cool. We took her to a party. Then we totally served some nachos for like 8 hours.

Then we got Ina who is pretty bad-azz and not a problem guest at all. We've been doing this and that with her all while she's been here. She's super cool. Along with her, we got an artist who she is a big fan of and another artist who is tagging along? Driving? Zoe Boekbinder and Rita Burkholder, actually. They're both reasonable, though Zoe seems pretty distant. Rita is a darling who reminds me of my cousin and has been fantastic on their entire stay. Totally look up Helen Kellers Ukulele and buy like a zillion albums. It's ukulele music and very cool. Zoe goes by Zoe, so look up Zoe Boekbinder too; she's got a great voice.

So again, really it's nothing to do with the actual people we have over, it's just that we have people over combined with the fact that I've been all over the place, running from interviews to conventions to covering voodoo to April covering voodoo to deciding to dress like a woman on Halloween to changing my mind, to changing it back again but finding out that I would be literally too busy to do so, to volunteering at Prime-Time to volunteering with Charles and United for Peace to running to a Ceasefire meeting and so on and so forth. I really haven]'t had any time to vegetate. It's a good thing and a bad thing, really. I am happy that I'm not vegetating that much because it used to be pretty much all I did, but on the other hand, I really need to vegetate every so often, or I pretty quickly go insane. It all still pretty much falls under the category of competitive flailing, and damn am I flailing to my best.

Point point point. Everybody's got to have a point. My point is that I can't find the time to write, much less keep in touch or whatever. I haven't stopped, so I can't appreciate anything. Nothing has sunk in just yet. Here I am attempting to squeeze out a bit of writing, mostly by stealing time from myself. It's 2 in the morning, later than I want or can afford for it to be, but here I am writing. I hope this really isn't keeping April up, but I feel like I have to do this to retain any legitimacy as a writer. What is my point? What can I talk about?

Why don't I talk about drugs? So far everything I've drank or smoked has had more or less the same effect on me. They all make me very tired and unable to focus. Which might be interesting from a writing point of view (let's see what I write drunk! Whoo!) but I am rarely near a writing receptacle when this happens. I don't really converse better with people or anything, I don't suddenly magically lose all of my insecurities; I just become too tired to care. In some ways that's similar to when I do write, simply because I am also too tired and too detached from my readers to care what they think. So maybe that's what the goal is?

Judging by TV ads and what I hear from people all the time, getting intoxicated should be some gateway into a magical experience of social lubrication and joy. Introverts suddenly open up, Awkwardness is replaced by hilarity, and all are equal under the watchful eyes of inebriety. It's quite an expectation, and rather disappointing that it's not even remotely as cool as I'd been lead to believe. It is in fact so underwhelming that I wonder if I'm doing it wrong and I feel like I'm just around the corner from the "right" amount/combination of alcohol or the "perfect" toke. I don't really care that much though, and I feel bad for not caring. How do you turn down a beer or a hit by saying "yeah, this shit doesn't really do anything for me?" I'd almost rather be a teetotaler than a big jerk who just doesn't like the feeling all that much. It's a strange experience, to be sure.

So what is my point? Drugs are stupid? Don't do 'em fool? Not really. I think drugs just fall under yet another one of those categories of things that simply work out better for some people more than others. It's like a hobby. Some people are interested in it and derive legitimate value from it, but others are not interested or do not derive value from it. That label is probably only strange in light of the way that society tends to treat all of these things as being universally effective (and often universally harmful). It's just another culturally driven mindset. A stereotype, probably.

I guess I'll stop here because I really am eye-smashingly tired. I hope I can get some more writing done soon. Thanks for reading.

Prediction

No one has any idea what they’re doing. We’re all blind to the consequences of our actions. We make predictions, we make assumptions, but until the consequence has arrived, we have no true idea of what it will look like. Some people tell other people that they indeed do know what the future holds. Some people will tell you that they indeed do know better, that they are “experts” or that their advanced age or experience somehow qualifies them as being that much more aware of their universe. Some will say “I know more because I’m more mature/intelligent/capable/observant.”

It is, of course, a lie. It’s one of those lies that are repeated often enough that it’s taken for granted as truth. It’s codified, in fact. Codified in religion, codified in law, codified in society. The concept of authority lies on the concept of responsibility. The concept of responsibility relies on the concept of being aware of the consequences of one’s actions. The idea is self-sustaining through a system whereby it’s accepted that the passage of time confers a sort of prescience. There’s always a “wise old man;” never a “wise young man.”

I read quite a few articles on a fairly artificial controversy over Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” campaign, hoping to lift the spirits of gay youth. I read a number of other articles espousing and promoting a polyamorous lifestyle. I read an entire webcomic espousing feminism and atheism as ideal examples of society. All of these things had a unifying theme, a sense of self-righteousness that pervaded their individual campaigns. This is what is moral and correct and good. That is what is immoral and incorrect and bad. This is an act of attaining freedom. That is restrictive and reduces freedom. All of these are based on basic assumptions of what is right and what is wrong. All of them are based on morals, essentially. The understanding, the buy-in, is that these morals are more beneficial to human society than the morals that disagree. That as much freedom for as many people possible is better than limiting freedom to certain people. That people really do have a fundamental and expected right to do what they want, so long as it hurts no one.

These ideas don’t have any particular logical grounding. Assuming that your logical goal is to simply promote and extend the human race, the status quo has proven to be fantastically successful. Radically altering the concepts of love, marriage, genders, or religion are simply solving a problem that doesn’t really exist. Assuming that the logical goal is to make everyone happy, you’re basically in the same boat. Happiness is subjective. Perhaps the majority of people are happy with monogamous relationships. Perhaps the majority are happy not to have the pressure and responsibility that a man might have. Perhaps the majority is fine with homophobia, and it makes them happy to restrict gender into easily comprehended boundaries. Perhaps they’re fine with believing in a friendly magic ghost in the sky. Certainly it can’t be the other way around, otherwise the majority would make a change and support these things.

“But Jake,” you say, “what if they simply aren’t aware of any alternatives? Society is simply an inertial engine that tries its best to maintain society exactly as it is, even if they did decide to change things, society would probably quash the change as quickly as it could.” Excellent point, however society is still made of people. Scapegoating it as a root of all malfeasance dehumanizes and removes the importance of the people in a society, and misunderstands what is actually being referred to as “society.” The vast majority of what people describe as “societal pressure” is actually internally generated anxieties attempting to predict the consequences of diverging from what everyone else does. Again, as we can see, faulty reasoning based on poor predictive ability. Let me give you an example: I have painted toenails, very nicely done by my girlfriend. They’re painted in that dark red color typically associated with striking dresses or very luscious lips(tick). I wore sandals today because all I have are sandals and dress shoes, and I don’t like having to wear dress shoes very much. The predicted response is that people would look down on me and instantly notice my nails and possibly remark on them or shun me. The problem would be compounded by me riding a “girls” model purple cruiser bicycle. “Ew,” the public would say, “I bet that guy is a transvestite.” This is the prediction, the assumption, the very concept of how reality will be in the near future. How wrong it is. I walked and biked and made it from here to there without a single comment, without a single shun. Hardly anyone gave me more than a second glance. The only time I heard anything concerning the nails was when my girlfriend, in an act of sheer malice, pointed them out to her co-workers. What did they do? Make the same general prediction of occurrences, while denying that they themselves would ever be so judgmental. Society is made of people who are too concerned with how they themselves appear to worry significantly about others. A lot of people, at least subconsciously, realize that, and that is why there are so many people with strange quirks out there. Everyone has some eccentricities. It is totally impossible for a person to completely tie themselves to the way they assume others want them to appear. They all have outlets and they all have comfort zones. Just as you claim that people may change their mind about what makes them happy if they step out of these zones and try new things, so do people have a complete inability to understand what lies beyond their perception. To you, perhaps, these comfort zones, the limits of eccentricity perceived to be allowed by society

My point is, no one really knows what they’re doing. Life isn’t as simple as all that. Life is a series of decisions made based on faulty data and irrational assumptions. Assuming that any one viewpoint has more inherent credence than any other is another of those irrational assumptions. I am not trying to make an argument here; I don’t necessarily disagree with any of these viewpoints. What I disagree with is the assumption of morality, that these arguments are somehow correct by the very virtue of their content.

I’m sorry it has taken me so long to post this. I have actually written a few things that I haven’t put up for one reason or another. I’ve been somewhat busy and I haven’t had the same sort of night of solitude that inspires me to write for a while.

Heroes in a Half-Shell

I was going to write something interesting and informative, but I just found out that there was a teenage mutant ninja turtles crossover movie featuring all three major iterations of the turtles (1984 comic originals, 1987 cartoon, 2003 cartoon) in the same movie. This has totally shoved everything else out of my mind. Torrrrreennnnntiiiiing.

What’s up?

I am sitting here this evening writing yet again. I have read an acquaintance of mine write up ridiculous mockeries of what he feels represents the modern patriotic spirit; an arrogant and materialistic spirit of ignorance, and modern religious revivalist fundamentalist attitudes; an irrational and intolerant voice of spite. He posted them on his facebook and aimed them at his facebook "friends," ever a captive audience (*cough*). People reacted one way or another, either understanding the joke and winking their approval of the lambastment or misunderstanding the intentions of his writing and voicing their dislike of his supposed rhetoric.

 

It amounts to very little, except a bit of snide pleasure at poking fun of those who don't get the joke, and is ultimately divisive and counter-productive to its purpose. But what is its purpose? To make fun of the people who genuinely hold these opinions, certainly, but what goal is that? I could just as well say that racist pseudo-patriotic bigots who wave the American flag as a justification for being completely rude and arrogant are all pigfuckers and the goal has been accomplished. It was vastly easier. Maybe not as clever. The outcome, though, is the same. So why go through the production? It's not for a particularly intense hatred. He did not suffer one of these people shooting his family or anything particularly traumatic in regards to these people; he just disagrees with them pretty thoroughly.

 

Why, then, why formulate such a vicious mockery? Why commit the effort? The answer is pretty simple. When there is nothing a person can do to change a situation, a popular resort is for people to complain. This form of mockery is a form of complaint, of exposing the absurdities of reality for what they are and hoping that his opinions are vindicated in the eyes of his peers and that his ideological enemies are flustered by the essentially false image he portrays of them. It's an outlet for a subtle feeling of anxiety of knowing that in the world there are people that disagree with you so thoroughly and from your perspective, so illogically and that there is nothing you can really do to change them. So you mock them. You laugh at them; you point out their foibles and minimize their successes. Welcome to the Daily Show. Welcome to the Colbert generation. In decades past, maybe the people would have demonstrated, maybe they would form communes and separated themselves from the rest of society. Perhaps they would have gone on strike; perhaps they'd start a revolution. This generation, though, cannot. It will not, really. It wasn't raised on the principle of action in the face of adversity, it was raised on the concept that the world is the way that it is and there's nothing you can do to change it.

 

Why? Why does this generation feel this way? The answer again is simple. They do live in a world that they can't change. They don't have anything they can do about it. We're in an age where securing employment has become both an intensely depersonalized (ever taken a personality test online? Ever been rejected from a job because you didn't score the right answers?) and completely necessary act. We live in an age of megacorporations that run stores with people who have never even seen the people they work for, who do jobs that essentially transform them into human automatons, reducing their activities and skills and their very worth in a social sense into their ability to transfer money from consumer to owner without stealing it. It's a day and age where it is compulsory to indebt yourself to a faceless bank in exchange for a largely arbitrary and useless term of education before you can find yourself working in one of these corporations. We grew up in an age of soccer moms and extracurriculars and clubs that were formed by people who were not your peers and that you might not actually want to be in but you're there anyway simply to prove that you're a social person with some sort of record of your sociability. Nothing is free and nothing is really optional. We're past the time of legitimate entrepreneurs, self-made people that made the right moves and started their own businesses with less than a high school diploma and maybe the equivalent of a few hundred dollars in their pocket. Those people made themselves, and made themselves well and founded the megacorps that exist today. Their legacies actively ensure that their legacies will be the only of their kind. What passes for today's daring entrepreneurs are smarmy rich kids like Mark Zuckerberg who grow up in suburbs and go to fancy expensive colleges and become even richer by essentially swindling people out of their money providing unnecessary internet services and convincing megacorps to give them unnecessary money for their unnecessary advertising and nothing of any real value is produced.

 

Never before has the disconnect between money and tangible value been so great. The dollar is already based on a floating point that is "determined by the market" and backed "By the full faith and credit of the U.S. government" which ultimately comes down to "it's worth what we say it's worth, and we'll shoot you if you say otherwise." It's a problem, and the depression we're in right now is emblematic of the problem. Money has become a head game. Wall street is a house of cards. Nothing has remotely reasonably tangible value anymore. A house that may cost forty or fifty thousand dollars to build turns around and sells for five hundred thousand dollars, a 900% markup. Then someone buys it, but not with real money, with an agreement that they'll pay a big faceless corporation for thirty to forty years. Plus interest. The home seller gets money, at least. It works out in some weird and complicated way that makes both the faceless corporation and the home seller a fat stack of cash, but screws over the buyer.

 

The reality is this: it has never been as expensive to own a house as now. And when I say never, I mean in all of human existence. A basic need, the need for shelter from the elements, a need shared by most every other living thing on the planet, has now become essentially a luxury for humans. All because of the idea, the concept that perhaps homes are very valuable and all of the games that people play with that assumed value. Leading straight to the problems we're having today. This largely leads to the problem this generation is facing as well. We live in a world where people we don't know and will never meet are actively causing problems in our lives and we can't do a thing about it. We are essentially taxed without representation, as corporate influence in politics continues to become more and more brazen and obvious. Those without are not counted, and those with will do everything in their power to prevent more from joining their ranks.

 

Life is regimented and routine and it really does seem like there's nowhere to go from the inside of the system. Fantasy movies and books are on the rise this generation. Escapism reigns supreme. Depression is also on the rise. Suicide is frighteningly common. The world has become unbearable to some people, and even worse, hopeless. This generation is collapsing in on itself with more and more kids living at home or on the benefit of their relatives for lack of employment or being underemployed, which literally means they're not earning enough to live on their own in their "entry level" jobs. Every position requires "experience" doing the same thing that the position requires, which means to say that there's no apparent way to get a position without having already gotten one. When it comes to people who take rules and limitations very seriously, this totally stymies a job search. The actual answer is to simply ignore this "requirement" and either lie your way into a job or make buddy buddy with someone at the workplace that can rep you. It's a terrible system, encouraging exclusion and dishonesty as a means of survival, but it's the system that we've got.

 

This is the world our generation has grown up in. A fucked up sort of machine that works through a system of obscure rules and mechanisms. It's a brilliant and comforting system for people who like and need routine and predictability in their lives in order to function, but completely terrifying and awful for the other bunch of us like my acquaintance who can't function in a place so small and predictable and stifling. It's very much like going to a movie and being able to predict the rest of the plot in the first ten minutes, so much of this method of life is boring and repetitious. Possibly the worst part is how being different, being interested in doing the wrong thing, is also wrapped up in the same system. Sure, you can express yourself, as long as it's in these predetermined methods and manners. Sure, you can even forgo these, we've got a separate system of underground artistry, just don't expect any legitimacy. There's no reasonable way to escape the system if you want to survive. So people like him and like me and like so many others I've met just complain and make the motions of supporting this culture. Our day will come, maybe. But probably not. Let me just be satisfied with my TV and celebrities and my video games and do whatever it takes to feed my habit.

Outside

It's rejection. That's what this feeling is. It doesn't seem like it, and it logically shouldn't be, but that's all it is. It's infuriating, really. I have no reason to feel this. Especially not all day without end. But here we are and here I am. I spend so much of my time trying to get rid of this ridiculous feeling, doing whatever I can to hammer in the unreality of it. I take exorbitant risks, hoping to shock myself out of the fear, I trust fully and completely with only the slightest provocation in hopes that I will learn that I can do that and that my emotion is groundless. I adopt a veneer of iron-clad confidence, in hopes that this somehow sinks into myself and teaches me how to be confident. I thoroughly justify everything I say and do and think just in case it ever comes to question, so that perhaps if I am rejected, even that won't be so bad, for my actions were rational and had some grounding and it is in fact the other party's fault. Blame the other party instead of wallowing in the emotions.

It's never worked, and possibly it never will. My only other option is to just suffer with it and rationalize and detach and find myself away from myself and away from the emotions that comprise me. I'm not crazy, not really, I just have a complex. And the thing is, it's not futile, it doesn't disrupt every personal relationship I have, but at some point it probably came into play. There's almost always some point in time which I was thoroughly convinced that a person whose respect and admiration or even just acquaintance has been entirely out of my grasp. I've taken small words and brief glances and even simple discourtesies to their illogical extremes, because here in my world I cannot comprehend that perhaps no offense was meant or even conveyed, because I am somewhere in my head constantly looking for reasons to justify my own fears and tell myself "see, I was right, they never really liked you all along because you are awful" because that is the only answer I want to hear sometimes, rather than "no, Jake, you just crazy sensitive. You need to get over stuff. This shit is all in your head" and sometimes I do believe it's all in my head and I understand that and it gives me strength.

Sometimes I even forget about all that and don't realize until later that I should probably be looking at life through my anxieties. Those times are pretty neat, but I forget what they're like once they're over, though. I do loathe myself. I loathe the things I write, I loathe the things I say. I am a loathe of bread. Or something. I don't know. Does anyone ever take me seriously? Sometimes I'm not serious, but that's a lot easier than being serious. I don't want to brook with my real opinion. I will not barter in it lightly. What if my real opinion loses me opportunity? What if it becomes a catalyst for the rejection I fear so much? It's safer to stand on the edges, on the outside.

I'll wake up tomorrow and everything will be okay again and I'll probably forget why I ever felt this way.

Puzzle Quest

I have a problem. I have downloaded Puzzle Quest 2. Puzzle Quest, if you don't know, is Bejewled, except with monsters and swords and things. Puzzle Quest 2 is an updated version of the first puzzle quest, which is a game I literally could not put down. I eventually lost my copy for the DS somewhere, which is possibly the only way I would have stopped playing. We're talking about a game that I played all the way through to beat the ending and conquer every town and capture every monster and find every rune and trained every mount, and then I started a new game and got halfway through that before losing it. So, as you might guess, Puzzle Quest 2 weighs pretty heavily on my mind and in my opinion.

 

It's one of the few games (the other being Tetris) that will literally continue playing in my head in front of my eyes every time I close them. It's like an acid flashback except that it doesn't end. It literally continues through anything I do. I was playing puzzle quest while frying up some crummy rib sandwich thing. I was playing puzzle quest while having intense sex. I am playing puzzle quest right now as I write this. Shitty orchestral music (seriously, this stuff is so ridiculously cheesy and dramatic) is playing in my head right now. I can hear the noises from the gems lining up. I can hear the voice-overs declaring that my combo was "a heroic effort." It's pretty thorough, this obsession. Doesn't miss much.

 

That said, not all my activities have involved Puzzle Quest (at least, not externally). I've been incredibly busy, something that is actually pretty noteworthy for me. It's a good thing that I am dating someone who does things and is pretty active much of the time. It really helps me decide to do stuff. She's a football fan (actually, a sports fan in general) so I get to go places just to watch sports. We went to the French quarter pizzeria (a misleading name, as pretty much every restaurant in the quarter serves pizza) and bar and watched the preseason niners game because she is a niners fan. I feel bad for her, but then I remember that I'm a redskins fan and I haven't watched football in some years because of this. It was fun. Some guy in a hat came along and sang some assorted stuff. Mostly blues, but he threw in a Hendrix song for no reason. I gave him a dollar because I can't actually afford to give him a dollar but I liked him anyway. Grocery shopping here is sort of fun. The nearest grocery store is (thank god) in walking distance, but it's right in the middle of the quarter, so I worry that I'm getting gypped on touristy prices. Being the cheap ass that I am, I mostly buy cooking things there anyway.

 

Anyway, it's in the middle of the whole tourist locale for New Orleans, so I see nothing but contemptible tourists most of the day. Smarmy white folk, flaunting their money and their inability to hold their liquor all over the place. There's some really cool places there, though. I dig the gay grill there (clover) mostly because it's inexpensive. I dig flanagans pub because it's all dark and pub-ish. I like the little cc's community coffee because it's all coffee place/internet repository-ish. I like the river. I like wandering down canal street and walking into hotels that are constantly having conventions (reminder: must write up writeup on deepwater technical symposium) and wandering into empty convention rooms and stealing candy and generally being a nuisance. It's strange, but either they disguise their camera's really well, or they simply have none. Which seems strange because these are pretty ritzy hotels.

 

I've been outside the quarter or midtown or treme a few times. The CBD (central business district) is pretty much what you'd find in a city, big ol' office buildings and related detritus. Uptown is like this place that seems so emblematic of living in the east or the south or anywhere that was built before the 1860s. Lots of grass and trees and old buildings that are short and close together and they all seem very astute, though most of them are pretty much rundown on second reflection. Still, walking down magazine street sometimes feels like walking in the sunset district in SF and sometimes feels like walking in Kalispell if it had a lot more plants and bugs everywhere and sometimes feels like walking in Gaithersburg if everyone there were actually poor. It's a strange feeling, being somewhere that just feels like a horrible amalgamation (I'm looking at you, super-skrull) of everywhere I've been before. The wal-mart here is just like the new one in Kalispell, which is weird because there is no real comparison to that kind of thing in California. Or even in Maryland. I like living here, I think, more because I'm living here than anything else, probably. I'm very content with living most anywhere, and I don't get too incredibly attached to the places I do live. I like them all, but they're not essential components of my life or who I am.

 

I guess what I'm saying is that I could be me from here to Tripoli. Never before have I appreciated so much purchasing a laptop until now, frankly. It's sad, probably, and a little embarrassing to say that my computer is a greater component in my life than where I live. April occasionally brings up the fact that we live in the south, usually directed towards some conservative statement or judgment or something that someone else does that reminds her that we do live in the south, but I don't quite understand what is so terrible about it. Certainly, it's a different mindset and a different way of life, but it is no more inherently bad than anything else is. It's just a worldview of a certain sect of people. New Orleans is hardly southern to boot, especially judging by all the gay bars and crazy deviant events I've been to just so far. It's in the south, yes, but it's not southern in any legitimate respect. It's urban, and further, it's an urban college town. While geographic propinquity may lead to some fairly southern attitudes, it's a town where people go to get drunk and get laid, full of tourists and college students. It's about as south as Sacramento.

 

I guess my point really is that I don't much understand hating a region for any reason, stereotype or not. It seems pointless to hate things that you disagree with, because all that does is burn bridges for understanding and cause conflict where there is none. I don't hate Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin even if I am a sarcastic jerk towards them and with respects to them. It's a product of the way they interact with my views, treating my views sarcastically and douche. I respond likewise because I know that they don't respect my views and thus aren't deserving of my respect for theirs. It certainly doesn't mean I hate them or resent them or will go out of my way to avoid/confront them. All of those would frankly be a waste of my time. I understand them as semi-political figures interested in the pursuit of power and influence over people and I do not begrudge them that. Heaven knows what I would do if I had the kind of fanbase that Beck does. They're celebrities, essentially, and investing oneself into the lives of celebrities is hollow and futile.

 

It's not that I don't hate anything, not really. Hate for me is an emotion, something I feel towards something that is particularly bothering me at a given moment. I walk past a group of cicadas being stupendously loud, I hate cicadas. Once the emotion (and the cicadas) has passed, I no longer hate cicadas. I honestly cannot hold a grudge. There are certainly some people and some situations that I cannot stand to be in, but when I am not in those situations or dealing with those people, I do not feel any particular resentment towards them. I simply can't obsess over another thing like that, I am too busy living my life. The only thing I can obsess over, apparently, is bright and colorful puzzle games.