I hate computers. It happened again. I made a post, and it died. Sigh. I'll do another one later.
4:39 PM

The Dead Presidents aren't bad.

Speaking of presidents, let me predict a trend in politicians: branding. One of the most significant innovations of the 20th century, branding is selling concepts over products. So Nike doesn't sell shoes anymore, it sells pure sports. Coke doesn't sell soda, it sells a cool refreshing piece of America. And it's starting with people, too: Michael Jordon is basketball. Bo does sports. Bill Gates was trying for a warm friendly sort of Big Brother thing, but it never really took off, due, I think, to his absolute lack of people skills. So I see this coming for politicians. This has already happened, to a certain degree; FDR was the nation's warm uncle, Reagan was more a grandfatherly paternal sort; but I think it's going to go more and more.

Right now political ads are horrible. They're just not well-designed, they're very blunt: they tell you, I am good, my opponent is bad. Generally, there's no more subtlety then waving an American flag around now and then. Imagine, their best idea of influencing people was to show the 'rats' part of 'democrats'. Real advertisements don't need to resort to tricks like that. So in the next few years, one of the richer candidates (prolly this next election) will hire an advertising agency and actually use it (adverising agencies are consulted right now, but are subordinate to political consultants, which is dumb).

Politicians will start being tied to concepts. At first it'll be traditional stuff-honour, courage, patriotism, justice, etc. But then it'll expand to stuff the average voter really cares about-sports, television (already candidates are required to appear on SNL). But at this point, the concepts will begin to get crowded-after all, Nike already is sports. So then we'll see partnerships, instead of donating money, Nike will donate some branding-allow them to use the swoosh, lend them use of some of their best agencies, etc. Imagine, Democratic McDonalds toys, Republicans at Burger King (Greens at Arbys); Dems use Coke, Republicans Pepsi, and so on, and so on.

Well, maybe not quite that far. But it's not far off. Already some public vehicles-cop cars, post office trucks, etc.-accept ads. The intersection of state and market comes faster and faster. ("Fascism is more appropriately called corporatism", Benito Mussolini)
5:40 AM

[No update today]
11:32 PM

Salon has an article about the US spying, and it mentions how absolutely no major American papers carried anything on it. Guess this is why the US got 17th on a recent press index.

Postmodernism is another philosophy, like religion, rationalism, nihilism, etc, where people can take perfectly good premises and turn them into utter bullshit. Truth is relative, they tell us, and beauty can be found in anything: great! That's good stuff. I agree! But then they warp it. If truth is relative then we can never argue, as both sides are right, and arguing would establish us as 'structuralists' (the enemy of the postmodernist. If beauty can be found anywhere, then we can fill museums with "modern art", which isn't pretty, isn't meaningful, and is altogether a waste of space.

You should never take your opinions to their logical and full extent. Any Christian should think that yes, there's one god, and yes, all the other religions are wrong, but to take that to: they should be converted at swordspoint, or that they're going to hell? Too much. Common sense is far more important than reason and should be listened to more often than it is. Yes, I'm anarchist, yes I don't support the government, but that doesn't mean: I support killing politicians, or even that I support never voting. Reform can happen, even if the overall trend is bad. Rationalism: yeah, science is good, and yeah, reason has helped us, but why not believe astrology? It's fun.

I don't mean, by the way, the bad sort of common sense, where people refuse to act or think in any way but the most mundane because it's against "common sense". That's reason again, it's common sense without common sense. This isn't to say I dislike reason, just that I heartily disapprove of its use without common sense. Another thing: why are people against holding two contradictory views as truth? I think that Bush is a mastermind of evil and that he's basically a dim-witted good guy. I think that there is no God, and every time I'm in danger I think 'please God forgive me all my sins'. I believe in science not superstition and that I'm capable of affecting things with my mind. I believe computers are good, and computers are evil. I believe corporations are pure evil, and that, for my money, you can't get better than Taco Bell. What's the problem?



I've been meaning to read more of ol' Walt, come to that.

*reads*

Ha, Walt rules. He's everything I like:
"In “Song of Myself”, considered by many to be the poet’s most important work, we are told that all that is real is sacred, we all possess something of the divine within ourselves and the holiest and most whole thing we can do for ourselves and our fellow man is develop to our fullest by listening to all and learning from all, regardless of how humble the source of knowledge may be:"
(from here)

I particuarly like O Captain! and When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer.

Any(way): I've been continuing to eat healthily, which just can't be good for me. I had a salad again tonight, and my breakfast yesterday consisted of purely healthy stuff, plus Cherry Coke. And Frosted Flakes. But, I mean, I had veggie patties, grapefruit juice, biscuits! I've long fallen for the whole 'vegetarianism isn't healthy unless you really do it right' spiel, but frankly, there's absolutely no way I'm less healthy now than I was when I was omniverous. I'm going to get off the veggie diet for a week, though, when I go visit my Grandmother/Dad for Spring Break; I don't want to put them out. But there, I'll try, at least (If I was really going vegetarian I would tell them, but as this is not permanent I'm not putting them out).
5:18 AM

I got a Wendy's Spring Mix salad (Taco Bell was closed), and it was surprisingly good. And extremely filling. There were more vitamins in that sucker than I've had for some time, I think I'm going to start eating salads regularly. This is all because I've decided to be vegetarian, only not really, not permanently, because I don't want to put my family out when I go back for the summer, so I'm just doing it, I've decided, for Lent. Which starts around now and ends around Easter, so that's not too bad. It's been a few days now since I started, and it really hasn't been too bad, and I'm actually eating healthier than usual. For instance, I got a 'protein bar'. This was a mistake. Now I know. The guy at 7-11 actually warned me, but it's good to find these things out on your own.

But anyway, the salad was good. I'm reading Catcher in the Rye right now, I've never read that before, it's pretty goddam good. What is not good, however, is 'The Piano Teacher'. Technically, yes, it's good. However, in any human sense of the word, in the sense of all that is right with the world, in the sense of vaguely entertaining, or even of thought-provoking, it is not good. This is the equivalent of Howard Stern for a more intellectual audience; meant only to shock and disturb. And it's boring. Boring and disturbing, elements which should never be mixed.

The movie, in fact, reminds me of the protein bar: perhaps it would be good for you if you could choke it down, but the texture's so horrible that it's just not possible. The salad does not really remind me of Catcher, but they're both good, just in different ways.

Well, I have Latin homework to do, so I'm going to: do it.
6:19 AM

Just a small update to show ya'll this:

Revealed: US dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war - the US is spying heavily on all the Security Council Members but itself and the UK. This comes as little surprise, of course, but proof is going to hurt the US. Especially when coupled with Turkey's rejection of US troops.
8:39 AM

For years, I have operated under the impression, beget to me by many a weary soul, that life is not like the movies, that there could never be supervillians or elite squads of supermen. These people have been lying to me. I know this after spending an instructive night reading crime stories. There are tons of villains, I was vaguely aware of this, but I never knew about the Seekers. I believe these do-gooders to be made up because there is simply no way that a team like this can exist. Basically, they're the most elite bounty hunters possible, guided by a strict moral philosophy (from ancient Egypt, too!) that try never to kill anyone. I mean, wow. The whole thing really sounds like something on USA or TNT, and I would be rather surprised if a movie or tv show influenced by them doesn't get made sometime.

The super villains are fun too, for instance, Eddie Gein, who formed the basis for both Psycho and the character Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. He literally made suits out of people's skin, kept shrunken heads around, had a belt made of nipples, had lampshades and wastebaskets made of skin. Most of his materials were garnered from a nearby graveyard, it should be mentioned, only a few were fresh. He had an authoritarian mother who he loved more than anyone else in the world, and when she died he 'went' mad (he was basically mad already, but this is a good point to mark it).

There's the Borgia family, a family which included eleven cardinals, three popes, a Queen of England and one saint. The saint wasn't bad, he was a major founder of the Jesuits, but other than that, the family was rather evil. Not even so much evil as extremely ruthless in their pursuit of power (Machiavelli used Cesare Borgia as a model of the properly ruthless Prince). Victor Hugo wrote a play that starred Lucrezia Borgia, which he prefaced with



They poisoned, shot, knived and otherwise killed their way to power. Once there they ruled with the ruthlessness only available to the truly powerful; they conducted many Crusades, shot prisoners for sport, and of course offed any political enemies. Sex was also popular with them, Lucrezia has been accused of incest, most of them are illegitimate (sons of Popes?), and they married into some of their royalty. I believe they were the only spanish Popes ever, too.

Enough of this, though; I will pay to the person who can prepare a vegetarian chicken nuggets with barbeque sauce the sum of one million dollars. Next time Argy goes to the grocery store, I think I shall tag along, I'm running out of Dining Dollars and buying generic soda will save me at least one million dollars. Lord I'm hungry, to the point where I think I'll go at 9 to see if Taco Bell has opened (doubtful, but damnit, I'm hungry).
8:08 AM

I hate computers

I was reading No Logo on the other computer there, and it kept dimming, which is what it does when it's been unplugged, so I thought, no problem, I'll just hook it up to the monitor. And I did so, and shut it, and lo and behold, it goes into hibernation. I put it aside for now and start cleaning off room in front of my monitor so I can turn/see it. Then I see the wires for the laptop. Since it'd prolly be best if it was properly hooked up, I reach around to there--and knock my skull goblet half full of coke onto my laptop.

I sigh, and clean it all off everything (the laptop was closed, meaning it splashed onto everything else as well), in the dark, and when I open up the laptop again, it's flickering. Uh oh. So I turned it off, and soothed it, and said 'there there, it's alright', and tried again, and..nothing. It won't even flicker. So I took it outside to do a proper cleaning job, with light and all, try again, and...nothing. By this time I'm a bit worried, so I onned the other computer, plugged the monitor in there, and go to Opera to search for how to deal with spilled stuff on laptop, and...the keyboard won't work. The fucking keyboard won't work. I'm in a chatroom, now, when I find this out:

GAHH
H
I h
at
e
c
om
pute
rs
hate
hate h
at
e

There was more than that, much more, as I fixed the keyboard, which involved taking off each key, blowing at it, and putting it back on (ultimately I think it was just the enter key that was broken, but it's best to take care with these things). Anyway, here's where we are now: laptop not working, keyboard somewhat working, bed and clothes all sticky, Alex very sad. Very sad indeed. Sigh. I hate computers.

The only thing I could find online was to turn it off and leave it to dry for a while, so I guess I'm going to try that, and hopefully it'll work. If not I guess I'll take it to my Dad at Spring Break and he can either fix it-he is a computer whiz, after all, even if he's fallen to Macs-or we can take it to someone who can fix it. Hopefully. This really is most depressing.

I guess I'll talk about other stuff, to get my mind off the fact that I'm typing on a direct agent of Satan. Last fall we won $1000 (we're 'Glenbard South' on that list), and since we've been trying to figure out how to use it. We've decided, certainly, that some or all of the money will go towards doing a project next year (as opposed to donating it to charity or something), and so now we're trying to figure out what that project should be. $1000 is an incredible amount of money for a volunteer project, so I think we should work on establishing some sort of community centre.

For instance, we could make a community garden. I am sure that lots of people would be eager to help us with that. The hard part there is getting land, and I'm sure we can get some small section for cheap or donated, as it's for a good cause. There we would have to be working with a Gardening Club or similar entity, as we'll all be gone.

I'm sure plenty of people are sick of gardening after the last thing, so perhaps something else...I'm all in favour of going full out and creating an infoshop, but I don't know how much call there would be for that, either in our group or the community as a whole. So I dunno. The community garden thing would be fun, if we can find a small plot of land that cheap that quickly (It would have to be a goodwill donation, I fear). Anyway, I'm going to go mope and stare plantively at my laptop and ask it real nicely to work, so g'bye.

7:39 AM

Viacom, they can make a movie with Paramount, show it in Loew's theatres, advertise it with 'documentaries' on Comedy Central and MTV and then rent it out at Blockbuster. But no, they're not a vertical monopoly, because...erm...oh, because the entertainment industry donated over $46 million combined to the Democrats and the Republicans last election.

Sigh, I'll try to stop talking about corporate stuff. I've just been reading No Logo, which is a great book (if you want to read it, ask me, I have it in e-book), and can be summarized thusly:

Corporations BAD
America BAD
Radical leftist protestors GOOD

It got pretty popular because it was released right around the same time those crazy anti-globalists were mucking up Seattle. Anyway, I'll talk about something else.

Umm

Actually, I'm afraid I don't really feel like posting right now, perhaps I'll do something later on. Sorry.
4:22 AM