From a broken heart to a broken system

Dearest Postmodernism,

The two short decades since we first met have felt like jolly centuries. I remember with no lack of warm regard our young days together. They would, from across the room, tell me that we should be nice to everyone, be accepting of other cultures, and never hold ourselves in such a pulpit of high regard so as to exclude the voices of others. I saw traces of you around then, bored in my desk, shyly admiring your gentle loveliness.

Later, as we read stories of magical realism, race relations, and cultural connection in high school, we had so much. I felt that you were the end of everything. Just the glimpse of such a shining ideal showed to me that all other aspirations were senseless, that only through rejecting our ability to find truly objective truth could we abandon pretense, that we belonged together, and all the while you twittered along. Ah youth, the flowers, the butterflies, the warm summer days, and foremost, the mental conceptualizations of cultural relativism's latent influence on our ideology.

I knew that things were becoming serious when you followed me to college. We spent long evenings cuddling together in the grass as the smooth sun set, and longer nights struggling through freshman essays, with you helping me forwards all the while. It seemed as if nothing would ever change.

But then you did, or rather, I realized what you really are. One day a close friend asked me about you; he knew we spent so much time together after all; he asked me what you were like, who you spent your time with, what you were all about. That's when the trouble first began. I couldn't tell him. It wasn't that anything was particularly embarrassing, or that there were no stories of the two of us and our time together. No, the problem was that I really don't even know you at all. I stammered, “Well, she likes to talk about Foucalt, sometimes Derrida, she spends her time ensuring that overbearing discourses don't dominate the sphere of life, and she can say something surprising on any topic .” My friend and I looked at each other for a moment, him slightly confused, me horrified that I knew only so little, and with a slow draining feel setting into my stomach. Hurriedly, I looked for a source of my confusion.

Had I been too self centric and never listened while you talked? Surely not, for you were always speaking so much, and I had listened to what you had to say. Were you lying to me, hiding yourself? This couldn't be so, for we had spent enough time together for this to be impossible; I simply would have noticed. What could it have been then? Then the unthinkable quietly asserted itself, that you really had no substance at all.

I thought further on those things that were supposedly so you. In their time, certain literature, criticism of literature, film, photography, music, dance, poetry, policymaking, policy punditry, news, protest, cultural movements, and even fashion movements had all supposedly manifested as products of your self. How could one be so many different things, unless, unless you were really none of these, and just a piece of academic lingo? I tried so hard to tell myself that you were something more substantial than a flashy phrase, than a trend, and really would have been able to find comfort despite never knowing your true self, but this was but the beginning.

I realized that you always hung around with those snooty academic types. Part of our original infatuation was your appeal to the masses. You were open and accepting of all, or said you were, but there you were, spending your time with professor hootensnoot, dancing with doctor debonair, all the while quietly wrinkling your nose at the common man. I noticed how very nuanced were your terms and habits, your technical jargon, and it occurred that not only could no one clearly outline you, but most could not even engage in your dialogue. For a girl who spent her time telling everyone that we ought to sever the dominant discourse, this was a surprise, for it looked very much as if you were perpetuating it. But for you, even this I could forgive.

And then you started to get possessive. I can handle, and actually embrace, some closeness; we did come to college at Whitman in part to be together after all, but what you have been doing lately is frankly disturbing. You sneak into all of my classes, and just sit there, watching me. In English subjects, no one's analysis is wrong, everything is excellent and engaging, a great yarn, and all this for you. In debate, everyone is an evil, ecosystem hating, simulacrum perpetrating, colonialist, anthropocentric, fear mongering, abusively statist, theivingly capitalist, chauvinist, and this is because of your presence. In fact, the only place you don't chase me to is Modern Philosophy, and I don't doubt that you would if you could, but being postmodern, you can't quite slip into modernity. It has been getting uncomfortable.

If this were not enough, certain things you have been saying are, well, a little bit crazy. People talk. I am certain that you mean well, dear, but not every book is Fruedian, not every imaginary tree, gun, walking path, or representation of power phallic, and not every children's book about gender and sex. Your insistence that all things are subjective bothers me even moreso. Certain things, that the sky is blue, that one plus one is two, that Seattle cannot have a respectable sports team in any one activity for more than three seasons at a time, that I am now writing a letter which pains me much, are just plainly true. You act as if everything is this vague societal construct, that we are fully entitled to make the wildest and freest extrapolations, since after all, everything is all false anyways, that probability didn't exist, and it worries me. How can I lay these blatant facts aside in good faith?

Look, I may not know the precise score, but I am no fool. I know that if you poke a bear, the odds are high it will eat you, that certain chemical processes almost always work the same way, and that when authors write a book, they do initially mean something and there is at least one reading that we can find more probable than others. It is absurd to assert that we should talk every which way about everything, as it is to say that dice end up differently sometimes, so a one is as likely to be rolled as two through six combined. I say this as no offhand comment, for at night I lie awake and ponder us. Postmodernity, your disassociation from the real world pains me.

I would tell you that it's not you; however we both know that it is. I read modern philosophy books in class now, and whenever Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and Hume make a reference to the intangible nature of reality, I think of you, and become sad. It feels like reading a story to which I already know the horrible ending. There really is only one way to put this: we both know what has to happen. Postmodernity, I have found something better, I like it, and I am not ashamed. Empericism just feels so right, and with that I must say farewell. I'm sure you'll find many ways to interpret this.

Regretfully, Tim

Random snippets of disjointed conclusions

It took an evening moment of pulling random records out of a shelf arrangement (not that this act itself had anything to do with the resulting conclusion) to help me realize something plain simple, and unreasonably relevant. Bifurcation will be the death of us all.

I find myself this night in an amateur radio station. In the back of this station lies a tasty, midsized labyrinth of hard copied music. To pass the time we are doing a short radio segment. The arrayed dials and latent possibilities of radio are somehow unable to distract me my core, entirely unrelated, observation regarding bifurcation.

We all have only a highly limited span of time in which to do things. I, and I suspect you as well, have an odd tendency to take on all kinds of commitments. These commitments are typically the types of things that seem highly entertaining, have a strong pull, and usually are in fact somewhat redeeming. Now conventional wisdom would assert that over-committing life's plate is just never an ideal choice. Up to this point I have done a fantastic job of completely ignoring conventional wisdom, and sampling as many scrumptious activity morsels as I could possibly sustain. ((Snippets of radio, smidgens of jogging, scrumpets of schoolwork, some reading, far too much collegiate debate, and this blog among others, should it be highly interesting to you.) I know it's probably not, but I like parenthesis too much not to include fun facts.)

Anyways, taking on too many things robs you of the ability to excel in any one. It would seem to me that each person is endowed with some certain measure of natural ability, and that to exercise that ability to its peak, they must also commit solitary attention to it. The tendency to simply not do this though, is the bane of highly interesting achievements everywhere, and as such should be avoided.

That is all.

Chatroullete

Chatroullete is a website that allows you to videochat with random strangers in rapid secession, or rather, one of the foulest, oddest, most variable, and least forgettable experiences on the more trafficked parts of ye olde internet.

The basic system works by having users load themselves into a hopper that connects two of its members at a time to chat. No names are given, only a feed, and at any point either partner may cut the feed and move on. Usually Chatroulleters have their feed on an autorestart, so as soon as one encounter ends, another instantly begins.

As you can probably predict, some absolutely disgusting video feeds tend to pop up now and then. One of the more common obscenities is some random person tugging the old boat in clear visibility. I personally wonder what always prompts the nastier minority of Chatroullete's denizens to get indecent, inappropriate, and otherwise naked for a yet unknown audience of random internet goers. Perhaps they enjoy the aspect of being watched? Maybe extreme loneliness drives them? In any case, the bulleted chamber of Chatroullete is definitely there.

Worse still are the stealthier taboo breakers. Often a screen will at first appear blacked out, and then fade into one type of revolting scene or another. Another common ploy is for users to seem conversational at first, and then slowly start stripping or what have you as a conversation goes on. There is actually no way to tell what percentage of the base is there for the sex appeal, because so many people are slowrolling. Here is one such example; note that the fellow is already shirtless to show off the old guns.



After trying the site to make more memorable a boring evening on several occasions, I noticed something funny about people who use it. At first, someone sees something that they really wished they had rather not, shies away and exclaims something to the effect of "Ewwwwww!". Moments later they come back and press next to find another dialogue. Apparently disturbing acts actually being preformed can be just as riveting as those in fiction and film.

If you are not squeamish, and willing to put up with brief moments of revulsion, I strongly suggest that you at least give this novel concept a try. At the very least it will probably be difficult to forget, and for me, that is enough.

And there was murder in their eyes

When I woke up yesterday, still bleary at around 2:30, I remembered that the renaissance fair was happening. Every year a gang of community members puts on a renaissance Europe themed fair here, and I make it a point to at least go and have a look; it is certainly memorable.

The day smiled on Walla Walla with a light breeze and clear, warm sky. As a direct result, many families had chosen to come scope out the event. With families come kids.

Boff (I hope that is spelled correctly) fighting is a mainstay element of the fair. In this activity, participants whack one another with soft weapons. Boffing represents a unique opportunity to live out the inner nerd-fantasy that so many hold dear.

Most adults and teens are relatively guarded in their boffing. They choose to view it as something of a sport to justify it against the naysayers and bally-hoers. The kids, especially the ones present by the swarm at Renfair, are entirely submersed.

You can get a clear idea of what these kids think is epic just by watching a few boff matches for fun. Completely oblivious of the outside world, they run and scream around the arena, stabbing one another in the back, fleeing from the enemy, seizing victory with ruthless cries. One kid kept attacking the others once they were down, pantomiming a bloody murder, another, on victory, held up his weapon above his head, looked directly at the audience of students and parents, and let loose a resounding victory scream, which was pretty humorous.

It becomes immediately evident also that the young'uns are playing the same video games and watching many of the same nerd-movies that the old'uns do. They seem to know exactly what to do to look 'cool' with their weapons, and they also don't hesitate at all to slaughter the other kids once in the mindset of the game. Kyle, a friend involved in the community that helps implement the fair, mentioned that one wee visitor from the prior year kept running up behind the other children, and using two weapons to 'cut off their head' from behind. It's hard to say whether violent media makes people more violent, but with certainty the next generation gobbles it up.

Also striking was the fact that many of the adult bystanders were apprehensive to take part. You could see them looking out and thinking about it, after all the actual participants seemed to be having a lot of fun, but fear of looking silly was sufficient to constrain these people to guilty sideways glances and non-participation. The invisible restraint was made especially apparent here, since the younger set was so visibly unaffected. Personally, I lament that we have so many standards that prevent members of society from doing the most interesting and memorable thing available. Maybe we would all be better served to randomly scream supremacy more often.

Hip hop talent exhibited at Tea Party rally

Untitled from elizabeth glover on Vimeo.

The culture conflict here is overwhelming. Look at the facial expressions on the audience.

The Tax Man Cometh!!!

Sullivan lifted this off of Wonkette.com - it is fantastic. Sure, you may disagree with a certain policy of Obama's, but just passively doing so with your vote is not enough! He is going to steal your breath and sneezes with a reproducing, multiplying hoard of tax collectors bent only on the total subjection of American liberties everywhere. Stop him now by visiting the RNC's website!

My life is a big red line going from bed, to class, to food, to bed

If you were to create an aerial heatmap of your last several months of time, what would it look like? How would your time be clustered? Would it pulsate around a single hub, burning itself deep into a rut; would it assume the form of a loose red haze, networking out every which way; would it be something in between? My map would be a big, fat, artery tracing a triangle pattern from my house, to class, to food, to home.

Why is this the case? Routine. I find it incredibly easy to draft up a basic itinerary and then follow that come hell or high water. On reflection, our society itself is rather well structured to compel such behavior. From a very young age we are told to always have a plan, and always stick to it.

For me at lest, a single plan never really acts properly to plot out life though. I at one point start doing something for one set of reasons, and then as time quickly passes, the role that thing has in relation to my goals completely changes. The realization that this has happened lags weeks, months, or even years behind an actual change however. I believe that we can attribute the delay to routines being seductively simple to follow, and belligerently hard to break.

Taking the example of walking to class, coming home, reading random blogs and Youtubing, then sleeping, the difficulty of breaking pattern versus the ease of maintaining presents itself. In most cases, I continue to do as I do for the pure reason that it is what I do. Rowing took up four years, which naturally led into college and debate, and I find myself moving forwards as an automatic mechanism, responding to surroundings without considering fully why.

I implicate the internet provide for its absurd ability to entertain in order to explain this lack of 'why'. When trying to unwind from a day, the go-to activity is rarely self consideration, so much as full immersion in stimulating media. While there exists more than enough time to say, go for a walk and think about the state of things, not doing so takes less energy.

Of late I have been making a conscious effort to branch out my heat map, and also consider actively why I am doing what I do. Nothing earthshaking has yet resulted from this pursuit, but at least certain obvious self-suggestions, such as 'stop playing video games for upwards of five daily hours' come quickly to light. I suspect also that even two or three twenty minute periods of free time to reflect will prune out more than their weight of unfortunate choices.

Give it a try; reconsider something that you find to be obvious and central to your life. Why did you begin to participate, why do you do so now, and is this still valuable?

The Hijacked Post (in which Tim learns the value of clearing passwords out of his roommate's browser)

Dear blogger/Tim-

I have to drive some prospective debate students to Pasco in a few minutes, so I'll make this quick.

The internet is a dangerous, dangerous place. Yes, there are a precious few genius sites that enlighten the world like synapses in the minds of Descartes, Kant - even Spinoza. The majority of the internet is a slum where kittens are the preferred street drug, violence is perpetuated through "fail" videos, and sex is sold cheap.

Yes, this is our modern-day wild west.

Take, for example, this site, unvarnished.com, that allows co-workers to post negative reviews about you without your control. The site wreaks of dickishness. Their address isn't even unvarnished.com, but rather "getunvarnished.com" – a move that prompted the actual owner of their false domain name to post an apology due to the preponderance of misdirected traffic.

I must be off, but Tim's password will live on in my MacBook browser. I'm logging out so he/you can't clear it while I'm in Pasco.

- ZORRO

Braaaiins

If you find yourself living on a college campus, you are highly advised to play Human Versus Zombies. The basic gist of the game is that everyone playing, save one zombified individual, starts out as a human. Play takes place over the entirety of a campus, save classrooms and dining halls, and a game lasts for some predetermined amount of time, usually a few weeks. The first zombie player attempts to tag human players as those students walk to and from class. Whenever the original zombie catches someone, that someone also becomes a zombie, and tries to infect more humans in turn. A zombie must catch and 'feed' on a human every so often, or they starve. The game ends when time expires, all humans are zombies, or all zombies starve. Most variations of the game also give humans the ability to temporarily disable zombies by shooting them with foam darts or the like, thus inspiring countless nerdy spine shivers of joy.

Why play? The answer is simple and compelling. To put to rest boredom.

Life contains myriad boring moments. Yes, a ten to fifteen minute walk from one's room to one's place of education can sometimes be uplifting and scintillating, but by virtue of happening every day, these walks have a definite tendency to grow hackneyed.

Picture two scenarios - the first - that you grumble out of bed, dress yourself, and take a slow boring walk to morning class - the second that you grumble out of bed, and stalk cautiously across a minefield of potential shame, clinging desperately to the scrap of victory that is your human status. The second scenario makes tasks as plain as crossing an open field between buildings into an exhilarating challenge.

If your campus puts on such a game, join it. It's not like you were going to be doing anything better with your 10 minute walks.

P.S. The new sleeping pattern has proved itself to be excellent. On Tuesday nights I ignore it however, as my earlier class comes at 1:00 on Wednesday.

Trolololo and trying to get things done whilst tired

For some reason this clip is oddly enjoyable: http://trololololololololololo.com/

Having said that...

I have come to the conclusion that a time shift is really in order. Up until now my sleep pattern has been to pass out around 1-3am, and wake up at 10am. The upside of this is of course that I get to find sweet stuff like trololo until 3am, and the downside that I don't sleep very much. It's hard to evaluate whether or not the pearly treasures of the internet outweigh rest, but I suspect that this may not be so. My reason for this inkling occurred today, wherein I received quite a railing for what, in all fairness, was a god awful paper, written in the depths of the night, and then also took a three hour nap at about 6:30.

Apparently common sense is accurate on this one. I actually tried for about 20 minutes to find something more juicy, but really there does not appear to be any extremely accessible research on the subject, so I will trust the grapevine. It seems at least from that paper, and on reflection, dozens others like it, that there is an undeniable correlation between using the time late into the evening to get things done, and doing so poorly. Also, some obvious benefits of conking out around 10-11am include:

1. Getting to eat breakfast.
2. Going for morning walks.
3. Using the Internets while the sun rises, and coincidentally while no one else is online to bog down the wireless.
4. Avoiding surprise awakenings when housemates decide it is time to play catch in the kitchen above me.
5. Having the ability to sign up for classes that start before 11am or so.
6. Clocking nine hours of sleep.
7. Writing fewer boring blogs due to sleep deprivation.

So with that in mind, onwards to bed.