Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Weighing on me.

I hate how big I am at the moment. I carry it well, but it's not comfortable. The spring in my step is measurably diminished. The world hits back when I step on it. It's gravity, man. My rise in mass has made me subject to impacts of a greater degree than I'd find ideal. I remember stepping lithely and blithely through the world. Worst part is, I still do so but now there is effort, and pressure on the joints. It is only a matter of time

I need to get down to about 185.

When I renewed my driver's license in April, she asked me (typing in the fields, validating data) "Are you still 170?" I was very happy to hear it!

She believed 170 was an askable question, and a believable answer. My heart leapt within me to hear it, and I believed it was so! Or at least, that it could be so. So I answered "yes," without hesitation, much.

There wasn't anything else I could answer. I haven't weighed myself in ages. What could I have offered in contradiction? The DMV doesn't truck with this sort of exchange:

She: "Are you still 170?"
Me: "Who gives a fuck. Seriously."

In any event, having committed to 170 I felt honor-bound to find out where I stood: on a scale. 209. Wow.

I don't fault myself for confirming the inaccurate figure. As I said, I had nothing to offer in correction. 170 at least was something I have weighed, and something I believe I conceivably could weigh. Me making up other numbers out of whole cloth would have helped neither my cause nor the DMVs, and this poor woman was just doing her job and possibly, trying not to laugh. She kept a very straight face, though. I believe her belief in my answer's truth was as basic as my own hope in its possibility.

But it doesn't matter. I stepped up and confirmed to 170. I feel somewhat honor-bound to make my driver's license true. As I have so many other government-issued documents. It's up to me to step up to what I attest as true.

185 comes first though. I bet at 185, I'll be much relieved, very much more comfortable in how I move through the world. My grace and ease will return, my currently encumbered bounce will come bounding back to its previous jive ass EFFORTLESS FUNK STRUT.

That's all I've got on that score.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

The Internet Is Kind of Weird! Pt.1: Or Is It?

This could end up being a series, because the Internet is kind of weird, yo. I was just thinking about this.

I don't think human beings have changed, you know? Except maybe they have! Because all of this self-surveillance is bound to have some effect. Who ten, twenty years ago would be narcissistic enough to sit in front of a video camera, ramble and mug through twenty minutes of video and then put it out for public viewing? Only a select few involved in local community television, that's who. And what about all these phones? I mean, camera-phones, video-phones, you know? We're living in a state of constant surveillance, from our friends, our selves, our "social network," and we pretty much love it! Is this wrong? Is any of this wrong? Am I complaining? Heck, I'm not complaining. I'm not saying it's wrong, but it does seem kind of weird. Doesn't it?

Like it all just happened, somehow. Technology's not a democracy, folks! Nobody decided we wanted it, but people around us started adopting these little new tools as they came out. Started doing it because they could do it: "Ooh look! New! Cool!" And we all started ending up in these pictures and videos, progressively drawn into all these circles, and what could we say? We couldn't come up with any real objection to it. "Hey, that's rude, quit it!" Was it ever rude before, to be in someone's frame during a candid photo snap? It only seems different now because everyone is equipped to provide full coverage of each others' lives. And without warning, we do!

And of course as a given type of exposure becomes prevalent, some of us holdouts say "Hey, maybe I should try." Vlogging, or homemade porn or whatever - prevalent just comes to seem normal.

Speaking of homemade porn, shifts in attitudes towards sex shame and body shame need to be their own post. That's too hot a topic! But Sex is only one of the areas were it appears the Internet is either weirding human behavioral norms, or normalizing human behavioral weirds, whichever the case may be. People today either are already or seem to be becoming showoffs in all aspects, showoffs of every human behavior, on the internet. Did the internet cause this, or was it simply the lack of easy opportunity that prevented us from naturally being this way all along?

In the old days of messageboards and written-word bloggers (hi there!) the theory was that "the anonymity of the Internet" freed people to be uninhibited. That because people couldn't tell who you really were, you could be who you really were - or experiment with other personae. But does this still wash today? Is it still anonymity when your face is visible? When your face is out there on Friendbook, mouthing off to people at least some of whom know you, uninhibited as you please? Is it still anonymity when you're V-logging on U-tube in your favorite t-shirt, laying out all your most strident political or comic book views? Is it still anonymity with a dick in your mouth? That's not very anonymous. Maybe for the person whose face is out of frame, it is. Perhaps it is the anonymity of "everyone's doing it," or at least, the anonymity of "so many normal-looking people are doing it," that it seems normal.

The anonymity of conformity with perceived norms.

These norm-shifts all happened so fast, we could say. But not really. They all happened in tiny, harmless, incremental steps that just kept coming. Change was slow, each little step probably unnoticeable, or only the tiniest bit jarring, none on its own was cause to sound an alarm. Technology, and the practices it enabled, outdistanced etiquette - not in an eyeblink, but in-between everyone's eyeblinks, over years.

This is not an essay, by the way. It's totally rambling. Who ten, twenty years ago would put something like this up, for others "to read" (ostensibly)?

Monday, May 27, 2013

I don't see why people think Godzilla is funny.

We think we're so woebegone with our hurricane disasters and our terrorist threat levels - for Christ's sake, we need to grow up and count our lucky stars. The initial Godzilla event in 1954 claimed over 100,000 lives in Tokyo, and left more than a million homeless.

What we've had to deal with in terms of disasters is laughable on that scale. The fact that subsequent Godzilla events have proved far less catastrophic in terms of human loss is a tribute to the Japanese people's response to horror: stoic resolve, and a grim determination to be better prepared next time. Despite the apparent destruction of the beast, Japan's top scientists and military leaders immediately went to work creating and implementing a nationwide defense and emergency civilian drill program that has become the model for daikaiju preparedness the world over. Why, even our household term for "giant monster" is taken from the Japanese - just as we've all stopped calling tsunami "tidal waves," and implemented Japanese methods to lessen that threat.

The Japanese know disaster preparedness. They've had to know it. And all the world over, forward-thinking cities have aped that proven Japanese model, and been rewarded for their foresight. When Reptilicus struck Copenhagen in 1961, use of coordinated fleeing methods on the Japanese model resulted in casualties in the low dozens - despite the extent of the monster's rampage. In fact, Danish citizens were so well-drilled that footage of the event shows many of them clearly laughing, as they run from the city en masse!

If I have to fault the Japanese for anything, it's their optimism. Much of Tokyo was leveled in '54. The Japanese responded by clearing the ruins and using that space to plan and build the heart of modern, sky-scraping Tokyo, as we know it today from such films as the one where Bill Murray pervs on a 17-year old. But shockingly, the Japanese appear to be willing to believe that Godzilla's personality is subject to a similar rehabilitation. After a series of diakaiju attacks in the 1970s, where Godzilla's sudden appearance arguably lessened the devastation that would have been wrought by another rampaging monster, many of today's Japanese regard Godzilla rather supersitiously as some sort of hero or protector.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Godzilla is an amoral, vicious, destruction-loving force of murderous wrath. It's just that Godzilla is also a territorial beast. If a big enough target strays into view, Godzilla will wreck its day for us. That doesn't mean we should delude ourselves Godzilla is on our side. Time and again, Godzilla has shown that if no Godzilla-sized-threat is available for fun and games, the defenseless cities of Japan are a more-than-agreeable substitute.

The bottom line is this. Godzilla is no hero. We don't need him to be. Any sensible observer would be forced to conclude that we'd be better off without the seemingly-invincible threat Godzilla presents, and just find ways deal with such invariably-lesser threats as occur.

Every time I drive South along the Pacific Coast Highway, I sense a flash, an uncomfortable phantom presence, looming out on the Pacific horizon. A lumpen, towering blot, emerging ever higher from the waves, splashing in slow, unstoppable strides towards the coast with a bored, implacably surly glare. I turn my head with stopped heart, but it will only be - some low, sea hugging cloud. A mirage.

Thank God.

I cringe at what the result would be, if Godzilla decided to forsake the long-suffering Japanese archipelago and turn his attention to our unprotected, unprepared, jaded and blasé West Coast. Thank God the New York event in '98 proved to be a false alarm - some fucking dinosaur or something. Vulnerable to conventional air-to-ground missiles! Ha!

Godzilla is impervious to all modern weaponry. Nuke him, and he'll only grow bigger and fouler-tempered. I assure you: we would not think Godzilla is so funny on our shores, as our cities lie in ruins, with casualties running into the millions, loved ones missing...! This freak of nature and radiation is a walking atrocity on a global scale. We can only praise and thank Japan, for the grace and stoicism with which she has dealt with this plague of chronic devastation. We do little enough to help Japan in her struggle. The least we could do is cop a proper attitude.

Godzilla: fuck you.

You are an abomination.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

God's Attributes? OK!

I really apologize! I had no idea you thought all this time I was just talking about "random, unspecified God" - I guess I took it for granted that we're talking about God. Just, you know, that same God that people throughout the ages, starting at a pretty barbaric level and working themselves up to huffing heights of inventiveness, have ascribed all kinds of attributes to. Most of those attributes seem ludicrously specific to me! Just some excuse to tell someone what to do: "God says don't eat hot dogs." BLASPHEMER!! God didn't say that! You did. I saw. Your lips were moving.

Kidding on the blasphemy. These little dietary rules and behavioral observances, restrictions and dedications, they're perfectly harmless and trivial in my view. Mosaic Law was a way to live one's life as a form of prayer. Beautiful, but I'm very glad I'm not bound to it! There's only one truly considerable blasphemy, in my view. It is three words: "God says kill." We must combat it, but we shouldn't be surprised when we see it. In every age, people of bad will will use every good, bad, or indifferent thing they can to shore up their power and justify their abuses as virtues. Church-based power structures have been one of the biggest targets for that in the past, and it's usually pretty easy to see what's going on. Human greed, grubby and bloody and nasty, uses any and every means to try to cast itself in a good light. Many times the power-mad will claim God's will, to justify their hate, or their greed or lust for worldly dominion. It is so easy to convince people that God shares their hate for the unbeliever, or the wrong-believer: the Samaritan.

But I don't know, somehow it always seems pretty clear to see this when it happens. When people misuse God's name to justify hate and wrath and judgment of their own, it's pretty easy for me - a Christian - to set their gospel against that of Christ.

I believe in one God, omnipotent, creator of all that is, knows all that there is to know, sees all that there is to see, created us for some reason (and who cares what that reason was? I trust God it's a good one), created the universe as a convenient location in which selves could be naturally generated, grow and learn, and self-determine who and what they were going to be. All in a natural and realistic setting! Maybe God thought the universe was cool. Wanted to show it off? Maybe God wanted to see what gifts we would make of ourselves, to each other and to God. But again, though: who cares? And: who can say? Who can say what God's reasons are? Because I believe God exists, I don't strain to dictate God's reasons to you. Not my job. God's got God's reasons covered.

Just so, with God's specific aspects and attributes. Ultimately if I'm wrong on any particular trait, I trust God to set me straight. Because, you see, I think God exists. So all the specifics of God's setup, I leave to God. It's no big deal to me. Personally I picture God almighty as an infinite being of spirit. But if God has a beard, or (God forbid) a penis, I don't care - if that's the way God wants to swing, swing away God!

None of this is anything unusual, theology-wise. No breakthroughs here. This is plain vanilla God, my conception is harmonious with that of thousands of years of theologians. I'm not very inventive when it comes to God. I even believe in Jesus: a unique instance of infinite, all-pervasive all-transcendent ever-present God choosing also a self-limitation, incarnation at the same time as a fully human homo sapien. I do believe in that. "What good did it do us?" is a reasonable question. I've got some personal feelings on that score, strong ones, but not really germane to the basic question about God's attributes.

Again: I expect God will set me straight on each unimportant detail I could have gotten wrong. If there is a God, those details don't particularly matter squat to me.

You see how careful I am always, to use phrases like "if there is a God." I haven't the slightest doubt there is a God. Not honestly, not in my heart. Oh, I can see quite clearly that it is possible God might not exist. I see quite plainly that the universe does not require God's existence in any way. But it's one thing to concede the possibility of something, and another thing to actually go in for it.

Why, I've known atheists aplenty who can concede that God's existence is possible. So's God's nonexistence. The mere possibility of a thing is no reason to say you believe what you honestly don't believe.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Is that what you do it for?

I've seen many talented people in different fields slaving away at their art, only to grow bitter because it is not recognized. They grow to hate something they used to love to do - not because they were bad! But because they resent their art for not making them a living. For not garnering them success, or notice.

Worse, they grow to hate others in their chosen field for getting notice. "Why them and not me?" I've seen people who loved music so much they wanted to do it for life grow to hate music, and no longer want to make or hear any new music. And for "music" substitute "art." Or writing. Or acting. Or anything.

It's tragic - not just their pain, but the loss of their voice as an artist. I can't understand. I love music so much I want to do it for my whole life - I've got that. No one can take it from me. No one has to buy. No one has to pay me, so I'm not at the world's mercy. Or take poetry. I'm reasonably convinced that poems do not, can not get one noticed outside a very small circle of unusual people. So I've written at least 365 poems every calendar year since 2009 - for no reason? No, I write them because it is joy to be able to create even one thing one loves. Songs are my main love, as a writer. I write the song for the song, and for no other reason. I write a song to get the song - to get a song I love! To get a song I want to have.

What do people want to get out of creating art? If it isn't the piece of art itself, the creation - if that's not what you want to get out of the act of creation, aren't you in it for the wrong reasons? Isn't your heart in the wrong place, and don't you deserve to fail?

If you love creating something, you stick with it. You have nothing to prove by sticking with it. Quitting is fine, if you're not into it. Quitting over these other reasons (success? getting paid?), just means you weren't into the thing itself. If you love creating something, you do stick with it. Fuck the world, the audience, fuck who's buying. Who cares? Art is just practice. You do it because you love the act.

If it's something you like to do, you keep creating. Create a body of work. Put it someplace visible, sure! Why not? You're not afraid of people seeing it. But don't worry about people seeing it. Give them a chance to, if you like, but don't care who is or isn't seeing your work. Your work is not what you're working on, it's just a by-product. The real thing you are working on is what's wholly yours: a mastery. Your ability, your technique, your practice. A voice of your own as an artist.

And sure, a shit ton of works as well! Some good, some great, some just okay - works that you've strewn in your wake, as you create. Those are neat to look back upon, to see how far you've come, and maybe have a laugh over. But your past works are not a thing you should enslave yourself to, to sell them to the world.

Your art is yours. Don't let anybody else make you do it. Don't let anyone else tell you what it's worth.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

in failing confidence, i resort to overt trash-talking and worse, to all-caps - the bad-manners internet equivalent to "shouting"

WHO THINKS YOU CAN BEAT MY HOUSE!! THOSE GOD-DAMN IMBECILES ARE GOING TO RUN ROUGHSHOD OVER ALL OF YOU AND I'M THE BIGGEST ONE IN THE BUNCH!!!! IT'S LIKE A BANANA OR SOMETHING - THERE'S ALWAYS ONE FREAKY ONE WHOSE ALL WEIRD HOW HE BENDS, AND SLIGHTLY LARGER! WELL GUESS WHAT PEOPLE - I JUST CRACKED THE STEM AND I'M A-PEELIN'! YOU BETTER NOT WAIT AROUND TO SEE WHAT THE UH...THE BANANA IS...

...AWWW MAN IT'S ALL ROTTEN ON THE INSIDE.

THAT'S RIGHT! I'M ROTTEN TO THE CORE! THIS BANANA'S GOT A CORE SO BLACK AND SQUISHY YOU DON'T EVEN WANT TO SALVAGE IT, THROW IT IN A BLENDER WITH THE OTHER BAD BANANAS AND SOME WHOLE MILK, AND VANILLA EXTRACT LIKE MOM USED TO, WHEN IT WAS "BANANAS GONE BAD!" WELL HELL NO THIS BANANA (THE BANANA IS WHAT REPRESENTS ME, IN THIS RANT) IS WAY TOO BAD EVEN FOR THAT PURPOSE! WHY, YOU DRINK IN THAT THICK, FROTHY SHAKE AND YOU'LL TURN SICK COLORS IN A SECOND! I'M AFTER YOU, YOU ILL-ADVISED OTHERS! I'M COMING AFTER YOU LIKE A BAD CASE OF GARBAGE! I GOT A CASE OF THE TRASH AND I'MA PUT IT ON YOU! I GOT LIKE A BIG CASE OF IT, NO BAG NO LINER - JUST UPENDED THAT BIG OL' GARBAGE CASE ALL OVER YOUR HEAD AND CLEAN SHIRT, LIKE A BULLY IN JUNIOR MIDDLE SCHOOL TURNING YOU INTO A BIG DISPLAY OF HUMILIATION, BEFORE ESCORTING YOU TO THE TOILET BOWL WITH A BIG THING OF JOHNSON & JOHNSON'S "NO MORE TEARS" (THAT FUCKING IRONIC BASTARD!!!!) TO GIVE YOU A NICE "IN-LOO SHAMPOO"!! YOU GOD DAMN RIGHT I DID! WHOSE NEXT? WHOSE NEXT?


YEAAAAAHHH

COME ON

Sunday, May 12, 2013

I just want to say I don't think happiness is important.

I don't understand a view of happiness that sees happiness as the natural state of things, and then when it's interrupted by something bad, people are like "OH!! MY HAPPINESS!" - like that's what's bad! Like the bad thing about the bad thing is that it took our happiness.

The bad thing's bad because it SUCKED - who cares about happiness when there is something bad to deal with??

OK, I realize that tons of people do. I'm confessing a weird thing here, maybe. I don't care about happiness. Happiness is not important. Finding a way (finding many ways) to meet reality and deal with bad shit is important. That bad shit is going to keep happening forever, and the bad shit is going to keep ruining your day and parts of your life, but - once you come up with the best ways you can, to deal with it the best way it can be dealt with - you can stop dwelling on it. Further worry won't help. At that point you can take what comes.

The best way it can be dealt with may not be all that awesome, but the best you can do is best you can do. You look out for better ways as you go, but until those come along there aren't better methods than the best you can do, to deal with the bad.

Happiness is not important. When happiness happens, it happens naturally (in-between crises, anyway) once you've taken care of what's important. Even in terms of good things, you can't find happiness by seeking it! Only by seeking for what's more important. When you GET what's important - someone you love surprises you with love, or you overjoy someone you love! Or you overcome obstacles to secure a real home for you and all of yours, or you find and excel in a JOB in a company you LOVE in an industry that matters to you, or you work hard for a cause in your community, and that cause triumphs! - people who think happiness is important, generally it's these other things that are important to you. Seek them, feed them!

Don't care about your happiness. Your happiness trails after you, insatiable, a child with a chocolate-smeared face awaiting the next treat.

Friday, May 10, 2013

I Worry About You!

Paranoia on behalf of another is a disreputable, indefensible sort of neurosis - even paranoia on behalf of one one loves. But I can't help it. I worry. I worry about you. Irrationally, I worry.

I worry about you. I do not worry for you.

Everyone seems to find me an invincible pollyanna optimist, but maybe that's just because every night, I lie awake running through and living in every worst-case scenario that raises its spectre'd mein - for as long as it takes to exhaust its spectral dangers, and only then do I sleep? This tends to cure me.

But my worries are my own, though. As are yours, surely! Do you worry for me?

No one worries for another's sake. It is to grapple with our own horrors, and find ways to best them - if only in imagination - that a worrier worries. In our own horrors, circumstances of cared-for others may loom large, but still it is not for their sake we worry, but for our own. How can our worrying help another?

And telling another of our worry for them - this is pure selfishness, and detestable.

So I apologize!

Thursday, May 09, 2013

How to Tell If I Thought You Were Serious

1. You say something.
2. Are you serious? I don't know!
3. I respond with the perfectly serious response.
3A. If you were serious, I gave the perfectly serious response. My sincerity is always evident, and frequently devastating.

3B. If you were joking - I gave the perfectly serious response! My bone-literal straight-man remarks generously provide you the platform, for you to keep going, build the joke with me, until it could actually start to be funny!
4. Now you're like, "is this guy serious?"

But really, it didn't matter.

Did it?

Do NOT "Assume."

Do NOT "assume."

Why?

It's an ASSHOLE move, dude! You go around assuming, telling people you assume this, assume that - you will be caught out cold! Sooner or later, some wag or dirty dog is going to come along and call your number on that "assume" biz. Don't do it; not worth it! It isn't worth the risk.

Presume or suppose, instead. They'll never catch you out that way! Better yet, suspect.

What are they going to do in that case? If all you did was "suspect"! What's their recourse? To prove your suspicions wrong - to restore your faith in humanity? "Oh, I suspected, but I was wrong! Whew, glad!" Fuck!

You pretty much pulled the trump card, there - as you can see. As opposed to the fool who assumes - he pretty much opens himself up to all sorts of little snitty little comebacks, on that basis.

Give them no such openings. None of this "I assumed so." Go strong. No need to go so easy on people who are only waiting to nail you for your misstatement with a clever rejoinder to make YOU look like the dork. SCREW "I assumed so."

"I suspected as much."

Yeah.

Wednesday, May 08, 2013

Your Beloved Old Saying Is Just Plain Wrong #1: The Watched Pot

"A watched pot never boils?"

Wrong. When the fucking sun's surface balloons out past the orbit of Venus, it won't matter who's watching. Not only that pot's contents, but possibly even the pot itself will boil off, depending on what material it's made from! And when that happens, don't expect it to hang around to call the kettle black, either. Watched or not, every pot boils.

Stop taking received wisdom uncritically for granted. Learn science.

Your beloved old saying is just plain wrong.

Tuesday, May 07, 2013

On Waitresses.

Whenever someone talks about tipping the waitress or the waiter, I always picture running up to them in a field and pushing them over. Now, I'm not sure why this is the dominant image. I've never once in my life tipped any form of livestock! People who tip cows should be forced to tip bulls instead, if you ask me. Jerks!

I love the word "waitresses." I just love that word itself! Waitresses. It's such a good word. The plural is so euphonious! Waitresses. Also, it's a fantasy of mine to have more than one waitress. At the same time, I mean! Not one of those deals where one leaves and another takes over. That seems so impersonal by comparison.

I mean, I guess it's okay if there's a dude in the mix too. A waiter. I suppose that's still a luxurious amount of pampering, service-wise. But a pity, too, because then I won't be able to use the plural! That oh-so-euphonious plural. Waitresses.

The words you use to describe it can be such an important part of your life experience. "Servers" is also a fine word! A solid, unisex term: servers. I often mentally apply the term to cops. Servers, and protectors. Unlike the more one-dimensional service you get from your waiters and waitresses!

Hot tip: do not attempt to tip your cop. Not under any circumstances is that going to work out well. I hear that in Mexico it's OK! But if so, that's totally out of my experience - different culture. As a rule, "When in Rome" applies.

Focus For Your Health: On Vegetables!

Too many people have been talking shit about vegetables and here I am to say, "Holy FUCK. Vegetables have been around FOREVER, people and you need to GET OVER IT or GET USED TO IT.

Many vegetables were on the scene as just regular plants! Originally, and people tried to eat them and DIED - except no, those were not vegetables, because they weren't edible yet. Eventually evolution happened, result: VEGETABLES. Vegetables and the populations that eat upon them have evolved IN TANDEM: can't have one without the other! Can't have a meat eater without some meat, and an herbivore needs FODDER to fatten up on for that to happen, ergo: VEGETABLES, including hay if you're a horse. OF COURSE HAY IS A VEGETABLE! Not for humans, maybe, but it's a fucking edible masterpiece for big mister four-hooves horsebelly! Those horses' bellies are specially adapted for the purpose, Holmes, and if you think otherwise you better not go into the horse business that's all I can say. Because you will be out of pocket on oats.

Vegetables are pretty much what I suggest criminals should be eating in prison. Why do they get meat? There's no religious reason! I feel like it should be a healthy punishment for them, to eat only vegetables and it would simplify things for the chefs, who could go to town on creative and delicious vegetarian choices, meanwhile, the warden sits in his privileged tower eating a STEAK DINNER, laughing at the cons and their healthy repast as he slowly clogs his own arteries. The price of freedom is eating whatever you want, folks - without a little restraint, let's face it, you probably will die. Have you noticed the common thread, here? VEGETABLES."

A lot of folks try to make a controversy out of it. They repeat the old saws, the old wives rumors and legendary urban tales: "Vegetables are for FOOLS," or "Oblong vegetables are sometimes inserted into the anus or vagine for sexual pleasure purposes!" I say that's DISGUSTING!! Why even bring that up? But it raises some good points: always wash your vegetables - and don't be a FOOL.

Ever Hurt Your Own Feelings?

Anyone here ever hurt your own feelings? I did! Just the other day. I can't really talk about it, it's still kind of tender, I'm still not sure exactly what I really meant by it and the last thing I want to do is open THAT can of worms again.

Monday, May 06, 2013

Good Thoughts, Good Thoughts

So I've been thinking good thoughts lately. Without even trying!

I don't mean "good" as in "high-quality." These aren't supersmart, heavily-intellectual thoughts by any means. Nor would such a thing impress me. No, these thoughts are more "good thoughts" as in, thoughts that sort of just seem in the best interest of humanity. In everyone's best interest! "For the greater good." Thoughts like that, where if anyone else or indeed, if everyone else had that same thought, they might immediately say "Right on, brother!"

Except, to whom would they be saying "Right on, brother!"? It wouldn't be to me! In the scenario, these thoughts are occurring to each person, individually, as if they simply came up with it on their own. So then to suddenly come out loud in response - "Right on, brother!" - to one's own thought? Some might find this troubling.

These sorts of implications and complications are part of why many people have grave concerns over so-called "group-think," - and I for one couldn't agree more.

OMG NEW PSB Pt. 2: AN APOLOGY!

This is a Pt. 2 - there was also a Part 1!

My bad on a comment submission. I posted the Pt.1 of "OMG NEW PSB" on September 22, 2012. Today I got 3 comments in a row from a reader named

iCraps!!! now!!! TINNER!!! (zzzz)

That name again is:

iCraps!!! now!!! TINNER!!! (zzzz)

Commenter, first - can I just say your name is a delight? Unfortunately, with the "craps" reference, plus the sudden deluge of comments, plus - not trying to be unkind, here, but your spelling and grammar as well - I'm sorry to say, I took you to be a spammer. I deleted the comments. Whoops. When I checked afterwards, your profile shows you started in May 2013 with exactly 1 profile view (mine?). I feel especially bad if you started your profile up just to chime in with your thoughts on the Pet Shop Boys!

So to make up for it, I'm posting all your deleted comments right here, as a separate post in their own right. Thoughtful of me!

This was the text of comment one:
"WHY NO ONE TELL ME" because groups that make practicality the same dated style of production in all there music since there commercial/cultural irrelevancy over 6 years ago now.With every successive album release they bleed more and more fans, there presence in the Media and Radioplay becomes non existent to the point the most recent single release strugled to get anywhere near the top 100 ! Obviously no-ones interested in PSB's endless tired + turgid releases by now, long past there sell by date by now apart from a couple of hundred elderly men still living in the 80s culture + biased against modern technologies.Mainstream culture believes PSB stopped making music in the 90s (which they probably should have if they wanted to maintain the credibility they'd built up). Thus PSB have no presence in mainstream culture (given there long term lack of significant success - no surprise) everyone thinks they're unnoticed + buried with such pointless lack of success no one knows of PSBon OMG NEW PSB
iCraps!!! now!!! TINNER!!! (zzzz)
at 6:21 PM

This was the text of comment two:
No one told U because PSB is stuck in making record that sounded stale in 1990s never mind NOW. Being trapped in your 90s decade bubble when PSB where known, remembered by people in mainstream culture.. but for the rest of us PSB commercial success ended 6 years ago + they may as well have split up since know one remembers them accept for a hundred elderly men stuck in the 90s decade insanely biased against change like modern technologies on OMG NEW PSB
iCraps!!! now!!! TINNER!!! (zzzz)
at 6:37 PM
This was the text of comment three:
No one told U because PSB is stuck in making record that sounded stale in 1990s never mind NOW. Being trapped in your 90s decade bubble when PSB where known, remembered by people in mainstream culture.. but for the rest of us PSB commercial success ended 6 years ago + they may as well have split up since know one remembers them accept for a hundred elderly trapped in their 90's bubble where they are strongly biased by any new change or advancement. on OMG NEW PSB
iCraps!!! now!!! TINNER!!! (zzzz)
at 6:43 PM

So there's that. All three comments, original and unedited - thanks to the email of the comment, which was retained! Once again technology saves the day, and in doing so, proves it is A-OK.

So, iCraps!!! now!!! TINNER!!! (zzzz), in response to your remarks, some comments, some question:

1. Thanks for explaining the impact of cultural/commercial relevance on how much publicity a new album receives upon release! You seem confused as to when PSB stopped being relevant: in the '80s or in the '90s. It was in the '80s!

2. You make repeated reference to PSB's fans now being comprised of "elderly men" whose numbers you put variously at "a hundred" or "a couple hundred." I checked the last album's sales in its first week, and for accuracy's sake, you should probably say "at least ten thousand elderly men in the UK alone," and to err on the side of accuracy, probably we're talking "elderly gay men." But that's a minor quibble! A few thousand elderly men (of any sexual orientation!) are insignificant in terms of determining what's relevant in our culture, unless you believe in the illuminati of course.

3. Say, what's your take on Beethoven?

That's about it. #3 is kind of a stretcher as far as relevance goes. But to be fair, you didn't give me much to work with!