Category: Doodles

What to do? Kayak!

I asked a friend “Conan, what is best in life” and got a rather good summery from her: The best of life might be a time when you have the feeling your brain is being challenged and fed everyday, without having loads of stress and fear or inferiority complexes.

Kayaking! There is absolutely no reason for me to think kayaking is a good thing, but why the fuck not? It’s not as though I have a bunch of other hobbies that compete for my attention (Note to self: It’s always sunny in Philadelphia isn’t a hobby) and there’s always the off chance that I’ll enjoy myself – God forbid – and have fun.

I know I wrote that interesting stuff is happening around me and I’m looking forwards to spring. Yes, well, that was like a week ago and the happy happy has left the way of Spongebob (and the season 4 of It’s always sunny in Philadelphia) leaving me once again pondering the meaning of life and the “get a job for summer” issue.

Lars, the happy architect I worked with at the museum last spring, is full of sage advice on any topic, and pointed me in the right direction when I asked about kayaking. I have this idea, see, where I would travel through Sweden on a kayak, using only smaller rivers and lakes. There are people paddling up the coast, but in my minds eye I see myself slowly gliding next to the riverbank with a straw in my mouth with a whistle on my lips. Whenever I felt like it I would just lean to one side and sleep on the soft and green grass; Birds chirping and strawberries within reach.

Maybe a slight exaggeration, but I’d rather call it “hope” than “lunacy.” Forrest Gump never listened to the nay-sayers, now did he? Just picture me smiling like an idiot, paddling up a river. Tell you what, I might even consider fishing if the expedition would be long. (Or does tofu keep for three weeks in a kayak?)

Oh heavens, part deux. And the Twitter.

Much of my online activity as of late has migrated towards Twitter and Blip. In case you don’t know them they are micro-blogging services. The micro implies both the length of the messages you can publish, and also the length of my attention span – which seems to have shrunk to measures traditionally used for 100m dash.

Like right now, while writing this, I blipped two songs and emailed Petter about it and updated my Twitter feed (even though it auto-updates every five minutes).

At the same time as the immediacy of connection is being realised, there’s an almost constant feeling of “wait, where were I?” Some of us have become so fully immersed in our computers and their proffered connections that we’ve become very active nodes. We’re spending so much time computing and parsing data that to an online observer we might as well be highly specialised and slightly retarded computers. Or maybe it’s just me; Having so much info passing through eyes and ears and out my fingertips, and retaining nothing but the constant buzzing noise, the trunk noise of a phone held to the ear.

[flv:https://monocultured.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/untitled-linked-comp-01_1.flv https://monocultured.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/picture-1.png 640 360]

The upside of all this – Olle tells me that optimistic posts are better than “the self-loathing and whiny stuff” I occasionally write – is that I’m getting stuff done. Granted, it’s not like I’m actually using all my waking hours being creative or something, but there is a feeling of “getting shit done” in the air which is uplifting.

There’s that thing with my brother and that thing with Petter, and some stuff Ana and I have been talking about as well as the whole Skup Palet that Anna, Jan + a bunch of us are learing at. With that, I know it’s easy to talk about stuff that you might do or are interested in doing or perhaps would consider doing if the conditions are favourable and you are sober enough, but there’s something in the air. Like, pollution, only good pollution.

Thanks to global warming the winter has been mild here and we’ve been spared the sleet and piss that a Gothenburg winter is commonly associated with. Knock on wood. It all adds up.

I can’t believe I’m actually looking forwards to spring. Let’s recap the past year: I quit smoking after 7 years, started running, got a drivers license and had an interesting job both in spring and fall. And I got a moustache.

And now I’m looking forwards to spring, lying on my bed looking up at the clouds passing by. It’s just like that science guy from Independence Day when he played another science guy in The Fly and he slowly turns into a fly and peels his eyes off. Only I’ve peeled my eyes off and discover I’m now a twinkly hippie person. Before you know it I’ll be tie-dying shit and doing astral journeys in public.

Pants! It’s all pants!

The only pants that actually fit me – and by that I mean the pants that don’t make me look like a pornographic sausage roll – have suffered terrible deterioration. Apparently I’ve developed crotch-rot, because I now have four pairs that are beyond silly to wear and make the hairy leg-flesh look like a ill-cleaned pork kassler; I don’t know how many people I have mentally scarred. Will sit down with sewing machine tomorrow and try to remedy the sad state of affairs, if pants can be said to have states of affairs.

In other news: 1) I went to the gym with Petter last Friday and still can’t bend my legs properly. 2) I get less shit done than I’d like – am tired. Maybe eating poorly. 3) Started running again and my pulse is up at 180 when I run as slow as possible which means that the whole “ærobic excercise” stuff is out the window 4) Jonas, Tobbe and Mark have all visited without me mentioning it here. I don’t know why I’m not updating more often. Blame Twitter. 5) Students of mine might be reading this blog, so expect fewer cock-jokes.

CFO explained (somewhat)

Tomorrow, I’m going to take advantage of an offer to exercise for free at a a local gym. I’m gonna try to keep my bpm below the aerobic threshold of 142 in order to become less of a disgrace than I am now – I can hardly walk up stairs without getting winded and I sleep like a cyborg on meth because I’m not expanding energy on anything except typing, frying tofu and masturbation reading poetry. If downloading shit on the Interwubs would require physical labour I would be Adonis incarnate though. (I just got 3GB of “shoegazing” whatever that is)

About this whole “Chill the Fuck Out” new years promise thing. It’s nothing more than an awkward way of trying to rein in all the pointless stress. To simplify life, if you like. Have a bit more fun, have a bit less of a meaningless time. Try not to lie to others nor myself. It’s a Doctor Phil feel-good bonanza.

In other news: My brother burned his hands. I think he got the CFO method down pat.

Embracing misery, awaiting death. The story of the sick wuss.

I’m sick as a puppy kicked with boots of botulism, and have spent the past week building myself a cocoon of self-pity out of spit, phlegm, slime and mucous. My brother and I have taken turns to laugh hysterically at our miserable state and inactivity; I have listened to old episodes of How to disappear completely and drunk copious amounts of tea. As an aside, I have little faith left in the healing powers of whisky – massive headache followed our attempt at Scottish healing.

The running shoes I brought are still in their bag. The book I brought has only been opened once. All meetings with friends came to naught and I’ve spend some ten hours looking for a new cellphone because I have come to hate the Samsung I’m currently stuck with. On the bright side, I did get to ride a taxi from downtown to Kungsängen, which put my suburb in a more accessible place, albeit only mentally.

As things stand, I’m looking for ways to get home to Gothenburg in time to infect everyone in the city with whatever it is that I have. The streets will run foul with the stench of decay and poor hygiene, and civilisation as we know it will be no more! That, or I’ll just have a cocktail and go home and sleep post fireworks.

Below is a Explosm.net cartoon, followed by one from XKCD.com. Both required reading in these times.

Tan Le, co-founder and president of Emotiv Systems, gives a live demo of a mind control device that uses a person’s thoughts to input computer commands.

→ Fora TV: Tan Le at The Entertainment Gathering, Dec 12 [via Tobias]

BILLION DOLLAR BILLBOARD – By Lee Beavington

Damien gasped.
“Look at the stars! They’re MOVING!”
His friends ignored him, stumbling over the beach with bottles in hand. Damien dug his toes in the sand and craned his neck. He tried to rationalize the tiny, shifting white lights. Too far to be planes, too close to be planets. The several dozen scattered twinkles rearranged themselves in the cloudless sky. Maybe he had had too much to drink. Unless..

A moment later he read the constellation of satellites.
DRINK DUKE BEER!
Then the satellites dispersed. A friend slapped him on the back. “Do as it says, eh? Bottoms up!”

→ From the webpage of G. W. Thomas, where a different author presents a very short piece of fiction each day. I recommend you subscribing to it by email here: www.gwthomas.org

Burlesque! Caffeine & Suicide! Mustache!

Last Friday was spent at a party. A burlesque party. To better fit in with the crowd of Manson fans and strip-tease performers, I presented myself in tights and with a mustache + soul patch. I’m going to try this feature on for a couple of days. So far most people are bemused. I don’t know, is it too Wyatt Earpy? (Also, please notice the author pose I have going on. I’d be an awesome writer if I would only not have to actually write something)

Newspaper publishers should consider consolidating and outsourcing news operations — even overseas — to save money as revenues continue to shrink, the head of a major U.S. newspaper company said Monday.

→ USA Today: Outsourcing could be in journalism’s future.

In July of this year, the now-defunct Eureka Reporter reported that McClatchey has outsourced the copy editing of the Orange County register to India, outsourced the advertising design department of the Fresno Bee to India, and had intended to outsource the copy editing of the Miami Herald to India but ultimately changed its mind on that one.

→ Watching the watchers: Offshoring/Outsourcing Journalism: The Unstoppable Bad Idea?

Although caffeine does not produce with life-threatening health risks commonly associated with the use of classic drugs of addiction such as cocaine, heroin and nicotine, some caffeine users report becoming “addicted” to caffeine in the sense that they report an inability to quit or to cut down their caffeine use, they continue to use caffeine despite having medical or psychological problems made worse by caffeine. and they continue to use caffeine to avoid experiencing caffeine withdrawal symptoms.

→ John Hopkings Medical Center: Information about Caffeine Dependence

The motif of harmful sensation is a recurring idea in literature: physical or mental damage that a person suffers merely by experiencing what should normally be a benign sensation. The phenomenon appears in both traditional and modern stories.

→ Wikipedia: The motif of harmful sensation

Both McKinney and Bedard told me about people who took Tylenol or phosphorous, which also destroys the liver (and incidentally produces phosphorescent vomit). In both cases, they slept off the initial sickness and recovered for five days — during which time they decided suicide was a mistake after all and they wanted to live. But the liver had been destroyed and after five days each of them started to feel very sick, passed into deep coma, and died. “He knew it would happen and that there was nothing we could do about it,” Bedard said, “and his friends and family knew it, and for five days they sat in the hospital together waiting for it.”

→ How not to commit suicide, by Art Kleiner, 1981

I want you to know that I have a deep affection for you. I am deeply grateful for all your kindness. I wish I could have made a happier life for you. It was mostly my fault, please forgive me.

→ Suicide notes. ibid.

Jill Tracy – Evil night together:

[audio: https://monocultured.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/01-evil-night-together.mp3]

I’m looking specifically about a rejection of postmodern theory (I apologize for the broad terminology), that looks at thinkers like Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Deleuze, Jameson, etc etc, that accurately comprehend their arguments, and then rejects them. That is, if postmodernist thought is broadly characterized by a general rejection of singular, grand narratives and a method of critical thought that involves a disbelief in foundations — then I’m specifically interested in arguments that go against these characterizations and arguments.

→ Ask.metafilter: Anti-postmodernism for postmodernists?

All them small file thingies. Locust!

Not too long ago I would sit with Mac OS 7 and pick trough all the preferences and control panels and such, and I’d more or less know what they all did. Now I look at the limited number of files I’m backing up, and it’s five quarters of a million. I know my email folder is bloated, but 1,254,904 individual documents?

[audio:I’ve_Always_Wanted_To_Dance_In_Berlin.mp3]

And in case this post causes you déjà vu, it might be because I think it was published before the crash.
That, or you are finally going insane.

The presupposition of intent. Performativity and self: Catholicism and spanking!

I found a note that I’d written after a long discussion a group of us had a week or so ago. I leave it here for posterity to analyse and sit in judgement over:

So, whereas A and B are into it [spanking] because they’re fascinated by the play on power (who dominates whom and so on), me and C are more interested in the manifestations of power itself; Who actually beats whom, who really decides over whom, etc.

Where Bs game is about being the one in control or being the one subjected to domination, I am more interested in the nature of control and power itself — how does it feel to be beaten or to beat someone else, and ultimately (although it’s an extreme example) to see if there is a qualitative differance between killing someone and not having done it (not restrain oneself, mind you), and if that differance is noticeable enough to qualify a judgement call and not do it. In other words, where is the limit of what you can stand to do, and stand having done to you; not socially (i.e. how far am I willing to part with my civil — or representable — self) but rather existentially.

What person will I be if I quit now, and how much further can I take this before I don’t recognize myself?