General Lordisimo’s Apocalypse

I tend to think of myself as being a pretty open and accepting person when it comes to food stuff and different flavors.  There are truly very few things that I dislike or find gross to eat.  Some of the foods I now eat regularly, like mushrooms, eggplants, coffee, etc. took me a while to get accustomed to, but now that I am I count them at intrical parts of my diet.  All that being said, I am coming more and more to an awareness of one particular flavor/food that I really cannot stand.  Orange.

I don’t know how long I have disliked oranges, and orange flavor, but I do know that it has been years since I last drank orange juice.  In fact my dislike might have to do almost entirely with orange juice, of which the scent is enough alone to make me gag.  A strange thing to dislike, I know this, but it is what I got.  The strangeer thing about it is that it isn’t so much that I can’t eat anything orange flavored (except orange juice, which I really think would make me vomit), it is just, that if I have to choose a flavor I’d rather pass on, it is orange. 

A good example is orange candy.  I am a self regarded candy junkie, but, that being said, I will pretty much always leave the orange flavored candies for last or avoid them all together (on the other hand I rather like licorice candy, which many people find repulsive).

Also the orange fruit itself.  I can eat it, but I would much prefer any other citrus over them.  This includes limes and lemons (I actually love limes and can pretty much eat them alone).   So it isn’t even the citrus flavor that I find unsavory, just orange itself.

The one place where I have become rathe accepting of orange flavor is when it is used in beers, especially of the belgian style.  For example the witbier I brewed has a pretty significant orange taste to it, but I don’t mind it at all.

When it comes down to it (besides orange juice) I can handle most things with orange flavoring, or the fruit itself, I just prefer not to, and will make a great deal of other choices before willingly persuing orange. 

This morning I took a shot of DayQuil to help fight my cold.  DayQuil (the liquid kind) is orange flavored.  all I could think about is how much more I prefer the cherry or licorice flavor of NyQuil.  I’d gladdly have taken either of them instead if it were not for the fact that they pretty much just make me pass out.

A two for fucking one special here folks.  Not only can I offer you a contemplation here, but I think the material within begs a GDAFSA!  As those of you who have read my contemplations before are probably well aware I have some  pretty strong opinions and thoughts about the use of the Internet, especially how it is used in its social aspects and in lieu of the slew of applications that put users out on the web to be viewed by whomever happens to stumble upon it.  Last week I wrote about what the future holds for a world where almost everybody is producing publicly accessible writing (of some sort) and some time back, before that, I wrote about the responsibility vested in people who choose to write on such an open medium as the Internet.

With those two previous posts in mind (and possibly a shit ton of others that I have written) I now direct you to a New York Times article about a Twitterer named brumplum and the shit storm he stirred up by making a slight comment about Stephen Fry.

In truth I have a hard time wrapping my head around the apparent insanity that was spawned from the rather simple (and not even that insulting) comment which went as such: “Much as I admire and adore the chap, they are a bit … boring.” (This was in reference to Mr. Fry).  So what happens when brumplum makes that relatively tame and fair comment?  Twitter users go fucking ape shit on his ass, attacking him with all sorts of angry outburst, in defense of Mr. Fry.

My question is why?  And furthermore, what does this reaction say about human kind as a social species?

Again, I will repeat, that it seems to me that in all intents and purposes brumplum’s comment was relatively tame.  Yes it was a criticism, but it was not really all that scathing (especially in comparison to the response the brumplum received).  It was a simple opinion, which as a firm believer of freedom of speech, I hold that brumplum was more than justified at making (it was not even slanderous or libel for god’s sake).  And yet, as has been said, it stirred up a mass insanity of reactionary defensiveness.

Part of it likely has to do with the popularity of Mr. Fry who has 934,000 followers on Twitter.  Part of it further has to do with the way in which Twitter works, specifically in how people search for trending topics and then join part of the clusterfuck. All it takes is a small spark to ignite an explosion on the social communicating site, and a popular figure like Stephen Fry is more than eligible to cause such an ignition.

That being said though, does it justify the response?  Twitter very obviously invites users to contribute to the cloud their every thought or happening, and allows for a strange form of social communication in which various taggings (if we may call them that) warrant more attention than others.  In some ways this can be a good means of disseminating information across a broad spectrum and demographic, providing for an openly accessible information source that can break relevant news (think about the protests in Iran after the mess of their “democratic” presidential election).  But then there is the other end, where the reactionary aspects of the masses create a hysteria.  Look at the fucking balloon boy mess.  Twitter itself is partially responsible for all the attention that the hoax got.  Look at this incident with brumplum.  The relevancy of his comment is in actuality pretty marginal when you consider it, and yet it captured a wide range of attention (enough so as to get a New York Time article on it).

Here then is my concern.  Mob mentality has been a subject discussed and contemplated for a long time.  Plato was weary of the value of democracy because of the way in which the masses tended to act.  Shakespeare touched upon the sway of the crowd in “Julius Caesar” (personally one of my favorite Shakespeare plays).  Charles Dickens touched the subject in A Tale of Two Cities.  All and all this is not a new realm for humanity to explore.  Sociology itself exists in part to examine how humans interact in social situations, and mob mentality has not been lost to it. 

So is Twitter just that, a mindless mob that moves and produces content with an almost arbitrary tenacity and tendency to latch on to whatever base whim strikes as relevant at any given time? I am not suggesting that everybody who uses Twitter is a mindless pawn of the hordes (I would never consider myself as such), but what does it say about what people choose to re-tweet or to add a # in front of on the microblogging site?  I wonder if Twitter as a whole is a mindless beast, which at times can provide benefits and use, but which ultimately lacks any certainty of character or moral gauge in direction.

I find no surprise in the sheer number of companies that have found the benefit of using Twitter as an advertising device.  Advertising has always aimed to appeal to masses.  Even if a product is intended for a specific demographic, that does not change that the product will aim to appeal to the greatest percentage of that demographic as possible.

My concern, and it may be unfounded, is that Twitter promotes a dumbing down of the discourse.  Again, there are some definite benefits to the use of the application, but if these benefits are outweighed by the overwhelming degree of inaneness and idiocy then what does it really matter.

Of course the same could be said for the Internet as a whole.  Look it all the shit out there.  If the Internet really is a series of tubes then I think it is safe to say that it could use a really good plumber.  We’ve known this for a while though, and people who are educated about the use of the Internet tend to be aware about not taking everything at face value.  Regular users have developed a degree of caution and skepticism in regards to what they encounter out on the Web, and this is a good thing. 

Perhaps in time the same will happen with Twitter.  People will use the service with a degree of conscience and consideration about what is really being said in 140 characters.  They won’t flip a shit just because some dislikes their favorite singer.  They won’t become a mindless member of the herd in repeating again and again inane bits of nonsense (which admittedly, I am a big producer of Twitter nonsense).

Of course on the other end, Twitter could just continue to promote the idiotic and those people who recognize it will be forced to deal with or go elsewhere, while the mindless mass rampages onward.

This is not is not in fact so much a criticism of Twitter itself.  The service cannot really be held accountable for the content that it’s users produce.  This is a criticism of humanity in general.  Maybe I am just stuck on thoughts of Idiocracy which I finally watched this past weekend, or maybe it is just my continued frustration with Web 2.0 and Social Media, but there are times that I think the real fucking apocalypse will be quite anticlimactic because we humans are too lost in our own moronic bubbles to recognize the end times around us.  Cynical?  Fuck yeah, but I think that might be a natural state of somebody who sees people acting all sorts of crazy just because somebody called somebody else “boring.”

I don’t make claims about what the future will hold.  All I can say is that some days it seems like a cabin in the wilderness might not be that bad an option.

So it goes I guess.

I’ll say it right up front, time changes fucking piss me off.  I really have no clue as to why we do it (I’ve heard several explanations but they all seem to have some major holes in their logic).  Honestly I think it is just to fuck with us and make us all confused and pissed off.  While there is something nice about the “extra” hour we get in the autumn time change, it is at the cost having it get dark much earlier, and that blows the big one.  I would much rather have it be dark until 8 am or whenever in the morning than get dark before 6 pm.  God damnit I only get out of work at 5:00 and less than an hour of light is not a cool thing (especially for somebody who works in a cave of an office with no windows).

So fuck you time changes!  I don’t know who thought you were a clever idea, but if I had a time machine they would be on my list of people whom I’d kick in the groin.

My friend and yours, Evan, from OrangeCoat, sent me an article yesterday entitled “Nearly universal literacy is a defining characteristic of today’s modern civilization; nearly universal authorship will shape tomorrow’s” (Jesus that is the longest fucking title).  Later Evan wrote a personal response to the piece, which can be read here.  All and all, both the article with the preposterously long title, and Evan’s response are quite interesting, and provide some quality material for contemplation (which I haven’t done for a while).  I originally intended just to comment on Evan’s post, but realized that all my thoughts had the potential to get a bit out of hand and become something longer than that post I was commenting on.  Easier to just write it all down here then.

Why do we have writing?  Simple question really.  Why do many societies (though not all mind you) use a written language?  I am sure that anthropologists and linguists have many explanations for why written language exists, but I believe that probably the most simple and direct response is that written language exists to keep records of information.  The origin of writing, which is generally attributed to ancient Mesopotamia, started out as a means to keep track of goods and supplies.  These were very simple records, which because of their physical form provided a reliability over that of basic human memory (which is what people essentially had to rely on prior to writing).

Over time writing evolved from just serving the purpose of recording goods and supplies to being able to record laws, ideas, stories, etc.  It changed the way in which people communicated.  Where once people relied on oral traditions which, like the game of Telephone that many of us played as children, had the potential to distort and change an initial message, writing provided a means to get one direct piece of information down.  This does not mean that it was flawless mind you, writing, like all language, is open to interpretation and distortion of meaning, but writing does differ in that it is down in a physical sense which theoretically has a potential “infinite” lifespan (note: infinite in the theoretical, in the sense that we can not really comprehend the infinite.  Further, obviously a great deal of all that has ever been written has been lost and forgotten making its infinite existence moot).

So writing, where it came into use, changed how language was used.  Language was no longer simply a means of communicating but was now also a means of recording.  Now, flash forward through history to our present-day.  In all the thousands of years since ancient Mesopotamians first inscribed cuneiform characters  into clay tablets to our present-day and age of 140 character Tweets on the vast Internet, written language has gone through some considerable changes.  Not only have languages themselves changed and evolved but so have the numerous writing systems as well as the means in which we put words down and maintain them.  Over the past couple decades we have been witnessing one of those major changes as writing has increasingly moved from the physical world of books and newspapers to a digital world of computers and the Internet.  Now more than ever, we seem to becoming aware that the previous paradigms are in change, as numerous print medias close down and Google and the Kindle make books available in a digital format.

And this brings me back to the long titled article and Evan’s response to it.  According to Pelli and Bigelow (the authors of the SEED article), they believe that there will come a day and age in which there is “Nearly universal authorship.”  To qualify a piece of writing (whatever it may be) as published, Pelli and Bigelow suggest that it must reach at least 100 other people.  I think Evan has the right response in that this seems to “miss the point” a bit.  Reaching 100 people to be deemed published or an author is completely arbitrary as far as I am concerned.  Evan says:

 Authorship used to entail publishing work (usually written) produced through considerable intellectual effort and thought. Why? Because printing was costly and if your work was going to be disseminated through an expensive resource, it better be worth the read.

This is correct, but he misses the fact that furthermore, authorship and publishing possessed (and still does in a number of forms today) a degree of a vetting process.  Just because somebody can write something does not mean that they are an author, all it means is that they are capable of producing written language.  Being published is a bit more slippery in that essentially, back in the day of the “expensive resource” it can be imagined that anybody with a significant amount of money could publish whatever he or she wanted, regardless of its quality or intellectual value, but in general, published work was regarded as that which had gone through a process of approval through some third-party (an editor, publisher, etc).  Again, this does not suppose that everything which was produced was flawless, without bias, or even that good, but it does mean that there were limitations in the ways in which things were put into availability aka. published.

In contrast, in our modern times of Twitter and blogs and Internet Social Media, the ability to be “published’ is quite literally only a click away (when I am finished writing this post I will click a little button on my screen which says “Publish” to put this up on my blog).  So the question is, does just posting something on any of the numerous outlets available to Web users necessitate that it is “published” and that they are “authors” regardless of 100 people reading it or not (again, 100 is an arbitrary number used to promote a statistical model, but I do not think it is necessary at the heart of the discussion)?

I would say “no” all the while admitting that it really comes down to semantics (which in and of itself is interesting in that it is a clear example of how language can be interpreted in varying ways).

The reason why I would say no is because I think we are missing the point that we are dealing with paradigm shift in regards to written language and how it is used on the Internet.  “Authors” and “Published” are words that are used to describe a different form of writing.  We continue to use them on the Internet, not necessarily because they have the same intended meaning (I call Pelli and Bigelow “authors” above; I will “publish” this post), but because we currently lack other words to use in place of “Author” and “Publish.”  Ultimately the consensus may rule that “Author” and “Published” are used for writing on the Internet, but their meanings at that point will be different than they were in the pre-Internet world.  On other hand, we could come up with other words that we choose to use.  “Blogger” is already quite common in the lexicon, so is “Post.”  I would say that we could use words like “Web Writer” of “Contributor” to describe those who write online regardless of whether on a blog or just as a 140 character Tweet or short comment.  But again, ultimately it will be a matter of semantics and what the consensus is that determines just what written language on the Internet, and the people who produce it, are called.

The next important part to focus on from Pelli and Bigelow and Evan’s response, is the importance of influence in regards to Internet writing.  Again, I think Evan get’s it right when he says:

If everyone is influential, no one is influential. Influence requires a disproportionate weight within a community and if everyone weighs the same, who’s the influential one? What will happen has already happened — talent separates, clumping of influence emerges, the conversation gets crowded with noise, it eventually fractures, and the party moves next door with less noise.

This is true, influence cannot be evenly distributed.  There will always be people or groups that possess more influence than others.  What changes with writing on the Internet, is not that people will certainly gain more influence, but instead that they may possess the potential to reach a greater audience and thus more people may have the ability to have a degree of influence. 

Let me put it like this.  Essentially, it can be assumed, that anybody who has unrestricted access to the Internet, could find and read my blog, and could, in turn, be influenced by my writing.  With this consideration I have a pretty wide potential for influence right?  Well kind of.  Sure the potential is there, but that doesn’t actually mean that I have any major influence.  On any given day I usually get somewhere between 100 – 200 unique visits to this blog, which is by no means a very large number considering that there are some websites getting millions of hits a day.  While millions of people could feasibly access my blog and read my writing, they do not.  Why?  Probably because my actual influence is quite low. 

So where does influence come from?  It does not come from the fact that one can create ideas and make them available.  We can all do that.  Even before the day and age of the Internet we could.  What creates influence is a sense of Talent, Authority (yes, note the “author” in there), and Relevance.  Prior to the Internet, anybody who willed it could stand in the middle of town and start ranting and raving about whatever ills he or she imagined, but likely his/her influence would be limited at best.  However, if they possessed a degree of talent, or had some actual authority on the topic, or were touching upon a particularly relevent subject their influence had a potential to increase.  If they had a combination of some or all of these elements then it makes sense that their influence would increase even more so.  As such the President of the United States of America giving a speech on the State of the Union over the radio would have far more influence than a person protesting the new street development in a small town.

Of course there is the reach, and that is where the playing field get’s a bit more leveled.  As I said above, essentially anybody who has access to the Internet could get to this blog and read this post.  As such, that person on the street corner protesting new street development, could create a blog, or post multiple Tweets, about their thoughts or interests, but without those elements of talent, authority, and relevance their actual influence is limited at best.

It is reasonable to assume, as Pelli and Bigelow have, that there will be a time in the future where the majority of the World’s population has access to the Internet (or something very similar to it) and have the opportunity to write on it through multiple outlets.  It is further reasonable to assume that the social and open nature of these communications will continue, so that people all over the world can access any posts or writings and partake in part of a discussion with them.  However, this does not mean that everybody will share influence, it will merely dictate that the potential for their writing or communication to be accessed will be greater than it probably would have been in a pre-Internet world.

A problem and perhaps irritation, that I often encounter with all this news about how the Internet is “changing the way we live,” is that it often strikes me that people are jumping to conclusions a little bit too fast.  That isn’t to say that the Internet won’t (or hasn’t) change society or the world, it is just that so much of what is claimed to be the next “big change” jumps the gun and seems to fail to take into consideration a whole slew of other factors that play importance in human interaction and life.  I think Pelli and Bigelow have written an interesting consideration (which I in turn am choosing to provide a further outlet of spreading and sharing) on the way that people communicate and how the Internet will possibly affect writing, but I also think that they fail to a degree to consider that for thousands of years writing has been changing anyways, and that it will inevitably continue to change even as more and more people write online.  The Internet is big news because it, and all the tools it provides us, is present, but that does not make it the pinnacle of human achievement or potential, it is merely another moment in the ongoing fluidity and dynamics of human kind.

All and all good stuff.  Thank you to Pelli, Bigelow and Evan for getting my brain wheels turning this morning.  It’s been real.

Well kind of . . . at least for rats.  Really you should just read this article which discusses findings that indicate that processed foods high in salt, fat, and sugar might affect us in similar fashion that addictive drugs do.

Why is this a sign of the apocalypse?  Well probably because it kind of suggests that a good number of us might be junkies . . . junkies for junk food.  And hell, have you ever seen a junkie do much of anything worth shit besides be all crazy for the next hit?  No, you haven’t, because they’re fucking junkies.  Point is, a sign of the apocalypse doesn’t have to be a stray asteroid or the dead rising from their graves.  It just as well may be a nation full of fat ass food junkies looking for their next fix . . . all the while missing the inevitable alien invasion fleet.

Just sayin’

Note: I’m not about to claim that I am better off then these junk food junkies mind you.  I fully admit that I have a serious addiction for things like candy, burgers, and frozen pizza.  But heck, at least I can admit the addiction.

Happy American Beer Day folks!  Ah, a great holiday indeed.  And I must say there isn’t a much better time to be celebrating American Beer than right now.  Across the country there is a plethora of breweries producing American beer, ranging in size from the small local brew pubs up to giant domestic producers.  So I suggest, whatever your preference might be, that sometime today you grab yourself a tasty brew and say “Cheers!” to good ol’ American Beer.

So yesterday some friends and I took up verious carving instruments and rendered a number of pumpkins (and one acorn squash and one gourd) into a collection of jack-o’-lanterns.  It was a lot of fun (albeit a bit messy).  We also collected the pumpkin seeds for roasting, a first batch turning out quite tasty.  Dan was kind enough to use his photography prowess to document the occasion, of which you can view the photoset here.  Yay!  it is almost Halloween time folks.

This is the jack-o'-lantern that I carved. I think it looks melty.

Side note: The beer in the glass in one or two of those pictures is some of my witbier.  It is a really fantastic beverage.

“Any person who would get confused by these two different products and names should probably slow down a bit, and lay off energy drinks.”

                                                                        U.S. Senator, Bernie Sanders

Well, sounds like there is good news for Rock Art Brewery in that Hansen Beverage Co has dropped it’s cease and desist against the small craft beer maker.

I wrote about the whole debacle last week in this somewhat angry post.  it seems that Hansen Beverage Co. backed off after getting this awesome letter from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.  Bernie Sanders is a really cool guy who has done a lot in support of his home state, as well as for the greater good of the Nation.

I’m very pleased that this all worked out okay in the long run.

I do not think that I am terribly good at writing music reviews or criticism because I feel like I lack the proper vocabulary to describe the experience.  I can know why I like something, but the articulation never seems to come across correctly.  That being said I really love music, and so when I encounter an album or artist that I enjoy I feel the need to express it in some form.

As such I point to The Flaming Lips‘ newest album “Embryonic.”  I have been a pretty big fan of The Flaming Lips for the past seven years of so and as such pay close attention to any new music they are working on.  I first heard “Convinced of the Hex” from the new album some months back, but had not encountered much else besides a few speculations and tentative reviews.  The Album was released a week ago, and this past weekend I stopped into Best Buy and picked it up.  I am very glad that I did.

In trying to explain “Embryonic” I think it is important to point out that this is definitely not a piece of music of everyone.  In fact I imagine that it may achieve, at best, only a modest following.  Why?  Probably because the whole thing is just too out there and weird, too different from the majority of mainstream music, and that is really saying a lot for a band which is infamous for its bizarreness.

Does this mean that “Embryonic” is a bad album.  Not remotely.  I have listened to it everyday since I’ve bought it and I am become more and more convinced that it might be one of The Flaming Lips’ finest creations.  It is a particularly good listen as a whole album from start to finish.  

“Embryonic” is dark, moody, discordant, and verges on an almost nihilistic tendency.  The maintenance of a consistency strikes as being happenstance more so than any purposeful direction.  Yet for all the strange chaotic noise that comes through the album it seems to work incredibly well.  I’ve read through a number of reviews of the album and I think that SPIN get’s it right in saying that this album is ”the band’s coldest, darkest, slipperiest, least organic work yet.”

I have a long history of loving strange music.  My first real favorite band was Pink Floyd (from whom The Flaming Lips obviously take some major influence — they are even recording a full cover of “Dark Side of the Moon”).  I remember rocking out to “The Wall” and “Animals” back in the mid-nineties while all of my friends we finding pleasure in the pop of the day and age. I have expanded my preference for strange and bizarre music with a collection of such artists as Beck, Radiohead, Chad Vangaleen, Mr. Bungle, Modest Mouse, and so on and so forth.  Sure several of these artists, as well as The Flaming Lips, have enjoyed some popular success, but it seems that they are more often than not recognized for pushing the limits and challenging the status quo.

“Embryonic” displays a commercial disinterest in lieu of producing something truly original and new.  Like Mile’s Davis’ “Bitches Brew” it challenges the convention of a style and sound which the band has formally been attributed to.  It is strange to think that a genre of music like psychedelic rock could really need to have conventions challenged, but everything, even the most out there stuff, has a tendency to become jaded and hollow and that might be why an album like “Embryonic” is so important.

This is the weird part of the post where I question whether I have said anything valuable or interesting in support of the album.  Because of its utter strangeness I question whether it is even really worth recommending the album to most people, because of my assumption (and it is an assumption) that “Embryonic” might just push the envelope a little too much for more conventual musical preferences.  In closing then, I will say that if you like a musical experience that is different from much else that is currently available, then “Embryonic” might work for you.