You shall kill only the killers

How prescient was PKD - even though the specifics are off. There is no Penfield Mood Organ, there's just entertainment on demand, mind and body pornography. There's no Mercerism, there's just the global mind fusion that is the internet. There are no androids, but we feel the need to separate ourselves into classes and castes, between those who feel and those who do not (which is easy enough; this side of the TV feels, the other side does not: see third world, global south, etc).

We've even got Buster Friendly. 24/7/365 news, TV, media, sports. Britney Spears and Anna Nicole. It's cave drawings gone digital. Large breasts symbolize fertility. It's everything humans have ever been - and we think we're different.

Maybe that's the delusion he is really trying to uncover. These are universal themes, not exposed by technology. Instead, we use technology to exploit these desires. We haven't used the internet to evolve, to interact more potently. We've used it in the same ways we used any form of communication and networking. It's just a new plane.

Take internet gaming, for instance. It's similar to any sport. Work together with others against a common enemy to reach some goal. The goal doesn't even matter. The goal can be symbolic. If sports prepare us for war, this is a valuable evolutionary trait. We don't need to go to war to be prepared for it. We can use symbols and artificial constructs - which entertain.

And in that sense, the two are no different - biologically and socially speaking.

So it's not as if this is a huge revolution. At its roots, it is the same thing we've done since we came out of the weeds. We replaced the real with the symbolic. Now we just run on treadmills.

Okay, so - do we feel any longer? Or are we all androids, unsympathetic, the real meaning in our lives destroyed? I think the symbolic has so fully replaced the real, but it doesn't matter. We don't see through our own eyes, we see through others. We're reaching a new global medium. Average. An emotional middle-state.

Check this out. "We Feel Fine", a data-driven collection of feeling statements drawn from the internet. It's interesting enough in its own right. But what makes it so fascinating is that anyone can plug in and really feel those emotions. Just like in "Androids", we program for ourselves the emotions we want - from inspiration to depression - and there it is, on the screen, in our mind.

It's as if a billion monkeys were typing - not on typewriters, but on blogs. And this is what they came up with. Was this always here, but unexpressed? Now we just have the power to explore the feelings of millions of individuals, not just Shakespeare or Yeats or Goethe, but nearly everyone.

Strange that we all think our experiences are unique. It's that dichotomy - we live our own lives, but we are part of the collective, unyielding experience. Perhaps that's the 'mystery of faith' in the religion I was born into. That every day we are all crucified. Only through the experience of one can we understand the experience of all. In believing, we choose to fuse with that entity or idea.

Just some thoughts. Ramblings. I haven't posted in a while, so I suppose my glass is overflowing right now.

Here:
I think the only thing allowing me to ramble like this is my complete lack of audience.

On Loneliness

I was truly alone for the only time in my life last summer. My confidante was gone, pursuing the opportunities for travel given in return for seven years of your life to the US government. I lived in a house with three other people, but they were involved in their own lives, not ignoring me, but not being particularly forthcoming.

I had a routine. Wake up, go to the coffee shop to brush up on my chemistry for the fall. Come home, eat a small lunch, go to work. After work to the terrace, alone with a book or to write a letter. Watch the ducklings and the rising lake level and other peoples' children. Walk up State Street, pick up some old movies from the library. Go home, read on the porch or at the coffee shop. Watch a movie, lazily do yoga. Go to sleep.

I saw my friends sometimes of course. We would sit on the porch and smoke or drink, intermittently chatting up and harassing pedestrians. Having the kind of long, intricate discussions about ourselves that I imagine stop once you have children and grow up, replaced by stories about bowel movements and nursing bras.

But really, I was quite alone. No one pressed me for details about my life.

It gave me an odd sense of serenity. Those two months were the only ones I had without any obligations. I walked through the streets of Madison and every hour was only mine. It streamlined the rest of the world, like watching my biography being played out on the screen. There was a single interpretation, the vision of the director.

My days weren't filled with self-reflection, but with observing other people. No longer distracted by creating documentary of my day to relate to someone at night, I focused on the details of the lives of others. I eavesdropped on conversations while bussing tables, watched people squawk about produce to one another at the farmers' market. I saw people come to the coffee shop alone, like I did, every night. We snuck glances at eachother over the edges of our ambitious summer reads, books on European politics or literary classics not yet tainted by Oprah's hoard of housewives. We shook the ice in our drinks to bring attention to ourselves, tapping to get the last few sticky cubes to slide into our mouths and watched one another through the wavy iced coffee glazed lenses of the glasses' bottoms.

One night, I went home from the cafe and sat on my porch before going in, watching the buses pass with tired hisses. One of my fellow loners walked by, glanced up, faltered and then continued on. He returned five minutes later and came halfway up the steps, said he recognized me and did I want to take a walk.

No, I said, thank you.

I saw him a week later at the cafe, and within ten minutes a girlfriend appeared twittering into her phone about a new apartment. He glanced at me sheepishly, but I smiled back, straw between my lips. There was no need to apologize, my last sips told him.

I was fine on my own.

My favorite media sources / blogs / podcasts

I love the internet. It allows us so many amazing opportunities to learn. Every day, people are creating content which we all enjoy. People who are experts in their fields.

I think I never really realized the value of expertise until the past two or three years. I thought that someone could really "master" anything in a short period of time if they had a general set of skills. This may still be the case, but passion and experience can really shine through.

So here are my top-twenty favorite media sources (podcasts, blogs, papers, magazines), in no specific order:

Podcasts (All can be found using an iTunes search)
1. NPR's collection. They've got This American Life, Cartalk, Talk of the Nation, To the Best of Our Knowledge, Intelligence Squared, All Things Considered, All Songs Considered, and Fresh Air, among others. All are superb examples of great journalism and storytelling. Oh- and don't forget Prairie Home Companion and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me!

2. Podrunner. It's just a great way to get exercise music. I don't have to throw together a playlist, I just run my podrunner track and I've got an hour of beats to run or cycle to.

3. Short Stories: Selected Shorts and the New Yorker Fiction podcasts are like little "Buddhist catnaps". Really a great way to spend an hour, these podcasts entertain and challenge.

Blogs
4. Best Week Ever consistently provides some great content. I'm not a fan of celebrity news, but I do like how they mock the hyper-attentive celebrity industry itself.

5. Comics: Penny Arcade is funny in a very deep way; and Tycho's posts are always amusing. PVP is great, too. Both are about video games, but the humor reaches far beyond that.

6. Food blogs are better than porn. I just love Bitten. He makes some pretty great recipes. I love his videos the most. Jia's blog is great, as well as Eating Madison A to Z. Without them, I would never know where to eat on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday!

7. Politics, my favorite subject. DailyKos is the progressive blog, but it is definitely one-sided. Political Arithmetik is a great blog, but now it is mostly superceded by Pollster.com (where the author posts consistently). Media Matters is also a progressive blog with essays regarding media coverage of candidates and issues.

Traditional Media
8. NYT. That's easy. Crosswords, news, international coverage, the Magazine (What a great way to spend a Sunday!), food, art, wine, culture... Definitely worth the whatever-a-month it costs.


That's it for now. What's your favorite media source?

Watch out, the world's behind you...

There's only so much one can take of organic chemistry, really. Only so many hours you can spend drawing letters and lines into snowflakes and snakes with oxygen for eyes.

And yet, despite my careful hours of prodding electrons into their new orbits, I feel very sure I will do horribly on my test tomorrow.

Frankly I've had enough. Aldehydes and ketones be damned.

Everything is frustrating on a Sunday, but nothing more so than getting up early on a March morning. Driving down Madison's wagon-rutted side streets, wanting to go to church just to hear someone sing at you 'depart in peace', and then ending up in your bedroom, alone.

Sometimes I regret painting over the bordello chic purple and mauve that the previous tenant lived in. The yellow I chose is beginning to remind me of the short bus, especially when my dresser is vomiting dirty clothes on the floor.

If it was June, I could leave my windows open and listen to a warm rain. I could fall asleep to the gentle worry of a bum crawling into my room in the night and not have to think about awakening to trek up Bascom Hill--Madison's last great bobsled run.

Instead, I will toss and turn and debate drinking my security whiskey, unable to read myself to sleep because the only books I've started recently are about poverty, terrorism and my white liberal guilt.