The Internet Is Decadent And Depraved

“ When disasters strike and institutions falter, as at the end of empires, it does not mean that the buildings all fall down and everybody dies. Life goes on, and in particular, the remaining people fashion new institutions that they hope will better ensure their survival.

Ernest Callenbach, the author of Ecotopia (a book I have yet to read) and a man who died recently. This is from a letter/missive he composed shortly before his death, which is long but well worth a read if you, like myself, have been worrying about the state of humanity. Granted, Ernest tends to view things from a fairly aggressive leftist environmentalist’s stance (a position that I’m pretty sympathetic to even though I know the solution isn’t as easy as removing the “looter elites”), but his observations and consolations still should strike a chord with y’all. We do seem to be cruising for a societal bruising, and I expect that we’ll see some form of revolution, reform, or revision to the way things work in our lifetimes. The thing that’s got me worrying (and hopefully you, too) is that right now, it’s hard to tell whether that change is going to be all utopian and secession of the western states-ish, or if we’re headed towards something more New World Order-y. Either way, our man Ernest thinks that somehow, like Pac says, life goes on. I don’t know about you, but I take comfort in that. So go out there, practice some human decency today, and maybe try and learn how to butcher a hog or something that’ll keep you going when the system collapses, man, ‘cause even if things don’t get any weirder that’d be pretty cool to know.

A Call to Arms, A Rekindling of the Imaginations

jujedispatch:

Shortly after finishing and handing in the last term paper of my undergraduate career, I sat down for a semi-scheduled chat with a dude I knew who was interested in some of the stuff I’d been doing for my thesis. Our conversation quickly veered away from all that, and we ended up discussing for about an hour the sorts of topics that reaffirm everything that we as a society hold to be near and dear about college; rather, the fact that we were having the conversation was reaffirming (and joyful but ultimately a little sad, as I was packing up shop and setting of for new frontiers so soon), as the topics themselves were slightly dour. I remember spending a great deal of time discussing spectacularly imaginative creations in fiction and the disappointing trend away from these very delights. For example, I partially wrote on Infinite Jest, and we both took some time to marvel at DFW’s creative brilliance, the Eschaton match in particular. What stood out, for us, wasn’t the simple fact that DFW had gone and created himself an immensely detailed alternate future-reality-thing (although that’s pretty awesome too), but the quality of Eschaton. Reading about that match, this dude and I concurred, was a direct look into a particular sort of imaginative genius, the sort that delights in flights of whimsy, that creates games like this not out of a sense of cold satirical rhetoric, but because it would be totally awesome to play a game that turns tennis and absurdly complicated mathematics into the best sort of real-time game of Risk ever. There must have been joy in DFW’s heart when he dreamt Eschaton up, and it comes through loud and clear to us reader-types.

The thing is, the dude says, we’re sort of drifting away from this sort of joyous creative kind of fictional imagination. The world of contemporary lit is vast, but the big titles and heavy hitters out there today are largely doing work that incorporates what could be thought of as a mean intelligence: rather than Eschaton or Middle Earth, we’re getting harsh realities more akin to Pynchon’s wacky alternate postwar Europe, in which everything is sort of nasty and cruel and reflects the author’s brilliance, but also a larger sense of purpose that’s probably communicating a bleak message about the state of our own Very Real World. I scratched my head at this one, having just come out of four years of reading decidedly non-contemporary books, but the dude is, as far as I can see, right. Like it or not, fiction has taken a turn for the cruelly brilliant, and has left whimsy behind.

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Hey guys, check out my other blog! It’s all established and happy now!

This is quite possibly the best thing I’ve seen in a while.

(Source: wslack)

Remembrances of Decembers Past

Not to get all fancy here, but sometimes I think that nostalgia is the emotional equivalent of a warm drink and a roaring fire, you know? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it’s December right now, and I’m sitting here in my east bay apartment thinking of about this time last December, when I was sitting in my reading nook in that old, tilted-ass house back in Williamstown, watching the snow fall after finishing a paper or something late at night. It was super-cool, kind of like Narnia, in that at the corner of the house there was this big, old timey-ish streetlamp, and the snow wasn’t really sleeting or dumping or anything, just a steady, silent pour of small-yet-fluffy flakes, so that there really was that kind of halo effect going on around the streetlamp. Couple that with the already copious dusting of snow on the ground, general holiday geumtlichkeit (last December was one of my favorite parts of senior year, but that’s another story), the contentment that comes from finishing nasty essays… for whatever reason, the moment struck a chord. I was done, it was time to sleep, I had stuff to do in the morning, but it was one of those moments that just needs to last, be more than a moment, but an experience (not to get all fancy again, just trying to express this honestly). So I sat there, even though it was cold and I was tired, and just sort of took it all in for a while, watching the snow fall harder and softer, flakes catching on some updraft caused by the overhang of the roof and shooting up on strange vectors. It’s weird that, out of all the various things that were done or said, this passive watching of the snow late at night is still one of my clearest memories of college. I’m not entirely sure what that means.

But (of course) I have a theory, and it’s kinda warm and fuzzy like a Charles Schultz special: there’s something about December, about all the various holidays and the pagan solstice stuff and darkness and the cold and the end of a year that takes on a profound importance in our little minds.

Charlie Brooker on CoD3 →

shuffstuff:

I can’t play first person video games. Yes, even Portal. (I had to stop because I felt to guilty about killing the adorable robots.) But I am absolutely obsessed with reading about them, thinking about them, and talking about them to the point that my friends—the ones who are also doing theses by choice and are a cross-section of the geekiest people alive in their own special ways—are making fun of me. I need more gamer friends, I really do.

BUT. This article about masculine forces in CoD3 is awesome and you should read it.

Well, for one thing, games are inherently wussy. The stereotype of the bespectacled dweeby gamer is an inaccurate cliche, but there’s no denying games are far from a beefy pursuit. Which is why shooty-fighty games go out of their way to disguise that. Every pixel of Modern Warfare 3 oozes machismo. It’s all chunky gunmetal, booming explosions and stubbly men blasting each other’s legs off. Yet consider what genteel skills the game itself requires. To succeed, you need to be adept at aiming a notional cursor and timing a series of button-pushes. It’s about precision and nimble fingers. Just like darning a sock in a hurry. Or creating tapestry against the clock.

Because this man is a genius, and this article is hilarious. Note to self: watch more Screenwipe.

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

peppersjam:

At the risk of derailing my music blog, a question: Is it too early to listen to Christmas/Hanukkah music?

The answer is an unequivocal “yes.”

But, is it too early to listen to the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas”?

Never. This is pretty much the only jazz I ever listen to (post overwhelming-childhood-jazz-inundation)… I should probably change that.

The Vince Guaraldi Trio - “Christmas Time is Here (Instrumental)”

Okay, not to be a dick here Steve, but sometimes there are rules when it comes to the bizarrely sacred institution of seasonally appropriate music, rules that I’m going to have a hard time justifying. Holiday music is by definition one of the hard-and-fast-est of these rules, as it simply would not do to play whatever your non-Vince G. holiday music alternative is in the height of summer. But that’s about where the rule ends, except for things like holiday cookies. Thanksgiving dinner not on Thanksgiving? Not acceptable, but turkey is cool whenever, and cranberry sauce goes well with it, and eventually we’re having everything but the pumpkin pie. Corned beef and cabbage not on St. Patty’s day? All the time if you’re more legitimately Irish than yours truly. I guess we could say that it isn’t right to play Souza not on the 4th, but he works his way into marching band repertoires all the time.

So basically the one universally justifiable constant of seasonal appropriateness is that Thou Shalt Not Play Holiday Tunes Before Thanksgiving, As It Is Way Too Early For That Shit. And that’s agreed upon, except for our boy Vince. Now, I can’t enforce the rules (nor should I; that would get out of control), but I can appeal to your reason in the same way that they tried to appeal to Dr. Frankenstein: put the Charlie Brown down, man. If you play that all year long, it won’t be as special anymore. It’s good— and probably should be played all year long, if it wasn’t for this unusual specter of seasonal music— but it’s damn good because we only hear it from Thanksgiving until, say, the end of December. Just think pumpkin pie in July, wait a few weeks, and start browsing the rest of Vince’s non-Christmas Charlie Brown catalogue. There’s some good stuff in there.

wireinspire:

A gap that needed filling. Thanks, Matt Powell.

Paradoxical motivation for a young lad looking for work? Perhaps. But also strangely comforting.

(Speaking of work, y’all can keep tabs on Juje’s semi-pro efforts at jujedispatch.tumblr.com)

aconversationoncool:

Get on down with your bad self.

Oh word.

(Also, that looks like the best front porch hang-out party imaginable).

Onwards and Upwards

Well gang, things have been pretty quiet over here in Tumblr-land, which is fair. Life happens, you graduate college, and then you get home from traveling to realize that there are other things to do during the day than find cool pictures to reblog (because, quite frankly, that’s kinda what these things become).

So, things have been quiet, and I expect that they’ll be even quieter over the coming months as I create one of those grown-up lives and hopefully finally fulfill my dream of removing myself from the Internet. But in case you guys worry that my absence will leave a huge, text-heavy hole in your lives, head on over to http://jujedispatch.tumblr.com/. That guy’s pretty good.

While it’s no All Caps, this is still kind of cool, and a look into the twisted mind of the Beat Konducta (why is he a giant stuffed… Aardvark? Where did the foxes go? Who cruises around and casually does some robbery?)

Also, not quite sure how to feel about the sped-up rapping… comes off as kind of creepy, but I desperately want to love everything Madlib does (even when it’s still not quite doing it for me— looking at you, Medicine Show #11), as he is the face and savior of all that is good in West Coast hip-hop.