The new dynamic of coveting is done through litigation.

look who's suing google.

i never really studied history, but i think in the time of kings and queens, pharoahs, and other such rulers each of which had to constantly watch their back. Greed prevails, and whoever can benefit will try to kill the ruler. Skip ahead a few years and it seems that the biggest name still has a target on them. The difference is that rather than killing, people just have to sue them.

i thought i'd write about recent events with me. but i'm not quite sure what to say that's interesting yet. i'll post some pictures from england later.

i thought of a question.

if you had access to the internet that was 5 years into the future, what would you look up, or download, or do with it?

I asked my friend and he said, what if the news talked about great imminent disaster 3 years from now, and then all of a sudden all internet activity stopped completely at that point. What would you do then?

it sounds like a movie to me. someone make it.

Here is my story of the recent events; and through how my stomach got turned from not knowing what I may be doing while being forced into an immediate decision.

So my job completely fell through. I knew the guy that was my employer was an asshole, but I think I didn’t want to think it. Finally a half hour before I left for England, which would be immediately followed by my flight to Korea, I got an email NOT from the employer but from an acquaintance that knew the employer. He told me that he doesn’t think the job will go through, and also he asked me to call him. I called him, and was informed that the employer really did hire not only one, but two new people, and he still hasn’t emailed me to tell me he did such. At which point I wasn’t even sure if I was going to England. My bags were packed, but I only had a one way ticket to England. So I scouted out cheap return flights that turned out to be not so cheap. Finally, I said screw it, I’ll go to England and come back a week later anyway. I’ll hope for the best with the prices, and if the best doesn’t come, I’ll just say I’ve put off my trip to England for too long regardless. Then I’ll get back home and actually make sure I have a job waiting for me for when I get to Korea.

By doing this, I’ve just cut out 1000% of the stress. I’ve stopped worrying about money issues too; which means that I’ll start a job midway into September, and leave early from the job the following year regardless of losing out on a year-long contract bonus.

I might even consider a job in a different country such as Japan or Dubai. It’s less likely given the logistics, but I’ll still consider it.

So I’m in England right now, and this is where my story is sitting. We’ll see what happens.

My nephew in England is extremely cute by the way. He doesn’t say “no” to anything like most kids. If he doesn’t want something he’ll just ignore you. But he will say yes a lot. I think he doesn’t say “no” because his name is Noah.

The House Party Show

I had a link to download the songs from the show. But I've learned that they download directly from a friends computer which really slows down his computer. So maybe sometime I'll figure out how to just post a song or two here by itself.

notes about the downloads you can't download:
- some songs didn't make it because the quality was just too terrible
- we never decided on a band name, so we just changed our name every couple songs
-the band itself consisted of 3-4 people
me: djembe, guitar, singing
doug: guitar, harmonica singing
allison: cello
justin(guest appearances): small djembe, backwards guitar(because he's left handed)
everyone else: backup vocals
-two notable originals: "held captive" by local rabbits, and "not coming back from this" by lemmingaid
-"held captive" had some audience conversation overtop of it about ultima online.
-"not coming back from this" was an impromtu original

China's Net Addicts
It's come to this. And of course China is the type of country to try to forcibly resolve these problems. i don't know what to say really. i just thought i'd mention this because i'm interested in China's development, and subsequent influence on the world; and also, I'm interested in technology's affects on our social realities.

Speaking of technology's affects: Baby Einstein won't make babies smarter. I think it's kinda funny how it seems like every time we as people try to replace something natural with something artificial it's invariably worse. it's a big lesson against short cuts.

an MSN conversation slightly edited.


m says:
i have a great art idea that i've decided i need to fulfill

N says:
whats that

m says:
oh wait, have you read my blog?

m says:
i just remembered i wrote a little something about it

N says:
not in the last few days

m says:
ok

m says:
then my idea is based around our digitally photographed world

N says:
hm

m says:
a world of instantaniety

m says:
a place that almost ruins imagination, and mental imaging

m says:
and takes away contemplation on any point

m says:
there are no more giant fish stories

m says:
you now know the fish was the size of their hand

m says:
so i'm going to go around with a pen a paper and just write down what i think would look like a neat picture, but not actually take the picture

m says:
besides, i think we accidentally convince ourselves that the camera doesn't lie, and we convince ourselves that the photo is as beautiful as the scene really was

m says:
but i distinctly remember looking at things that a photograph never captures as beautifully as my minds eye

m says:
after i write down the pictures i see, i will take the paper, and incorporate it into a painting that has abstract references towards the scene

m says:
essentially it is a jumping off point to start using your mental imaging center to produce and think on images more. a somewhat revival of that part of our brain.

TOP 10 WAYS TO DESTROY EARTH

http://www.livescience.com/technology/destroy_earth_mp-1.html

i had a great idea for an art project. it just needs developed a little bit more. i want to walk around with a note pad just write down what i think would look like a good photograph. my notes will be the artworks. maybe i'll even frame the pages artistically.

i remembered what i meant to write about. my last post was written because i couldn't remember. but now i do.

i think a petition should be started against media outlets. i think there should be a law put into place that bans any media outlet to report any crime perpetrated until the individual/company is proven guilty of the crime. the court of public opinion tears someone up even after they're found innocent because all these media outlets are too eager to report a story before a conclusion. i think individuals should be protected more than the rights of the media to push a sensationalist agenda.

it's hitting me. the sudden realization that i shouldn't be nearly as frustrated with the ignorant opinions put forth on the internet as i often am.
i read things like "you're an asshole, why do you even write anything" on some message boards. except take the example i use and make the grammar half as good, and the ignorance and arrogance increased 10 fold. and be sure to allow for many uninformed blanket opinions. once you do that, you've captured the essence of my frustration with people who write their opinions on the internet; you've also captured the essence of the mind of a teenager, or younger.

but the problem is, if i have a conversation with someone in the real world i can generally categorize their maturity almost before they say anything, and i can adjust my reception to that comment. however, with the internet, i need to wade through a bit a shit until i realize that this is probably some bored kid writing this stuff.

now i just assume that everyone writing anything on the internet is "that dumb kid", and then when they're not, i'm pleasantly surprised.

ze frank mentions on his site about this article http://www.orgnet.com/divided.html , and how we are bathing in what we already believe. which got me thinking about how incredibly profound this is. it is like each of us are wired to find a direction, and increasingly close our minds to anything that doesn't propagate our own beliefs. with this mode of thinking, we do not, and will not understand each others views except to the point of being able to properly rebuttal them. i know i'm guilty of this. i just wish documentarians, and news reporters weren't so guilty of this. i was reading a recent article by someone that was clearly in opposition of something i believe, and he made it absolutely clear that his article was going to be overtly biased(and actually not even factually correct in many cases). considering all of this, i more and more realize that debate is simply philosophical masturbation. if there is intent to actually change someone's view, there needs to be a personal and impassioned approach.

about 153, 000 people are proven absolute truth everyday. which happens to be the approximate number of deaths everyday.

i read about descartes simply because his name popped in my head, and i needed to know where i knew him from. it seems he's the founder of modern philosophy and the one who first said "cogito ergo sum"(i think therefore i am). i held onto that statement thinking that that is as far as we can define our reality with absolute certainty. but after reading a little bit about descartes, i have since learned that his philosophy further elaborated to say that we know we exist in some capacity because we think, but we also know that an outside world exists separate from our own thoughts because in the very least, there is sensory information that is not self-generated.

i sat in my car and drove, and thunk, and lost myself in idealism. there were four one hour car rides that i took and each were segments in absurd levels of daydreaming. granted, the last was a little bit of a wash as a whole.

1. i daydreamed about what i could do if i maximized free time with productive efficiency. this also called for extremely high levels of ability and confidence. but by the end of the car ride i had recieved 2 phd's, wrote and sold a screenplay, started a number of small businesses(which i passed the reins on), held successful art galleries, gave guest university lectures, briefly hosted a segment on much music, tried out public radio, wrote a book, and played some music and comedy clubs in my spare time. all of this was in a 2-3 time frame. also to be noted, i lied on many resumes, and i'm not necessarily interested in doing all the things within this daydream.

2. i daydreamed about being able to run as fast as a car for at least 7 hours. i think this was inspired by the traffic. subsequently i realized the chain-reaction of things that would be affected by this. Within my body, my eyesight and reaction time would have to be remarkably better, along with my overall body endurance. i'd also constantly live in fear of being shot because people are strange and want to kill success(john lennon). then i thought about getting a good shoe sponsor. then i imagined despite how neat it would be to run that fast and long i wouldn't quite be sure what else to do with it aside from lending myself to research, and being a good pro-athlete.

3. i daydreamed about extreme activism. i mean extreme in a good way, as in very productive. through past conversation it was deducted that the idealistic hippies gave birth to the superficial 80's, which beget the generation x, and led to now. "Now" is a time of so many causes; war and global warming for example. we could very well be a modern reflection of the hippy era, but we're not. instead we are the cynical generation. so much talk leading to very little. so i initiated a fight against cynicism and apathy in my head. i was extremely empassioned, and i even appeared on all the major talk shows including oprah. one point i made was that despite the abundant anti-war sentiments, it means nothing. saying to simply stop the war is denying any problems, or denying moral obligation to help a lesser country. even simple slogans like 'books not bombs' or whatever they are does very little, because adequate and feasible alternatives to the war are not provided. if however these protestors dedicated their time to creating programs that would replace the warring efforts, than this generation would be moving forward rather than stewing in cynicism. i make no true stance about the war, but rather a stance against those that say, rather than doing.
this was an ironic day dream though, because i'm pretty sure none of what i said or did in the dream will come to any fruition, or even motivate myself to start a forward moving activist group.

4. i was tired and my daydreams were very lax. the one interesting thing i noted about myself was that in conversation i will try to answer most interesting and debatable questions. such as... is technology helping or hindering people socially? anyway, during the car ride, i had a question for myself that i just kept getting stuck on, and i had the hardest time properly wrapping my mind around. so i did an imaginary space game. i imagined myself in my head in a classroom sitting in a desk as a student. i also imagined myself as a teacher. teacher me, put out the question, and student me raised my hand. now that the stage was set, i figured i could then answer the question better. i figured i just needed to contrive a situation in which i excel at hacking through questions. and actually, this worked. i did get my answer in the end. i didn't necessarily like the answer, but i got it.

those are the 4 car ride daydreams.

the lack of avenues for original expression make expressing oneself less interesting. hence naked blogs. naked in the sense of barely filled out. barely adorned in personal sentiments. my blog recently seems to act like a relay conduit. "here, this is something interesting i've found that you've probably seen so many other places; but i'll put it here anyway to play my part in internet cultural propagation." The internet is not so terrible of thing. it allows us to live more in our own minds and explore thoughts in a way more fluent towards the way our brains naturally work. If you consider that our brains exist within abstract space anyway.

so i am writing this stuff right now as a means of acknowledging the boundaries i exist in as a blogger. it is a sense of watching a movie but ignoring the scenes the director intends for you to become immersed in. Instead watching the movie and deconstructing the actual creation of any particular scene; along with deconstructing the accepted rules of defined symbolics. as an aside it is interesting to imagine how great the divide would be for someone one hundred years ago to understand the cinematic cues that have been constructed through so many years of movie making. A simple example would be the trend of using a shaky camera for action scenes. Prior to movies, this wouldn't make any sense because the human eye to brain connection adjusts it's visual signals for shaky movement to eliminate this effect in most cases.

anyway, this blogosphere is creating a common dialogue and it's so hard to predict what generally plateaued result from all of this will be. I of course say plateued because culture never stops evolving, but there are stable and level periods within it for a time. and that brings another question; how far do our internet awareness boundaries need to extend to create even a semblance of a plateau?

we are fish swimming in the internet ocean, and sometimes we may try to understand the water around us rather than just swimming.
(i know that sounds like it's trying to hard to be deep, but i'll live with it.)

i want this to be next door to me.

http://www.designverb.com/2007/06/11/tunnel-house

To me music is infectious. y'know, like crabs or goneria, or even zombieism(maybe it's spelled zombyism). except with music I typically try to infect others, unlike the aforementioned comparisons where in their case you infect but you don't intend to... usually. and hence here is my latest infectious note. http://iguessimfloating.net/assets/mp3s/TakeMeToTheRiot.mp3

someone said to me today that i really look like i'm on vacation. as if i exuded relaxation. it might be true.

So we played the best game of "horse" last night. actually it was pig, the shortened version of horse. for those uninitiated, this game involves one person shooting difficult basketball shots. if he gets it in, the other people playing need to imitate the shot. if they miss the shot they get one letter from the word horse. the first to spell the word loses.

anyway, i kinda purposely lost when doug asked if anyone has any dental problems. this was followed by his trick shot. he found a piece of lego on the ground, put it in his mouth, bit down, then punched himself in the nuts. and then did a layup.

i was the third person to get the lego. it was gross, but at least i didn't really punch myself, i only pretended. so, at that point i lost. but the next round involved putting a stick between your asscheeks, and hobbling up to the basket to shoot. finally the last one that ended the game was giving jack(a person there) a piggy back while doing a layup.

all in all i think i cried from laughing.

more korean music.

anyway, i'm in canada now. i expected arriving here to be like jumping into ice cold water. but really, it's like slipping into a hottub. it hasn't really taken me aback at all. so far the only thing that has tricked my head a bit is that i keep wanting to say a korean phrase here or there. also, there's quite a few less people around. i think some of the minor differences will wear away in my head. and others i think will be more exasperated. we'll see.