Monday, October 04, 2004
On the subject of 'Last Words'
Our lives are no longer bound by locality. The internet allows us to be known, no matter how tentatively, all around the world. We really do belong to an international social community.
I have friends all over - in Los Angeles, New York, Indonesia, Wellington, Melbourne, Japan, France, Brazil, Malaysia, Mobile and even Sedgefield (synonimous with 'Parts better left Unknown'). Just look at the site map under the tagboard on your left to see what I mean (and sign it while you're there!).
What I have always found funny about online friendships and relationships - is how they are solely based on words. That's all I am to you really - just a collection of sentences and phrases. A series of paragraphs trying in vain to replicate the strange thoughts that flow through my brain - like freehand sketches of impossible geometries.
I am this sentence. And this one. And I am all the other ones I wrote before. And I will be all the words you will ever read that I have written. And that is all. Without these words you would have no sense of me - no perception at all. We have a purely alpha-numeric relationship.
What use have I for famous last words?
Now and at my last - these words are all I shall ever be.
This thought broke free from
Solender's mind at 01:10 pm
It is still at large and should be considered Armed and Dangerous
Friday, October 01, 2004
I often see Search Engines turn up in the Referring Web Pages section over there on the left. I wonder how dissapointed those people feel when they don't find information about Zeus, Osiris and Qetzlcoatl here in this chaotic little corner of my mind.
My thoughts on Mythology?
It's there. It's always there. I think classic mythologies were just extensions of storytelling. We began with primitive pictogram stories of Hunters killing Elk on ochre smeared plains. The Hunters soon grew into Heroes. The Elk into Dragons. Vanity had the Heroes become Kings and Kings become Gods.
Somewhere along the line religion happened.
I think we get caught up in the idea of religion and mythology being one. I think the 'death of religion' (heaven forbid) would not neccessarily diminish mythology's effect on society.
Modern Mythology florishes on the silver screen cave walls, in three-colour ochre smeared picto-graphic novels, around the heatless fire tribal-vision sets and on the sacred parchment pages of every book ever written.
Mythology exists within ALL the stories humanity has ever told itself, to teach or to entertain.
Hunters, Elk, Heroes, Dragons, Kings and Gods forever.
This thought broke free from
Solender's mind at 09:39 am
It is still at large and should be considered Armed and Dangerous
Thursday, September 23, 2004
The earliest lifeforms to lay eggs appeared between the Cambrian and Ordivician Periods of the Paleozoic Era - around 500 million years ago. Birds did not evolve until the middle Jurassic Period of the Mesozoic Era, some 300 million years later, and I somehow doubt that these proto-avians were anything like the modern day chicken.
The egg came first - stop wasting your time and move on to the next question.
This thought broke free from
Solender's mind at 07:30 pm
It is still at large and should be considered Armed and Dangerous
Saturday, September 18, 2004
You can't have everything...
...where would you put it all?
This thought broke free from
Solender's mind at 05:27 pm
It is still at large and should be considered Armed and Dangerous
Thursday, September 16, 2004
What colour is the sky on your planet?
I'm sure at some point most people will end up questioning whether they really experience the exact same reality as everyone else. I know I have and still do to this day.
When I was young, maybe seven or eight, I used to think that I was in some sort of elaborate test. I thought it was vaguely possible that everybody I had ever met was an android of some sort and I was being monitored by aliens/real human beings and one day the great illusory curtain would be drawn aside and I would be able to join the really real world. Obviously I thought all that with much smaller words - I wasn't even ten yet after all.
Today I guess I'm slightly less paranoid - I've seen enough people accidently bleed to set aside my 'android' fantasies. But sometimes I still wonder whether my reality is actually the same reality others percieve. Now this goes a little deeper than mere differences in points of view - and I have my doubts about whether I can explain it with any clarity, but I'll give it a go.
The kind of social disphagia I can imagine is probably most simply explained through 'primary colour' perception. Imagine, if you will, that you were born seeing the colour red as others would see the colour blue and vice versa. Now obviously your world would look entirely different when compared to anyone elses - your sky would probably be a shade of red for a start and when you bled (thus proving your non-android status) the colour that would ooze forth would be what we imagine to be blue. All the shades and hues would be affected and your whole world would be a psychadelic miasma of abberant colours.
The funny thing is that if this were so - it's highly probable that no one would really notice. We have a commonality of language that allows us to refer to the same objects, colours or properties objectively. When we're growing up we learn that the colour of the sky is blue - regardless of what we percieve. Thus, although you are seeing what others believe to be red - you will always call it blue because you assume that the colour you see is the same colour everyone else calls blue. All the secondary colours would be similarly shifted but because each hue is refered to through objective experience - it would seem that we were all seeing the same colours, even if we weren't.
As I said, that's the most simple example and I hope it was easy enough to grasp because the following is going to run counter intuitively - like leaping salmon of truth deperately swimming against the raging currents of reality.
What if other forms of perception were likewise affected? What if you experienced any one sense in a completely different way? Say you actually experienced sound as others percieve light: To you a symphony would actually look like a sprawling mass of colours. An explosion would sound like a flash of vermillion. Because the same commonality of language still applies (a 'bang' is a 'bang' no matter how it is seen OR heard) then it is possible that no one would ever know they weren't experiencing things exactly the same way as everyone else.
Now you're probably thinking that ears are designed to hear and eyes are designed to see - we all have near enough the same equipment so it follows that we all see and hear in much the same way. That is indeed true - the equipment is of similar make and model and seemingly similar design. But all this equipment does is capture light and sound and send it as electrochemical signals through to the brain.
While it is being transported, occular signals and aural signals are pretty much exactly the same - it is only when they get to the relevant sections of the brain that they are disseminated and interpreted into actual sensory perception. All the equipment does is convert light, sound, heat, smell, texture and taste into data which is fed into the central processing unit/nervous system for mental rendering. And it is only when this rendering is being done that we finally experience the universe around us.
I guess what I'm saying is: what if the rendering equipment worked completely differently for each individual? What if the raw data of the universe is experienced arbitrarily by every single person. The data is the same and the language being used to describe the data is also the same - so we would never really know that another mind views the world in a completely alien format.
There are already cases of synesthesia - where those afflicted will see noises and taste colours. What if this weren't a mere nueral miscommunication? What if this were just a peek at how others might be experencing the world?
Did you understand any of that? Did you not understand and do you think I'm crazy? Did you understand and do you think I'm crazy?
What colour is the sky on your planet... or how does it taste?
This thought broke free from
Solender's mind at 12:13 pm
It is still at large and should be considered Armed and Dangerous
Saturday, September 11, 2004
The 'hunkered down' generation
A great many of us travel through life accepting that the world is crap and there's nothing we can do about it. That 'shitiness' is inherent and all pervasive and we are but a fly on the dung-heap of existence. The best we can do is to just accept it and get on with our tiny little lives.
Newsflash: there'll be no 'hunkering down' on MY watch!
We have a responsibility, as human beings, as authors of our own desperate condition, to address and hopefully redress the crappy situation we've inherited. We don't have to accept shit as 'just the way things are'. We're better than that. We need to come to terms with the fact that we are, for all intents and purposes, directly capable of making personal AND global changes.
The illusion of a remote self-governing communal conscience needs to be destroyed for a start. The human race isn't just 'out there' doing its own thing - it's inside you. You own it. By sitting back and watching the world degenerate further into hell, you actually become part of the problem. It's the weight of global indifference (or at most 'quiet disdain') that is slowly pushing this world under and I for one am not ready to watch it self-flush.
What can you do? Voice your opinion. Get angry. Break something. Stop just being - and start doing. Don't whinge - but complain strongly, with purpose and conviction. Don't just get upset with the shit you see in the news - start conversations about it with people you know and people you don't know. Call people out on their crap. Don't let things slide. Make some noise.
Refuse to be part of the 'hunkered down' generation.
This thought broke free from
Solender's mind at 04:41 pm
It is still at large and should be considered Armed and Dangerous
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Greed is the World Killer
I've noticed a disproportionate amount of religion bashing going on amongst some of the people I know and respect online. Phrases like - 'religion is the root of all conflict' and 'religion has caused more death and destruction than anything else' have been the norm when the subject is broached.
Now I'm as irreligious as the next athiest but these blanket statements are simply not true. Here's some stats on the top 5 atrocities of all time:
1: World War Two (1937 to 1945) - 50,000,000 dead
2: Mao Zedong's Regime (1949 to 1976) - 40,000,000 dead
3: Stalin's Regime (1924 to 1953) - 20,000,000 dead
4: World War One (1914 to 1918) - 15,000,000 dead
5: Russian Civil War (1918 to 1921) - 8,800,000 dead
None of these conflicts directly involved religion at all. In my opinion they were all based on mankinds greed. Greed for land. For power. For geo-political control.
It's like we don't need gods to justify our own ends anymore - we'll kill who we want for whatever reasons we like. For revenge. For oil. For corporate profit.
Don't blame death and destruction on religion - we're more than capable of doing it all and worse on our own.
This thought broke free from
Solender's mind at 01:29 pm
It is still at large and should be considered Armed and Dangerous
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
I miss running my own bar - in particular I miss coming up with crazy cocktails. Here's a few originals and slight variations from my time down in The Ch'ch:
The Warm Fuzzy
1 part banana liquer
1 part chocolate liquer
1 part green chartreuse
1 marshmellow
1 lighter
1 long handled teaspoon
Layer liquids in order.
Flame top floating chartreuse with lighter.
Carefully spoon in marshmellow.
Allow marshmellow to 'toast' as much as you desire.
Blow out flame and shoot.
The Flux*
1 double shot of tequila
1 shot butterscotch schnapps
apple juice
ice
Half fill a tall glass with ice.
Pour over tequila and schnapps.
Top with apple juice.
The Wimbledon Special
1 double shot of peach schnapps
1 shot kirsch
2 medium sized strawberries
1 scoop vanilla bean icecream
blanc de blanc champaign
In a bar blender mix schnapps, kirsch, strawberries and ice cream until smooth.
Half fill two champaign flutes with mixture and top with champaign.
Brandy Lucille
1 double shot brandy
1 double shot creme de cacao
1 double shot baileys
3 scoops ice cream
3 oreo cookies
Burst cookies in a blender until crumbed and set aside.
Place alcohol and ice cream in the blender and mix until smooth.
Poor into a tall shake-style glass and stir through cookie crumbs.
* Not my own invention - all credit to Rachel @ The Rockpool
This thought broke free from
Solender's mind at 05:09 pm
It is still at large and should be considered Armed and Dangerous
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
Cafe Conversations Part Two
Me: It just seems more... like... agressive for the man.
H: Why?
Me: Because he has to... 'penetrate' the woman - she just has to lie there.
H: Yeah right - you've been with the wrong women.
Me: Tell me about it.
H: Besides, why is it always the man 'penetrating' the woman - why isn't it the woman 'enveloping' the man?
Me: ... ... ...
H: You'll catch flies with your mouth open like that.
This thought broke free from
Solender's mind at 12:44 pm
It is still at large and should be considered Armed and Dangerous
What's the frequency Kenneth?
For months I've been struggling with my wireless broadband connection at my workdesk. I have this little 'Woosh' modem that has a frequency strength counter which ranges between 0 and 4. At my desk I used to get a 3 hit, until I got this metal paper work holder thingamy (my desk really was a state before I got it) that somehow seems to interfere with my reception. As such I've been struggling to get a 1 count and have been shifting the modem and paperwork shrubbery around my desk trying to get an optimal result.
Today, quite by accident, I popped the modem up on my desk and didn't notice that the little aerial thing was actually touching the shrubbery... and I got a 4 count! Woohoo!
God that's a boring story - I'm just gonna stop writing entries about aspects of my own life now. More crazy esoteric pop-philosophy to come...
This thought broke free from
Solender's mind at 12:08 pm
It is still at large and should be considered Armed and Dangerous
