The worst part about fucking up is realizing that someone at some time told you exactly how it would end. They gave you a hypothetical situation and you found out it was a prophecy which came true.
So, now you've fucked up and what do you do? Cut your losses? Stick it through? It's a choose-your-own-adventure where every decision leaves you with your mouth full of defeat and your pockets wide empty. And unlike a c.y.o.a., your failure affects the people around you too. There isn't a thing you can do about it. You fucked up, and now they have to deal with it as well.
What do you do? Stick around so they can deal with it better, and slowly wean your way out of the mistake? Or do you abandon the ship with the women and children and leave the first mate to drown or save himself? These are the questions...
Friday, June 19, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
The Internet Made Me A Cunt
I know what you're going to say. Well, one possible thing you will say. "Will, you can't say cunt! That's profane!" And you are right. But you are also a cunt. It isn't your fault, and I don't mean it in a terribly offensive way. It's just a fact of life. The internet has made you a cunt too.
Now, it is true I am prone to overgeneralizing and simplifying, but everyone on some level has been formed into a lesser human being by this beautiful heroin a favourite author of mine dubbed cyberspace. First of all, it has made everyone a whole bunch less literate. My grammar feels sticky in that last sentence, but whatever. The individual may strive to keep his or her words long, but these lengthy (often three or four characters longer than the abbreviations) are always swamped by the cunts typn n shrtfm.
Additionally, the internet has made you less social. And again, I hear you voicing your protests: "I am on Facebook fifteen hours a day! How is that not social!?" to which I reply: you are a cunt. If I never had to read that eight character proper noun of a waste of time again, I would be most certainly pleased. With said web site, you can take a backseat to a friendship. Instead of actually hanging out with your pals, you can virtualize your fantastic good great times by reading a pointless survey they've filled out. Instead of having great fantastic good times with your chums, you can pretend to talk about meaningful things and type to them 'how r thngs? uni iz gr8'
I despise this. But, I must be honest. I break the rules myself. Quite frequently, even. I occasionally use too many commas, and start words with conjunctions. Sometimes, I even write incomplete sentences. Even I fall to power of the abbreviation from time. And for this I am a cunt. I am breaking the intangible laws of English because of the internet, just like you, your best friend, and all the people you pretend you care about on your friends list.
This could be a full essay but really, your patience wore thin after the first two paragraphs.
Now, it is true I am prone to overgeneralizing and simplifying, but everyone on some level has been formed into a lesser human being by this beautiful heroin a favourite author of mine dubbed cyberspace. First of all, it has made everyone a whole bunch less literate. My grammar feels sticky in that last sentence, but whatever. The individual may strive to keep his or her words long, but these lengthy (often three or four characters longer than the abbreviations) are always swamped by the cunts typn n shrtfm.
Additionally, the internet has made you less social. And again, I hear you voicing your protests: "I am on Facebook fifteen hours a day! How is that not social!?" to which I reply: you are a cunt. If I never had to read that eight character proper noun of a waste of time again, I would be most certainly pleased. With said web site, you can take a backseat to a friendship. Instead of actually hanging out with your pals, you can virtualize your fantastic good great times by reading a pointless survey they've filled out. Instead of having great fantastic good times with your chums, you can pretend to talk about meaningful things and type to them 'how r thngs? uni iz gr8'
I despise this. But, I must be honest. I break the rules myself. Quite frequently, even. I occasionally use too many commas, and start words with conjunctions. Sometimes, I even write incomplete sentences. Even I fall to power of the abbreviation from time. And for this I am a cunt. I am breaking the intangible laws of English because of the internet, just like you, your best friend, and all the people you pretend you care about on your friends list.
This could be a full essay but really, your patience wore thin after the first two paragraphs.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Ghosts; Admittance
There are hours in my life where I feel like someone slipped me a hefty novocaine trip. I don't know why. I've had a good day, a great day, but I want to tear the skin off a squirrel and hit someone in the ankle with a shopping cart. Out of boredom. Indifference. Apathy. The sun rises while my eyes are awake and I don't care. Bombs could fall and planes could crash and babies could die, killing their mothers during childbirth in a natal pandemic, but I wouldn't care. Wouldn't blink.
Is apathy really that terrible? Is indifference that mortal a flaw? If I don't care about a thing, nothing bad will ever happen to me, right? If I keep my mouth shut and my eyes on my own, laughing or shrugging everything off, good and bad, it's not that bad?
It's too late, my writing is shit. Don't really care. Who reads this, they'd understand. All three of them. Mind blank.
Ghosts don't stay where you leave them. They haunt you. Town to town, geographic positioning irrelevant. Your ghosts stick to you like semen on the bottoms of your feet in the shower. They don't stop haunting you until you handle them in whatever ghost-busting way works for you.
I'm a user. I have been since I found out it's easy. Every moment in my life is a transaction with at least one unknowing participant. I can't apologize for this. It's in my nature. Like a sociopath with killing or a butcher butching. I'm a manipulator. I say the things people like to hear, want to hear. I adapt myself to be who they want me to be. Slightly. And never permanently. I think I've lost myself and these are no woods. My SELF, not just myself.
Who the fuck am I.
Is apathy really that terrible? Is indifference that mortal a flaw? If I don't care about a thing, nothing bad will ever happen to me, right? If I keep my mouth shut and my eyes on my own, laughing or shrugging everything off, good and bad, it's not that bad?
It's too late, my writing is shit. Don't really care. Who reads this, they'd understand. All three of them. Mind blank.
Ghosts don't stay where you leave them. They haunt you. Town to town, geographic positioning irrelevant. Your ghosts stick to you like semen on the bottoms of your feet in the shower. They don't stop haunting you until you handle them in whatever ghost-busting way works for you.
I'm a user. I have been since I found out it's easy. Every moment in my life is a transaction with at least one unknowing participant. I can't apologize for this. It's in my nature. Like a sociopath with killing or a butcher butching. I'm a manipulator. I say the things people like to hear, want to hear. I adapt myself to be who they want me to be. Slightly. And never permanently. I think I've lost myself and these are no woods. My SELF, not just myself.
Who the fuck am I.
Friday, June 5, 2009
Snips [2]
I've upgraded 'Snips' to all-out writing orgasmorgasbord. They will now include things like haikus or prose or other weird little things I have around. Perhaps photos if I take some of those.
Here is today:
all the keys he holds
unlock misery and friends;
suborned, he clicks still.
. . .
They do the big city zombie street shuffle. A little to the left, a little to the right, bobbing side to side, inch and then another. A sigh, a frustrated breath, a baby's carriage takes up space. Increased steps, passing on the shoulder and the curb. Dodge the trees, absurd.
. . .
the notebook's pages have all disappeared
he opened the cover, it was as he had thought
they took their leave, did not give notice
now he's a pen and a tongue and no place
to speak his mind.
the boat has dropped its oars to the lake
he had somewhere to row, no way to go
get out and swim? with the fish and the frogs
backstroke to the home of the beavers
they don't give dams.
a pair of broken lungs can't breathe
and a knife without a handle cuts on both ends.
Here is today:
all the keys he holds
unlock misery and friends;
suborned, he clicks still.
. . .
They do the big city zombie street shuffle. A little to the left, a little to the right, bobbing side to side, inch and then another. A sigh, a frustrated breath, a baby's carriage takes up space. Increased steps, passing on the shoulder and the curb. Dodge the trees, absurd.
. . .
the notebook's pages have all disappeared
he opened the cover, it was as he had thought
they took their leave, did not give notice
now he's a pen and a tongue and no place
to speak his mind.
the boat has dropped its oars to the lake
he had somewhere to row, no way to go
get out and swim? with the fish and the frogs
backstroke to the home of the beavers
they don't give dams.
a pair of broken lungs can't breathe
and a knife without a handle cuts on both ends.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Snips [1]
He smelled the mint from the woman's gum and his ears drank in the melodies from his iPod, and he thought: of a girl he missed; a girl he never knew; a girl he dreamt about
. . .
They talked about things intangible; French grammar and the similarities between une planche roulette and a sailor's she-ship.
. . .
He watched the pair sleep from across the room and had to leave. The cold concrete greeted his bare feet with welcoming shivers and he licked the lips she kissed when he bent over to brush her cheek with them.
. . .
There's a nazi on the train and I want to tie him down on the tracks and watch as his fat wrist and sagging fading tattoo turn to red pulp and charred flesh.
. . .
They talked about things intangible; French grammar and the similarities between une planche roulette and a sailor's she-ship.
. . .
He watched the pair sleep from across the room and had to leave. The cold concrete greeted his bare feet with welcoming shivers and he licked the lips she kissed when he bent over to brush her cheek with them.
. . .
There's a nazi on the train and I want to tie him down on the tracks and watch as his fat wrist and sagging fading tattoo turn to red pulp and charred flesh.
Digital Top Droppings
EDIT: I am doing this.
I have been writing little snips of prose in my phone's memo pad since I bought it. The pieces are not connected and sometimes they are songs, sometimes they are parts of a story I have to tell but haven't formed yet. These snips ('snippets' is way too matronly for me) are limited to 512 characters, which makes them perfect for... you guessed it, blog posts. So if you're reading this, should I post the snips from my cellphone onto this blog and maybe one day I'll turn a few of them into a fully connected story?
Oh and I know Moe (of Moesnoseknows fame) will say yes, but what about ... any one else?
((If there is one blog you should comment it is this one))
I have been writing little snips of prose in my phone's memo pad since I bought it. The pieces are not connected and sometimes they are songs, sometimes they are parts of a story I have to tell but haven't formed yet. These snips ('snippets' is way too matronly for me) are limited to 512 characters, which makes them perfect for... you guessed it, blog posts. So if you're reading this, should I post the snips from my cellphone onto this blog and maybe one day I'll turn a few of them into a fully connected story?
Oh and I know Moe (of Moesnoseknows fame) will say yes, but what about ... any one else?
((If there is one blog you should comment it is this one))
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Sans Serif Name Drop
Hello, Internet.
We have to have a chat. Not the kind of shorthand, acronym/abbreviation orgy of misspellings and insults you are used to. No, this chat demands your attention and doesn't flash by you in a flicker of one-hundred forty characters or less. So let's get down to it: you demand too much of my attention for such little payoff. I sit in front of your glowing tubes and peruse your many, many catalogs of vapid entertainment, top 10/15/20/25/100/150 lists, your articles that appear to have been written after several tumblers of rum.
And I hate every time I click my mouse on a snippet of text, underlined and in hyperlink blue (or purple, on an especially mundane day). I hate having a favourites bar with text that would have worn away, were the buttons real for how often I press them. I especially hate how I know there is a far deeper secret than I see on your surface. I know there are glorious places in the folds of your skin, and underneath that skin but I can never find the right path to them.
And your ability to 'connect' my peers and strangers? It is fueling our disconnection. Forgive me for being a hypocrite, old friend, but you are disease, spreading virally. Your spread and influence are creating a shockwave of malpractice in your users. You allow marketers to attack us with their wired ads, popping over and under and up, infiltrating the corners of our eyes with their banners promising naked women or fast cash.
I cannot stand your willingness to say whatever comes to your mind. I am not one for self-censorship - your target audience doesn't need to accept your statements for their reception of the information you bear is the unwielding reason of your being - but when you reduce yourself to becoming a puppet for those speak with no worth you become a useless entity, a fox with broken legs and a shaven pelt. Step up, my friend. You have more importance in you than to be an advertiser's Elysium.
You have many useful tools, I will never refute this fact. But you need to organize yourself in such a manner that these tools are on clear display, so I can use them when I need to. Take your translating sites, your magazines, your games and your (archaically illegal) downloads, and organize them. Make yourself into a suitable figure, one that is shaped from x to y to z on neverending axes. You will thank yourself for it. You digg?
We have to have a chat. Not the kind of shorthand, acronym/abbreviation orgy of misspellings and insults you are used to. No, this chat demands your attention and doesn't flash by you in a flicker of one-hundred forty characters or less. So let's get down to it: you demand too much of my attention for such little payoff. I sit in front of your glowing tubes and peruse your many, many catalogs of vapid entertainment, top 10/15/20/25/100/150 lists, your articles that appear to have been written after several tumblers of rum.
And I hate every time I click my mouse on a snippet of text, underlined and in hyperlink blue (or purple, on an especially mundane day). I hate having a favourites bar with text that would have worn away, were the buttons real for how often I press them. I especially hate how I know there is a far deeper secret than I see on your surface. I know there are glorious places in the folds of your skin, and underneath that skin but I can never find the right path to them.
And your ability to 'connect' my peers and strangers? It is fueling our disconnection. Forgive me for being a hypocrite, old friend, but you are disease, spreading virally. Your spread and influence are creating a shockwave of malpractice in your users. You allow marketers to attack us with their wired ads, popping over and under and up, infiltrating the corners of our eyes with their banners promising naked women or fast cash.
I cannot stand your willingness to say whatever comes to your mind. I am not one for self-censorship - your target audience doesn't need to accept your statements for their reception of the information you bear is the unwielding reason of your being - but when you reduce yourself to becoming a puppet for those speak with no worth you become a useless entity, a fox with broken legs and a shaven pelt. Step up, my friend. You have more importance in you than to be an advertiser's Elysium.
You have many useful tools, I will never refute this fact. But you need to organize yourself in such a manner that these tools are on clear display, so I can use them when I need to. Take your translating sites, your magazines, your games and your (archaically illegal) downloads, and organize them. Make yourself into a suitable figure, one that is shaped from x to y to z on neverending axes. You will thank yourself for it. You digg?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
