Deus Absconditus

dgenerator — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:36:45 GMT

Odd shit you see working at Microsoft: Felicia Day, playing pool and hanging out.

dgenerator — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:39:21 GMT

Once upon a time I was going to post a rant here, but I think I will save that until I am feeling grumpy about something unrelated, so that I can get the grumpy out.

Neuromancer: 25 Years Later

I think it would be fair to say that Neuromancer has shaped me - or my hobbies - more significantly than any other book I have read, and I'm certain I'm not alone in saying that. There's no hyperbole in the statement: Neuromancer changed my views on what the future could be like. When I was very small, The Future was always a place of Lamborghini-style hard lines and swept angles, of jetpacks and humanoid robots, and moon colonies. The Future was pretty damn exciting. In the single act of reading Neuromancer in all of its stiff charactered, crazy-languaged glory, my brain warped and shifted. The Lamborghini lines and swept angles rusted and became bent, the jetpacks stopped working, and the robots ceased to be humanoid, becoming more insectlike and alien.

It was a hell of a sea change.

I recall having a discussion with a friend in 1997 - one that I revisted later, in 2001 - about the gothic subculture and its relation to cyberpunk as a style, a genre, and a vision of the future. I recall at the time being exceptionally excitable about the explosive growth of the internet and all of the upcoming technologies which even now, less than a decade later, we take largely for granted. You know, smart phones, digital storage so cheap as to be effectively limitless for end-users, wireless access in public spaces, remote interaction with private and government entities, et cetera.

This friend of mine informed me that cyberpunk was dead, had been dead for at least five years, since the early to mid 90s. Her rationale was that since punk was dead in its hardcore and smash-the-state incarnation, cyberpunk could only hope to coast along via inertia rather than remain relevant. Naturally, she also said that goth will remain relevant because it looks backward to a static inspirational period rather than being transitory like cyberpunk. I told her that this very rationale is why cyberpunk will remain relevant rather than die off. Because cyberpunk is fundamentally forward-looking by definition, it can evolve and change with time rather than remain locked. Sure, first-wave cyberpunk is quaint by modern standards, but cyberpunk (as an umbrella) has spawned sub-genres, evolved, mutated, and I think very much remained relevant to our current lives. Because it isn't just mohawks and mirrorshades, cyberdecks and Fighting The Man.

It's the root genre of transhumanist fiction. It's commentary on technology in our lives, changing us as we change it. It's genetics, internet law, urban renewal, shifts in moral panic.

Like my argument with psychik about punk-as-genre vs punk-as-political-movement, I don't think you need to timelock categories to a particular time period and then invent wholly new categories when the original changes: not only CAN you trace an evolution over time, I think in general you SHOULD, or something will never remain relevant longer than two or three years.

Metaphysics

dgenerator — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:33:46 GMT

Some thoughts I've been having:

The Nature of Essence and Creation
All that is, is Essence. Put any thoughts from your mind about atoms, quarks, germs, or even bacteria-as-we-know-it. All that is, is Essence. Essence flows, it binds, it arranges all under heaven into the Ten Thousand Manifold Things which make up creation. A river flows because the Essence of that river yearns to travel to the sea, as water-essence desires to be with itself. The Essence of a fire consumes because it must change wood into air.

One does not become ill if one fails to wash after touching a corpse because of the bacteria in the corpse, no no. One becomes ill because the nature of death-essence is to spread death and to decay life: by touching the body, and failing to perform the proper cleansing rituals, you have both spurned the blessings of the Gods of Purification, and you have allowed your life-essence to become contaminated by death-essence.
Essence demands change. It cannot stand to be stagnant. This is why the nature of the Wyld and Creation alike are constantly in flux. Perhaps the truest crime of the High First Age against Creation was to prevent Creation from changing. This is why Essence must change from stone to mud, mud to water and air, air and water to wood, and wood must burn to release air again. All such changes are the nature of Essence.
Stunts and Essence
As Essence must change and flow, so to does Essence demand action on the part of the animate. While the motion of a mortal weaver will allow the Essence to flow into them and into that which they create, it is a small brook of dynamism. So then do the Exalted possess such vast quantities of Essence, as do mortals who have enlightened themselves. These creatures are tidal waves and tornados of Essence; they may do the impossible not only because of their Essence, but because all of Creation loves them so well.
This is the nature of the Stunt. Creation and Essence, being formed of dynamism, and loving those that are dynamic within them, take note when heroes and villains act in concert with the nature of the world around them. At the simplest level, when one blessed with greatness acts in a fashion that is audacious and bold (1 die Stunt) and causes onlookers to gasp, the Essence of Creation hurries and crowds around to respire within them: the Essence wants to dwell within the audacious and bold, because they are the ones who inspire change in the world around them. When the audacious and bold act in concert with their surroundings (2 die stunts) or have the good fortune to act in such concert with their surroundings in a truly unique manner (3 die stunts), so does more Essence take note and flow into them.
This is the nature of things.

Next: The Nature of the Incarnae, and of Virtue

Okay, I'll post more.

dgenerator — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 19:34:02 GMT

So I know I've been slack on posting. It happens. Just one of those quiet times.

I have nothing of note to report that matters, really - working, geeking, et cetera. All is well and as it should be, but details aren't really relevant at this point.

I shall try to post more in coming days.

dgenerator — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:40:58 GMT

lilmissnever, I understand your pain.

People do not understand copyright law. AT ALL.

E3

dgenerator — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:39:18 GMT

If you didn't see the Microsoft E3 presser this year, let me sum it up for you:

We rock. My group rocks. And we will give you awesome.

dgenerator — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:58:29 GMT

I just remembered that the only reason I ever bought a cell phone back in 2005 was to ask a girl out and have her be able to call me.

I'm not sure what that says about me.

Hokusai and Hiroshige

dgenerator — Wed, 13 May 2009 22:11:28 GMT

I'ma tell you about Japanese "ukiyo-e" ('Floating World') prints.

Everybody who knows anything about Japanese art knows (and usually loves) Hokusai Katsushika. That's as incontravertable a fact as "If you know anything about cars, you know Ford." You know Hokusai, in fact. He did the woodblock ukiyo-e print The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, which you will have seen unless you are dead or blind. It's undoubtedly the single most famous image ever produced by a Japanese artist ever, and is part of one of the most successful print runs of ukiyo-e woodblock cuts: Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji, which actually has 46 prints in it because it was so popular he made 10 addendum prints later. The Great Wave Off Kanagawa is #1. #2 is also fairly popular, and my personal favorite of the series, South Wind, Clear Sky, aka "Red Fuji."

Back in 2005 I took a Japanese art class at UCSB, and discovered Hokusai's number one rival, Ando Hiroshige, and discovered that I actually liked Hiroshige's style better than Hokusai's. This is at least somewhat due to the fact that Hiroshige influenced Van Gogh, who I've always thought was awesome. Van Gogh went so far as to copy some of Hiroshige's prints. But a major reason I like Hiroshige more is the subject matter of his work.
Like Hokusai, he did landscapes, but he preferred to base them around roads and regions rather than singular features. His competing print line to Thirty Six Views was The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido, the Tokaido being the major road which lead between Edo and Kyoto.
There are a couple of stand out prints from this series, with my personal favorites being Kanbara-juku (#16), Shono-juku (#46), and Saka-no-Shika (#49).

On a lark, I was browsing ebay yesterday, and found a number of Hiroshige prints for not too much.
I now own original, 1830 prints of Kanbara-juku and Shono-juku.
I'm especially happy about scoring the Shono-juku print, since it's my favorite.

dgenerator — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:24:50 GMT

Dear Santa Barbara,

What the hell. Seriously, could you go more than a few months without being on fire? Who are you trying to impress? Is this like, the forest fire equivalent of binge drinking to impress your friends? Lay off. I like you just how you are.
P.S. You can have some of my rain.

-Tyler

Is it just me, or is it very 1940s in here?

dgenerator — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:28:58 GMT

Aside: I've been meaning to post more, but I've been busy.

I'm a poor supporter of feminism. I would go so far as to suggest that when presented with most 'modern' (i.e. radical or guilt-inducing) representations of feminism, I am actively hostile toward it. This is mostly because many varities of it are predicated on the theory that I do not know my own mind, because I am too programmed.

Having spent a lot of time and effort getting to know my own prejudices and biases, I don't like being told I don't understand because I'm not observant enough. There is also a strong tendancy among early-college age feminists to behave as if no progress has been made since 1960, and which I usually find to be a cypher for their desire to be controversial in ways they hadn't been at home.

But every now and again, I feel I ought to recant my opinion that progress has been made. I'm going to post an article by a Canadian columnist now. I think you should read it.

Caring for Karine
Sending our daughters to war in Afghanistan is just wrong

By MICHAEL COREN

So Canada sacrifices another victim on the altar of equality.

Last week a young girl dressed up as a soldier died in the increasingly futile and pointless war in Afghanistan. She was 21 years old, had been in the country for two weeks on her first tour of duty and probably weighed a little over 100 pounds.

Please know that I mean no disrespect to Karine Blais or to her family and I grieve for her and them. But what on earth was she doing in such a place and in such a job?

Look at the photograph of this beautiful girl. Look at the innocence, the gentleness, the grace. All of them precious aspects to the human character. So when I say that she was "dressed up as a soldier" I mean it as a compliment. I've known soldiers all of my life and I have an invincible respect for them. I've seen their courage, integrity and sheer decency.

I've also seen their capacity for controlled and righteous violence, which is absolutely essential for any fighting man. Yes, man. Because there are few if any women who have the skills required to serve as a front-line combat trooper.

Yes, yes, yes, I know it's fundamentally anti-Canadian to say this but I'd prefer to articulate the views of the silent majority than hide behind some modernist fetish that places more importance on the myth of absolute equality than the safety of a girl who should be laughing with college friends rather than fighting theocratic madmen.

Can we really imagine for a moment that if a group of Taliban tribesmen rushed a trench or an encampment this poor young woman could fight them off, could deal with the thrusts of their long knives and heavy clubs? Do we seriously think that the men in the unit would not risk their own lives to protect a pretty young girl who was inevitably being beaten to the ground by salivating killers?

The very reason we have various weight categories for all forms of organized fighting is that whatever the training, a pugilist's weight and muscle bulk give an advantage to the heavier combatant.

More than this, even contrived cultural denial should not prevent us from admitting that the death of a daughter or a wife is different from that of a son or a husband. Women nurture, give birth, care in a way that is unique. Quite simply, they are different from men.

If captured, of course, such a woman would be repeatedly raped. And tortured. Again, I'm not meant to say this. Not Canadian, not CBC, not Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Not the sort of thing we're supposed to feel, so we pretend that men and women in the army, police and fire service are given the same tests and have to fulfil the same requirements. Yet truth still breaks through.

We rightly condemn Islamic extremists in Afghanistan because they treat women so badly. Then we allow one of our own to give her life so that we can congratulate ourselves on how liberal and egalitarian we are, lie about how gender difference don't matter and then encourage our generals and politicians to obscure the truth on television about soldiers and causes.

What hypocrites we have become. Poor, poor Karine -- this is not the way it should have been.

You and your country deserved better.

MICHAEL.COREN@SUNMEDIA.CA

The fact that I find most hilarious? Look at Coren's rhetoric about the poor girl's size and how those awful, club-swinging Taliban would kill her no matter what. Let's ignore the fact that she'd be packing a CQB automatic weapon. Let's look instead at the fact that Coren has fetishized Blais's innocence to such a degree that he doesn't even recognize what her job was. Would you care to guess?
She was an APC crewman. She died when a mine took out the vehicle she was in. So much for the arguments about her physical ability to defend herself.

I will be happy when we, as westerners, can look back upon this kind of sentiment with the same confused bemusement we now feel when looking back at 19th century 'science' which 'proved' that 'the negro' was incapable of higher learning.

The bones of Coren's thinking should be ground up and paved over and used as the foundation of a monument to our own stupidity.

Why I hate twitter.

dgenerator — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:21:31 GMT

Why I don't use twitter:

"Twitter is the blog equivalent of a meth-addled 13 year old trying to explain Pokemon to their grandmother. It's all fragments and inanity."*

*Dear reader, if you twitter, I do not hate you. I just refuse to read your tweets.

dgenerator — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 22:46:16 GMT

Debated making a custom friends group for this, and then decided "Fuck it." Making a 4 person friendslock strikes me as uneccessary.

Rules for Exalted
The following are a set of what you might call guidelines more than rules for my Exalted game, which has yet to have a name. It'll have a name sooner or later.
1) Think Big. This isn't a game to worry about if your ship will get stolen, or if that island is gonna send their fleet after you, or if Cao Xing shot you in the eye with an arrow. This is a game where you worry if you can steal a NICER ship after yours gets jacked, where you worry if you have the time to wreck that island's fleet, and it's a game to worry about if you'll look sufficiently bad ass when you pull that arrow out of your eye and eat the eye off it. Yes, just like Xiahou Dun.
2) More Awesome is Always Better Than Less Awesome. Some people treat awesome and stunts to be like cherries on sundaes - you stunt or do a crazy thing once in a blue moon, because doing it more often would be overkill. No, no, no. Stunts are like all the OTHER shit on the sundae, and the cherry is a 3-die stunt - the plucking of your eye off the arrow, or "Get away from her, you BITCH". 1 and 2 die stunts are the nuts and chocolate chips. They are the texture of the game, the subtle flavor additives that change it from vanilla to dessert.
3) Be Proactive. I am perfectly capable of wrecking creation around you and making it so the game sucks. How can you stop me from simply advancing time and ruining everybody's day? Simple: be proactive. That is to say, determine what things you want and pursue them. You want to own a fleet? Determine how you wanna get or build it, and go do it. You want to kill a god? Build yourself an army, some guns, and go do it.
4) Be brave, be bold, be exemplary. Now, this isn't the same as 'be retarded.' Don't assume that picking a fight with a bunch of dragon blooded with 100 xp on 'em won't kill you totally fucking dead if they're good at fighting. What I mean is this: the world needs people to grab it by the collar and ask it what the hell its problem is and if it'd like to catch 5 across the face. Sometimes that involves picking a fight, and sometimes it involves stealing the Silver Prince's Resplendent Tutu of Shadows as a way to embarass him. But at the end of the day, the Solar are what they are because they're not afraid to say "Fuck you, I'm Chuck, I do what I want!" So what if you don't have an army and you want to conquer that city? You can kill their armies BY YOURSELF, and then convert the survivors into a worshipful cult.*
* May only apply to spooktress unless others buy additional Socialize & Presence charms.
5) Live it up. Don't be Mr. Stoic with no emotions. Turn the emotional dial to 11. Pump your fist and sneer at the gods. You're a badass, but you don't live in a vacuum.
6) Have a Plan. Like the Cylons, you should have a plan to get what you want. To get EVERYTHING you want.
7) Rock. And. Roll. Getting bored? Surprise me with something. Like rock and roll, you should never have to sit and wait unless something is building up.
8) Think Laterally. Unless I am grossly stupid, sometimes you won't be able to get your way with a stand-up confrontation. Be prepared to get creative in that Shadowrun kind of way. In return, I promise every situation will have multiple avenues of attack.

dgenerator — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 20:42:57 GMT

I think you all need a bit more Tom Waits in your life.

dgenerator — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:37:44 GMT

I think many people in this world mistake certain attributes of personality or quirks of history for intelligence or quality of character.

Personally, I think anger and scorn are probably the most frequently mistaken for intelligence. Many of my favorite people and heroes have undoubtedly contributed to this: Hunter S. Thompson, Warren Ellis, Harlan Ellison. ESPECIALLY Harlan Ellison. Genius author that he may be, I think many of his fans and others who seek to emulate him forget one key thing: Harlan is always loud, but being loud does not always make Harlan right. No matter how angry and scornful you are, deriding someone effectively does not make them wrong. It just makes you a jerkass. Now, you can be a funny jerkass, and you may even be right, but your rightness is independent of how you present it.

There also seems to be a highly prevalent belief that outrage - no matter how disproportionate or ill-thought-out - is the primary sign of having a social conscience. This extends through the ranks of hippies, punks, left wing, right wing, feminists, socialists, capitalists; it spares no social group, though some are admittedly more prone to it than others.
Come on, you know you've seen them: the people who are always pissed off at some violation of rights, at some percieved slight due to social class or ethnicity, who refer (with a straight face) to the 'ruling class' of the United States while they themselves are probably part of that very class? And then, decrying the unjustness of oppression of their hated foes, demand that those foes be silenced/killed/mutilated on the altar of public opinion, and never sense the irony in their own statements?

I want to have beatonna's head babies. This reminded me of psychik - at least the Lenin part did:

And this is just funny.

dgenerator — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:06:09 GMT

The sheer volume of idiocy I am seeing today is a little startling, and it's driving me crazy. I am slowly edging toward the point of punching people in the eye. For instance!

-On the subject of Exalted: "The biggest thing was it went from "play an awesome character in a larger then life game" to "play a pawn on a chessboard" Big characters, built to be far stronger then we could face (to the point of eventually having basically fiat powers to make them unbeatable) were the true movers and shakers of the setting. Sidereal advisers were not advisers, and did not actually do visions of the future as the basic premise of the game was. Pretty much no matter what you play you are a tool."
Sounds like a problem with the GM, no the system.

-On the subject of the Amazon Kindle 2's ability to use read to you via a text-to-speech program:
*Long aritcle about the Kindle's 2's high quality text-to-speech.
Forum Poster 1: "Amazon has since announced that authors and publishers can have the text-to-speech function disabled on a title-by-title basis."
Forum Owner: "That announcement is tantamount to "Pirates announce that their blatant theft of copyrighted material will be discontinued, on a title-by-title basis, if the authors being stolen from write a truly sincere pretty-please letter.""
I cannot even form a coherent response to this, it's so stupid. Yes, because checking the "no text to speech" box when submitting your book's DRM and metadata is OBVIOUSLY the same as 'plz pirate kthks'.

-And, of course, this gem:
"Take a look at all the constituency groups that for 50 years have been depending on the Democrat Party to improve their lives. And you tell me if you find any. They're still complaining, still griping about the same problems. Their problems don't get fixed by government. And those lives have been poisoned. Those lives have been cut short by false promises, from government representatives who said don't worry about it, we'll take care of you. Just vote for us."
Obviously, only democratic politicians promise this. Republicans never do. Right.

Taxes

dgenerator — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 09:04:47 GMT

I owe $2,300 to the IRS for 2008.
I mean, I guess 2008 was good for me and all.

But damn, yo.

dgenerator — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 21:30:43 GMT

Know what I don't understand?

The belief that government exists ONLY to maintain public order, defend borders, and provide minimal public goods, and that anything else is an intrusion into the 'purity' of the free market - which, as we all know, solves everything. Even if it screws you over doing so.

The very concept of the essential purity of unregulated capitalism is very alien to me.

Unrelated: CCR = still awesome.

Houses of the Blooded

dgenerator — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 22:58:35 GMT

Okay, so... Houses of the Blooded.

I get it, I really do. It's the game for doing what Lance loved doing with Birthright. It's the game for Rome. The game for The Count of Monte Cristo. And it's the game for Dune, really, at least if you're playing in the Houses of the Landsraad, and not out fucking off with Fremen.
Edit: It also sounds like it's the same kind of game as Aether, which appeals to me.
I get it. It's a cool idea. But you know what I totally don't get?

The Ven.

Seriously, I don't get why they exist within the context of the game. I don't dislike them, but it seems like the Ven and their divisions exist simply for the sake of being there. Like, Clans in NWoD make sense, because of the long history of clans in OWoD - despite the fact I don't think they're needed objectively, it probably wouldn't feel like Vampire without clans. In 7th Sea it made sense because of the heightened sense of 'national character' - so the Montaigne will always seem French, and Vodacce always Italian, etc.

But given that the Ven are manufactured of whole cloth, and their history fictional, I do not understand the need to divide them from ordinary humans in a supernatural fashion. Now admittedly, part of this comes from my belief that PCs need not be supernatural to be more awesome than people in a story-heavy game. But part of it comes from my instinctive shying away from special+supernatural for its own sake in games.
Look at it this way: suppose there are 3rd gens waging the jihad in Vampire, right? And now suppose the purpose of the game is to play 10th gens waging the jihad for their progenitors. And now suppose there's no internal reason for it except that's what the game is about - the Antedilluvians aren't actually out to control everything or destroy it. They're just fucking around, and they've always been fucking around, and there's no history before they showed up. That's kinda how I feel about the Ven - I just don't get why they're special for special's sake, since that actually LIMITS the kinds of dramatic stories you can tell, as by dint of power, only a Ven has the awesome to challenge another Ven, and you're either related to them or not.
And I understand that the Ven are supposed to represent emotional extremes. But I've never had a hard time believing human beings can exemplify raw emotion like that.

Shit, at least in Exalted, you can become a Celestial Exalt by knack of being amazing or surviving something you shouldn't have. Yes, I admit I have a terrible dislike of you-are-born-to-power setups.
Edit: I admit as well that the descriptions of them struck me as 'tragically doomed as a race' in that Elric sense, and I'm not a fan of that, either. I'd rather that their situations be tragic rather than themselves. I.E. Hamlet is doomed, not the Danes, because the Danes are all like Hamlet.

So in a nutshell: I don't get why the Ven are required to tell the kind of stories the game is geared to tell. They're cool and all, but I guess I don't get why they're there.

Totally at random!

dgenerator — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:43:09 GMT

What have I been doing? Well, other than turning my LJ into a land youtube reposts, apparently, I've been...doing stuff. You know. STUFF.

My stuff, let me show you it!

It's Keenan! And he is not suspicious in his vest and hoodie. No, no. Not suspicious at all!

deadro is a tiny woman, but she is made of metal and will steal your nuts. And then shoot them out of a cannon. Why? For the lulz.

psychik is enthusiastic about breakfast foods, which is at odds with the fact that she apparently does not consume them with any regularity. The 5 Spot fixes that for everyone. They'll enjoy their breakfast or be executed.

Black Cat, by Ladytron

dgenerator — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 08:52:31 GMT

Apparently, Mira Aroyo isn't just in Ladytron. No, no. She also has a PhD in molecular genetics. From Oxford.

Way to make me feel like an underachiever.

The Doors

dgenerator — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:33:19 GMT

This post contains nothing of substance at all.

Now, I want to inform you all of a very basic fact. This basic fact is: "Most of you do not love The Doors enough." This will not stand. You go out there and admit that despite Jim Morrison's behavior, The Doors - as a band - are pretty awesome.
urbanemonkey is exempt from this rant, because she loves The Doors plenty enough.

Another great (if geeky) lesson of this week has been that when you are playing Shadowrun, it's very hard to get more effective than the Ares Alpha. Automatic weapons playing 'lead hose' is hilarious in that "Oh god that's horrible" kind of way. Highlights of the awful people kidnapping Caine, the gang boss of The Ragers:
-Dispatch (Eli) holding down stairwells by use of an assault rifle and ambushing the crap out of people with grenades.
-Rev (Chuck) killing an average of 3 people ever second and a half through use of his John Woo gunstylings.
-Cupid (Greg) using his Bene Gesserit-ish Voice Command stuff to order two guys to jump out a window.
-Singing "The 5 Days of Christmas" while doing it, since in-game it's the week before Christmas.

No, I never intended to say anything meaningful here.

dgenerator — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 08:06:24 GMT

I had an excellent weekend and think you should all know it.

And now, a public service announcement about the dangers of certain types of fish.

A darker tone.

dgenerator — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 22:14:54 GMT

The other day I was talking about how awesome people are, because of the layers of complexity they hold, and how you never really know anyone for certain. Now I'll mention the downside of those levels of complexity: the fact that most of the time, the majority of humanity behaves like total idiots.

Ha ha, you say. We know you're a misanthropic SOB, you say. But no, I don't actually mean it that way. I'm not impugning people's ability to be intelligent or have 'right action' in the Confucian sense. Rather, I am pointing out something that everybody's witnessed. Think back. When was the last time you saw somebody act in a fashion that you found inexplicable, irrational, or just plain made you go "What the fuck?" Yeah, you've had that happen at least once in the past week. Don't lie. People do shit that's irrational or confusing and you have absolutely no idea why they did it.

People have depths of complexity, yes, but that means that their reasons for behaving in a particular way are frequently totally fucking crazy if you sit down and ask them to explain themselves. This isn't news to any of you with half a brain or a pair of eyes, I'm sure, but it needs mentioning. This is because most people do not actually think objectively about their own behavior. Rather, they rely on their higly complex series of learned actions, prejudices, expectations and interconnected instincts, and it gets them through the day. The very complexity that makes it impossible to know another person on the deepest level also makes it generally very difficult for someone to know themselves. I'm not down on that kind of behavior, either, at least not conceptually. But I've gone to a great deal of trouble to ensure that my reactions to things, my opinions, and my thinking process is actively logical and that I am internally aware of what my brain is doing. And frankly, that kind of instinctive reaction-only mode is antithetical to that.

That kind of thinking is, as far as I'm concerned, what causes people to: miscommunicate, get freaked out, overreact, and generally behave like the retarded shitheads we know the rest of us can be. And don't mistake me for saying that I'm against emotion, because that's not it either. I'm against being a prisoner of your own instincts, and I'm against letting your emotions run all over you. I'm not crazy enough to say it doesn't happen sometimes, but there's a difference between 'it happens sometimes' and 'it's how I live.'

I think this is one of the primary ways I identify people I want to spend time around vs those that I do not. If someone is the sort to be reactive rather than analytical, there is a very high chance I will find them either boring (as that reactivity spreads into all facets of their life) or they'll drive me crazy (with their behavior). So this is why, when coupled with my prior post, the complexities of human beings both enthrall and repulse me. Some lucky people are analytical enough to know why they behave how they do, and turn it to their advantage to squeeze everything out of life they can. I don't know many of those, but the ones I do are awesome.

Puppet cannibals.

dgenerator — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:51:45 GMT

Last night I dreamed I had to keep venacava entertained while she waited for...an aircraft, I think? Possibly a taxi. So I put on a puppet show for her, except the puppets were autonomous, and were bunraku-style puppets. One puppet cannibalized another puppet because she saw glorious spectral visions, and the first puppet wanted to see them too. The cannibalized puppet's innards were made of screws, fishing wire, and dead leaves.

Don't ask me, man. I just live here.

dgenerator — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 23:02:03 GMT

No matter how well you think you know someone, you don't really know them. No matter how many details you can piece together, you're only ever generating a framework of reference - a simulacrum in your mind - that you can use to refer to them in a theoretical way. I'm not bringing this up for any specific reason, or in regards to any specific person, but it was something I was thinking about as I stared at my ceiling last night. It's like this: you know concretely that other people understand what you mean, generally how you think, but there are always layers that are never touched by another human. Complexities that have to be generalized into 'ideology' and 'personal philosophy' when interacting with other people. Abstracted away.
I think that's one of the reasons I love people. They're like a puzzle that never ends - they never run out. I can keep digging and digging, and there's always more strata, more nuances I can uncover. And it's also why complex people - ones with depth of character - are even better for that.

In an effort not to go apeshit because I can't compile anything without the code going crazy, I'm gonna talk at you now. The following are Awesome Things that I can logically understand not liking, but am confused by those who actually DO dislike them in practice.

1) California, by Mr. Bungle. I honestly believe this is one of the most musically intelligent albums of the last 30 years - but not one that most people would think of, due to the fact that it's somewhat...crack-addled, I suppose? It really shows that Mike Patton knows his shit backwards and forwards, though. And it's so much fun. It defies genre, conceptions of style & form, and rejects classification. Doubt me? What musical genre is "Goodbye Sober Day?" Or "None of Them Knew They Were Robots?" And why are they on the same album?

2)The Great Gatsby. I was talking to Avery about this last week. He said, "I thought the Great Gatsby was a waste of time." My response was, "I think you're fucking retarded." Of course, he then said that he thought all books he had to read in High School were a waste of time, except Richard Wright's The Outsider. I have an unwholesome love of F. Scott Fitzgerald, not depite but BECAUSE of his tendancy to be both brilliant and overwrought all at once. When I was younger, I have no doubt that Fitzgerald's writing seriously influenced my own literary development.

3) Cowboy Bebop. I almost didn't put this here, because I actually have yet to talk to anybody who actively disliked Bebop. Indifferent, yes, but dislike? Not yet. If you don't like the idea of interplanetary film noir, jazz-listening bountyhunters who act like old west cowboys crossed with Miles Davis... well, I don't think I want to talk to you any more. No, really. Leave. Now.

4) The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I know a lot of people like Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World better, but I'm more of a Wind-Up Bird guy. The depth of the story and the breadth of Murakami's scope in the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle really do it for me. Yes, it's about a disappearing woman, but it's his BEST book about a disappearing woman.

5) Gridlock. If you hate Gridlock, die. It is better that way.

6) The 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T. It's hard to think of a car that I find more awesome, american, and full of punting you in the balls. Totally, utterly impractical. And also totally sexy.