miles away from creativelivin

goodreads pushed me to copy and paste this into my blog. and so! here we go!
weee:
1984 by George Orwell

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
For some reason i thought i’d read this book before. but clearly no. It is amazing, and unsettlingly timely.

It’s weird to think that these issues of where society might be going was very alive in 1948 (when written). But today, in 2009, it seems far less people are thinking about such large issues.

the introduction for this edition (by thomas pynchon) claims the appendix at the end might be seen as optimistic. that the gloom of the book might be seen in a positive light if it was distant history. I think this misses the point, and is more a sign that Pynchon either needs to find happiness or wants to charm you with the angle he’s uncovered.

i thought it much more likely that the ending post-narrative is there to remind you of Winston’s job: editing history. It’s hard to summarize… but i think in a way, Orwell is showing us how he is re-writing the future by ending with the past.

Anywho. hell of a book. Doubt many modern american’s could muster the attention span to read it entirely, much less think about what it is laying on the table. but here’s to hoping!

View all my reviews.

Psychological Archetypey typey

watching “joseph Campbell Mythos 1″ a series of lectures, that will supposedly present the entirety of his unique perspective (on the unities through all cultures, outside of time, instead of the usual focus on differences at certain times). Blah blah, you have to seek it. I can’t summarize. a summary would be “mythologies serve us in 4 ways: mystical, cosmological, socialogical and pedagogical. it’s so boiled down it’s useless. blah blah. look it up if you’re interested.

The video so far has me thinking of a few things that i wanted to jot down. (and where better than this creative pursuits journal?)

- we project our anima/us (our personal and generalized vision of feminity) onto women, subconciously, and this causes the initial attaction. she has the same dimples mom had, for example. I don’t see why this would be too terrible for the mind to allow you to conciously appreciate, but apparently people agree that this is how it works. we just like certain girls, and don’t know why.
then we get to know them, and are confronted with “the fact”. at that point we either retreat and try to re-project our anima onto some other girl. Or we accept “the fact” and this what is known as love (and maturity? or was maturity purely related to coming to terms with social pressures? I AM ALREADY FORGETTING. I WATCHED THIS 5 MINUTES AGO! AHHH!).
I find this interesting a very personal level with regard to all the women i’ve ever interacted with, and my owen current dissatisfaction with my age addled mom. I honestly can’t claim to remember her, or any of her features, before the age of 4. but in a way it seems like i can reverse engineer what i must have thought of her during these early formative years, based on what i find attractive in random women. creepy? sure, but : true? hmm. and why do i seek this? why do i mistrust my subconcious?

Further i am puzzled by the ways in which we tend to mold ourselves into what our partner wants. Campbell’s model doesn’t seem (so far) to accomodate the ways we pretend to be what our partners want, and perhaps assume this false persona we’ve presented, because we crave their love. (i’m not sure that this relates exactly to their specific “persona” term, with regard to how we present ourselves to society… personal coupling seems wholly separated from social pressures. deciding if you love someone seems to transcend social pressures. and they claim that in the east, people tend to minimize their Ego and actually believe they are their persona. so what does that say about their capability to see past a persona and accept “the fact?” hmm. i guess is says they don’t really fall in love. or maybe this presentation is just geared towards audiences in the west, and we aren’t supposed to ask such questions).

- side note, campbell’s big “thing” apparently is the idea that you can only understand all the complicated bits of your subconcious- by deriving these abstract and secret truths, from their application to symbols, which your concious Ego can then process. so, for example, I can’t process the idea of “self” until i read about a fox in the story of the sour grapes. then i realize that the fox is my “self”. in this context.

this idea of only understanding my self based on how i see it projected out into examples from the world – strikes me as a very strange part of the human condition. (is this only meant to work in myths? or are mythologies just particularly suited to suggesting these personal subconcious connections?). Doesn’t this mean that we can only understand certain examples of self, and never all at once? because no story can sum up all the different ways your subconcious elements are manifesting? hmm. maybe i’m selling stories, and human learning, a bit short. not sure.

- sati is said to represent your “being”, verses the “asati” which is “nothing”. I only mention this to wonder further at the purpose of the little girl character named “Sati” in the Matrix sequels.

- i was also struck by Campbell’s casual aside that it is popular in our culture to say the character of the teacher is irrelevent, and all that matters is the information the teacher presents. He seemed angry at how false and stupid that notion was, and noted that we imprint subconciously on our favored teachers, based on our subconcious projections, and this determines our interest in learning various things. he noted how you can remember 4 or 5 favored teachers before all others. While this rings true for me, i don’t think i fully understand his point.
And it seems very relevant to my current pursuits in presenting online learning lessons. I’m reminded of a teacher who recently asked that her picture not be shown to the students, preferring that a young assistant narrate everything, and that I animate the TA in a charming cartoon style. Maybe good, maybe false. I dunno. but interesting from Campbell’s character perspective.
(And interesting that no formal pressure is placed on teachers to present themselves well. at a recent conference, one speaker noted that we should insist on certain email etiquette for teachers. but it was left as a personal preference of hers, that we weren’t really expected to fight for. WEIRD! FAIL!?!?!)

that is all, just had to pause the DVD until i could process. While I haven’t processed, at least i’ve noted the three most interesting things, for future distilling.

in the rhyme of sickness

been pretty damned sick for several days now. i seem to have covered the entire spectrum of sick activities and unhappinesses. do we all go through this? why does it seem like “i can’t think straight for all the dizziness and congestion” is just a stage before “its in my chest now, so I’m tired and my throat hurts.” with possible side roads through vomit and bowels and such. i’m frustrated by the lack of anything new. and the time wasted.

thursday was spent out of my mind, festering and aching in a ball. Friday was clear headed but 8 kinds of gross, with elements of extreme nausea. today seems to backslide to congestion town and dizziness. hmm. the feeling of backwards progress is the worst part.
so blah blah. i bought some junk food and mailed a letter, and blah blah, it seemed to break the endless cycle of “drink water, nap, wake up 20 minutes later desperate for the bathroom – repeat”. yay. i don’t know why i’m still babbling about this.

too personal!

i just finished watching TheMatrixReloaded, while chowing some Wendy’s. This is the first time i’ve watched the flic with the “critics who hate it” commentary track. it was kind of fascinating. to see how they were oh-so-wrong, but also sometimes very right. and that’s what i wanted to rant about, before it slipped my sickened mind.

basically, i can feel a nap coming on, so i’ll cut to it and screw the pacing of this post.
- the first half hour sucks by setting up an epic war movie. we loved the cloak and dagger of the first movie, and these war-is-coming scenes fail to be innovative. they’re just the same cliches we’ve hated in other war movies. fail. (however, i do think this succeeds in moving the overall story forward considerably, instead of playing it safe). I think the first half hour would have been saved by focusing on a small person in Zion. I’d wager the oh-so-hateable “Kid”. He just got there, so we could confuse the audience by dropping our main 3 heroes (trinity, neo, morph) and learning about Zion through the Kid. Set up his friends (other’s who escaped the matrix in a “normal” way), and follow him as he tries to get word on what’s going on outside. His POV as he asks Neo to let him on the ship, and wonderes what will be announced at tonight’s meeting. blah blah.

i think having the first half hour from a Zion kid’s perspective would have served the purpose of “setting up the shire, so we know what is at stake”. It would have fucked with the way the second movie is “all about trinity” (arguably). but tying the kid into some girl he desires, could have mirror neo+trinity, Merovingian+Persephone;, oracle+architect(or… is cypher more appropo?). And could have given a more specific face to the masses we’re supposed to care about.

(aside:… It’s too bad morpheus&Niobe didn’t seem more tied in to the “girl is everything” angle. Maybe it is implied that this is part of why Morpheus is a failure?)

Alternatealy, i agree with the DVD critics that the Wachowski’s had a lot of leeway due to the first movie, and could have gone much crazier. (so it’s a shame they chose to ground the movie in so many cliche crap scenes straight from a bored tv show). I think a more interesting way to explain zion would have been : one big fucking orgy. Instead of sweaty dancers (with nips here and there, and lots of pelvis grinding), they could have just gone for : everyone in Zion is trying to repopulate the human race. While it would have sickened some, it would have shown some balls. so to speak. and it seems like something more worth fighting for. to me. and it would have made zion more like a sodom and gomorrah that needed to be destroyed (in the eyes of more evolved machines). plus it would have effectively gotten sex outta-the-way for the rest of the series. and made the big war/violence of the third film more disturbing, in contrast to all these places fill with wanton lust (and drawn a tigher to connection to the sperm-like squiddies infiltrating the large round egg-room?)

hmm.
anywho.

Criticisms that confuse me:
- Why don’t people get that neo is an exile, just like these other programs? “they can remain here in exile, or rejoin the source – where you must go”. hellloooo. Why don’t people recognize the merovingian and persephone as aged versions of neo and trinity? isn’t it clear that this is why persephone just wants to be kissed like she once was? Aren’t they the ultimate example of what will happen if you deny your purpose and refuse to rejoin the source? (refuse to take part in the cycle).
- why do people think neo should have flown away from smith(s)? Neo can beat Agents now. multiple agents. so why would he fear smith? to me that whole scene is clearly Neo thinking “well, i am the one, so why should i run?” and smith clearly thinking “quantity will beat quality”. and in the end, it seems it would be very disturbing to a christ like figure if he had to turn tail and run from a threat he doesn’t seem able to beat. this is core to the whole ending of the series.
- why don’t people see it as important that Morpheus stands his ground and fights, and BEATS, an agent during the freeway chase? Sure the movie doesn’t have Link telling you what to think (as he usually does spell everything out). but the notion that the entire sequence is worthless seems unfair.

Random suggestions (for my own edification):
- people think the Cypher fight scene is a joke. It just comes across as “we need some fighting” justified only by the line “you can’t really know someone until you fight them”. which seems more pompous than true at that point in the movie. Cypher is never confronted with someone he fights and then discovers is not who they say. he never fights neo again. Arguably he is establishing that Neo is the one, and thus he should be taken to the oracle. Arguably the scene is going back and further explaining why Morpheus fought Neo in the first movie (before taking him to the oracle…). but the fact this isn’t needed again seems weird. And the fact that smith just strolls up on them in the playground makes it seem unnecessary (like cypher is a crappy bodyguard). blah blah. I would have had the fight scene more focused on the idea of feeling neo out. repeated moves. maybe some crazy silly moves, like throwing chopsticks and tea. maybe crazy drunken fighting. All in all i would have made cypher more of smirking demon guardian figure and less of a cool robot dude (because the movie is already full of good looking stylish robot dudes). It’s too bad Cypher could have attacked neo outside in the rainy chinatown (like an annoying bum) instead of the boring safety of the empty tea house interior. But maybe it comes across as more civilized and polite in the boring empty interior. and more evocative of the first movie’s dojo fight. hmm. Maybe just having a gimmick like fighting neo next to a wall covered in a strange ornate symbol, then reviewing all the holes and damage done to parts of the symbol after the fight was over (like judging tea leaves) would have made the fight feel more important. and less like some time was wasted. hmm.
- i would have had children playing in the playground, obvious friends of the Oracle- perhaps with Cypher escoting them away while Neo and Oracle talked. Perhaps it was meant to be melancholy that the Oracle was alone in an empty playground, but it didn’t come across very well. better yet, the kids/potentials could have been disappearing during the chat about choice and reason, being turned into Smith’s gang for the fight, culminating in cypher dragging the oracle off, which would have made it seem more like things were getting out of control, even from the Oracle’s POV.
- They should have cross cut Neo’s weapon/museum fight with the trinity/morpheus escape. the way the ghosts bubble up out of the ground kind of implies to me that it was shot with that in mind (they they would emerge seconds after going into the ground, not ten minutes later). It also would cut down the amount of time neo spent flying. the point (from an action perspective) is that they NEED neo, and he’s busy. But as it’s cut now, it’s like the movie wants us to forget that he’s on his way (but we can’t, so we know he’ll show up to save the day, so there’s a small lack of danger to everything). weird.
-they didn’t play up the sexiness of new plunging a hand into his girlfriend and massaging her heart. enough. the scene works i think. but it seems weirdly brief, and then we’re back on the ship with everyone sitting around being bored until an attack forces them to run off. would have been better to have the ship scene be about how no one can believe he just brought another person back to life, plus the tension that squiddies are attacking and there’s no time to explain. This dead scene breaks the movies “build up to climax” so badly that everyone checks their watch. (maybe i’m wrong. Empire certainly slowed the pace before ending. hmm.)

-I used to think they should have let the second movie run longer, and ended it just when cypher calls. it seemed clear that this was shot to mimic the end of the first movie. but now i think they should have ended it minutes earlier, when neo blasts the squiddies. it could have maintained a great pace after Trinity’s resurrection if they had to run, there was no time to explain, morpheus couldn’t believe he was wrong about everything, Neo blasts the squids with his mind somehow, collapses, and everyone yells “what?” “what”? “WHAT?” and then that text “To be concluded” popped up, with the bombastic rage song (Which starts “Whatcha say, whatcha say, whatcha say, wha?”
this would have the same you-gotta-see-the-next-one-to-put-it-all-together, with much more energy. Currently they get rescued by some ship we’ve never heard of (the hammer), they sit and talk AGAIN – about shit we’ve never heard of (a suprise offensive attack that failed), and then we end with a pan from Neo to Bane – WHOM NOBODY RECOGNIZES UPSIDE DOWN ON FIRST VIEWING. or so i think. thought. think. plus, bane is just a weird mystery at this point. It’s not clear if he is smith, or is just fucked in the head. sooo. sure he screwed up some military op that we didn’t see. but him comatose near Neo has no definitive weight. bleh.

- if the “Kid” was used as the entry to the movie and Zion, he could have been a much more interesting replacement for Bane. Maybe he got out on some other ship, and ended up taken over by Smith. You could have ended with him in a coma next to Neo, and felt much more weight.

anywho. had to babble for my own notes. guess that is out of my system. time for some coffee.

… part of me wants to do a phantom edit, just to see if the movie works better. part of me wants to do a comic version of how i think the first thirty minutes should have been handled. I wish the Wachowski’s would do a Lucas Revisionism cut, but change the film to be more-slick/less-cliche-hand-holding. but i guess instead I’ll just go be sick some more. bleh.

Blerf. New YeahYeahYeah’s single

wondering a lot about the nature of the modern artist.
but this isn’t a post for waxing philo. sophical. topical?

Just wanted to note some trivial doodles on a scap of paper, so i can throw it away.
ideas for Left4Dead mod:
-Smoker’s death changed to a hanging cloud of maggots, which he can then fire at survivors, until they run out. like a gattling gun. just trying to tie into the grossness of flying maggots, ala FromBeyond, and give the smoker something satisfying to do when he’s blown up.

-Perhaps add “thief” character who steals your weapons? perhaps a human survivor who’s gone nuts? You lost points if you shoot him? or perhaps he hides behind closed doors, and you’ll only get things back if you don’t attack him. ?

- perhaps add “baitor gator” who dangles guns, pills, health, ammo. But it’s a trap. If you try to take it, you’ll find youself snagged.
maybe this would be better served as a modification to the smoker and boomer (and hunter…). that they could target the existing ammo/health drops. Boomer slimes them, so picking them up would call horde just like being barfed on. Smoker will instantly snag whoever picks one up. Hunter will lay waiting and perform a perfect pounce when triggered. (thus you could shoot the hunter and smoker first. but boomer has clearer advantage).
might be an interesting trade-off way to handle some of the annoyance of targeting for Smoker and Hunter. And the annoyance of getting shot before barfing. …

- perhaps the smoker could be modified to take the players weapon if the initial drag is interrupted.
Ie, if you melee the player, or shoot the tongue – this sets the victim free, but their gun is dragged on. you, or the victim, would then need to melee the gun, or shoot the tongue again, to release it.
This would also be a fun way to slow down the survivors, and give them more to do, strategically, than run like hell towards the exit.

(end of notes)

- also need to write out the idea of giving infected more options while waiting for respawn. Currently they have ~20 seconds to watch what others are doing (thus you learn to play by watching others on your team, and/or you can plan what to do on next spawn). Sometimes this seems to add no benefit (all others on your team are dead. or you clearly just need to do whatever you can to stop the survivors from running straight to exit).
Soooo, it’d be nice to have options. perhaps right clicking while you wait. or perhaps a menu pops up with option “zombie” or “worm” :
- one idea is to control zombies near the survivors. Same crappy health, but instead of standing still until being startled, you could run zombies into the trees, and try to sneak up on survivors, just to crank up the pressure. Perhaps a controlled zombie’s eyes could glow red, to let the survivor know it’s a human controlling.
- crazier idea is to let you control a “worm” from your dead corpse. Perhaps it could be an stomach for the boomer. a tongue piece for the smoker. a claw for the hunter? a head for the tank?
.This would be gross fun for the survivors, as part of the exploded corpse is animating and coming after them (fitting into some zombie movie’s tricks).
.If all 4 infected have been killed, there’s a chance for a concerted second attack before they all respawn.
. these “worms” would move quickly along the ground (able to catch up to survivors), and have the ability to jump.
. these worms only appear/can only be killed after they’ve been activated by infected (so you can’t just shoot an infected’s corpse to keep that infected’s worm from ever trying to activate).
. Survivors could kill worms with 2 shots, 2 melees, or by kneeling twice (if already attached to you).

my idea for these worms is some sort of small trivial attack. boomer stomach makes existing environment zombies alert instantly, and attack that character first. Smoker tongue slows down survivor it attaches to. hunter claw knocks your weapon out of your hand. tank head causes shock/stumble-back.
… alternately, maybe one could take control of a survivor’s gun. or cause a survivor to start firing endlessly. or make a survivor run constantly. or survivor can’t use weapon. or survivor can’t melee. or survivor is blind. or survivor can only walk. or survivor can’t talk. etc.

al.mo.mind

just watched “the mindscape of alan moore” with my parents.
my dad seemed to snooze in and out, and my mom seemed to get notably antsy (but paid close attention).

I greatly enjoyed it. It’s kind of embarassing. it’s still very powerful.

It’s another one of these “idea polemics”. a seemingly random rambling rant from an important smart person, laced with pretentious imagery and excessively dramatic editing (as if the filmmaker wants you to stop every 5 minutes and “PONDER THAT SHIT, PEASANT! OOOOOOH!!!!”).

but still, it was very effective for me. And i dig these sorts fo videos. I’m thinking of william gibson “no maps for these territories” (which i loved, but no one else has been able to enjoy). and that “what the bleep do we know” which i had to turn off halfway through, due to my burning anger at their lazy strawman arguments. Almost every jodorowsky interview wants to be an idea polemic, but almost every one leaves me wanting to smash his smirking condescending drug hazed face in. i mean, clearly gibson and moore have done more than their fair share of drugs as well, but i find them both deeply loveable and interesting. jodorosky just strikes as someone who can’t stop sucking himself off, every second of every day. He edits himself into constant “ponder that shit, moron! ooooHhhh!” moments. whilst moore seems to come to charming tangential summaries that have deviated from the point, but are still delightful. and gibson seems to stumble into fascinating contrasting ideas all the time and almost be embarassed that anyone else was there to notice.

blah blah. i have many thoughts about the details of this alan moore “conceptual catalyst” movie. many important ideas. but i hesitate to pick one and run, because i think i should stew a bit further in them. just in case i die in my sleep, the ones that are stuck in my craw right now: advertisers holding the true shamans of culture (writers/artists) hostage to their psychotic short term mass synchronized retardation tricks. the notion that the explosion of information leading our culture into a steam state (arguably asynchronous chaotic consumption of many disparate unrelated information clumps, which doesn’t sound good to me. or sustainable. and i think we’re already steaming in it. and i wonder how i can tie it into some sort of steampunk story). must be the notion that the value of a human civilization is measured by the number of physical inventions. and did China really rival europe for naval ability at the time of columbus, but instead choose to turn it’s back on the external world? if true: whyyyyy (and what can be learned)?

and i’m left eager to write a story where all the modern shamans are made explicit for the audience. so we see a leathery skinned old aborigine, all wild haired with face paint hash pipe and loin cloth, sitting down with ad execs to discuss the best symbols, music, and words they could use to sell some ridiculous apple jack cereal tube. and some other shamans being ridiculed for bothering to create art. (in my mind, andy warhol deconstructed art in the 60s/70s and the world still hasn’t recovered. hasn’t started to focus on putting it back together, as alan moore also rants about).

annnnd, i’m slipping into it. soo i’ll stop. … i used to day dream of monitors throughout my house which just played endless looping concert footage. Now i think there should be a few rooms that just have looping “ponderous polemics” videos. … and maybe i should look up polemic to make sure i’m using the word correctly.

random idea

Sitting here in my cushy cubicle, animating kanji, daydreaming about a world where we only eat enough to live, and pour the rest of our meal onto our head and shoulders. This way, friends and co-workers can eat and lick off any tasty leftovers – and no one cares if your work-costume really looks fresh and clean. hmm. needs a villain. perhaps one who pours ice cream all over the floor of their cubicle, and sleeps in it at night. ehhhh. hm. maybe not. maybe a horrible idea.

checkup

the store is tenatively linked (from solid fuel studios.com).
needs work

this is a funky story about the science of space weather:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/36876

work on a new web strip has begun. comedy is out. scifi is the new black.

at home, my computer is still randomly blue screening (locking up), despite a brand new graphics card. sooo. pain. PAIIIN.

recently read the first four books of Scott Pilgrim and was pretty blown away. weoof. more later.

chick app

meh.
been enduring mysterious computer failures over the past few days.
ran mem test in safe mode last night. no errors. hmm.

today, i randomly restart and find everything loading fin.
i downloaded and ran GPU-Z (heat noter) and Aida32(system profiler). i find myself strongly suspecting that my graphics card has been overheating. hmm. though i started L4D and noted the CPU maxing out, alongside the GPU heating up. hmmmmmmm.

bleh. fail. fear.

checkup

bleh. my computer has been randomly restarting and sometimes just going to a black screen as windows loads.

today it officialyl just goes to blue screen instead of completeing the windows loading. very frustrating. i wish to kill the zombies (Left4Dead).

Running mem tests. but. bleh. need to fix computer. and stop playing video games. and get back to work. somehow.

in other news, i did setup (and am paying for) a shopping cart. just never bothered to link to it from any of the web pages. EEK!. must do this. must… make it look slightly prettier first, and then do this.

in other news, my good friend Maria has her new website uP! go visit! Http://www.mariadeira.com !!!

Checkup

Saying “lost the mission” would be an understatement.

Took a 9 to 5 government job (with a union). Moved back to Corvallis (land of tasty food). Settling into a new basement apartment (haven’t see the Corvallis Basement Spiders yet).

Was also deathly ill. Vomitted blood. story for another time.

Finally starting to feel less chaotic.

But I’ve been playing a ton of Left4Dead (with only escalation in sight).

Very close to being broke (like 8-bucks-in-checking-account broke). But supposedly getting first paycheck this week. should be back to freewheeling by the end of next month (when next paycheck arrives). several debts to attend to. weee.

I feel very close to being a simple friendly old man. it is weird.

but the comic books and art explorations WILL CONTINUE NEVERTHELESSSSSSSS. sometime. soonish.