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Feb 1, 2003

Ah, so it was Julius Caesar. Not


MACBETH!
Nick ::: 7:49 AM ::: 0 comments

Jan 31, 2003

Skbosh.

Blogs are the surest sign of the end of the world. Witness Chris's little disaster. Indiscretion is contagious, innit?

Let me try to explain something I foresaw about weblogs long before I had one. The internet is one place, and the real world is another. They're like parallel universes à la science fiction. They exist right over each other, act according to totally different rules, and only interact through a couple of "transfer points" which are mostly known for a lot of disastrous, weird shit.

For instance, in the real world, we have inhibitions. We know how to be discreet. Over generations of speakers, we've learned the most valuable communication skill of all: the ability to keep our mouths shut. This skill varies from person to person (I'm particularly overspoken), but the point is that we've all learned how to use an inner monologue.

Be honest, guys. There is not a man in any room over the age of thirteen who hasn't at some point glanced at a "friend" and thought, Wow. Nice ass. This doesn't mean that we do it all the time. This doesn't mean that we act on it or allow it to affect our behaviors or understanding of the person beyond the body. Our learned power of self-censorship makes society possible and it really makes us better people. We have learned the habit of thinking before we speak.

Contrast this to the internet. Probably half of the information flowing over the wires at any given moment is the binary ASCII code for "A/S/L?" Many of us had heard of cybersex before we'd even entered a chat room or an IM window. It's just a great big sea of indiscretion out there. Most of us never developed the same automatic inhibition for typing that we have for speech. The blog is an especially bad format because it in no way emulates speech. It's modeled after a frigging diary, for Chrissake -- the place where you're supposed to let fly your true feelings and thoughts. Oh, yes, very liberating. Very good for the soul.

Right up to the point where someone actually reads it.

Return to Chris's situation. He's a soft-spoken person. He'd probably never even hold forth for that long in real life. Yet stick him in front of a computer and give him instant publishing in a format he thinks he can trust, and he says amazingly offensive things. People read it and they're shocked. Long-term friendships are crushed because people learn things they don't like about other people.

I'm not for a moment defending what he posted. Hell, I didn't even read it. But let's have a fucking news flash: if you knew everything about everyone, you wouldn't like anyone. Society -- relationships -- romance -- loyalty -- friendship -- these are all concepts that depend entirely upon not knowing everything about other people. Secrets make the world go round. We all keep them because we all know that we're all fatally flawed.

The problem with a blog is that it betrays our normal conceptual associations. Writing in a blog smacks of a secret journal. It's yours. You write in it and control it. You can delete it and change it and play with it. It's a totally controlled environment. But the problem with a blog is that it is actually more public, more readily available, than anything else you can publish. Any single human being with access to the internet can read any blog at any time. Novels, newspapers, magazines, and memoirs can't match that, and yet in order to write something in any of them your words must go through at least a score of people. Publication is an onerous process because people write down things they would never even think about saying. Not so a blog: with a blog, you just click. There's no one to check you, and no time to check yourself. And even if you delete it very quickly, it's likely that someone has already read it -- instant distribution.

The point is that if you are not capable of forcing inhibitions on yourself in an environment without rules, you should not be blogging. It's a perilous habit, and as psychologically addictive as certain drugs. I'm not defending Chris, and I'm not excusing what he did, although I can hardly condemn him. I'd have to read what he wrote to do any of those with a clear conscience. I'm just saying that he should be careful, as should we all. Blogs don't bring out the worst in people, but they do have a tendency to bring out the people in people.

You know, hell is other people.
Nick ::: 4:51 PM ::: 0 comments

Jan 30, 2003

I need some stuff for my yearbook captions and I'm wondering if some of my faithful readers could help me out. Can any of you tell me...

...the band director's name?
...the number of times a week the marching band practiced?
...the length (in weeks) of the marching season?

I'd also appreciate a couple of quotes from Bad Habits cast members.

Thanks!
Nick ::: 1:44 PM ::: 0 comments

Jan 29, 2003

The next time a damned armed forces recruiter calls me, I'm giving him the following life plan:

Step One: Apply to college -- late.
Step Two: Be disqualified from all colleges applied to.
Step Three: Get drafted onto the front lines of the infantry.
Step Four: Get shot by some Iraqi with an AK-47.
Step Five: Die.

It's a tight schedule ... I don't know how I'm going to fit in the Great American Novel.
Nick ::: 11:02 PM ::: 0 comments

Jan 28, 2003

I'm in statistics hell. This is supposed to be easy, quick homework, yet I've been bludgeoning at it for hours and I'm still not done.

I remembered a dream this morning. It was technically a nightmare, though I immediately wanted to classify it as a "good" dream, because it had such a well-developed plot. It was set in the future, at some sort of mall. I was out with a group of friends and some sort of police officer or guard appeared, and arrested a member of the group for their race. (I think this bit came from Gangs of New York, which I saw just yesterday.) The rest of the dream was a series of great set pieces in which we became adventurous rebels and found humorous and clever ways to disrupt the tyrannical rule of our evil overlords. (That bit almost certainly came from Schrodinger's Cat, which I've been reading lately.) It never ended, because I had to leave for school.

It'd make a good novel, I think, if I fleshed it out a lot and changed some of the details. I actually found myself sitting there in bed afterwards trying to think of ways I could embellish the setting and background. That's a cool feeling.

Here's an interesting but mostly random fact: I dream in color. This dream was not colorful, but it seemed to have been run through a photographic effects program. Everything was tinted a sort of silvery-blue. I think that color scheme actually came from a video game.
Nick ::: 12:09 AM ::: 0 comments