Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard: a related thought.

Today, the history that is ‘given back to us’ (precisely because it was taken away from us)…

A full circle: mass nostalgia leads to the creation of idols who take on the responsibility of acting for us, leading again to despair over the history we have lost.

On signifiers, signs, and a semiotician’s view of the world.

An interesting detail: things invented for practicality nearly always end up a sign of some sort—a societal symbol.

On the company of light-emitting diodes (or: a glimpse of the non-human presence I sleep with).

How can you be afraid of the dark when the light of numerous LEDs sends a stream of photons to your retina? They are on standby—a collaboration of green, yellow, and sometimes red—all keeping shadows visible.

Somewhat inspired by Qazse’s Mantra Explained Over Cornbread.

RIP ppp0.

It’s the end of an era for me: the end of my use of dial-up as a means for accessing the Internet (and I mean the Internet, not the World Wide Web). I’m going to miss the agonising slowness that made me work on things while I waited for something to load as an alternative to mind-crushing boredom.

And thus, the lines:
iface ppp0 inet ppp
provider ppp0
were commented out.

On the YouTube decision, and resulting comments.

Choice is surprisingly inadequate in comparison to collection—my mp3 collection is bigger than yours.

More on grief and impermanence.

Thanks to Qazse’s responses to my previous post, I’ve had quite a bit to chew on. Qasze has spurred on thoughts of media-fed permanence; or, the assimilation of TV and shopping into our unconscious search for permanence. In other words, we are reassured that our life is well within our control when a repeat is shown on TV, or a replacement product is advertised. We are consoled, as it were, with the reliability and unchanging nature of the media.

Untitled musing.

It’s fascinating that, without realising it, I’ve constructed my notebook along the fundamentals of chaos. We are, as children, taught to grieve. For death, for life, for memories, for the past—it’s almost like our progression to grief for impersonal characters was merely a progression of our mantra that we selfishly cling to our property. On the other hand, chaos embraces death as a basis for a construction. A use-by-date, a constant movement (temporary!), if you will.

Related idea: Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones.

We (the youth) don’t treasure the surreal experience of our dreams. We are able to speak of them to others like they are cheap, and easy to come by. The metaphysical (and personal) boundary has been shattered by the constant catch-cry of ‘follow your dreams’.

On age.

The rings of trees only show history (age) from a human perspective. Otherwise, the aesthetic quality is meaningless and fades into irrelevancy.

On understanding and knowing.

When writing something long, tedious, and too articulate—something on the lines of this: “it is not so easy to gleam from the text what exactly…”, it occurred to me that a simple “I don’t know why” would suffice in those places.