Zero Up Zero Down

Oh, a quick explination

2011-04-13T20:16:00.000-07:00

TL = Too Long.
DR= Didn't Read.
DC= Didn't Care.
TL= Too Lazy.
TI= Too Intimate.

Yes, my posts are getting longer. I have nothing to do but think about things and write about them.

TL;DR;DC;TL;TI

2011-04-13T20:08:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the long rambling post. I'm afraid it was a replacement for my normal internet diatribes. Like I said at the begining of this whole thing, I do a lot of arguing on the internet. Why do I do that? Right as I'm decrying the ammount of sure stupid opinions on the internet?

Well, I'm a damn dirty hypocrite that's why.

Why do I do it though? Hypocricy is part and parcel of being human, so that isn't the reason, it's an excuse. I'll tell you why. Shocker huh? Like I totally wasn't setting us up for a talk about that, was I? Litterary devices for the win!

I do it because I'm starved for conversation about the things that interest me, I feel powerless about the things around me, I have no voice in the larger scheme of things, and I want to reach out to people to share the ideas I have that I think are worth being heard.

Isn't this though the way we always feel? How often at work do we have to bite our tongue about that sycophantic incompetant boss of ours? Don't we all wish we could march into the Capitol with wooden barrels of hot tar and bags of feathers? How can we connect with people with our own interests? It feels like we have no voice over the louder, crazier, and richer people. It's so damn hard to do that in real life. I can't afford to hire a lobbyist to go talk to Senators about what affects me, and what would make my life better would hurt the bottom line of campaign donors who pay for those commercials with the scary quasi-racist/homophobic/xenophobic/red scare overtones. Christ, you would be an idiot if you didn't see the old school Willy Horton ad back in 1988 as a scare for white people. The Swift Boat stuff is straight out of the McCarthyism playbook. Getting people to listen to you when you don't have a college degree is really hard because we have been conditioned to believe that someone who never finished college is unintelligent, a slacker, or a failure. Ok, I kinda am a slacker, that's a given, but I am far from unintelligent.

I love history, and not just pop history like World War II, hippies, Vietnam, the Founding Fathers, etc. I would actually love to get a copy of Gibbons' "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" for leisure reading. John Locke and Rousseau talking about social contract theory is a huge favorite. I love reading about the massive ulcer that is trying to straighten out English Royalty during the War of the Roses. I love that stuff. I love discussing Richelieu and Realpolitik. Yet, since I don't work in the local PoliSci department, or am busy writing books about the stuff, I have few people in my immediate circle that can talk to me about this kind of stuff.

On the internet, you can find groups of people who you can talk about this stuff with. You can write huge long posts about your opinion or outlook, and have links and sources cited. Some of these posts rival term papers, and mid-term essay tests. They are some well thought out, informative posts. Seriously, journalists could learn a thing or two from them. These people have become my outlet. Since I didn't finish that history degree, I'm not writing those history books or lurking dusty archives in London, Seville, or Paris, or D.C. They are the way I can feel intelligent again between those moments when I feel like I haven't suceeding in using my intelligence to the full potential I feel I have.

Yes, I am a bit conceited about my intelligence. I don't care. My intelligence is a source of confidence for me, and I will hold onto it tooth an nail to keep me from totally feeling like I am a meaningless mass of mediocrity. I still plan to use it for the powers of good some day, and Lex Luthor will be finally vanquished forever to the Fortress of Solitude.

Ok, maybe I'm not Kryptonian in my level of intelligence, but I do adhere to most warning labels and microwave directions. I have also been known to buckle up, not impulse spend, and follow Ikea directions correctly.

Yet, I think that's a huge thing for me, and quite possibly a lot of people out there, especially the venom spitting raptors at the bottom of the web page in the comments. We feel marginalized, and voiceless. The internet gives us a place to finally speak out and try to be heard. It just keeps falling short though. We never seem to have our thirst slaked for speaking out. Why? We can't truly feel the reaction, the connection, the intimacy of really sharing ourselves.

Of course we all know about the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory (google it, it will explain everything), and the joy of anonymous internet, but at the same time that veil that we can hide behind becomes a burqa we force ourselves to wear. We have become cowed from speaking out because of pseudo-alphas in the pack, we have been taught to not rock the boat, we have been taught not to share those social tar pit topics that send a herd of elephants into the room. It's safe to speak and be you on the internet. To share those dark things, to share an intimacy that you normally can't. There is this whole thing a guy does where he takes anonymous letters that reveal those demons that only lurk in the deepest winter nights and posts them on the internet and in art shows. He has made a fabulous expression of existential angst our society has taught us that we aren't allowed to share, that we are scared to share, that we have been beaten into not sharing. We aren't able to connect.

The pace of society that moves as fast as processors upgrade has left intimacy and time to listen to people behind. So we look for it in our internet and phones.

I remember years and years ago when I was in college Kurt Vonnegut came to speak at my college and I managed to snag a front row seat to see him. Someone asked him how he felt about this newfangled internet thing that was all the rage these days. These days being around 1998 or so. He sighed and look down and up into the ether as he spoke, channeling Mark Twain. To me Vonnegut looked and acted so much like I feel Twain would in this day and age. Alas I digress, but so it goes. He spoke about how he remembered the ham radio days. How his friends and acquaintances would go on and on about how they had made friends in Singapore, and Poughkeepsie, and London, and Alderaan, and Burkina Faso, and all over the world. They would talk about how their friends just had a baby, or just got a new job, or had some other wonderful thing. Then those friends would be gone one day. They had a transistor blow, or that baby began to take up to much time, or maybe they simply lost interest with the voice on the speaker. Now this intimate friendship ended without all the wonderful drama that we have come to expect from friendships; the fights, the screaming, the drinking, and the lovely passive aggressive aftermath. It was fake. It was never a real friendship. They weren't able to come over and help you move, or give you a real shoulder to cry upon, or take you to a bar to lament your life. That's what Vonnegut saw in this internet, false connections. I didn't think about it at the time, but when it was over, I headed off to the school computer lab to hop onto the halcion days of Yahoo Chat.

Just like we have done since time immemorial, we haven't listened to the people who try to warn us. I didn't take Kurt's words to heart. I feel I can call him Kurt, we had that kind of connection, he was a famous person speaking and I was an audience member, I totally got a connection out of it. I actually bought a book of his because of it....Cat's Cradle sucked.

He was right though. We have built MySpaces, Facebooks, and Geocities that crumble to the tides of server costs in an attempt to connect to people. To make friends, to be heard.

It's all so fake.

You do not have 467 friends in real life that you can go to the lake together or hit the clubs with. You have 3 or 4 really good friends like that, and you don't need to poke them to get them to reply to you. You don't have to constantly blast my inbox with updates about your trifling minutia of life, I'm already your friend, I by implied contract have to care about the disappointing bagel you had today. You don't have to make a guestbook for your baby, I already agreed to watch him so you could go the the Radiohead concert....again. You can share all of this with me at the coffee shop, or the bar, or at the patio table while we drink poorly mixed drinks and burn meat.

But we don't. Forming that level of intimacy is hard work. It requires commitment and putting up with the hard stuff. Divorces, lost jobs, dead parents, drunken benders, letting them ruin your upholstery as you drive them to the hospital with a nail through their foot, fights over who is right and who deserves what, tolerating that got awful thing they do when they are trying to deal with that itchy soft palate by making that grunting snort noise. You know what the fuck I'm talking about Sarah.

It's easier to be smart on the internet when we can jump over and grab a quick reference from the other tab. There is no challenge to linking to politifact.org and using that as the irrefutable crux of your argument. (Obama never said he was going to veto the Patriot Act, go look it up. Oh, and he was never pro-gay marriage, just civil unions). It's hard to save up for school and bury yourself in dry academic tables about farm production under the Hohenzollern's. It's hard to defend your opinion with your own words.

Thats what I made of myself. I took the easy way to a false sense of emotional connection with someone who responds to my personal ad, and then feel a sense of loss when they stop replying because that person at the drug counter finally asked them out. I took the short reply on an internet forum instead of making myself read Charles Dickens and his impact on Victorian culture. (He made them extra boring. Seriously Dickens, Tale of Two Cities is shit.) I used the easy internet blast shield to hide from the slings and arrows of life. I put a good 15 years of work into building this. I only now am realizing what a waste so much of it was.

Yeah, I get long winded.

Next in the News...

2011-04-10T20:39:00.000-07:00

On Friday the Federal Government almost shut down. I didn't find out about it till the next day when I heard NPR. That's one of the things I do miss about the internet, and I do find value in. It provides instant on demand news. When the medium of the internet is utilized right when it comes to the news, it has overwhelming value. Streaming live feeds from events, detailed stories with charts available to analyze, and analysis from true experts. When the Arizona congresswoman was shot, I followed it on the web. I watch most of Obama's addresses on the web. I watched The Rally to Restore Sanity on the web. I enjoyed all of them as I could cross reference everything in a different tab.
The internet has become the go to for news. It's not that people aren't following news anymore, they just aren't watching it on t.v. It's just the natural technical evolution I guess. Though the problem of why people are mostly leaving cable news is what is slowly happening to the web, and even worse...if that's even remotely possible.
The largest problem of 24/7 cable news quickly became lack of content. Despite our best efforts we just couldn't fuck our planet or our country up fast enough to fill up the news cycle. The oddest thing about this endless news cycle was, was the fact that because of it, the snippets of speeches and statements from officials and experts actually got shorter over the years. Seriously, a sound bite in the 60's was like 3 minutes long. 2011 with 24/7 news channels? 30 fucking seconds. Instead of the full context of what Obama, Cantor, Palin, or whomever else said we get a snippet that takes less time than what you can microwave a pizza slice for.
What did they decide to fill this news time up with? In depth discussions with an Econ professor from Harvard or U. of Chicago? A reading from the Congressional Oversight offices report? A full analysis of a foreign country and the issues that affect us? No, they fill it with hours of Michael Jackson's funeral, encourage Charlie Sheen's antics, discuss Britney Spears, on and on and on. They actually interrupt real news to go back to these kinds of stories.
We all know they fill up their time with hours and hours of this tabloid stuff that doesn't deserve to be mentioned on the same broadcast as wars in Cote D'Ivory or Darfur, corruption scandals, Wall Street, or the Tea Party. What's worse than that, they give us things like Nancy Grace, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity. These cultural bits of backwash that just cloud the water. They aren't news, they are poorly written editorials in school newspapers.
I'll end my rant about them because I wouldn't be blazing any new trails of commentary about them.

However, what they do is what is the new problem with cable news, and actually the way the internet does the news, and one of the biggest problems I developed about the news.

Opinion.

Opinion is not news nor analysis of the news. You know the saying about opinions right? Yeah.

In order for the cable networks to try to maintain a sense of relevance, they now ask for your Tweets, your Facebook posts, your emails, and your comments at the bottom of the webpage.

What a stupid fucking idea.

One of my favorite things about The Onion is their "man on the street" interviews. Some recent topic in the news is satirized by opinions from blithering, insensitive, selfish idiots. That's what the news is doing now. Asking for your ridiculous uninformed opinion. I have absolutely no concern of what "SExYBiker57"'s thoughts on Wall Street bailout policies are. Instead of asking his opinion, why not ask that guy from a consumer advocacy groups are, ask Paul Krugman, ask the Treasury Secretary, ask someone who's opinion is informed and relevant.

These comments from every knucklehead with a network connection are not helping things. They add to the noise of our politics which honestly has been ruined by the media. There was actually a spat between CNN and FOX over the comments on their articles. Seriously, we are letting some mouth breather who calls Obama a "Nazi Communist Muslim" in their comments direct our discourse of our government? Calling someone a Nazi Communist is so fucking ignorant of political theory not to mention history (seriously Nazi Germans hated Communist Russians! Thats what a major part of WWII was about!) it makes me twitch.

I know we are all entitled to speak our minds. We all have the right of free speech and all that. We all have freedom to think what we want. However, that doesn't entitle you to have your horribly shitty opinion listened to. I'm not kidding. If you honestly want to call America a fascist police state on par with Nazi Germany, you are fucking idiot who does not deserve my time. I don't care if you want to quote Chomsky or Zinn or Nader, because much of the time their opinion is shit too.

That leads me to the point about this blog post. Newsblogs.

They suck and should not be listened to.

No really. Huffington Post is shit news. Drudge Report is shit news. The vast majority of what they spew is so biased to one side or the other they make things worse. They dredge up opinion from failed sit com writers or junior assistant D.A.'s from Birmingham Alabama to write news articles, or make comments about serious issues. Hell, most of the time Huffington post doesn't pay it's writers. The opinions spewed forth from these places that are so out of touch with reality that are given even remote consideration just make things worse. People actually cite these articles as fact based analysis, they actually steer our social discourse, they actually affect policy. You add to the fact they have no fact checking department, they have no ethical oversight, nor any writing standards. They can say whatever they want no matter how untrue, biased, or unprofessional, and we give them credence.

We are letting what happened to cable news happen to our news on the internet. We are letting our potential for true media oversight of our government and our society become the prophets wall from Monty Pythons Life of Brian.

I'm not missing that one bit, but I am missing my access to quality news on demand.

403 or 404, whats worse?

2011-04-08T18:30:00.000-07:00

So my room mate brought up a good point, am I just replacing one waste of time with another. I have been watching a lot of movies and t.v. shows to fill up my time. The worst part of the day is when I get home and have nothing to do. A few days this week I have come home and cooked dinner right away so that filled up the immediate arrival when I get home, yet that only lasted so long. Filling up time at work is easy because, well, I work.

Its the unplanned time that is killing me.

Time when we are not obligated to do things leaves us free to do whatever we want, within the confines of the law, our relationship with God, how much time you want to spend in confession, sobering up, or apologizing to everyone on your Facebook for things you don't remember doing but have the bruising to vouch for. Most of the time I fill this obviously with the internet. Sweet juicy, nubile, internet. Why I can almost see its dewy white hairs on the back of it's neck as I lean in to smell its arrousal. As I close in, I nuzzle it and turn my head slightly to nibble its earlobe and then...

God I need to get laid.

Anyway, it's a valid point, I can't allow myself to replace one time wasting habit with another. I know there is this quote who's author escapes me now, but they said, "Time enjoyed is not time wasted." That's nice and cute, but when all your time is wasted, then no matter how much time is enjoyed, it looses it's value. Besides, how sure are you that you are enjoying it? If the thought passes your mind just once that you should be doing something else, be it washing dishes, walking the dog, or learning to crochet, then your time would be more valuable doing that. If all your time is nothing but watching movies or reading books, it doesn't matter how much knowledge you accumulate with it, if you don't put it to good use, or temper it. What honest good does knowing Captain Kirk's cabin number do you if you are not using that as a minor plot point in the novel you are writing, perhaps the script you are writing for a rebooted t.v. show, or maybe hanging out with a large group of friends in a place other than your parents basement. Yeah, I said it. Trekkies are basement dwellers. I'm allowed to say that, I know all the listed names of Enterprise captains: Archer, Pike, Kirk, Dekker, Harriman, April, Spock, Garrett, Jellico, Picard and Riker. I set that shit for stun, bitches!
I know learning all this stuff is fun, but if it is all you do is accumulate the knowledge you can't use for something that gives some sort of value to your life other than temporary enjoyment, it holds no value. I mean this in the sense that, if all you have is paper, but no pencil, or perhaps all you have is cash but no goods to buy then what value does it have? I guess what I am say is, "Turn off the damn thing and go outside." What good is knowing this stuff, it you can't use it to expand on your life with friends, fun, a hobby where you build things and share it? Enjoy yourself, but have something else to do with yourself!

Boredom.

2011-04-06T20:58:00.000-07:00

Today it finally hit.

Boredom.

I got to work this morning and just kind of sat there. I was really tempted to get on reddit. I didn't want to read a book on my phone, we stayed just busy enough where I couldn't focus on learning code, and I just didn't want to play a game. I finally mustered up the focus to learn some PHP code which whittled away at the time just slightly. By lunch time I was pretty wonky.

My time was so eaten up with mindlessly consuming internet, that I forgot about all the interesting other things I could be doing. I honestly didn't know what to do. It's almost like being addicted to television. You come home from work and immediately turn the thing on. It sits perfectly positioned so that it can be see from anywhere in the living room. In fact, if you look at home architecture since the late 1950's in America, you will see that where the old focus of the living room was the fireplace or a large bay window, it shifted to where the T.V. could be optimally placed to be seen by all. Apartments are designed so that you can see over the counter island and see the T.V. The TV has honestly changed the way we actually build our homes. Do not doubt that in the near future newly built apartments and homes will be designed so that you can easily access broadband internet, view your monitor, and access the internet from almost every room in the house. I'm not talking about "smart houses" where you tap a panel and can start the air conditioning in a different room, or start drawing a bath, I'm talking about easy access Netflix and Huffingtonpost from the seat of your toilet....that doesn't involve your smartphone.

I got home from work and I actually paced my house for a bit because my normal habit of browsing the internet the minute I get home was interrupted. We don't have cable so I couldn't just turn on the TV and vegetate. I honestly didn't know what to do with myself. I went and sat outside for a bit in the sun. I didn't get the urge to cook anything so that didn't take up the early part of my evening. I really didn't know what to do with myself.

My normal habit of browsing the internet is gone, so I honestly didn't know what to do. This is what the internet has done to me. I don't know what to do with myself without it at points.

Tell me about yourself.

2011-04-05T11:23:00.000-07:00

So far in this blog I have been talking about what I am doing not how I am doing. So let's shift gears, or more likely in the case of my mental malfunctions grind those gears into fine shavings in the oil pan, and talk about how I am doing so far.

I have gotten pretty bored at a few points. When one can simply click on a video on Youtube, go to a blog, find a LolCat, read a comic, or well...watch porn and fap, boredom can be easily handled. Just click away and time is killed mercilessly. I'm glad that my roommate actually has a hard and fast rule about smoking in the house; that rule obviously being no smoking unless there is a minor monsoon outside, to which she will dart out in the rain to the garage to smoke, or even light up in the door and blow the smoke outside. It's a good rule because if you have ever known a hard core computer user with a smoking habit, you have also seen the ashtray on their desk that resembles the ruins of Dresden in 1945. Smoking for me now is a way of breaking the monotony of the internet. A chance to get up and get away and blink for the first time in about an hour and a half. This has actually helped train me to smoke less as it becomes a hassle to time getting up to smoke and raiding in games. Now I am completely aware of my smoking habits as it becomes a conscious decision to get up to smoke. A few times so far when my roommates have decided to go smoke, I didn't want to because I wasn't bored or wanted a lull in the show we were watching.

There is one slight drawback to all of this. Its part of what made me take on this endeavor, loneliness. I won't lie about the fact that I am absolutely terrible at meeting potential romantic partners. I never know when I am being flirted with, know when to say what, and when to know its a dead end when I do try. Part of my habit has been to constantly have a browser tab constantly open to www.okcupid.com, which is a free dating site for Gen X/Y types. I'm always scanning for new potential mates (slim pickings here in the OKC), trying to initiate chat, checking out who's viewed me.

You know you can tell when something you do is pathetic and makes you a looser? When you know its pathetic and makes you a looser.

Yep, I said it, sorry for no niceities. Pinning all your hopes that an online dating site will solve your loneliness or end your sexual drought is pathetic. At this point I don't know if the sense of disconnect and anxiety is coming from the loss of habit of checking the site, or anxiety of not potentially meeting people. This weekend I may suck up the financial cost of going to the bar and the thirty minute drive into the city to go to the ones I like. Meeting people at the bar is usually a lousy proposition in and of itself, but the prospectus of actually meeting someone even if it is merely for a conversation is better than playing GTA:IV for another night.

That so far is the low point, the whole curled up in a ball weeping in the bathtub loneliness thing. So far though, I am feeling a bit less anxiety about other things. I haven't heard a damn thing about Justin Beiber (Bieber? How do you spell that name?) or Charlie Sheen in five days. I honestly could give a rat's ass about the guy, and his whole saga was winding down in that usual cultural ADD way we have in America before my fast, but I haven't heard a damn thing about him, his show, WINNING, tigers blood, or Goddesses and I'm ok with that. I never watched his show, Platoon was a good move but its like 30 years old almost, other than that..Meh. I'm glad I don't even have to glace across it outside of the tabloids at the checkout counter.

As for Beiber (fuck it, my cursory grasp of grammatical rules tells me that is the right spelling), I'm not glad I'm avoiding him, I'm glad I'm missing all the people who hate him. The only reason I know anything about the kid, is because of all the amazing vitriol you find on the internet about him. Apparently if you read the comments about him, see the photoshopped pictures, or read the lousy jokes; Justin is apparently a woman or gay, like to perform fellatio on black men, has no talent at all, is personally responsible for the collapse of American music, and apparently looks like a woman.

Let me go ahead and say this; If you spend hours of your life raging about a 16 year old pop musician, you go hunting for the perfect picture of him so you can photoshop a penis pointed toward his mouth, or you crack the one hundred millionth joke about his slightly feminine appearance, you are a pathetic human being who is wasting their life. No really, you are. Trust me, I'm an expert on wasted life and potential, and raging about Beiber is so full of wasted opportunity it lives in a cardboard box in the subway. Beiber is just another pop star just like the hundreds that came before him, and will come after him. He has actual talent that the majority don't have with playing the drums and a decent singing voice. And guess what...that joke about him looking like a lesbian woman? Yep, about as creative and original now as a knock-knock joke, especially now that he rips on himself about it! You guys realize that everything I know about Justin Beiber comes from people complaining about him? If I didn't have to wade through 40 doctored photos a day, or listen to your tirade about how he has ruined rock music, or is the indicator of whats wrong with the music industry, I wouldn't know what his voice sounds like, what he looks like, or anything about him. Before I knew who he was, I thought he was just another mediocre musician that I would give 5 seconds consideration on my radio for. Your complaining about him only increases his fame.

Now that I'm off the internet for a month, I don't have to deal with the hate machine or the TMZ'ification of my life. I chose a long time ago to ignore daytime television for its kiddie pool depth, now I am giving serious consideration to figuring out how to develop a browser extension that will block any mention of Justin Beiber from appearing as a link.

Inadvertantly inatentive.

2011-04-04T20:42:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the inconstant updates. I have been asking my roommate to update the blog for me, but she has been busy and unable to upload my posts for me.

Alas, I will be having to crack the whip on her.

Saturday I actually did not spend it playing video games and developing bedsores on my behind in front of the computer. It was warm and nice outside, very few clouds. It was a Ferris Bueller kind of day. Instead of immediately waking up and lusting after my internet, I decided to take advantage of the nice day and wash my car. None of that ten dollars for five minutes of water stuff, but classic get outside and recreate an '80's music video with wet girls covered in soap. Except for Playboy bunnies, a pasty white slightly overweight woman with partially shaved legs wearing soccer shorts. Hey, I thought it was sexy in that sort of poorly lit home erotic photography of found internet picture sense. You know, the kind that ends up on 4chan or something.

Well, I only got a quarter of the car washed before my roommate showed up with a cat for her fiance. Wee.

We then went up to Sam's Club to buy unnecessary amounts of soda and frozen pizza. Only a country like America could both suffer from egregious gluttony ala 20 pounds of M&M's for $15 bucks to be consumed covered in a cheese product sauce with hot wings, as well as the glorification of Holocaust thin supermodels and pro-Anorexia websites. No seriously, there are websites dedicated to teaching you to starve yourself into kidney failure! Screw Puritanical values, this is the good stuff that makes us the unwelcome cousin at the international picnic!

After that I finally succumbed to playing Grand Theft Auto IV, the game that makes moralistic nutjobs shiver in ecstatic fits of joy. A game that makes Scarface look like a Pixar film in its violence, Hustler like Good Housekeeping in its sexual content, and more homophobia than a Senator taping his foot in an airport bathroom stall. Everything Americans love to hate in public and love to love in private. America's moral schizophrenia.

Sunday we finally went to the Medieval Fair they hold every spring in our town. This being the great state of Oklahoma, the wind was blowing at about oh...sixty miles an hour. I ate my obligatory yearly fried Twinkie. I hate Twinkies, but rolling them in batter and deep frying them then covering them in powdered sugar is truly delicious in that six minutes off you life way.

Later that day as I puttered through GTA:IV again my roommate who is part of the challenge behind this (she didn't think I could make it 30 days) asked if I had worked on any of the programing I have been wanting to learn for a while. I confessed I had not. She admonished me for it and actually told me to come home from work tonight with some coding done.

That's what I spent today working on in my free time at work. I managed to get the webserver to display simple messages and run some basic math, so I think I did alright considering that last week I didn't know how to do any of that. I know any of you code monkeys won't be impressed, but hey, go to your boring meeting with your boring manager Rob. Everyone starts somewhere.

I'm thankful my roommate admonished me. When you have lost your own motivation, you need someone else to push you. No one really can accomplish everything on their own. All the great people of history had aides, spouses, teachers, peers, and pets to help them get through the day when they came home and lamented their failures. They comforted them, cajoled them, licked their hands (I heard Empress Josephine was kinky like that), and took some of the stress off their shoulders. So I'm grateful she is pushing me.

Now let's see what happens on day five.

Into the abyss.

2011-04-03T20:52:00.000-07:00

I apologize for not updating yesterday, all five of my potential readers I'm sure are terribly disappointed. I humbly beg for forgiveness for taking advantage of their baited breath waiting.

So yesterday I awoke and realized right away that I forgot to close my browser on my computer so when I awoke, there before me stood my arch nemesis; pointless information. I actually held my hand in front of my face like one would if they had been ambushed by someone with a flashlight in a dark room as I reached out and closed the browser. "Well, why the hell do you still have a network connection you goon?", you might ask. Quite simple. I lost my thumb drive. Instead of loading the word documents onto a thumb drive and sticking them in my roommates slot...

Wow, double entendre. I should pencil in emotional maturity as one of the many projects for this month....

Back to the story...I am going to simply share my updates over the home network. That way she can just upload them from there.

I managed to get dressed and ready for work that morning without having to stop to make sure someone had responded to anything that I had intelligently quipped. As most people compliment their own intelligence and wit, I refuse to let that rest on any laurels but my own. Since I had more free time in the morning I was not rushed and the dogs got to spend an adequate amount of time sniffing the same bush that has been outside the door for the past six months

Of course when I arrived at work I faced the same issue of looming web browsers. This one, instead of being the dating site www.okcupid.com,which was the morning ambush at home, was a lovely news article that was half read before I darted out the door of work. I sighed and closed that tab feeling like I had suffered media coitus interruptus.

Most of the morning was filled with actual work of resetting Outlook, unlocking accounts, and explaining in polite ways that forgetting your password for the fourth time this week is by no means an indicator that you are senile, mentally deficient, or a government employee. We have a lot of free time at work that is usually filled with chit chat between workers, working on side projects, reading news articles or Lolcats, and mine was spent trying to figure out why my antiquated external hard drive was not working. When I say antiquated, I mean that as generously as saying rotary phones still serve some sort of purpose still. I am sure of that fact as I still hear automated systems kindly taking the concerns of ninety year old former Central Bell employees with the same phone they bought in 1962 into consideration.

To return to the central point of this, I in a classic facepalm incident, had realized the plug for the drive was plugged into a dead outlet only when I had returned home for lunch.

After lunch I kept myself busy with going through files on the drive deleting unnecessary files. Long dead backups of old computer profiles from 2003, links to websites lost to the posterity of time, (excuse me while I file dump one for my dead homiepages, respect brothers), a few music doubles, and the failed ebook format of .pdf's.

I had once downloaded every Shadowrun book in the off chance I might ever play that game. Unfortunately that would have required me to find someone who was willing to run a game that required a archivists skill in record keeping and a corporate middle managers love of micromanagement. I still enjoy reading the rather detailed world the writers had created for this cyberpunk dystopia pen and paper role playing game, and wish that video game makers would spend even half the amount of time creating such a detailed universe. One has to appreciate labors of love that go to explain such useless details as why fashion, food, entertainment, money, and politics in the year 2070 are the way they are. It requires a true love of the worlds one creates in their mind, a passion for writing, and enjoyment of one's work. Unfortunately, I care nothing of running a character sheet that is more than six pages long. How can you expect me to keep track of that much detail when I forget regularly which pocket my lighter is in?

So Shadowrun, as much as I love your universe and creativity, you must be consigned to the rubbish heap of the Recycle Bin.

After stopping by the drugstore on the way home to flirt with the clerk and get me a bag of M&M's, I came home to frustrated confusion. Normally I sit down almost right away and read all the Not Safe For Work links I couldn't at work, the Youtube videos I couldn't watch, and check my dating websites. Trust me, I'll return to that. I actually can't remember what I did right away when I got home, which bothers me. I think I finally shorted out at that point. My life has become so reliant on Internet habits for me to diverge from it actually causes my brain to shut down to defend myself. I know I didn't get on the Internet as I'm almost sure I immediately took the dogs out and smoked a cigarette with my roommate who was home.

Later I watched some Star Trek: Enterprise with my room mates and returned to Grand Theft Auto IV and played on that till about 2 AM.

For a first day I did ok, but I think I haven't seen the beginnings of boredom or withdrawal.

This is going to be interesting.

Zero Up Zero Down FAQ's

2011-03-30T09:20:00.000-07:00

So here is the FAQ on how this is all going to work.

1.) Starting at 12:00 A.M. Friday morning all communications to anything that has an ip address. This includes anything on the internet via computer or my android phone as well as XBox Live.

2.) I cannot access the internet for anything that is not an "emergency". An emergency would include; booking a flight to another state for a funeral, finding the nearest zombie shelter, or finding a good attorney on those inevitable misdemeanor charges for assault as I do not trust day time television. An emergency does NOT include; finding numbers to alternate pizza places than my usual, signing up for that groupon that I really want, paying bills, shopping of any kind, no torrents for that album I just have to have. None of that.

C.) I will use this opportunity to help my organization skills.

4.) This blog will continue to be updated hopefully more than once a day. I will write all of my posts in word and then give them to my roommate who will post them to this blog. I will not be updating this blog personally.

5.) ??

6.) Profit?

Upboating.

2011-03-30T08:37:00.000-07:00

So, Im posting an AMA about this on Reddit. Why would I do that? Mostly to help myself with accountability. John Donne is right, no man is an island, at best an archipelago if anything. I think that by putting this out there I will be responsible to other people, which is odd because part of the reason I am doing this whole this is to maybe reach back out to people in real life. Weeee, contradictions are awesome.

Would you like to know more?

2011-03-07T20:00:00.000-08:00

Probably the hardest parts of this project in self discovery, or self immolation, depending on how one looks at it, is trying to determine the appropriate time and day to start, what the hell to do with myself when I do, and what sort of restrictions do I have?

I originally wanted to start this on the first of this month, but I wanted to have some depth in the posting roster before I took to the mound, however as you can plainly see, that panned out marvelously. Its all part of a larger idea of procrastination I think. Sitting down in front of a computer is procrastination away from doing all the things I should be doing; exercising, drinking, socializing, reading, drawing, writing, drinking, learning how to code, learning how to dance, drinking, learning a new hobby, um...drinking.

Wait, why the hell am I talking so much about drinking? I haven't touched alcohol since New Years and that was a glass of wine. What the hell, man? I'm trying to be edgy and stuff. If I do that again, please slap me. Hard.

Anyway.

So, I keep putting this thing off, with new and more inventive excuses. I guess I need to set up a definite date for when I am going to start doing this. Maybe I should start this on the 1st of April? It will give me plenty of time to get things in place to do when I unplug that internet. It is also nicely symbolic of the foolishness of this endeavor. You know the longest I have gone without internet since about 1997? Six months. That's right, six months. That was how long I was in Iraq, yep. It took a war to cut off my internet access. Alas, I digress. April is a 30 day month, it ends on a Saturday and starts on a Friday. So I will have a nice weekend to get over the twitchiness, and weekend at the end to gorge. So lets set it here and now, I'll start on April Fools Day at exactly midnight. Huzzah and all that.

Well, now that that's settled. Tomorrow we will talk about what kind of activities I have planned for that month, and then we can talk about what the rules are and such.

Mark Twain was not a Blogger.

2011-03-07T14:48:00.000-08:00

If I'm supposed to be keeping a blog about me quitting the internet for a month for the sake of posterity, I should really try to keep up with it. I think Mark Twain predicted blogging 150 years ago with this quote,

If you wish to inflict a heartless and malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to keep a journal a year.

Yep, sounds about right. Then again, Mark Twain was a cantankerous fart.

Whats interesting is, is Twain wrote that in 1869, an era noted for its general lack of idleness. I mean they didn't exactly have indoor plumbing and auto service centers. You had to use hand pumps, straight razors, feed and shovel out your pimpin ride, and undo corsetry for the sake of bumping the unbathed uglies. Mind you corsets require amazing patience and strength to endure, and only the members of the warrior classes can properly use them as a sexual tool. If such a hardy folk as those who were building railroads over the Rocky Mountains, rebuilding their sacred racist institutions to endure for 100 years more, and beating the bejeezus out of each other in 90 round bare knuckle boxing matches could not maintain a simple diary, what hope does my technology induced ADD self have?

The Post with No Name.

2011-03-02T20:13:00.000-08:00

Told you I have an addiction. I haven't revisited this blog in a week because I became distracted. I found out all of season 5 of Futurama was now on Netflix streaming, I watched all the episodes in two sittings over two nights. Yes, about 7 hours in two sittings in the evening over two days. What else did I do with my evening? I can't really remember. I think that there was some cooking at some point but I'm not sure. I know I got up to go smoke, that's clearly apparent as I have had to buy more cigarettes. Yep, another addiction.

I spent the rest of the week playing my MMO, for something on the order of about 14 hours this weekend. Monday I spent an inappropriate amount of money on a new Android phone, so as to have access to things I couldn't at work...meaning YouTube videos. This of course means that I will probably be borrowing money again at the end of the month from my friends just to eat and put gas in my car. I got into more debates on Reddit, that's no surprise.

Let me explain to you why I debate on the internet now so we don't have to revisit it later on, though I'm sure we will.

I spent most of my youth (yes, I'm 33 and call it my youth) studying politics, warfare, military history, history in general, archaeology, anthropology, nuclear warfare (I consider this seperate from military stuff as it's practically is a study in national insanity), and other topics that aren't really great cocktail conversations on the patio. I would go so far as to call my prefered subjects of studies, "downers." Yet, I love them. Nothing will get a rise out of me like a heated debate about the Constitution, the history of the Revolution and the nations foundations, military policy, global politics, or anything of it's kind. When someone asks me about it, I perk up and I jabber on and on, incessantly until someone has to force the conversation away. You know how some people talk to themselves in the mirror? I do that, but I'm actually giving lengthy lectures about the recent recession, or the current wars, and on and on.

The problem here is though, no one really brings that up around me. I'm sure if I worked for a think tank, or was still in the army, or was a college student or professor, I would be talking about this with many peers and colleagues, but there is no one. So I go to the internet. On the internet, I can have my opinions validated, debated, I can share what I know, "school" someone in a subject I know better than them, and so on. I love to share the conversation with my friends who tease me about it, but I persist. Why? It's the only place I can feel like I have something to say and people will listen.

I think that's important to a lot of people. They want to be heard. Not listened to, but heard. They want someone to validate their existence, feelings, and thoughts. However in this world that we have created, if you can't say it in two sentences that are controversial, or packaged right, no one will hear you. Those precious few people who listen to you are like treasures to be hoarded like a leprechauns treasure. They are just so hard to find though. We are to busy with the next RSS feed, the next sound clip, the new top 40, the new blog post, the new tweet with nothing relevant said, to actually stop to listen. Every one of us knows someone who constantly has their Borg implants in, those blue tooth headsets crammed in their ear to catch that next great call or perhaps those white sensory deprivation buds we cram in our ears, those artificial barriers that even 30 years ago were rare enough to force conversation, "Say man, what is that thing?!" Now we ignore it. We can even be sitting down with friends or loved ones to eat at a restaurant and while you are sharing details of a great real world experience, they are checking into foursquare and giving that answer we perfected speaking to our parents in our teens, "Uh huh."

I complain so vociferously about this because, well, that's me. Not in the sense of the friend at dinner buried in their cell phone, but in the larger sense of that is how I live my life. I go to my computer and, "Uh huh," life. I think that is how a lot of addictions work. It's a way of avoiding paying attention to life. You bury yourself in distractions so that you don't have to face the harder challenges of having to be hurt by other people, have to feel a connection to other people, to feel validated, to feel good, to seek refuge.

Mine is here on the internet, attempting to connect to people through something you really can't connect with people through.

I Had an Idea.

2011-02-22T21:51:00.000-08:00

I had a weird idea about two weeks ago to take a break from the internet.

A lot of people take time off from browsing the internet; they go read a book, work on a hobby, clean the house, go on a vacation, join a cult, get sent to prison, you know...stuff like that. They don't think a lot of it because they actually have active social lives, friends to spend time with, kids, jobs that keep them busy, and things they are actually accomplishing, so to them the internet is just another thing in their lives. It has become a tool they use to get news, read product reviews, shop for those products, order pizza, look at Lolcats, send emails home to their parents, check movie times, a million and one things that enhance their lives that they spend away from the internet. To them, the web has become a part of their lives that enhances it and makes it better, a way to lead a fuller life.

I'm not that type of person. The internet is my life.

I guess I should describe what my day is like so you can understand how it is my life. I usually wake up later than I intend to every morning because I spent way to late on the internet or computer; those are separate things that I'll explain later. I rush to shower, put on make up, and get dressed. The most unnecessarily long part of getting ready is putting on my socks and shoes. I start to put on my socks and glance up to check on whats on the front page of my favorite website Reddit. I usually end up clicking a few links and read some of the comments there, responding to replies to some of my comments (in fact, as I type this blog post, it dawned on me to check to see if this guy responded to one of my comments and I went off to check...he hadn't). It honestly takes me about five minutes to put on my socks and shoes. By this point, I'm already running late for work so I barely have time to take the dogs out so I hustle them outside to smoke a morning cigarette quickly before I run them back inside, grab my stuff and head out the door. Depending on how interesting the last post I read was is how much time I have to rush by and grab something to eat on the way. I get to work with a few minutes to spare and immediately log into my computer and immediately get to work. While I'm trying to eat my breakfast I work my little job unlocking people's passwords and checking websites out between actually having to do my job.
We have a lot of down time at work so I get ample time to browse the web. I read the latest crap on the Huffington Post and yes, the HuffPo is crap. No seriously, it's a liberal Drudge report with better graphics with a dash of Perez Hilton celebrity/Apple obsession. I read it mostly as a form of masochism. I read my web comics, maybe some NPR, browse for job listings, shop for things I can't afford, and then head back to Reddit. I do this the whole day when I'm not working. It's almost compulsive. I can't not do it. I click on the same posts over and over, scan comments for things I want to reply to, check to see if anyone has responded to me, over and over and over. During breaks I think about things I just read, things I want to say to someone in reply, or day dream about things I just read and return to my desk to do it again.
I get off work then go home and watch all the YouTube videos I couldn't at work and the NSFW stuff. I usually spend an hour doing this. At that point my two roomies have come home and I take the dogs out and go smoke with them. I try to cook a dinner that I can throw in the oven and walk away from to go read more posts, more news, more videos, browse for things, over and over. I usually burn stuff because I forget it or get busy and don't want to interrupt my train of thought. Back at my desk while I drop crumbs onto my keyboard I keep browsing, or maybe by this point I have started playing a game on the computer. I play an MMO called Lord of the Rings Online, and offline games as well. This usually happens until almost midnight every night with breaks for more soda and to use the bathroom. This is my workday life, take work out and replace it with more time on the internet and you get the idea of what a weekend is like.

I have been like this for years.

I hate it.

I'm 33, I've been single for five years, I'm underemployed, undereducated, out of shape, broke, haven't gone anywhere other than the gas station or grocery store in about 3 months, and generally not happy with my life. What the hell happened to me? What have I missed out on? Why do I know I am all these things but have done so little to do anything to change it? Because reading the internet is easier than doing anything about it.

That's where this idea came from. What the hell could I be doing instead of sitting in front of a glowing rectangle?

Well, I'm going to find out.

And maybe fix my life a little.