well i have been fooling with FTP path settings so i can blog away again. and think i got it now. my heart wasn't in it, so i just sort of pecked away at it rather than obligatory adrenalized teeth-clenching techno-marathon. hope it's fixed.
it's not.
[later] now it is.
and here is a picture to prove it [Later still:don't like this watercolor: am going to change it in rare backdated move. you'll see.]
up at 4:30 this morning. i really enjoy the days when this happens. i get real busy.
here's todays thingy: at least i hope it is here, some problem with transmission from blogger to my site. [many hours later]. just got back. this webpage does not exist yet. i"ll tinker more. keeps me off the streets. so if you don't see this it's not here.[still later] there is a techno-glitch somewhere. but i've been trying to post this since tuesday.
"Brock Enright, an artist and entrepreneur in New York City, has an offer for you. For a few thousand US dollars, he and some co-workers of his come when you least expect it and kidnap you, holding you hostage for up to a few days. You even get videos of the event detailing your ordeal as his company does their best to make you feel like a real hostage..."
Plastic: Being Abducted For Fun And Fulfillment
i was reminded by this item of an alarming trend that has been growing for a few years in our culture. i don't know what to call it, but here are some examples:
1) theme parks
2) reality tv (oxymoron)
3) micheal moore's idea to make trent mich into a theme park
4) my cousin bob's and my idea about 15 years ago to start a business that charged middle-class people a fee for putting them "homeless" on the street for awhile.
5) book i read awhile back where idea was to build "sinful" environments, for example gangster run las vegas, where customers could visit but was perfectly safe.
what is this trend? sanitized experience? it's all make-believe anyway? we've gotten to the point where experience without cash payment doesn't feel "real"? nothing feels real? nothing is real?
good place to hang out:
( blogdex )
where you can find news (if it doesn't find you first.):
"Friendly fire deaths linked to US pilots 'on speed'"
you can install a "get a (random") blog" from this page. it will take you to a random blog somewhere. why? i don't know.
i feel the need to outline what i think: probably because i have been immersed in music, no writing. so here goes:
1) humans are concious. trees, snakes, apples are not. altho the cartesian split ("i think, therefor i exist, but trees don't, so they don't") has been found to be lacking in it's catagories of what is and what isn't.
2) the objects of human conciousness are a little tricky, because they are not what they seem. (don't believe everything you think.)
3) conciousness seems to be a small part of a bigger entity, the unconciousness. it would not matter except the latter pushes us around into postures we had not planned to be in.
4) conciousness (and unconciousness) creates culture, and the collective that goes under that name feeds back and defines ego conciousness. that is, it effects the experience of being a person. this experience is different in different times and places.
5) the subject of conciousness (the "I") is therefore contingent, a handy device. what exactly this "really" is will be a subject of great debate in the near future. because when you come to a fork in the road, take it.
6) working on the last point is the core of the answer to many of our social, economic. and political perplexities.
7) therefor today, problems can only be solved on the personal level. the corporate oligarchic flavor of reality is replacing the personal with the commercial, so better hurry.
Osama bin Laden: is he is or is he ain't?
"the suspected terrorist mastermind will appear in a taped recording . . . they also said bin Laden was well."
Today's Daily Briefing -- The Heritage Foundation
"Sources believe that if the bodyguards were captured away from bin Laden, it is likely the most-wanted man in the world is dead."
CNN.com - Sources: No bodyguards, no bin Laden - July 30, 2002
Breaking this law--even if it's to share music by your own garage band--could land you in prison for up to five years. And that's not counting the civil penalties of up to $25,000 per offense.
from
Pirate this, go to jail - Tech News - CNET.com
friend ninian dropped by with lots of banjo's, fresh from a musical learning week at warren wilson.
it was so hot so long we stayed indoors, visited, played some, listened to tape of dylan playing winston-salem last march.
i demoed my latest hobby horse, mp3s made with opcode oms, vision DSP and Vision Pro, also using soundedit 16 and SndSampler, quicktime voices and some editing in quicktime audio, lots of VST filters, a good mike with line outout adapter for mike in on G3, and midi keyboard Roland D20. all this stuff is at least a generation behind today, but i find it strangely fascinating to make this stuff work together. and it can do so much more than the last time i played with this stuff, 10+ years ago.
Later this week i'll put up about 5-10 pieces and you can judge for yourself. i consider these to be potential soundtracks and they are all works in progress.
meanwhile figuring out away to add small economical visuals to quicktime midi or movie files (audio).
lately haven't had the urge to ponificate. i don't know what to say. i am aghast not just at what is going on in the privilaged domain of the rich and powerful (R & P), but even worse, the so-far lack of any reaction to it from the pipple. there are at least 2 things that might be contributing to this lack.
one is business as usual, same old thying, began with reagun when the blue collar folks especially SE bought into the picture and from then on acted as if they were future candidates for this elevated standard. in theory. and it is still happening in a mutated way i guess.before this phase pipple wanted to be rock and roll stars.
or 2) the discomfort and unease of living in the whole picture, time, speed, confused identidies, loose numbers careening around the place, where does a trillion million go? where does it come from?
ninian opines that 9/11 in some way shook all this stuff loose. maybe. for sure it is affecting a whole lot more people than the early-adapters-misfits. i think more and more folks will be ruminating on how to get off the wheel of work. personal downsizing, part time employment, shared living expenses, it's a movement..and there is no one size fits-all solution.
if the latter is what is happening it will be cool - just very quietly folks slipping away.
and the war (now that i'm going i'll ride it down, i'll write it down). war against terrorists. war against drugs. war against cancer. these are not the recent 2-300 years of what war was; that was btween 2 institutions (flags, maps, uniforms, conscription, but civilians progressively incorporated into the show, wwii air marshall tedder began satuation bombing of german cities.).
war against the formless is a whole new thing and the ongoing shutdown of govt. procedures, plus the secrecy, is often part of the wars against the evil invisible.
in the past, since WWII, the word "fascist" has usually been used in an overblown, over the top manner, especially when criticizing the US guvmnt. that's changing.
"Don't be alarmed by the word fascist. It's a term that is used for mindless respect for authority and uniforms, oppression, use of force, nationalism.
Whenever I'm in the USA, I see this all around me."
from
Plastic:
"He argues that the marketers do more than mirror the splits in the American social fabric, they accentuate them by designing media and advertisments that encourage contact between the narrow marketing segments and discourage those from outside the segment from coming in contact with the customized media using "signaling" and "branding" techniques."
from turow
i pruned my overwhelming number of bookmarks today and looked around to see what they were. a lot had disappeared into the cyber-ozone. Newcity was still around. check out the dick cheney piece:
"And for the first time, there were some faint signs the cows might be coming home to roost. Polls showed that the issue was beginning to stir the public, some of whom were starting to make vague connections between the corruption of Bush�s corporate pals and the fact that their nest eggs had been wiped out."
