A new story idea (perhaps short, but easily expanded to something longer):
We have a Fellow, who shall fill the lead role of our experience; think something along the lines of Edward Norton in Fight Club, a office rat, rather dissatisfied with his existence despite having attended a good college, having done well, and having then secured a quite good job with Blank Corporation X. Nonetheless, he is unenthusiastic about his existence, his relationships with others deteriorate rapidly as he begins plumbing the depths of archaic video games and the internet in search of some sort of ancillary reality that has more meaning than the one that he inhabits. Our Fellow's side quest starts to chew up more and more time and we watch as he loses touch with his friends, girlfriend, family, in exchange for a more perfect, digital world with new, more perfect digital friends. Eventually, Our Fellow moves into a run down shack in some unpleasant corner of town and slowly integrates himself more fully into his digital existence that comes to be far more important than the real world.
From there the ending is murky, perhaps he goes all in and constructs some sort of device that permanently locks him into digitality, or perhaps something draws him back to the real world, some binary friends draws him into a chemical, physical reality. Either way, the message is essentially the same--there is no real worth in our world at present, and perhaps the digital escape that we create is no better, either way, meaning is instilled by humanity, and what we as individuals deem worthy of our time is then what is worthy of our time, end of story.
Perhaps something for the Stanford docket, or it'll just have to sit and gestate for a few more years.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Red Raincoats and Rifles
Hrm...rather aggravated mater today, because I don't see the need in memorizing precisely how many undergraduates most of the schools that we shall be visiting have. I'm sorry that it is unimportant whether Duke has 5,000 or 6,000ish; the difference is minimal and the only thing worth remembering is that it is in the same range as Stanford and company, whereas NYU is much larger. My interest in Reed is dead, Pomona having supplanted it, and at present it would appear that NYU is on lifesupport; perhaps the visit will resuscitate it, but I'm rather not counting on it as the place seems like another larger-ish university, rather than the overgrown liberal arts school that I'm looking for. Pomona has become the second runner, more because I would prefer California over the East Coast, so the reasoning is less than sound, though Pomona's chemistry program is quite good; the lack of engineering is annoying, and I'm rather expecting Penn to be enticing; Columbia not so much.
In other news, I started writing, got a whole two pages out, and then was distracted by...something, I don't remember what. Facebook, in all probability, which is utterly stupid, but at least I kept the same tone and cadence that I've been striving for during the entire project, so the layoff hasn't negatively affected the continuity or anything. All's well, in short. I keep vacillating on whether or not to proceed with reading Ulysses, and I have reached the Circe episode, written in play format, which ought to progress more quickly than the last few bits have. Now that I understand that the Odyssey episodes do not fall in chronological order, I understand that aspect of the work far more thoroughly and everything has more or less fallen into place; a little refresher ont he Odyssey helped as well. At the same time, I've realized that I am not nearly literary enough to understand or appreciate the complex parodies and such that fill a large part of the work; certainly it is a piece of virtuosity that only Eliot can even come close to, and if nothing else I can grasp the first layer of references and such, those being the Odyssey-related ones. Beyond that, I'm willing to let things slide. The ending is inevitable, the message already one that I have heard before, but I'm going to see the thing through, given how much time I have invested in it.
In other news, I'm thinking of taking a break from thinking...well, not thinking, but at least communicating with L or making determinations to do so for a while; letting that little thing slip into memory where it belongs. That would be my only other issue with going to Pomona; I would be forced to interact with L and that would be utterly disastrous for Holy is Thy Name, if the project is not completed by that point. I wish I could say that I would be done with the writing, but I know that I won't be, though the storyboards have been helping. I rather like having fluff demons, I think, and it would be a shame to do anything to get rid of this one, though I want to at the same time.
--Sam'ich out--
In other news, I started writing, got a whole two pages out, and then was distracted by...something, I don't remember what. Facebook, in all probability, which is utterly stupid, but at least I kept the same tone and cadence that I've been striving for during the entire project, so the layoff hasn't negatively affected the continuity or anything. All's well, in short. I keep vacillating on whether or not to proceed with reading Ulysses, and I have reached the Circe episode, written in play format, which ought to progress more quickly than the last few bits have. Now that I understand that the Odyssey episodes do not fall in chronological order, I understand that aspect of the work far more thoroughly and everything has more or less fallen into place; a little refresher ont he Odyssey helped as well. At the same time, I've realized that I am not nearly literary enough to understand or appreciate the complex parodies and such that fill a large part of the work; certainly it is a piece of virtuosity that only Eliot can even come close to, and if nothing else I can grasp the first layer of references and such, those being the Odyssey-related ones. Beyond that, I'm willing to let things slide. The ending is inevitable, the message already one that I have heard before, but I'm going to see the thing through, given how much time I have invested in it.
In other news, I'm thinking of taking a break from thinking...well, not thinking, but at least communicating with L or making determinations to do so for a while; letting that little thing slip into memory where it belongs. That would be my only other issue with going to Pomona; I would be forced to interact with L and that would be utterly disastrous for Holy is Thy Name, if the project is not completed by that point. I wish I could say that I would be done with the writing, but I know that I won't be, though the storyboards have been helping. I rather like having fluff demons, I think, and it would be a shame to do anything to get rid of this one, though I want to at the same time.
--Sam'ich out--
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Poke Poke Poke (repeat as necessary)
Just finished 1984, which leaves Jane Eyre as the only real book left on the summer reading list; should be able to finish that and Ulysses while flying to, driving about, and returning from the East Coast (ick), and then I'll have a week to write the 1984 essay, and a while after that for the Jane Eyre one, though I might just get 1984 out of the way now while it's still fresh.
SAT on Saturday and I'm annoyed with the whole having to study for it deal, which is silly given that it's supposed to be an aptitude test, though clearly fails in that regard as studying does help. So, I shall continue to throw monkey wrenches into the system so long as the system requires that I take a test that is four hours long and consists of first grade math, useless grammar rules, and obscure interpretations of even more obscure prose passages.
Anyway...deep breath, deep breath...
Posted an inordinate number of pictures on FaceBook the other day which as precipitated a near flood of photo comments, though I suppose that is my penance for flooding all of the people in the pictures with notifications that they have been tagged in a picture. Blargh. Kat got cranky [kranky] about one bad one from prom, and I deleted it...eventually.
Funny, finishing 1984 has taken all of the desire to write out of me, which is perhaps a little worrying, but I've had studying and Rock Band and Grant Theft Auto 4 to keep me preoccupied (the last having only just managed to establish a foothold in the realm of my attention, and only because several of its missions entail escorting a stoned Jamaican fellow about and shooting a large number of vaguely unscrupulous other fellows).
Anyway, reading 1984 for the second time in only a few months was not particularly enjoyable, most of its potency being lost; O'brien's last rant was rather dull compared to the first time I read the book, and most of my mental energy went into picking apart aspects of Ingsoc thought that we will likely never end up discussing in class because we will likely never discuss the book at all, it being a Mertens class. The conclusion that I reached was that Ingsoc will fail for the same reason that power hungry groups have been falling for the entirety of human existence--the most flagrant sin of all, blah blah blah--hubris. Their problem is that they do possess near total power and are working toward making their grip on that power permanent, but in so doing they are setting the stage for their own destruction. If the Party does succeed, as it plans to, in creating a Newspeak language where there is literally no capability to think improperly, then there is no mental language with which to describe deviancy; with the mind being as malleable as the party wishes it to be and reality as viewed by the citizens of Oceania similarly subject to the will of the Party, it follows that eventually, the Party will succeed in temporarily eradicating all resistance, at which point the Party will have achieved a perceived lock on power, assisted by the full use of Newspeak. Thus the Party will have eradicated the disease, but become utterly vulnerable to a recurrence--the Party will have willingly destroyed its ability to perceive any deviancy and will believe that their world is perfect insofar as they want it to be; persons who do no exhibit proper behavior will simply be glossed over by Party members, beyond the members' perception, existing in nearly an alternate universe. From there it is only a matter of time before a handful of intelligent Proles emerge or the Party conditioning process fails ever so slightly in the raising of a child, and then those liberated individuals could conceivably walk into a Ministry and massacre its workers with a machine gun and surviving Party members would fail to see that anything had occurred. The flaw lies not in the Party's failure to grasp power, but in their impulsive use of it; for the Party, it is not enough to have power, it must be exercised in some feeble attempt to assure themselves that they really are in control. It is not really necessary to alter the mind and soul of every deviant, but rather just to have the power to do so. The exercise is totally unnecessary, and by continuously exercising its power, the Party ensures that it will eventually seal itself off from concrete reality and while within the collective mind of the Party the Party will have total control, it will in actuality have only succeeded in blinding itself to any sort of resistance, sealing itself off into a ball and a state in which it is totally vulnerable to assault, not of verbal or logical means, but physical force should suffice. Though there would be no real need to do so as the Party would be effectively blind to all free persons and those liberated individuals need not bother themselves with a few million people living in rundown slums in London.
I could go on about other things, Winston's pseudo-betrayal and such, but I don't know that there really is any need to. That is merely picking nits with Blair's logic, and the end result is more or less the same. If there is no choice, then there is no culpability, but Winston and Julia are estranged either way. More interesting, perhaps, is whether or not Winston really could have withstood the rats, or if he was merely told by O'brien that he could not and therefore became predisposed to believe what he was told, at which point the action became involuntary. Either way, Winston had no choice in the matter--if we remain with Blair's established rules, that is--and thus cannot truly be blamed for what he did.
Blargh...enough academic ranting.
SAT on Saturday and I'm annoyed with the whole having to study for it deal, which is silly given that it's supposed to be an aptitude test, though clearly fails in that regard as studying does help. So, I shall continue to throw monkey wrenches into the system so long as the system requires that I take a test that is four hours long and consists of first grade math, useless grammar rules, and obscure interpretations of even more obscure prose passages.
Anyway...deep breath, deep breath...
Posted an inordinate number of pictures on FaceBook the other day which as precipitated a near flood of photo comments, though I suppose that is my penance for flooding all of the people in the pictures with notifications that they have been tagged in a picture. Blargh. Kat got cranky [kranky] about one bad one from prom, and I deleted it...eventually.
Funny, finishing 1984 has taken all of the desire to write out of me, which is perhaps a little worrying, but I've had studying and Rock Band and Grant Theft Auto 4 to keep me preoccupied (the last having only just managed to establish a foothold in the realm of my attention, and only because several of its missions entail escorting a stoned Jamaican fellow about and shooting a large number of vaguely unscrupulous other fellows).
Anyway, reading 1984 for the second time in only a few months was not particularly enjoyable, most of its potency being lost; O'brien's last rant was rather dull compared to the first time I read the book, and most of my mental energy went into picking apart aspects of Ingsoc thought that we will likely never end up discussing in class because we will likely never discuss the book at all, it being a Mertens class. The conclusion that I reached was that Ingsoc will fail for the same reason that power hungry groups have been falling for the entirety of human existence--the most flagrant sin of all, blah blah blah--hubris. Their problem is that they do possess near total power and are working toward making their grip on that power permanent, but in so doing they are setting the stage for their own destruction. If the Party does succeed, as it plans to, in creating a Newspeak language where there is literally no capability to think improperly, then there is no mental language with which to describe deviancy; with the mind being as malleable as the party wishes it to be and reality as viewed by the citizens of Oceania similarly subject to the will of the Party, it follows that eventually, the Party will succeed in temporarily eradicating all resistance, at which point the Party will have achieved a perceived lock on power, assisted by the full use of Newspeak. Thus the Party will have eradicated the disease, but become utterly vulnerable to a recurrence--the Party will have willingly destroyed its ability to perceive any deviancy and will believe that their world is perfect insofar as they want it to be; persons who do no exhibit proper behavior will simply be glossed over by Party members, beyond the members' perception, existing in nearly an alternate universe. From there it is only a matter of time before a handful of intelligent Proles emerge or the Party conditioning process fails ever so slightly in the raising of a child, and then those liberated individuals could conceivably walk into a Ministry and massacre its workers with a machine gun and surviving Party members would fail to see that anything had occurred. The flaw lies not in the Party's failure to grasp power, but in their impulsive use of it; for the Party, it is not enough to have power, it must be exercised in some feeble attempt to assure themselves that they really are in control. It is not really necessary to alter the mind and soul of every deviant, but rather just to have the power to do so. The exercise is totally unnecessary, and by continuously exercising its power, the Party ensures that it will eventually seal itself off from concrete reality and while within the collective mind of the Party the Party will have total control, it will in actuality have only succeeded in blinding itself to any sort of resistance, sealing itself off into a ball and a state in which it is totally vulnerable to assault, not of verbal or logical means, but physical force should suffice. Though there would be no real need to do so as the Party would be effectively blind to all free persons and those liberated individuals need not bother themselves with a few million people living in rundown slums in London.
I could go on about other things, Winston's pseudo-betrayal and such, but I don't know that there really is any need to. That is merely picking nits with Blair's logic, and the end result is more or less the same. If there is no choice, then there is no culpability, but Winston and Julia are estranged either way. More interesting, perhaps, is whether or not Winston really could have withstood the rats, or if he was merely told by O'brien that he could not and therefore became predisposed to believe what he was told, at which point the action became involuntary. Either way, Winston had no choice in the matter--if we remain with Blair's established rules, that is--and thus cannot truly be blamed for what he did.
Blargh...enough academic ranting.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
