Posts
I've talked about the following online several times before (including here at VOX just a little further below, or perhaps on the next page depending on when you're reading), of how I believe in this new mental condition that's recently come about because of the Web 2.0, which in an attempt to coin a phrase I call "Global Displacement Syndrome" or GDS; it basically can only come about in people who consume a massive amount of amateur creative content from around the world at once, usually through online means, just hundreds of photos at Flickr and hundreds of videos at YouTube every month, just like I've been doing more and more in my own life over the last several years. Because when you do something like this, you end up getting not only the cool high-end artsy stuff like usual, but also just a ton of casual and informal media from around the planet too, photos from birthday parties and school events, cellphone images of a neighborhood statue posted a hundred times a year to some moblog or Photobucket account, showing that statue in a hundred different states of weather and daylight. And I've said before, getting that kind of regular multimedia input into a neighborhood halfway around the planet from you makes you...well, not exactly a local, you can't exactly call it that, but no longer a stranger or simply a tourist to that city either, with you now knowing a lot more about that city each day than a simple tourist would know.
When you get too much input in your life like this, when you spend too much time thinking about it all like I have, then your brain can get into certain strange mindsets at certain times, which for me always seems triggered by things like warm summer afternoons, pot, laid-back European dance musicians, and a host of other things. And that's a mindset where it suddenly becomes difficult to determine rationally just what city you're in at that exact moment in your life -- whether it's Chicago or London or Frankfurt, Sydney or Seoul or Ljubljana, Rio or Toronto or Cape Town. In fact, it's like you're not in any of those particular cities at all, but rather a strange and mystical world where all these cities have combined into a tenth, entirely fictional one, one where you and all your online friends from these other nine cities are all living at once, a place just as real and concrete in your head as the actual physical city you're currently located in. And when I'm under the spell of GDS, like I've said before, I sometimes have these really strange experiences here in Chicago where I physically live; for example, when I look out the window next to my computer here at home (the image seen in this entry, taken just a few minutes ago), it's hard for me to tell whether I'm still in Chicago or maybe suddenly in another one of these cities just mentioned, that if I were to actually go downstairs and open the front door of my building, hell, who knows, maybe I just will find Barcelona or Oslo or Saint Petersburg right beyond.
I find myself getting into this mindset more and more with the passing years, the longer I'm exposed regularly to all these hundreds of casual photos and videos online from around the world, all the underground bands and artists I follow around the world all at once. The Social Singularity? The Coming One World Culture? Or just the sad result of too much Flickr, 420, and time alone? Hmm.
It occurred to me this week, that 2008 is officially the 20th anniversary of the last time I switched hairstyles; and the reason it occurred to me, of course, is that it was recently time for a haircut for me, a time when I'm reminded more and more that the hairstyle I originally picked when young and cute and with a full head of hair doesn't work so well anymore, now that I'm older and have a thinning, receding hairline. (After all, the last time I changed hairstyles, fucking REAGAN was still in office.) So anyway, I decided to go for a new look this week and see what I think, the "Tasteful Gay Middle-Ager In Boystown" look, aka the haircut all middle-agers with receding hairlines get when they want to ackwloedge said receding hairline instead of continuing to hide it with greater and greater failure. Anyway, so I'll live with this for a few weeks and see what I think; I don't know WHAT to think of it at this point, to tell you the truth.
Part 732 of my ongoing series, "Weird Random Crap Spotted In The Alley Behind My Building:" Abandoned ping-pong table.
I admit it, it's been yet another frustrating week, in a summer full of them; a week where I didn't get as many book reviews posted as I wanted, didn't bicycle as much as I wanted, didn't get nearly the amount of stuff done that I had planned on, and fell deeply behind again on my email, after finally after months starting to actually get caught up. And in fact it's been this way for me ever since my Mac G3 died a couple of months ago, forcing me to put CCLaP's publishing program and virtual photography gallery on hold, because of all my old publishing software being on that G3 and all disappearing when the G3 crashed. And I know -why- I've been so lethargic since then, too, because that was a legitimately profound setback to my plans -- it's going to cost several thousand dollars to replace that software, plus I need a new computer to run it which is several thousand more dollars, not to mention that I'm going to have to start from scratch again even at that point, in that all the old files I had been working on had been on that G3 too, which means they disappeared too when the G3 crashed. And that has me profoundly discouraged these days from getting anything in my life done at all, because I just keep thinking to myself, "Ah, what's the point? What's the point of even trying, when I'm constantly one step away from yet another disaster that will put an end to that too?" And so I exercise less, smoke too much pot, stay at home too much, and get even less done than before. And the whole thing becomes this giant vicious cycle.
But here I am at a neighborhood cafe on a Sunday morning, going through my weekly review as part of the "Getting Things Done" time-management system that I've been using in my life for about four years now, feeling better about things; and this of course is part of the point of doing a weekly review in the first place, is to simply set aside a bit of contemplative time and examine what exactly you did get done last week, what you hope to get done next week, and to simply realize that you have your life under greater control than you maybe sometimes want to admit to yourself (er, that is, if you really are keeping up on your GTD each day like you're supposed to). I always feel better about my life after my Sunday-morning weekly review; I feel not so out-of-sorts, like I have a greater handle over everything that's going on in my life.
I just finished up this great little book called "The Faith Between Us," a series of essays by two friends (one Catholic, one Jewish) about what it's like to be hipster doofuses in the 2000s and deeply religious at the same time; it's a great little book, to tell you the truth, and my review of it will be getting posted at CCLaP later this week. Anyway, one of the things the Catholic guy talks about in the book is the way he deeply desired to become a priest when a teen, and how a big motivation behind it was a yearning to be what what the German Romantic artists of the 1800s secularly called the "beautiful soul" -- the person who is completely consistent and at peace in mind, body, and spirit, the person who never falters, never gives in to temptation, who is never boastful nor pretentious nor petty nor insulting. And reading that, it made me realize that this is a big goal in my own life these days, a thing I am constantly striving for; to never be overwhelmed or stymied by whatever life has to hurtle at me, but rather to roll with the punches and remain optimistic and happy. And as cheesy as it sounds to say this, by the way, partly this desire has been motivated by the behavior of Barack Obama in the last couple of months, a man I'm coming to admire more and more with each passing week; I think it's astounding, for example, how well he's been able to keep his cool in public the last couple of weeks, between that New Yorker cover and Jesse Jackson calling for Obama's nuts on a plate. That's the kind of person I want to be too, the kind of person who can have ludicrously awful things happen around them but still keep their cool, still stay optimistic and positive and never drag themselves down to the level of the shit causing them problems; there are a LOT of people who wish they were more like this, frankly, which I think explains a lot about why so many people have gotten so excited by Obama's campaign, despite the fact that we barely understand what he plans on actually doing once in the White House, and also why people generally had such a bad reaction to that New Yorker cover in the first place.
Anyway, just some random thoughts passing through my brain on a Sunday morning; and now I better get going, cause I've still got a lot on my plate for today. Here's hoping that next week goes better than the last, or at least that I'm able to handle it all a little better.
No one makes political posters quite as well as the Germans, do they?
Wow, I got a whole lot done today, about 150 percent more than I usually do on any given day. I'm just now, in fact, running my last errand of the day, on foot this time so I can get caught up on some of my podcasts, and on this warm great happy successful evening feeling extra-tight with the Buena Park/Lakeview neighborhood where I live, something I'm always disposed to feel on warm evenings while walking through the neighborhood, especially strong tonight while feeling productove and in a good mood. This is truly one of the great urban spaces of the planet, definitely in the top-50 of all big-city neighborhoods around the globe; I'm very glad I have a chance to live here myself, for barely any money, versus maybe a nicer place in a city or neighborhood I can't stand. That's what none of those suburban-style city-planners of the '80s and '90s never got, which is why their plans were all such disasters (you know, the ones who argued that the way to save crumbling urban areas was to build massive, expensive, corporate-friendly "marquee spaces" in these cities' downtowns, convincing suburbanities to drive into the city on a regular basis, "naturally" convincing some of those people to actually move into the city after getting down there and seeing what's available. My absolute favorite thing about living my neighborhood is the evenings like tonight -- where I take a low-priority walk for no particularly important reason, taking my time and wallowing in all the everyday details of it all, the landscaped curves and bicycling cuties, all the groups sitting around tables at outdoor sidewalk cafes. Walking down the street, imagining being a citizen here a hundred years ago, taking the exact same route, seeing many of the exact same buildings. That's what keeps me happy as an urban citizen, not some overmarketed big-box mall or museum or mall or wharf or mall or whatever other "destination event" you want to mention.
Anyway, my two cents for tonight, right before hitting home. Here's hoping more days soon go as well as today's. See you.
So I'm trying to get serious about Fabb, basically, and finally get my first starter prefab homes finished and boxed and actually for sale, so that I can start collecting actual revenue, and get me that much closer to finally getting a decent graphics computer in my home, and the software again that will let me open up CCLaP's new programs. So, I've given myself a goal this week -- to get at least enough done in Second Life each day to justify a new entry over at the Fabb blog, with the goal of having the company's very first commercial home actually finished and ready to start selling by next week. That's it you're seeing in the above screenshots, the tiniest and and most inexpensive one I plan on selling, called the "Ion;" a tiny footprint, only half the size of a 512-square-meter beginner's plot, so that as many resources as possible can be devoted instead to landscaping, rezzing a vehicle, owning a boat, etc. Only 6 dollars/3 pounds/4 euros! How can you beat it!
You can read a lot more over at the Fabb blog if you want; basically, you're just seeing the first steps above, with a finished home basically coming (hopefully) in just another couple of days. Here's hoping I can finally kick my own ass into gear with it all, and finally see once and for all if there is any money to be made selling virtual goods in Second Life or not. We'll see!
I know, I'm continuing to do a lousy job of posting here at least once a day, right? Sigh. Okay, so before I get to reading here at the cafe, I'll write something. I'm at Intelligentsia today, in the heart of upper Lakeview, which always reminds me of that funky, crunchy time of urbanism in the 1970s, the rise of such smaller second-tier cities as Denver and Minneapolis, with lots of wood and lots of attics and lots of Cooper Black typeface every time you turn your head. That's the same time period the Lakeview neighborhood was gentrified, making it still retain a strong amount of that '70s Mork-and-Mindy, Mary Tyler Moore feel; hipster kids are highly tempted to dismiss the entire neighborhood as old-fashioned, firmly middle-class, not something as "authentic" as an -actual- shitty neighborhood like Pilsen or whatever, but I've always liked Lakeview precisely for embodying that first wave of postmodern urbanism, back when no one else wanted to, which basically involved taking the crumbling Victorian mansions in the area and converting them all into funky businesses and lofts, a time and look I remember fondly from my old childhood vacations to places like Denver and Nashville.
Anyway, so I'm down in such a neighborhood right now, about to get my hundred pages of reading a day done (today being hari Kunzru's "Transmission"), then a trip to the Lincoln/Belmont library to pick up a copy of "Tropic of Cancer," then to my place for hopefully a whole afternoon of Second Life and finally fucking working on my fucking cursed fucking ignored prefab company there, Fabb (fabbhomes.blogspot.com). We'll see!
I've said before, how one of the signs it seems of the growing global designation of "creative class" is one's comfort with leaving a certain amount of daily needed info left in searchable online form, to be instantly looked up using a series of home and work and mobile and vehicle online devices. And that when you do this, at a time specifically when a bunch of shiny, happy, utopian, Web 2.0 people are all wanting to start this hivelike global culture spread instantly by technology in the first place, this is exactly what's going to happen.
And I'm one of those people who chooses to leave an entire section of his personality online, so that it can be heavily influenced by these exact global online media influences I've jist mentioned, Flickr and YouTube and MySpace and iTunes and everything else. When I'm specifically in this mindset, and have my Chicago shades half-closed, I get the same view as from my friends' various places in Frankfurt (I know for a fact, because of waking up to such views in real life), plus views from a lot of windows in London, based on hundreds of images I've seen through contacts at Flickr; plus photos from Sydney, Cape Town, Toronto, Prague, etc etc. All Hail The Singularity -- being crudely first networked together these days not through biological imperative, like Kurzweil argues in his groundbreaking work, but merely through fun, gamelike activities and a simple effort to understand the world better.
