Beautiful day, unconnected thoughts
I'm posting here in order to get the old juices flowing. I should be working on a writing project, but I've got nothing at the moment. I'm staring at it, and wondering, where do we go from here. This is nothing new, but sometimes it's good for me to start and get going so that the old brain muscle gets a little flexing. There's a very good chance of something fun lurking in the back of my subconscious, and it doesn't always want to come out. I can't say I know what it is all the time, but it does seem to be there every time I can actually get things flowing.
That's boring, nothing interesting about it to anyone else I'm sure. What is interesting to everyone else? I have the feeling I should have some idea what that is, considering I seem to be completely unable to give up on this writing thing. I guess it doesn't really matter, since I've more or less decided I'm doing it for my own entertainment and enjoyment right now anyway. There is also the idea of just writing about the things I find interesting, since no matter how much I have wanted to believe otherwise over the course of my life, I'm seriously average in more ways than not. If it's interesting to me, it's probably interesting to some other people.
It's almost seventy degrees today, and in the beginning of February, you take that and run with it as best you can. It's been pretty cold for the last months (extremely cold by Virginia standards), so the break is both welcome and extremely enjoyable. I'm down at Crossroads right now. One of the many Richmond coffee house hang outs. Luckily for me, free wireless is abundant here in Richmond, and this new notebook computer from DJ for Christmas has given me the freedom to get out and do some writing anywhere I want. In the past, writing by hand has been absolutely fine, but it's the transposing, rewriting into with some kind of word processor which has caused me lots of lost time and lots of excuses for not finishing projects or trying to further my writing ideas beyond my own hand written notebooks. There aren't better days to be scooting around town on my two wheeled anxiety/stress treatment (a Genuine Roughouse, 50cc scooter). Scooters, are not only completely awesome, but have become a new obsession. I dream of a Kymco, HD250. It's capable of seventy to eighty miles per hour (depending on the weight of the rider and the riding conditions), has a comfortable passenger seat, and would be awesome for long trips sucking up all the two wheeled freedom I can stand. Motorcycles are pretty fucking cool too, but I'm a geek these days, not a bad ass, so there's something more interesting in scooters to me. You're only so cool on a scooter, and you're pretty obviously not trying to look cool if you're riding a scooter, but you still get all the fun of open road and no cage keeping you from the world around you. You also get much cheaper repair costs and better gas mileage. This is a trade off I make with joy. Seventy miles per gallon on my scooter, beats the twenty-seven to thirty miles per gallon in the used Honda Prelude I bought earlier this month. I love the Prelude, more practical on those twenty degree days, and I'm not bound by geography or distance by having it, but for sheer grin inducing awesomeness, the scooter is king.
Crossroads is packed right now. You wouldn't know by looking around here that we're in the midst of a recession which is teetering toward a serious, depression level economic downturn. This is a good thing. Plenty of college kids, which means the future of the nation isn't completely dependent on a service and manufacturing workforce. Let's hope it doesn't mean we're just developing another generation of corporate automatons bent completely on self indulgence and the accumulation of personal wealth no matter the cost.
That's cheery, isn't it? Cynicism may not be my default anymore, but it's still there. I wouldn't have it any other way actually. I can hear a variety of conversations while I'm sitting here, and a few of those don't really help much. I can hear the privileged, complaining of the cost of privilege, and not all students either. I can here a conversation which is infinitely more interesting concerning a trip over seas over a long period of time, through Europe, I think. Young couples are walking and biking up, the hipsters litter the dining area (figuratively and literally), and a few solitudinous souls sit reading books. It's interesting to hear a guy who spends an incredible amount of time doing little other than sitting around a coffee shop, complaining of the horrific quality of a good deal of music, film and literature, and extolling a indignant, self righteous hate in reaction to a hatred he feels for another section of society. He's an asshat of the first degree. I used to come here often, and he was here every single time I showed up. I don't come as often anymore, and he's here every single time. Coffee shop coutre. Isn't it lovely to be liberal and privileged?
Recently, I've been reading more. It's good to get back to. I've read the Obama book "The Audacity of Hope", which was a good read, just as a book, and also good to get a little better grasp on the values of the man we just elected president. I hadn't read it before because I wanted to make my decisions based more specifically on policy suggestions. I'm happier now for the decision having read the book. I agree with much of what the book has to say and am happy to have someone in power to express so many of those things which for me have so long left me feeling both alien to and powerless at the feet of the political realm of our society. It's helpful to me to see someone with those particular values and ideas achieving success. The idea that as a nation and culture we're more open to some different ideas and the economic situation is only increasing that open mindedness has helped me to make the decision that something like political science as a degree is something which could both afford me a career which is more financially viable than the service industry jobs I've had for so long, and it will allow me to try and work toward helping to make a positive difference in the world and nation in which I live. Even if I were to end up never going beyond VA politics, I'd feel very satisfied with a life and career trying to help the working class, middle class people of VA achieve more of a voice in their politics and as a result, a better standard of living.
I read "The Watchmen" last week, and it's too much to even attempt to comment on here. It's thematically and conceptually huge, and I have to read it again. The most obvious thing to me was the underlying theme of the vague nature of right and wrong on the cultural scale, and that the worst of events may produce the best of results.
I'm reading Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" right now, and it's amazing how much the material intersects with the themes and concepts presented in "The Watchmen". As harrowing, terrifying, controversial and ocassionally reaching as Klein's book is, when combined with the conceptual and thematic aspects of "The Watchmen", it makes me feel I'm not the only one who's spent a good amount of time in the last decade or so looking around and saying, "Uh, something here is very much not right. There really can't be any way we can keep going like this indefinitely."
The current economic situation, combined with the social and political situation of the last ten or so years, at least makes me feel like my personal revulsion to so much of what has been accepted as both normal and necessary hasn't been as misplaced as I had felt for so long. I often questioned my own sanity in relation to the fact that I felt as if I was one of the only people who was as horrifically disturbed by corporatist fundamenalism we've been steeped in. I'm also glad I am not the only one who's felt it has had the same kind of zeal as that of fundamentalist theology, and is suspicious of it specifically for that reason. "The Shock Doctrine" at least presents these ideas in a well founded, well researched, cohesive way that my combination of lack of education and lack of time to research has been unable to. I've expressed these things in specific experiences, over arching values, and questions about how we value human beings, material wealth, and power.
In a way, the idea put forth in the book, that there has been a school of capitalist economists who've built an entire world view around taking advantage of disasters of every variety, is now in a place where it can be turned against the very people who have advanced it, both philosophically and in policy. The combined economic crisis and the continued destabilization of world political and economic situations is producing a groundswell of sentiment in favor of policy and philosophy which not only places "free market" ideals under question, but also has given rise to a matter of making possible decisions based on principles and value systems more pluralistic and more real world, practical results oriented. In short, the philosophy or theory is becoming less important than the results the actions and policies produce. Some of this may be due to a societies ability to entertain things like philosophies and theories in times of prosperity, but when faced with the possibility of both collapse and irrelevance as a result, practicality wins the day. Values, ideals, and philosophies are the basis of decisions, but now, the success isn't being measured in how true the results prove the preconceptions. It's being measured in a larger, further reaching spectrum.
It's extremely comforting to see that I'm not the only one to be deeply uncomfortable with the pervasiveness of corporate culture and corporate influence in every facet of our lives.
That's boring, nothing interesting about it to anyone else I'm sure. What is interesting to everyone else? I have the feeling I should have some idea what that is, considering I seem to be completely unable to give up on this writing thing. I guess it doesn't really matter, since I've more or less decided I'm doing it for my own entertainment and enjoyment right now anyway. There is also the idea of just writing about the things I find interesting, since no matter how much I have wanted to believe otherwise over the course of my life, I'm seriously average in more ways than not. If it's interesting to me, it's probably interesting to some other people.
It's almost seventy degrees today, and in the beginning of February, you take that and run with it as best you can. It's been pretty cold for the last months (extremely cold by Virginia standards), so the break is both welcome and extremely enjoyable. I'm down at Crossroads right now. One of the many Richmond coffee house hang outs. Luckily for me, free wireless is abundant here in Richmond, and this new notebook computer from DJ for Christmas has given me the freedom to get out and do some writing anywhere I want. In the past, writing by hand has been absolutely fine, but it's the transposing, rewriting into with some kind of word processor which has caused me lots of lost time and lots of excuses for not finishing projects or trying to further my writing ideas beyond my own hand written notebooks. There aren't better days to be scooting around town on my two wheeled anxiety/stress treatment (a Genuine Roughouse, 50cc scooter). Scooters, are not only completely awesome, but have become a new obsession. I dream of a Kymco, HD250. It's capable of seventy to eighty miles per hour (depending on the weight of the rider and the riding conditions), has a comfortable passenger seat, and would be awesome for long trips sucking up all the two wheeled freedom I can stand. Motorcycles are pretty fucking cool too, but I'm a geek these days, not a bad ass, so there's something more interesting in scooters to me. You're only so cool on a scooter, and you're pretty obviously not trying to look cool if you're riding a scooter, but you still get all the fun of open road and no cage keeping you from the world around you. You also get much cheaper repair costs and better gas mileage. This is a trade off I make with joy. Seventy miles per gallon on my scooter, beats the twenty-seven to thirty miles per gallon in the used Honda Prelude I bought earlier this month. I love the Prelude, more practical on those twenty degree days, and I'm not bound by geography or distance by having it, but for sheer grin inducing awesomeness, the scooter is king.
Crossroads is packed right now. You wouldn't know by looking around here that we're in the midst of a recession which is teetering toward a serious, depression level economic downturn. This is a good thing. Plenty of college kids, which means the future of the nation isn't completely dependent on a service and manufacturing workforce. Let's hope it doesn't mean we're just developing another generation of corporate automatons bent completely on self indulgence and the accumulation of personal wealth no matter the cost.
That's cheery, isn't it? Cynicism may not be my default anymore, but it's still there. I wouldn't have it any other way actually. I can hear a variety of conversations while I'm sitting here, and a few of those don't really help much. I can hear the privileged, complaining of the cost of privilege, and not all students either. I can here a conversation which is infinitely more interesting concerning a trip over seas over a long period of time, through Europe, I think. Young couples are walking and biking up, the hipsters litter the dining area (figuratively and literally), and a few solitudinous souls sit reading books. It's interesting to hear a guy who spends an incredible amount of time doing little other than sitting around a coffee shop, complaining of the horrific quality of a good deal of music, film and literature, and extolling a indignant, self righteous hate in reaction to a hatred he feels for another section of society. He's an asshat of the first degree. I used to come here often, and he was here every single time I showed up. I don't come as often anymore, and he's here every single time. Coffee shop coutre. Isn't it lovely to be liberal and privileged?
Recently, I've been reading more. It's good to get back to. I've read the Obama book "The Audacity of Hope", which was a good read, just as a book, and also good to get a little better grasp on the values of the man we just elected president. I hadn't read it before because I wanted to make my decisions based more specifically on policy suggestions. I'm happier now for the decision having read the book. I agree with much of what the book has to say and am happy to have someone in power to express so many of those things which for me have so long left me feeling both alien to and powerless at the feet of the political realm of our society. It's helpful to me to see someone with those particular values and ideas achieving success. The idea that as a nation and culture we're more open to some different ideas and the economic situation is only increasing that open mindedness has helped me to make the decision that something like political science as a degree is something which could both afford me a career which is more financially viable than the service industry jobs I've had for so long, and it will allow me to try and work toward helping to make a positive difference in the world and nation in which I live. Even if I were to end up never going beyond VA politics, I'd feel very satisfied with a life and career trying to help the working class, middle class people of VA achieve more of a voice in their politics and as a result, a better standard of living.
I read "The Watchmen" last week, and it's too much to even attempt to comment on here. It's thematically and conceptually huge, and I have to read it again. The most obvious thing to me was the underlying theme of the vague nature of right and wrong on the cultural scale, and that the worst of events may produce the best of results.
I'm reading Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" right now, and it's amazing how much the material intersects with the themes and concepts presented in "The Watchmen". As harrowing, terrifying, controversial and ocassionally reaching as Klein's book is, when combined with the conceptual and thematic aspects of "The Watchmen", it makes me feel I'm not the only one who's spent a good amount of time in the last decade or so looking around and saying, "Uh, something here is very much not right. There really can't be any way we can keep going like this indefinitely."
The current economic situation, combined with the social and political situation of the last ten or so years, at least makes me feel like my personal revulsion to so much of what has been accepted as both normal and necessary hasn't been as misplaced as I had felt for so long. I often questioned my own sanity in relation to the fact that I felt as if I was one of the only people who was as horrifically disturbed by corporatist fundamenalism we've been steeped in. I'm also glad I am not the only one who's felt it has had the same kind of zeal as that of fundamentalist theology, and is suspicious of it specifically for that reason. "The Shock Doctrine" at least presents these ideas in a well founded, well researched, cohesive way that my combination of lack of education and lack of time to research has been unable to. I've expressed these things in specific experiences, over arching values, and questions about how we value human beings, material wealth, and power.
In a way, the idea put forth in the book, that there has been a school of capitalist economists who've built an entire world view around taking advantage of disasters of every variety, is now in a place where it can be turned against the very people who have advanced it, both philosophically and in policy. The combined economic crisis and the continued destabilization of world political and economic situations is producing a groundswell of sentiment in favor of policy and philosophy which not only places "free market" ideals under question, but also has given rise to a matter of making possible decisions based on principles and value systems more pluralistic and more real world, practical results oriented. In short, the philosophy or theory is becoming less important than the results the actions and policies produce. Some of this may be due to a societies ability to entertain things like philosophies and theories in times of prosperity, but when faced with the possibility of both collapse and irrelevance as a result, practicality wins the day. Values, ideals, and philosophies are the basis of decisions, but now, the success isn't being measured in how true the results prove the preconceptions. It's being measured in a larger, further reaching spectrum.
It's extremely comforting to see that I'm not the only one to be deeply uncomfortable with the pervasiveness of corporate culture and corporate influence in every facet of our lives.