Saturday, July 26, 2003 :::
 
By the way, the links in the archives are all screwed up and beyond my power or intellegence level to correct. There is a workaround, however: When you want to go somewhere else, come back to the homepage:
https://www.angelfire.com/rebellion/mymadness/
from there, all the links work.

::: posted by R J at 4:38 PM

 
You know, I don't have any mental problems, diagnosed or otherwise - I sure as hell don't have ADHD, because I can sit for hours motionless in front of a television or computer with no effort whatsoever. But I do feel like I am outside the human race, an observer, and sometimes I feel that I am an inhabitant in this body, but it isn't really mine. Sometimes I want to do wierd things as an experiment on others to see and try to figure out why people react the way they do. People worry over spilled milk too much. 37 years from now, when you are lying on your death bed dying from colon cancer, are you going to think back and think to yourself "Thank everloving Christ almighty I got pissed off over that spilled milk 37 years ago!! Holy shit, my life would not be complete, and I would not be able to die in peace today had I not gotten really fucking pissed off at that motherfucking spilled milke 37 years ago. Holy shit, I swear to God that spilled milk pisses me off to this fucking day. So thank god I got pissed off over it 37 years ago!! Goddamn, I couldn't die a happy man if I hadn't gotten so pissed off about that spilled milk of 37 years ago!! Colon cancer may take me today, but my life is complete because I got pissed off at that spilled milk by God!!"

Hell, I'm on a roll today.

::: posted by R J at 4:33 PM

 
Incedentally, I came across a web log that immediately caught my interest. Similar minds know each other by taste: Someone by the name of Stephi, who was also kind enough to be the second person since the inception of this blog to sign my guestbook. I think I'm in love. Although she apparently has a greater need than I to impose order on her surroundings.

::: posted by R J at 4:21 PM

 
Well. I haven't had any alchohol in months. I think I'm gonna go buy me a bottle of tanqueray, and drink it straight. A shot at a time of course. I'm not gonna down the whole thing. I haven't had any in years, but if I remember correctly, it had a minty pine-needle taste. In my boredom and desperate need to be creative I wrote a story. It didn't go anywhere. Shakespeare I am not.

The monkeys all took off when I opened the door. I don't know exactly what happened here, but I intend to find out. I find a large amount of broken vials that apparently contained some sort of thick yellow liquid scattered on the floor. And fur. Monkey fur. Lots of it. All the cages are open, and I find myself wondering what they were all doing here. I reach into one cage on a shelf in front of me, and pull out a small red jacket. Based on the strands of fur covering it, I surmise that a monkey must have been wearing it. Anyway, it is too small to fit anyone but a monkey. I put it in my pocket and continue on. Something falls to the floor and breaks behind me. Startled, I spin around to see a small white mouse standing on its hind legs, its whiskers twitching slightly as it eyes me with what can only be described as suspicion. 'What?' I yell at it, and the mouse scurries away without answer. I shake my head in disgust. I hate mice. But more than that, I hate monkeys. I walk the length of the room a few more times idly, picking up objects here and there to examine them, but find nothing of notable interest. Eventually, I leave, knowing full well the monkeys will be back.

::: posted by R J at 4:17 PM

Tuesday, April 08, 2003 :::
 
I really need to update the 'books I've read' page. And maybe put a counter on this page, too. So I can see how few hits I'm getting.

::: posted by R J at 10:00 PM

 
I have taken 2 college level introductory Psychology classes in the past 8 years and one in highschool, and read a bunch of books, and hate my job. I have about 4 college degrees, 1 AA, 1 AAS, 1 BA, and an MBA. And none of them interest me a huge amount. I wish I had majored in Psychology. Maybe I'd be a "Dr." by now. I'm aimlessly gathering degrees because I can't figure out the following:

A) What sort of job I qualify for.
B) How to go about getting a job I don't despise.

I have hated every job I've held for the past 5 years. Each time I change jobs, it is not for a better job. Nope, it is just to get the fuck out of the one I'm stuck in at that moment. They are such vile jobs I hold on as long as I can, but eventually it just gets so bad I get desperate and apply for as many jobs as I can, not caring what the hell they are except that it will get me the fuck away from what I'm doing right now. I am particularly offended by the fact that at best I'm seen as 'capable' and at worst retarded on these jobs. Obviously it is simply because I hate the jobs and only do what is necesary to keep from losing it. I'm reading "what color is your parachute" hoping it will give me some sort of insight into what I can do to get a job I don't hate, but I find much of it disturbing. The author is very anti-education, and I feel he is also a bit unrealistic (I hope he is, anyway). He basically states that 'going back to school is a waste of time', and 'you don't need education to get the job you want'. I think that is a bunch of crap. I hope it is. I think maybe I'm like the kid who sucked at math and was good at English class. He put all his energy into the English homework, knowing he'll always suck at Math. That's probably why I stay in school while not finding a job I don't hate. I've kind of tried looking, but the job market is so horrible right now (highest in the country) that there isn't much out there. I'm guessing if I went to a place that was better off, I'd find a job just like that. But I'm not doing a big move until I get some good job experience.
My Catch-22.

::: posted by R J at 9:56 PM

Saturday, April 05, 2003 :::
 
I'm too tired to do anything right now, but I highly recommend this BLOG, by BlackVelvetFourPaws AKA all sorts of other names.

::: posted by R J at 11:52 PM

Thursday, February 20, 2003 :::
 
Herman the blind, screenwriter extraordinaire, and therefore all around movie expert, was kind enough to respond to my thoughts on futuristic movies (or lack thereof):

"I was watching "Fantastic Voyage" when it occurred to me. Futuristic movies are the exaggeration of the present in which they were made. For instance, in the Fantastic Voyage, the technology was atomic in nature. Also, the ship was driven by atomic power. There were no computers on the bridge; no neat beeping scanners; all visual sensing was done with "radar"; and above all, the robot, Robby, was a glorified housecleaner. Whenever technology was spoken of, it was in the most reverent of tones, as if man would enter Utopia with it. This was the prevailing attitude in the decade in which the film was made. And the alien technology,
you and I can exceed right now on our desk tops. Although, they had harnessed atomic power for their benefit; fission, not fusion. I would expect alien races to have fusion power, and nod still be doing such vulgar things as "splitting atoms". How colloquial!! But from our age, we project an exaggeration of our computers, our central processors, our memory capacity and storage, or artificial intelligence. When are we ever living in yesterday's ideal of the future? Never. So, from that stand point, although you can make a movie that takes place in the future, you can never make a movie that predicts the future, or captures the moods, styles, and mindsets of that future. Follow? So, there may never be a point at which the creative mind's powers of imagination concerning the future are exhausted. This would only be the case if the individual writers didn't have a sound grasp of our
present. So, per our discussion of several evenings ago, movies about the future are metaphorical representations of our own times, our own hopes and fears, our own dreams."

And this I found in a new york times article, and in the same vein:

"I recently visited Epcot Center with my family.
We had a fantastic time. But remember how, when it opened in
the pre-compact disc, pre-Internet, pre-cellphone era
(1982), it was supposed to be a showcase for future
technologies? The most radical, far-thinking mockup on the
AT&T Spaceship Earth ride (inside the giant Epcot geodesic
golf ball) was a videophone. Like other recent observers of
the crazily accelerating high-tech world, I'd say that Epcot
may have some updating to do."

::: posted by R J at 12:11 PM

Saturday, January 04, 2003 :::
 
I have some sort of writers block or just don't feel like writing today, so I'll just canabalize some posts I've made on a yahoo group.
Heres a few posts about my thoughts on "how a 'truly' futuristic movie could never really be made"

I just realized that all those nifty 'futuristic' sci-fi movies are worthless. (okay, I'm stating the obvious here, but bear with me).
A 'real' futuristic movie would have a plot like this -- "Serial killer goes about killing people by using his mental internet tap to hack into people's bio-nanomachines and cause them to stop recycling waste matter into food, and instead cause them to create poisons from the waste" or "Drama about unplanned power-surge that reformats 36432's neural network, causing him to lose 17 terabytes of data, making him unrecognizable to his family unit" or "drama about a child who was disconnected during earthquake, was raised by unlinked humans and later re-integrated into bio-network". Stuff like that. I think the future will probably be so weird, a real movie about it would be almost incomprehensible.
What I mean is someone trying to make a movie about the future has the problem of having to make sure that it is something interesting and understandable to someone of today.
For example, how much sense would 'the matrix' make to someone born in 1658? None - they have no cultural equivalents of computers, high rises, cars, electricity, let alone any conception of a 'created reality' outside their own. Or even take an episode of 'friends' - assuming they could understand the English and get by the 'futuristic' technology, how interesting would a story of a group of people with an alien culture, alien values, alien visions, alien situations, etc. be? -- for them, it is a 'TV show that would never get made'.

For us, a movie like 'the sixth element' looks cool and futuristic, but for a movie that is supposed to take place 250 years from now, technology aside, it is almost indistinguishable from today. The most forward thinking and creative American author or scientist in 1750 could never have even come close to conceiving of an America of 2002 with any iota of accuracy whatsoever.

In other words, if one of us was lucky enough to somehow watch a movie written and filmed in the year 2250 (yes, yes, assuming movies still exist), at best it would be difficult to even understand the plot, or at worst it would make no sense to our 20th century culturized perceptions and understandings of the world. The very end of 'A.I.' sort of approached that, though (I thought so, anyway) - but even so, you would never find a movie about futuristic humanoid-shaped synthetic beings who inherited the earth after humans became extinct. If there was, it would be some sort of "human drama" anyway - "Mr. robot finds his humanity, or fights against the oppressive collective" or whatever.

I think maybe Da Vinci and Jules Verne are possibly the only exceptions, they both seemed to be ahead of their times.

(RESPONSE)

I think you're a little off here. But just a little. For example,
we can still understand and enjoy the journey of the Odyssey over a
1000 years later.

(ME AGAIN)

We are the result of the past, not to mention can and do study the past, and essentially things have moved from 'less complex' to 'more complex', so we would for the most part not have much trouble understanding something written 1000 years ago, as people are essentially still the same.

Looked at it from the other side, could Homer have envisioned, let alone understood present-day earth? I don't think so. His reality was ruled by gods and monsters, heroes and heroines, metal, bronze fire and stone. Our present day would be utterly and completely alien to him and his contemporaries in every way. Sure, you or I could probably fairly easily explain it to him (assuming we understood ancient Greek) how we 'got where we are today', but without that explanation would be missing 2000 or so years of 'buildup' (progress) to the present. He wouldn't have been able to create a futuristic story of 2000 years into the future because it would have been utterly inconceivable. The advancements that have been made over the past 2000 years, not to mention the shifting national and world boundaries are far too complex and in their reality could never have existed. Simple things like electric lights and steam engines would be far more bizarre than any Greek legend.

Anyway, what I was trying to say is that for present day us to enjoy a 'futuristic' movie, it has to have a plot that we relate to, characters we feel for, etc. So a movie that takes place 2000 years from now has to have humanoid characters that we feel for and understand their plight, and their technology also has to be just close enough so it makes sense. The real technology from 2000 years from now will probably be so utterly far removed from our perception of reality, without a lengthy explanation we would probably have no idea what we are looking at.

THEREFORE - (and here is my big point) if a director could actually see into the future, and put together a movie relevant to a human 2000 years from now, present day me and you would probably not be able to make heads or tales of it - that gets back to my point with "the matrix", or "friends" in my prior post. There would be so much extraneous technology, catch phrases, and other things that make no sense to us we wouldn't be able to make sense of the movie. If a person from 2000 years ago saw the movie "the matrix" they might be able to grasp the plot in a broad sense, but without an explanation of what guns, sunglasses, high rises, cars, synthetic clothing, computers, robots, etc. the movie as a whole wouldn't really be watchable - there would be too much unexplained technology - STUFF WE TAKE FOR GRANTED AND IS NOT THEREFORE EXPLAINED IN THE MOVIE. In all futuristic movies 'futuristic technology' either has an obvious purpose or is part of the plot device. Futuristic technology that doesn't serve an OBVIOUS purpose doesn't show up in the movie. In a movie MADE 2000 years from now, there would be so much weird technology that makes no sense to us, and that would also not be explained because it is obvious to contemporary humans of 2000 years from now, it wouldn't make any sense. I guess what I'm babbling about is futuristic movies (or stories) can't be TOO futuristic, or else we wouldn't really GET it.

Because no one would understand a 'true' futuristic movie, the person who wants to make it wouldn't get funded. The movie that gets funded is one modified so that present day people could understand it. Movies haven’t been around long enough to make a good point, but if movies had somehow been around since 1750 - in 1750 no one would have funded "the matrix" because it would have made no sense. It would have to be reworked - the clothing, technology, and stuff that is 'assumed' to be known by the audience isn't there. (all this is assuming that someone 250 years ago could have conceived of the ideas for "the matrix".)
In any movie, weird, far out technology either has an obvious purpose, is explained explicitly (even though the people in the movie would know without thinking what it does) or is part of the main plot itself. You won't find a movie with weird technology that you can't really tell what it does or why it's there but everyone seems to be carrying around. For example - a hearing aid. In most movies with people with hearing aids (aside from comedies) it is just stuck in the characters ear, not apparently doing anything, with no mention of it. If someone from 250 years ago saw that, they would probably wonder idly what the heck that thing in the characters ear is for,
because it doesn't seem to have any obvious purpose. If that movie had been made 250 years ago, it would be explained as part of the movie what it is for. You won't typically find a movie today that has a character with a third eyeball on their left cheek or a green copper-braided wire coming out of their left forearm for the entire
movie with no reference to it.


::: posted by R J at 10:12 AM

Friday, December 27, 2002 :::
 
I just realized today with the announcement of the alleged 'cloned baby' and the expected backlash that most people are a bunch of hypocritical ungrateful illogical bastards - I don't care about cloning one way or the other, but the whole situation strikes me. They suck up science left and right, cars, television, medicine, movies, electricity, light, air conditioning, computers - and yet vilify and rail against scientific discovery and experimentiation. They go to church to get preached at about the 'evils' of cloning or animal testing or whatever, and then go out and put on thier animal tested makeup, take thier animal tested painkillers -- every facet of everyone's life is surrounded by and immersed in the result of scientific discovery and invention. Yet they constantly pass judgement on the scientific process because some jump for jesus fucking moron howls at them from the pulpit, and so like any good sheep should, they go out and do the same thing, all the while being engulfed in the results of the very same science and technology they protest against. People are litterally swimming in the results of human and animal testing, exploded nuclear bombs and trips to the moon - SWIMMING IN IT - yet they ignore this FACT and protest it, all the while gathering even MORE science and technology around them. The only thing that humans have that is not a direct result of human invention is air. That's it. Fucking AIR. Technology pumps in the water, sends in the electricity, creates the clothing that clothes them, creates the vaccines that protect them from disease and saves thier children, creates the makeup they put on so they can attract other humans to fuck and create the next generation of ingrateful miserable hypocritical bastards.... Just because some bible-thumping son of a bitch tells you that something is bad doesn't make it so. There is no science that is inherently evil or immoral. I hate to use a cliche, but it is true -- it isn't science (or guns or what the hell ever) that is bad, it is the use that it is put to that makes it evil. These small minded fucking animals are holding back human progress while at the same time eating up the results of progress as though it was a fucking Christmas cake. How can one protest something yet embrace the results of that which you protest? Protest logging and live in a house made of wood. Protest animal testing but go through chemotherapy to save your ass when you have cancer. Protest nuclear energy, then go home and turn on your tv which is incedentally POWERED BY FUCKING NUCLEAR ENERGY. What the hell ISN'T there to be cynical about? The human race is a bunch of goddamn dim fucking ungrateful monkeys. DIM FUCKING UNGRATEFUL MONKEYS. And I for one am ashamed to be associated with them.

ROAR! I'M SASQUATCH!

::: posted by R J at 9:46 PM

Tuesday, December 17, 2002 :::
 
I've been throwing this 'free will' thing around on a Yahoo group, and have gotten some interesting feedback. I'll post some if I get around to it. Here is a bit more to my "idea":

Once a decision is made, it is made, and like I've said before, 4th dimensionally speaking, regardless of "when" a decision is made, it is already made. Only from our point of view where time is moving "forward" one second per second, it hasn't "been decided" *yet* (until it "has"). From the point of view that "time" has already "happened" every decision ever made or to be made has already been made. Like a movie - when you first start watching a new movie from the start, you get into the plot, "what happens next...?", after the movie, you can rewind to any point you like and watch it again. It will always be the same. You could look at the 4th dimension (time) in the same way - to us moving through it one second per second, it is in the process of "happening", but to someone outside of time, it has already all happened. If it has all already 'happened', even though to us it just seems linear, "moving" from "the past" into "the future", it has already been completed, or 'been decided' from the point of view of the 'person' outside of time looking in. Something that has already happened can't be 'changed', and it can only go/be decided one way, so if that is the case, you couldn't have free will, or else we would be able to observe and experience the infinite possible outcomes at the same time - i.e. "not limited by time or physical reality".


::: posted by R J at 9:24 PM