I hate the fact that I'm publishing so little original content lately, though I assure you I'm still generating it (mostly on post-it notes) regularly enough. Some day, I'll kick out another SATIETY, just... not in the foreseeable future. I worked for about 30 consecutive days last month, which makes a handy excuse for why I'm not blogging much.
The biggest contributor to my delinquency, however, is my recent decision to sign up for a Twitter account.
Keeping true to my past tendencies, I was plenty late to this latest incarnation of the social networking game... but once I tried it on for size, I found it to be a wonderous utility. Much like how I praised this very blog for encouraging me to improve my own creative writing, Twitter has reinvigorated this languishing hobby of mine. And it does so in a more accessible way. The problem with blogging is that it requires a pretty significant chunk of my time to write up an essay or article that I'm willing to unleash upon the public. It requires a good bit of revision and an even better bit of staring at my monitor like an idiot while I wait for yet-unspoken sentence fragments to clink into place.
Twitter, microblogging in essence, at once minimizes this time requirement and also introduces a new challenge by imposing its 140-character limit. It is much easier to write a 140-character tweet than a 500 word post, and yet it is much harder to get something entertaining and worth reading to fit into 140 characters than it is to barf out 500 words, hoping a few stick in the mind of the casual reader.
Twitter has made blogging fun again. It's encouraged me to share more of the dozens of interesting and weird things I encounter every day, and coupled with the raw communicative capabilities of my new jesusPhone 3GS, it's never been easier to share those experiences with a sentence, a picture, or a sound bite.
Follow me at @RITmusic2k Wink.
To take a more blasphemous turn, I just wanted to give a shout out to the wonderful Evolution 101 podcast, by Dr. Zack Moore. Newly liberated by my jesusPhone 3GS, I've taken to listening to music and podcasts at work, and I'm making my way through the archives of Evolution 101 again; I never forgot how informative and accessible the material was, but I knew that I'd forgotten much of the material itself, so it was a good time to listen to them once more.
It's easily found on iTunes, and also has a presence on the web:
Evolution 101
If you want to learn more about evolution and molecular biology than you ever thought you'd enjoy learning, try Dr. Zack on for size and thank me later for the recommendation. You'll find me over at #robotpickuplines.
Friday, July 10, 2009
BLASPHEMY - APPROBATION
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
BLASPHEMY - REJOINDER II
Hemant Mehta asks: How serious do you take your atheism? Let’s find out. Copy and paste the list below on your own site, boldfacing the things you’ve done. (Feel free to add your own elaboration and commentary to each item!) My comments are in that burnt-orange color that's such a favorite of mine. So I'm a solid 22. There are more that were kinda... 'close to target' but not quite, so I left them off. Some items I left off, and having done so could be considered more hardcore atheist than doing the thing listed. Anyway, it's all good in the 'hood. Catch you guys again next month!
Thursday, August 21, 2008
BLASPHEMY - CREDULITY
For the last couple weeks, I've been concurrently writing a loose collection of thoughts and reading through the series of threads and comments on Stephen Law's blog involving the notorious Sye Tenb of Sinner Ministries' "Proof of the existence of God" website. The latter, by the way, is a tedious yet fascinating deconstruction of the presuppositionalist mind. If you have an interest in learning the basic language and processes of philosophy and have a few hours to kill,* I can't recommend strongly enough that you go over and read it yourself. After you read my entire archive of brilliance, of course**.
Anyway, I wanted to make mention of the Stephen Law bit before I tried to assemble the aforementioned thoughts of mine into a more coherent piece of Vicious Atheist Propaganda***. I'll probably be back to talk about Sye after I'm done trudging through the last couple entries. Which might still take a couple days.
Regardless, here's the latest outpouring. It takes the form of a letter to a believer. The filter is off; if I can't find a good place to insert a tidbit, I'll just stick it at the end on its own. I don't want to mold this one too much:
The Latest Outpouring
I say "According to what I've studied, and based upon the information available to me, the world works in such a way that indicates there is no god, instead of a god or gods," to which you may say, "Well, explain it to me, then." And alas, I basically can't.
I can't explain it to you for the same reason a high school student can't ask his teacher to explain how her education enabled her to get a job teaching, and then turn around and get hired himself... I cannot do your learning for you; if we could, basic education would not take as long as it does.
The best I can do is show you the high standard (and rigor) against which my beliefs are tested, and tell you that the information that convinced me is indeed available to you. In essence, and not without irony, I want you to take it on faith. Not my conclusion, mind you... just the fact that the information that formed my conclusion is there. If you truly want to put your beliefs to the test, even in an effort to strengthen your own conclusions, I'll show you how, and I'll go a step further and point out a few places to start you along your search.
But if you actively refuse the information, you must know that you are denying yourself, and are therefore lying to yourself for the comfort of maintaining a framework that goes unchallenged, which is not a victory in any context. It is a forfeit. And if you do make the effort, you may still conclude that you were not wrong. Furthermore, you will have that much more confidence in your own position... which I can respect even if I believe you should've been convinced otherwise.
I know that for many, it is painful and difficult to be informed that they're wrong, especially regarding their highest beliefs, and even moreso the longer those beliefs have been held. My own first and greatest challenge along this learning path, and now one of my greatest strengths, was divorcing myself from that reactionary tendency. That I can not only accept, but indeed look forward to, being proven wrong only sharpens my own ability to reflect upon and challenge and refine the conclusions I do maintain, such that the opportunity for others to prove me wrong is diminished; for I have done much of their work myself.
And yet I surprisingly find that those who cannot bear to have their beliefs challenged are so often the same who adopt new beliefs so easily, without hesitation or scrutiny of any kind. Why would people give themselves so eagerly to beliefs that would utterly crush them to discover were wrong? Do people know themselves that poorly? The asymmetry of their overcredulous nature is fascinating, but is also disheartening.
The magnitude of their credulity is matched only by their incredulity toward arguments made against their positions once they adopt them. Where was that spirit of disbelief in the first place? It seems to me that their willingness to believe scales rather directly with their emotional investment into those ideas. They walk in easily with no attachments, then attach themselves firecely. When refuting evidence comes into the picture, the quality of that evidence is secondary to their own lack of attachment to that evidence, and thus it doesn't sway them.
So maybe the issue is that they throw themselves to passionately and fully into an idea once they believe it. We skeptics will not hesitate to throw an idea to the curb once a better one comes along.
A believer's beliefs are a marriage, 'till death do they part. A skeptic's are a one-night-stand. No wonder we're having more fun.
* - and you're a glutton for punishment
** - Made you look!
*** - Do I feel another acronym coming on? Oh yeah, baby.
Friday, October 26, 2007
EFFLORESCENT
The exterminator over at No More Hornets wrote a post earlier this year, in which he claims to have pioneered a new creative art form: Google-oetry.
A Googl-oem is simply a poem constructed solely from the keywords people type into google that end up sending them to your website. You are allowed to add punctuation, but not to add or change words.
What follows is my first Googl-oem, entitled 'Verse Justice'. Each line appears in the order it did in my keyword log. Some punctuation has been added... no other changes.
Verse Justice
There are one hundred students who open lockers,
Perfect squares... odd number of factors.
Technology and prose:
Perfect square, odd number of factors.
Metanoia.
Metanoia.
Huntington harbour boat-parade 2007,
Insomnia film post production?
www.cdgirls.com.
Debate formats: rebuttal and re-rebuttal;
The only real justice is the justice you take.
Novels which incorporate back story...
Average bed time of a highschooler...
Remaining humble when becoming education.
Why do perfect squares have an odd number of factors?
Ear tampons.
24 hour insomniac film contest;
Exploding crap,
Shit, jury summons,
Gas leak! Front yard!!
Another word for prose?
Ratiocinative?
Black prose?
Supernatural justice?
Justice pro-se.
It's friday... say a prayer to freyja.
...prayer to freyja.
...prayer to freyja.
...prayer to freyja.
Operose.
- kevin savino-riker
Now, I didn't write my name at the end of the poem... the last search keyword in my log was actually my name, which was remarkably convenient.
Monday, October 22, 2007
BLASPHEMY - INEQUITY
I learned today that I do not like being discriminated against.
After hearing some good words about Blogrush, a relatively new traffic-generating widget, I signed myself up in an attempt to generate traffic*. It worked remarkably well, to an extent**. I did get a few new readers (which brought my total readership up to 'a few'), a couple of whom left positive commentary on my work; I was indeed performing up to Blogrush's standards by actively contributing materials deemed valuable to the service's readership.
This morning, however, I received an email from the Blogrush staff indicating that my blog has been removed from rotation. The full text of the email appears here, but the critical elements are replicated below:
We regret to inform you that your BlogRush Account has been made INACTIVE because your blog did not pass our Quality Review criteria. You will find instructions below for making your account active again.
...
We determined that your blog did not meet our strict quality guidelines. Please do not take this personally but realize that we must abide by a very strict set of quality guidelines. (They are listed below.)
...
The primary reason(s) your blog(s) did not meet our guidelines: Inappropriate Content Or Advertising: Hate Speech or Anti-Racial (emphasis mine)
Hate Speech or Anti-Racial*** content...
...wow.
I guarantee you will not find one racist idea in all of the 127 posts that appear on this blog, for the same reason you wouldn't expect someone blind since birth to speak of a mental image; thoughts of that nature simply don't occur to me. So it must be hate speech they found.
Have I perpetrated an act of hate speech on any of these pages? I certainly don't think I have, but maybe 'hate speech' has swelled into such a broadly-defined word that 'criticism' falls within its blanket definition.
I have no illusions about this blog's critical views on organized religion, but I don't believe there is anything truly hateful spoken about any person or group of people, with the exception of Ann Coulter****, of course. To be clear, I passionately detest organized religion due its direct cause of so many personal and societal ills. I do indeed hate all the bad things religion causes, and I hate their cause equally. It is not wrong for people to have hated Hitler and Nazism; he caused tremendous undue human suffering. We should hate things that actively harm people.
Most importantly, though, is that when I speak out against religion I am not perpetrating hate speech. True hate speech is directed toward a person or group of people, not toward an institution. If you scour the pages of Prose Justice, the worst you will find... the thoughts that are as close to hateful as can be found here, will all be directed toward institutions, not toward people. It is not hate speech; it is just editorial opinion and information.
Just for fun, I myself looked for instances of hate speech. Using the search bar at the top of Prose Justice, keyword 'hate', Here's what I found:
"I love the English language for being so flexible and organic, but I hate when those attributes are exploited to supplement the argument being presented." - BLASPHEMY - EXACTITUDE
"Phones are as natural to gens X and Y as are toilets, and toilets are as natural as butts in this part of the world. We understand phones already. We understand their associated technologies as easily. Even the complicated ones like automated customer service. We hate that one, but we certainly understand it." - IDIOSYNCRATIC
"My roommate Tom's mugging - Tom was attacked by a handful of kids as he was riding home on a bicycle. They ran off the porch and chased him down, attacking him and taking the ten dollars he had on his person. I hate Brooks Ave...
...the massive standoff in my neighborhood, complete with lunatics holed up in a house with shotguns, and thirty-odd cops on the scene throwing around terms like 'kill zone'. I hate Brooks Ave." - PERTURBATION
"You may like foreign cars. You may like small cars. You may hate either, as a matter of fact, but with complete disregard to the preceding, you will love this commercial for this small foreign car. The Citroen C4. That is all...
...It's kinda like a gentlemen's club, really: Those who know about it love it, and everyone else hates them for being involved with it." - JOCOSE
"I HATE seeing great musicians wasting their talent playing other peoples' music." - INTERREGNUM
"I HATE the word 'holla' but will knowingly and willingly use it in jest to promote the disrespect of the word. I suggest you all do the same." - ORATORY 1
Any hate speech in there? Didn't think so.
But to be fair, let's try to look for instances where I actually have a chance to slip into hate speech. First we're going to use the term 'Christian', then we're going to use my frequent catch-all phrase, 'the religious'. If I'm going to say anything hateful about a person or group, those words will be there. So here we go:
"An example of this phenomenon is that Muslims are less likely than Christians to be killed in automobile accidents. When worded this way, it implies that Islam makes one a better driver than does Christianity. But it's much more likely that since Muslims generally don't drink, Muslims drive drunk far less frequently than Christians do, resulting in fewer enough drunk-driving fatalities to skew the results" - BLASPHEMY - ESPIALI left out instances in which the search term yielded hits for phrases like 'Christian organization' or 'the religious organization', again because regardless of what I say afterward, it is not true hate speech. If you want to look for them yourself, you'll see that what I say falls far short of hateful anyway.
"This one goes out to all the good Christian people out there who mistakenly believe atheism is nihilism...
...I know that you're expecting to be tricked, but honestly pretending that you weren't... would you have been compelled to say 'Christian'? Well, the fact is, I left one item off the bottom of that list. If that last item was "Believing that the character of Jesus Christ was the son of God and died for our sins," then and only then would you be correct in describing him as Christian." - BLASPHEMY - ALTERITY
"And in case there was any misunderstanding about the context of Mark 3:29, let me unambiguously state that the acts performed by Christians to spread Christianity represents the absolute worst of human nature. If any of our human behaviors deserve to be called demonic, it's the fear-mongering critical to successful religious indoctrination.
" - BLASPHEMY - COVENANT
"The 'Family Values' ticket, which you can find on your garden variety voters' ballot, really means 'Undercover Christian'." - EPHEMERAL
"Any sufficiently radical scientific study engenders passionate outcries from the religious: 'We must stop playing God before it's too late!' 'Playing God' to them is inherently bad; my guess is because of its violation of some deadly sin or another. Pride, vanity, hubris. Whatever it is... we can't puff ourselves up and presume to know what we're doing. We can't take God's place. We're violating natural order...
...It wasn't until our technology began yielding godlike capabilities that the religious got squeamish about it all." - BLASPHEMY - DESIDERATUM
"Blind faith removes the verification process something has to endure before you can have faith in it. This is the kind of faith the religious have; the problem is that they mistakenly believe that their faith is the unblind kind." - BLASPHEMY - EXACTITUDE
"We've been labeled that way by the religious for so long that we've gotten used to it. It's probably our own fault that we haven't done so much to correct the misinterpretations of what it means to be atheist." - BLASPHEMY - ATTESTATION
"Interestingly, the fact that the universe exists is a source of unspeakable awe and 'reverence' to me. It drives me to never stop learning. This is the kind of awe the religious could only dream of experiencing." - BLASPHEMY - REJOINDER
"The religious and the agnostics draw a circle, within which is the natural and explainable, outside of which lies the supernatural. The religious populate this external region with God...
...Because if it was worth it to you to ask about the universe's complexity, wouldn't it be more worth it to ask about God's greater complexity? That's only a rhetorical question because the religious would never dare to ask that...
...The pyramids were, with the obvious exception of their geometry, pointless. How many hours, how much raw material, how many lives were consumed in the building of these religious monuments? They serve well as a poignant example of the resource-sapping by the religious that occurs even today, though to a thankfully less drastic extent." - BLASPHEMY - SATIETY
"When the religious organizations lobby for teaching of intelligent design in schools, they often accompany this with a statement encouraging students to be cautionary in their thoughts toward evolution...
...If the proponents of ID want to be skeptical about evolution because it is just a 'theory', they should be raising as much opposition to relativity as well. But the religious community has no quarrel with relativity, because they do not believe support of relativity is equal to a renunciation of God." - BLASPHEMY - MODICUM
Looking through all that, there is only one passage that comes close to denigrating Christian people, and even then I explicitly aim my attack at the specific practice of fear-mongering for the purpose of indoctrination. Everything else there is statement of fact or constructive critiquing. Nowhere else will you see even a hint of bile or spite or flat-out insult*****.
After spending only a short while following links via the blogrush widget, I came across several websites with far more caustic language and direct attacks on groups and individuals, from atheistic blogs, from religious blogs, and from blogs that have no theological slant whatsoever.
So I guess this post is both a cry for help from my fellow atheist bloggers, and also a caution to my fellow atheist bloggers who use Blogrush. Their website indicates that they manually inspect every blog that signs up... I'd really like to know if this has happened to anybody else.
I realize this is a very modest instance of discrimination; nothing has happened to me, only to one avenue of distribution of my digital presence. But it's validation just the same that a blog about positive atheism and about religious criticism is viewed as hate speech, at least in the eyes of the constituents of Blogrush. Thank you, Blogrush, for proving to me that we atheists still have work to do.
* - and to win the lottery; well, one out of two ain't bad...
** - See footnote #1.
*** - which I think, etymologically speaking, means 'against differentiation by race'... so maybe all those people using the term 'anti-racial' should use a correct and unambiguous word like 'racist' instead. Because I'd like to be able to use the term 'anti-racial' for what it really means without having to stop and explain myself like I did here.
**** - about whom I didn't even speak hatefully... only critically, and I did so within the framework of stand-up comedy (which is ALL ABOUT exaggeration), which wasn't even that funny. OK, fine, you want to drag it out of me? I HATE ANN COULTER BECAUSE SHE IS A HATEWORTHY PERSON, WHO LIVES QUITE WELL OFF PROFITS THAT COME DIRECTLY FROM THE PROPAGATION OF HATE SPEECH. YOU LISTENING, BLOGRUSH? READ ONE OF ANN COULTER'S BOOKS, TAKE NOTES, AND THEN COME BACK TO ME AND TELL ME THAT MY BLOG CONTAINS HATE SPEECH. I fucking dare you.
***** - See footnote #4
Friday, September 28, 2007
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
EVOLUTION
It had to happen eventually.
I've been blogging to myself ever since I brought this page out of hibernation; my readership has dwindled to, well... me, and I have had trouble finding things I could write passionately about.
That is, with one exception. I've mentioned a couple times now that I've been working on an essay that was very important to me. I couldn't blog, but I could add to the essay. The overwhelming majority of my creative energies have been directed into it. It's been eight months now that I've been revising and editing the piece. The time has just about arrived for me to reveal it. With the posting of this document, there are bound to be changes to the blog itself. That's what this post is announcing.
I'm going to start with my essay, then continue expounding on the ideas essential to its theme. I'm expecting to observe a general drift toward relevance in the blogosphere as I make my presence more accessible.
It had to happen eventually: I finally figured out what this blog, what blogging, is for.
I'll add that this is a very precisely named post. It's not only a description of the changes happening at Prose Justice, but it also alludes to a good chunk of the content that's coming in the days ahead. Incidentally, due to the changes occurring, it will be the last post (for a long time, at least) to follow my 'single million-dollar-word' naming scheme.
There will be interesting times ahead, my friends.
Monday, November 20, 2006
SOLEMNIZATION
I've been brushing up against the century mark a lot lately...
My post count at a favorite automobile enthusiast bulletin board just rolled into the triple digits a couple days ago, and I've been doing a lot aggressive driving in said favorite automobile at over 100mph*.
And now, I'm penning my 100th post to Prose Justice. While I'd typically devote this entry to that alone, I'd rather get into detail on a new fixation.
Ever hear of Woot!?
Interesting online marketplace. Run by cool people with funny personalities. There is a bulletin board on the woot website, and each week they hold a photoshop contest, somewhat related to a product they sell, with an arbitrary goal.
This particular week was a double-pronged challenge. We, the contestants, had to select a product they offered, create an anagram of that product, and use the anagram as the title of a novel. Then we were told to design a cover for the novel and incorporate the product somehow. It's a bit much to bite off, especially being my first attempt at this (the contest has already been judged and I didn't win jack squat, but that's beside the point).
Regardless, here was the product I selected:
The Jepson Winery Mendocino Mix.
I took 'jepson winery mendocino' and found that it anagrammed to 'speedy minnow conjoiner'.
What in the world to do with this? Obviously I needed to turn to the most famous minnow in history, the S.S. Minnow of Gilligan's Island fame. From there, I found a suitable picture of a man, who, in my opinon, could potentially have fixed the Minnow and rescued those poor castaways, if only he had some inspiration to guide him**:
I gave it a little more thought, discovered some other anagrams for bonus points ('Jepson Winery Mendocino Mix' = 'Epoxy Rejoins Minced Minnow'; useful indeed... and 'Kevin James Savino-Riker' = 'An Invasive, Irksome Jerk'***), and came up with the following:
Click for a slightly larger version.
So, I said this was going to be a repository of sorts for creative media... I guess I'm living the dream. Hopefully there will be more to come. Hopefully all other anagrams of my name are less unflattering. Here's a start: 'Kevin Savino-Riker' = 'Ninja-Reviver Kiosk'. Even uses the hyphen. I'll have to draw a picture of that someday...
* - I know it's illegal, but I wouldn't do it if I wasn't doing it safely.
** - NOT Gilligan.
** - It breaks my heart, but I should've seen it coming.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
RATIOCINATIVE
Testing Testing...
...
Yep. Works like a charm.
Like there was ever a doubt.
So Google, as you know, is expected to take over the world sometime between 2009 and late 2009. And despite their constant march toward global domination, which would fully exhaust the resources of just about any motivated corporate body, they still make time to interconnect all their little utilities and services, expanding their feature sets and generally improving the interface between the end user (that's you) and increasingly numerous elements of the internet.
Take this blog entry, for example. Google recently acquired and further developed a program called Writely, a web-based word processor with collaborative functionality and tons of other goodies, including a spreadsheet companion. They're aiming to make Microsoft Office obsolete. They're on their way to achieving it. Regardless, I'm bringing this up because I'm writing this blog entry in the new Google Docs & Spreadsheets interface. And I can publish it directly to the blog, right from within the document editor.
So, that raises the total number of unique means by which one can submit content to a blogger account to a healthy 37.
Go, Google, go. Wait.... lemme buy some stock first. Then go.
Monday, October 30, 2006
SANGUINE
Blogger's new beta is slowly emerging from its shroud of secrecy as of late, and this blog's author is succumbing to the allure of a new interface. Though it's self-admittedly incomplete and potentially buggy, I am confident enough in Blogger's (via Google's) expertise that any remaining problems will be eliminated promptly. So I went ahead and transitioned everything into the new format.
What does that mean to you? For starters, it means that Prose Justice is looking a little greyer, a little wider, and left-handed. Just like me; that is, the left handed part... and maybe the wider part, but not the greyer part. Oh, the updated archived post navigation methodology is worth the price of admission alone*.
I'm anticipating the influx of photo galleries from those who took pictures at the Halloween Haunting II at The Lodge this past Saturday. Once those are in my possession, I'll drop back and write about the party. Meanwhile, enjoy the following:
Drink to your health!
* - Yeah, the price of admission is free, but don't let that technicality take anything away from the compliment.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
REQUISITE
Well, I know I'm "blogging", as long as you care to define "blogging" as "making noticeable changes to the blog" and not as "adding content with any discernable value to the reader". I just don't feel like I'm "blogging" right now, because I need to use the second definition. Unfortunately, it will still be a little while before I can do anything of value. Right now I'm in Phase: Dusting Off Occluded Internals.
Buffing out the wear marks of dormancy takes a little more work than I thought it would have. Turns out lots of image links are invalid; I have to figure out the new urls for files on the server out here in Cali. I also have a few new blog features to which I need to get accustomed.
What it amounts to, is that this entry is actually one more piece of filler, necessary because I need to post a picture into the entry. This will determine the location of my new profile photo. I could just put it up temporarily and remove the pic after I find out where Blogger hosted it, but why bother? There's nothing wrong with a little redundant representation.
Regardless, here's the pic, the new poster-child face of Prose Justice. This picture really sums up how I feel right now.
Really, I promise I'm almost done returning the blog to seaworthiness. Just a little more tweaking and I'll be ready to jump in head first. Maybe typing-fingers first.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
BEGUILING
It seems that blogger now supports full sensory immersion, with the addition of pix blogging from mobile devices. This of course ignores the senses of smell, taste, touch, and psychokinesis. Nerd. Oh well, here's a snippet of what's keeping me occupied at work.
Monday, June 26, 2006
REVELATION
Apparently I didn't give a shit.
In fact, I seem to have not given a shit WAY harder than I ever gave a shit during the active life of the blog. My last post was to celebrate Prose Justice's 1st birthday, one year and sixteen days ago. Over half my blog's life, spent in hibernation. Since I last posted, I've moved to southern California and gotten a new job, a new car, and a wicked tan.
Well, work has been slow enough lately to indicate an upcoming trend that might just allow me to instill some new zest into this dormant beast. What was once a budding berth of infant literary genius has become a comatose and malnurished toddler, which may now become a once-upon-a-time-budding-berth-of-infant-literary-genius-has-become-a-comatose-and-malnurished toddler-with-the-will-to-overcome-its-past.*
On an absolutely-unrelated note,
Here's to the good intentions of today: May they flourish and grow into the good of tommorow.
See you next year!**
*Because, I'll be writing posts again. Now that I think about it, that's an awfully long description. Sorry, little rusty.
**Not to say I won't see you before then. Just covering my bases.
Friday, June 10, 2005
COMMEMORATION
Jesus H Motherfucking Christ Almighty, I thought I missed my blog's birthday! When I first wrote this, I brain-farted and saw that it was June, but still felt like it was May, and it was definitely later than the tenth of the month by that reckoning. So I scrambled to save face and pop up a nice little commemorative here, and as I posted it, I realized that I'm over a week early. Oh well, at least I can claim acuracy to the month. I'll put this up today anyway, thought I'm going to forward-date it for archival purposes.
As of June 10th, 2005, Prose Justice (don't you dare click on that link, you're already here) will officially become one crazy year old!
A couple notables about this fun little project here:
- I have written 70 entries, including audioblogs, and have five drafts yet-to-be-published.
- Those entries total 30,286 words written, averaging 404 words per post.
- If you printed each character that I typed onto a piece of 8.5" by 11" paper (one character per page in banner-fashion) and placed them end to end in a line, it would be over thirty miles long.
- I have learned more than 50 'million-dollar' words in my extensive search for clever post titles.
- Since I've been tracking hits (November 15, 2004), my blog has been visited 1,316 times by 826 unique viewers. If I include my own visits, that number skyrockets to 58,422. Just kidding. It's probably a little lower than that.
- Despite all this, I'm definitely not sick of blogging, and am ready to set some new records this coming year. Either that or I won't give a shit.
Happy Birthday!
Thursday, November 04, 2004
ORATORY 1
Just when we thought cellphones couldn't get any more features, some wunderkind decides that we need a little more connectivity. They're even working on speech-to-text blogging, which could be cool, once you get used to dictating punctuation ("Hello comma mother dash fucker comma it's nice to see you again semi-colon you have to visit me more often period"). What with all the programmable key-entry macros and voice-activated dialing, I worry my fingers will soon atrophy due to chronic non-use. Makes me sick.
But who am I kidding? Being one to jump on the bandwagon, especially if I'm guaranteed a front seat, I embraced this wonderful technology as it currently exists and have decided to flaunt it here.
That's right, Prose Justice is now Cochlear-Enabled.
I don't expect that I'll use audioblogging too often, but when I do, it'll be a nice change of pace.
*I HATE the word 'holla' but will knowingly and willingly use it in jest to promote the disrespect of the word. I suggest you all do the same.
Saturday, July 10, 2004
CONCATENATION
What follows is an exercise in processing thought on-the-fly. I've been discussing with my pal Andrey about how the blogging itself had become a testament to tedium, not often worth more than a tape recorder into which one narrates his daily tasks. There was no creativity to be seen in the reflection of the day's activities. Rather than report on my whereabouts throughout the day, I'd prefer to devote more of this space to creativity, or at least insightful commentary. As it happens, I often feel like my most inspired dialogue is with 'Drey. It frustrated me, because he was getting to hear everything I wished I was capable of making public.
About that time, the idea hit me. I'm going to post my conversation with Andrey, with his comments removed. All you'll see is that I'm saying. You'll have to guess as to what he's said to me, based upon how I react. Surprisingly, there was an uncanny flow and poetic aspect to the passage, despite the stringing together of only my half of the conversation. Here is a snapshot of my mind at work, amidst the dynamic changes that occur during Andrey's systematic prodding of my psyche: (names have been removed to protect the identities of the innocently involved)
hey man
coo coo
will do
always do ;-)
fine fine
worked from 11am to 8:20pm
then went home, changed,
met her and her friends at a carnival in Rush
haha!
awesome
we were there 'till midnight or so
not too many
no opportunities for juice
I found out that her ravenous appetite for fried food rivals even mine
and she's so cute about it
we definitely have chemistry, still
we had a great time together at work today
after the carnival ended, we went our separate ways, since she was going straight to bed
I went over to a friend's and met up with sleeping people and a bunch of us watched 'secret window'
decent flick
not seen it?
hmm
it's a decent flick
very stephen king-ish
umm, what the fuck?
firefox new version just installed
and now it refuses to run
oh wait, there it goes
the computer's just slpw
slow
and my fingers are sticky
'course, it's been running for 30 days or so
well, I'm glad I do it
it's tedius sometimes
because I only seem to do it around this time of night
after I'm exhausted
and thinking to myself about the extensive plans for the following day
such as,
tomorrow I drive to Pennsylvania
so tonight I don't feel like writing tons about what I did today
that's the thing...
it' mainly been more of an activities log lately,
with a touch of feelings on the side
what I wish it were, were something more dynamic
like, "hey, I thought of a song lyric, here it is"
or "this insightful thing came to me in a fit of randomness"
yes, I have
but that was once out of the 20-something entries I've done
true, it is
I just wish it were fewer facts, more flavor...
to adapt a line from 'big fish'
no, I mean... well, more colorful content
more poetic in one sense,
more intangible in another
rather than relaying the course of my day, I'd rather use this as a place to store creative energy
so, fiction
in greater supply
and perhaps a reference to whatever real-life-of-kevin inspirations to which that fiction is rooted
often times, I feel like pasting our conversations into it
because what I say to you is what I wish it looked like more often
in fact,
there's an idea
little experiment...
brb
hmm. And now, Andrey's text:
hey
blogger is fixed it seems
also, check my latest entry
;-)
oh,
I saw 9/11 today, i'm still working on the entry for that one;-)
how was your day/night?
I passed by there!
so give me all the juicy details;-)
but I'm sure you had a million thought processes running
excellent
that's the new Johnny Depp film?
not yet
I've been gunshy about new movies lately for some reason.
not attacking them with the verve I used to.
been waiting for the "all clear" so to speak
I see
lol
I love the Mozilla group
ah
so tell me..
what do you think of blogging - call it a month in review
why?
[I agree]
but you've had that before...
I think it's dynamic because it represents how you feel the moment you publish
by flavor...
you mean randomness?
I too wish for more of that...
but maybe,
maybe that's part of the challenge we're laid out for ourselves. to reach down [or back] and recall the millions of inspirational moments that strike us throughout the day
k
all right
i'm glad we're on the same page with this blog thing
what you said about wanting it to be "more than just facts". I've felt the same way. I want it to be a reflection of Myself and my experiences, not just a regurgitation of the nightly news
I feel like I can't let myself go, like I can't tap into the creativity that I know is within me.
in fact [as you also said], this and many of our conversations are exactly what I want in my blog.
Go ahead, try to piece it together :)
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
DISCONSOLATE
So, I'm a little perturbed at blogger; the site seems to have glitched a little lately, keeping me off my posting pace. But enough of that. Today was a good, long day, full of gratifying exertion. Friends and I performed all the site preparation requisite to refurbishing the Moran's party house, between 8 am and noon or so, then spent the next seven hours drinking bourbon and smoking cigars while waxing intellectual about business and finance. All in all, a very educational experience. Next phase is up on Thursday, when we reframe a wall to prep for the reroofing project that comprised the original scope of the job. Leave it to efficiency-minded individuals to find more and more work to do...
Thursday, June 10, 2004
INAUGURATION
The decision to publicize one's inner monologue comes with great difficulty... assuming one's mindset happens to match mine precisely. A profoundly campy/cheesy aura surrounded most every blog I visited throughout my tenure as an internetive-compulsive web surfer. Even worse, perhaps, were the blogs that affected my life directly in the tangible world; one private detail slipped yields hours of distress under the proper conditions.
But the more I thought about it, I realized that I was in control of the atmosphere here. If I stick roughly within the confines of the present-tense, I am relegated to speaking in a sort of instantaneous snapshot of my thoughts and feelings; this will eliminate the potential to use this medium as a means to dwell on anything disturbing. I will always post with the reader's entertainment in mind. Rather, I will, upon completing a post, sit back and say to myself, "is this something that people would avoid reading if they knew what I was about to say?" And if the answer is 'yes', then I will refrain unless I feel very strongly that people need to hear me vent.
Having said that, I think the best use of this webspace is as a mental home-gym: By virtue of existing, this blog will coach me to think out loud more frequently, so I may fill its pages. Too often do I sit around and stumble upon a piece of wisdom, or a funny idea, et cetera, and too often do I lack the means to record it. A thought without destination is doomed to slip into the crevasse of muddy recollection, and then into oblivion just beyond. Just having this space available gives me a feeling of security, that I can take something out of my head, leave it here, and never worry about losing it. I have a hunch that if the thoughts knew there was a comfy spot awaiting them, they would manifest freely and with ease. Knowing that I have space to fill, I will begin to create on a prolific scale all my musings, song lyrics, poetry, and who knows what else...
Innocent in its inception, this blog should be free of all the imprudent categories of personal information. I'm not going to sit here and type about people I don't like. I'll cover every emotion I've ever felt, but only in the hope that any interested reader will find my words allegorical; if I can convey a message through my retelling of personal experiences as opposed to just putting them outside my mind as a means to avoid the situation, then this blog will be a success for me. If at any point you laugh to yourself, or scratch your head and go "Wow, I never saw it like that", then this blog will be a success for you.
I hereby dedicate this post to Andrey Hardy, who unwittingly coerced me into creating a blog of my own when he put a link to his in his Instant Messenger profile.
And so continues the great chain of inspiration, and perhaps lack of discretion; I, too, must now join the ranks of those who will share the collective blame when the whole spot blows up; someday, there will be one too many blogs in the world....
