Conversation with the Supplicant or Fear and Loathing on Twitter

May 27
Note: this is old (two months almost) and I barely feel this way anymore, but I still find this interesting.

I've been reading a book called FEED which deserves it's own review when I set it down. In the meantime . . .
It's set in the future, where people have computers in their heads and of course, these kids try to break theirs.
God, I hate sci-fi.
A quote on the book says the novel can be interpreted as a promise or a threat.
So, I'm suddenly all freaked out about how lifeless people are becoming since the internet became mainstream and how Twitter is almost exactly like the computer chips in the brain, except not here yet.
To me, the internet is for sharing life, not for having one. Like characters in a novel, we have to exist off the page. We have to, or we sacrifice our humanity and it saddens me and scares me that more and more, people are shelling themselves into screens. A mind chip will only seal the deal.
I was going to spend hours writing a detailed account of how I'm freaking out, but decided to copy and paste a conversation I had with Dave which moderately expresses every sentiment I was going to write anyway. This is faster, more concise and . . . feed-esque.
God, I hate sci-fi.

Dave: You know why I quit twitter?

It's BORING

me: oh yeah, well it's totally changing the way people are perceiving information.

i'm sorry that bored you

it scares me

7:59 PM I've been alive for 19 years and I've had to deal with way too many extreme social changes in the last 9 alone. From blogging to myspace to facebook to twitter, all of it getting more and more compact and destroying the peaceful, thoughtful world I once knew.

8:00 PM I'm reading a book about this disaster and that's fueling my paranoia to unknown lengths, but what am I to do?

I just want people to use payphones again. Read books. Watch movies on VHS.

Dave: Blogging: Never have so many with so little to say said so much to so few.

8:01 PM Twitter: Blogging on crack.

me: Fair enough, but now, no one pays attention to much else.

8:02 PM Dave: Like anyone ever has?

8:03 PM The only difference between the inattentive, dumbasses of today and of yesteryear is now we can gawk at each other's sublime retardation in HD.

8:04 PM me: I don't know why I'm concerned. It's all going to end in nuclear way anyway.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iURO8fOyWVOA0ytFlaAGuC9F7R9wD98EMMPO0

Dave: Don't forget Iran.

8:05 PM me: that's this weekend, isn't it?

Dave: Their President thinks his role in history is to bring the end of the world and cause the second coming of Arab Jesus.

what's this weekend?

me: Iran invasion

Dave: Fuck if I know.

I never pay attention to these things anymore.

me: maybe the weekend after next

8:06 PM Dave: It will always be some big bad foreign person versus the glorious "Christian" USA

Just look at that death toll thing you posted earlier

The war industry is what's made our congressmen wealthy

that or the other aspects of the over-arching death industries

People will always kill each other for reasons that end up being utterly pointless.

8:07 PM It's just the kind of guys we are.

The older you get the less you start to give a shit.

And I started out not giving a shit pretty well.

me: oh boohoo, existentialism.

8:08 PM i just want to live in fear!

at least until 2012 blows over

that's a joke, by the way.

Dave: right

8:09 PM me: but I am getting very nostalgic lately. Especially for discarded novelties of generations I didn't even exist in. Retro, vintage, these words have no meaning to me, I want things to always be relevant

8:10 PM Dave: Just don't get nostalgic for lawn darts. I don't think Bobby's head can take any more abuse.

me: So I've been watching Tim and Eric's Awesome Show because of the crappy videography reminiscent of the '90s, viewing old fashioned pictures on Flickr and collecting shit at thrift stores I don't need.

8:11 PM Dave: Ugh

tim and erics awesome show

><

On second thought, maybe lawn darts wouldn't be such a bad idea...

We were born out of time

we should have been born in the 40's or 50's so we could have come of age in the 60's

8:12 PM

I miss the 90's

in some ways like I miss a hole in my head

8:14 PM me: I hate the '90s. It was incredibly stupid, way worse than the '80s. But I still miss its simplicity, its stupid dialup, Furbies and grunge music.

Dave: omg

furbies

haha

8:15 PM after like 4 months of trying i taught one curse words
me: hahaha, so did we

Dave: at least the chinese know the meaning of community support

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE54O3BW20090525

8:16 PM me: that's amazing

Dave: isnt it thou?

5 minutes

8:22 PM me: i'm going to play GTA and kill pigs

8:23 PM Dave: say wha?

8:28 PM http://last-straw.net/2005/06/the-us-invasion-of-iran-has-already-begun/

That's back in 2005

5 minutes

9:30 PM me: "Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity."
--Robert A. Heinlein from The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

9:32 PM "My wife set off the metal detector at the airport the other day. Apparently it was the collar."

Past and Pending

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/space/07/19/man.greatest.achievement/index.html?eref=rss_mostpopular

This article that asks "What is Mankind's Greatest Achievement?" has got my head turning.

It's that I can't choose just one. The suggestions, written word (possibly my favorite), music (internationally understood regardless of language. Hmm.) cup noodles (pretty ingenious) and peace (yeah, when it lasts.)

I guess I'm just reminded of the good of man instead of the bad. Life feels special again, somehow.

Maybe the greatest achievement will be immortality or time travel or something great in the future. Who knows.

Debbie Family History - A Nostalgic Requiem

debbie family history from Kyle Anderson on Vimeo.

Squared and I were lost and strayed into random back alleys until we came upon a pile of discarded VHS tapes and old SNES games. We took as many as we could carry, found our way home and later in the year, would drink and watch whatever we popped in.

One video, "Debbie Family History" was especially intriguing but only when the gears started turning did we realize what we discovered.

8mm home videos, mutely filmed decades ago, memories transferred from negatives to positive to VHS to digital, dissolved a hundred times over until the spaces where the light hit the film barely remains.

This lone tape, now sitting on a bookshelf in my room, is possibly the only remnant of these things that happened.

So we had the brilliant idea of melding the six-hour video together with music and some of my words. We tried to keep the nostalgia as intact as possible.

The writing was inspired by an even older VHS tape I once watched as a kid. The BFG, a cartoon adaption of the Roald Dahl classic that terrified me but left poignant imagery in my head for years.
The story goes, a giant lives in a cave in the sky and captures floating dream things in jars and releases them into little kids minds. I took that concept and reversed it, an unknown being that takes memories and dreams that are no longer being used. As discarded as the cassette we found.

We Hate Love - Bitter Rantings of Mayhem Festival in Phoenix

This past weekend, after going to the Mayhem Festival at Cricket Pavilion, I am certain I have a brain tumor.

Apparently, KUPD, the "Big Red Radio" and Rockstar put on this little show to glorify their biggest and baddest "loud rock" bands they glorify. The fest could have done with more planning (the concert was so disorganized they forgot an entire stage in L.A.) and less sponsors, because the breeds of music tended to contradict and clash worse than thrash metal chords.

Slayer and Manson? Please. Those go together like The veteran metal heads drummed up their drunken, hardcore fans (constantly screaming the band's name) while the cross-dressing weirdo Manson only attracted more of the like. This only scattered and weakened the crowd resulting in a bunch of people standing around, too bored to mosh or even move.

As you can expect, the audience was a mix of skinheads, long-haired bikers and emo highschoolers. In short, everyone there was an absolute tool, including myself, who wore a plaid-green button up shirt. Hipster, some may say, but I'd say "easy target". I stood out like Manson's nipple's in a sea of black t-shirts and choker necklaces.

I'm still not sure how I ended up there with my friends Luke, Corey and Bryce. We (them, really) only went for Marilyn Manson, I went because I had a free ticket. We rolled up as a killer dust storm rolled in and as Killswitch Engage killed their set.

Getting inside was a chore, because they banned lighters and matches, apparently to stifle the fires random assholes started on the field last year. Still, the rent-a-cops didn't bar cigarettes, and people got in lighters somehow. Then they looted toilet paper from the bathrooms and started little bonfires all over. Since the paper burned quickly some people set t-shirts aflame or threw in empty beer cups. Believe me, it smelled great.

Luckily for them, Cricket came prepared and mounted a water cannon above the field. Whenever a fire got too big, firefighters and security would aim the cannon from across the pavilion and sprinkle it out. This barely worked (distance, wind and pyromaniacs shielding the fires with their bodies were factors) and really only created mud. People danced and slid downhill in the mud til it was black.

So then, to get new fires out, teams of security officers rushed into the crowd, threw everyone aside and extinguished the flame. Then they left, leaving the smoldering plastic bottles and paper towels and the cancerous smoke that blew in everyone's face. Minutes later a new fire would start.

The whole blaze thing was amusing and as insane as concerts should be, but it's about as interesting as the fest got. Like I said, the hundreds of fans that screamed for Slayer stood around, arms crossed when the band actually came on. Most of the fans were too drunk or busy burning shit to care, I suppose, but you'd think that the intensity in which they screamed would have started a riot or two. No such luck.

Which is probably why earlier, Killswitch Engage screamed "Fuck You!" to their audience for being too tame (they made up for it at the end by rambling about love or something and seeing Phoenix again soon). Who knows why this concert was such a disaster, maybe it was the 116º heat or the general Hot Topic crowd or something. According to Bryce, Ozzfest was actually intense, so it's not necessarily the city's fault.

Most of the Slayer tools left when Manson came on. The freak said something about how glad he is about going to Hell because it'll be cooler than Phoenix and all these cool Phoenix people will be there and whatever. Then he played a few songs from his terrible new album, undressed and dressed up a dozen times in a row and made some incessant staticky sounds. Along with the burning plastic fumes, I'm positive Manson gave me brain tumors the size of ostrich eggs.

I'm sure if you've read through this far you think I'm a whiny bitch that doesn't have any fun. That's not true, I had a blast and it was totally worth the free price. I just feel entitled to criticize musicians (and the fans thereof) that I dislike, especially when their only gimmick is hate. Yawn.

It seems to me that bands like Led Zeppelin and others were criticized of being Satan-worshipers, which they denied, but then new bands sprung up emphasizing zealous devil-worship to sell more records. Sooner or later, Manson became the king of such marketing. Whether or not any of these bands burn crosses or carve swastikas into their foreheads or whatever is besides the point. To me, even if Manson is faking it or not, it's just a gimmick.

I can agree with Manson on a few things, such as American foreign and domestic policy, but screaming such diseased lyrics isn't encouraging social change at all (not that it's important) nor is the creep shouting anything entirely unique. It's just kind of . . . pointless. If it does something, it does something, but as far as I can see it's a stagnant message lost on his disinterested public.

The majority of the audience I was cast upon may not agree, but they sure had less enthusiasm than I had jeering at the whole debacle. Manson screams into this boring, listless group of people and they're his FOLLOWERS? As they say (not really), if you scream in the abyss, the abyss screams back at you.

On religion, Manson has a lot more pitfalls. Even if the Christian Right (ironically, it's neither) is a hive of morons that ruthlessly judge others and value war, Manson hasn't said anything that's less hateful than the vehement anti-gay, pro-carpet-bombing, anti-abortion demonstrators. As Christ once said, "You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

The only blot of purity that Manson has claim to is not having directly hurt anyone. Big fuckin' deal. A lot of worthless people have that claim.

But I don't think that Manson should be shut up. As a follower of Christ, I'm against censorship of all kinds. Let Manson, Slayer and all the rest sing their petty little songs and incoherent lyrics. It amuses me more than anything. And at least they're good at what they're doing, in a way (but it's not hard to be hateful or join the Church of Satan).

Above all else, I wonder what Mayhem will be like next year and how they'll handle banning lighters or maybe the general lineup won't suck. If nothing changes and I somehow wind up there again, I'll be bringing a backpack full of kerosene soaked rags and I'll torch the whole place.

The Audacity of Humanity!

It is never a good thing to think anthropologically, which is something I constantly do, which means I am stuck living in the future, but the way, way distant future. I'm constantly considering who will discover my civilization when it crumbles.

As Chuck Palahniuk once said "Everything you ever create will be thrown away. Everything you’re proud of will end up as trash."

Because of this, I'm always careful of everything I throw away. If I don't want some garbologist to find my dirtiest of dirtys in the year 3021, I burn it.

On the other hand (and this is the point) I also find some things in humanity I want to destroy for the benefit of future generations. Sometimes I go into thrift stores and "drop" fragile pieces of absolute shit and I don't feel guilty. Why should I? I have purged the Earth of another fuckin' Anna Nicole Smith snowglobe or High School Musical porcelain dildo.

And I realize with certainty that I have no authority to decide what is worthwhile and what is not. I'm also glad that this same ideal hasn't been applied to things of relevance today or even my own works. That would be quite depressing and disgusting. Rest assured, I hate censorship with a passion.

But perhaps this is different. Separate somehow. Anyway, no one else is fuckin' doin' it!

It is an understatement to say that Americans need a lot less shit. From Furby cake decorations to Yu-Gi-Oh! adult diapers to Hannah Montana diet supplements, it's all shit that doesn't even deserve to dent a landfill.

This is the Audacity of Humanity.

Last night on Hulu, I watched "Giant Spider Invasion" a 1975 b-movie about trans-dimensional blackhole-traveling tarantulas. Confused as to why their meteor landed in Wisconsin, the spiders decide to eat everyone. The film was so worthless, no one even bothered to save a decent copy and the Hulu version is full of bad cuts, scratches and distorted sound, like a grindhouse film sans sex and violence. It goes without saying, it was fucking terrible. Here are the most intelligent quotes from the whole film:

"Sometimes the only time i know you're still alive is when I hear you flush the toilet."

"You're so dumb you wouldn't know rabbit turds from rice crispies."

I kinda of wanted to pick apart the plot a lot, like how the spider was emitting so much radiation that even if it was squashed, everyone would die of cancer. But what's the point?

I put "Invasion" on in the background and lazily got some work done and occasionally glanced up to see a bunch of Disco-era nobodies scream and violently get ripped apart at the hands of their radioactive arachnid tormentors.

The best part was the 50ft. spider which roamed the countryside and ate helpless cattle and douchebags that tried to shoot it. The tarantula was made using hunks of polyester and sherbet-tinted headlight eyes. And apparently, giving it too much radiation makes it explode orange, green and purple like a Willy Wonka wetdream. And someone actually took the time to design and construct this thing?? Such audacity!

But there's so much of this crap, it's unbelievable. Do you really think Transformers 2 is going to last another ten years? Yeah, that's what I thought about Pokémon: The Movie. (Note: generally, nothing called "the movie" is ever going to worth shit)

Now that poor, worthless spider is going to lie buried next to your collection of pogs and my mother's favorite John Cusack DVD's for centuries until Xeta anthropologists excavate it and ponder how stupid we were.

Announcing: FiLTHfiLLER.COM!

I am proud to announce the launch of my new website, filthfiller.com

It's going to act as a little portfolio for my work, much better than flickr or a blog can provide. Right now, it sucks, but it will grow and look nice and stuff. It has the potential to do a lot more than just show myself off, but I have little to no web skill, so I guess this is enough for now.

The name means nothing. It's just like Nine Inch Nails or Häagen-Dazs, a catchy, pithy title.

Anyway, bookmark that bastard!

Michael Jackson is NOT Dead

I've been hearing a lot of rumors that Michael Jackson died. I know, according to some negligible sources, that Michael was found in a coma and later, died. This is as much a hoax as Jeff Goldblum dying (but not as funny).

Let me give you proof.

Elvis: King of Rock & Roll.

Jackson: King of Pop

Since Elvis went to join the aliens and he was a king, obviously Michael went, too. I'm not even talking about the fact Mikey looked like an alien before his death. This is all about "king-dom". When Sting dies, he will be in outer space, living immortal among the stars. After all, he was the King of Pain.

So please, deny these rumors of Jackson's "death". He is very much alive and always will be.