welcome home
July 19, 2006
So this tiny Chinese kid was hell-bent on sitting behind my seat on the red-eye from Vancouver and screaming the Chinese word YEAH or YIH over and over again while kicking the back of my seat repeatedly.
Also interesting was the logomanic man sitting across the aisle from me, he tapped me on the shoulder as I was watching a movie *wearing headphones* and asked if I was doing anthropological research. I said no I was watching a feature film about an Inuit community and he told me all about his brother who had sent him a pair of mukluks made of sealskin from Barrow and how incredibly fishy they smelled.
Later I felt him trying to peek under the sweater I was wearing wrapped around my head as I did an impression of a sleeping person so he would leave me alone and stop telling me how close to Maine St Andrews was.
The reading I gave at a Haines Alaska bookstore of "Walter the incredible farting dog goes on a cruise" left a deep impression on my digestive system - since my contribution to the flight from hell was to make like Walter and have the most incredibly consistent 'little winds' for about 97% of the trip, luckily it didn't smell or anything. Actually how would I know, I had a sweater wrapped around my head.
I spent so little time in Vancouver trying to cram in as many visits as possible with all the lovely people there. I rushed from place to place dragging my newly redisovered old dear friend Karen in my wake. Vancouver was awesome. The trip was awesome. Travelling itself, is not awesome. Yet as I write this I am booking rooms at the Green Turtle hostel in San Francisco.
And I am desperate to get back to Vancouver because I think it is beginning to eclipse Montreal in my estimations as a fun place to live in. But so expensive.
More about Van/Whitehorse/Alaska later when my photos are finished loading and the jet-lag has worn off.
On Vacation
July 11, 2006
Sunset in Whitehorse about 10:00pm last night.
I am feeling a little sad today. I think the high of travel has worn off a little and I miss my doggy and other Montreal specific essentials. For example there is no longer a free wifi cafe in the city of whitehorse - not one. I had to beg a password off the ownners of the cranberry bistro in exchange for design work - which is awesome of them by the way. But it makes me feel a little like a goldfish out of my climate controlled tank.
Notably, the fact of the no free wifi has proven that I am completed addicted to the internet. On sunday when Ruth told me The cafe that had free wifi last time I was up had quit offering that service I quite literally began to have a small twitch just in my spacebar/rightclick finger
The good news (of course there is good news I am on vacation) due to the sketchy internet I have no choice but to find real vacation activities. Today for example I am going to go biking up to Miles Canyon, and tomorrow we are all going kayaking and fishing on long-lake.
And.. if everything works out right, saturday and sunday we will go camping in Haines Alaska.
The only problem I see at present is that I had hoped to remake my business card and my website while on vacation - my busness cards still say: "html, photoshop and dreamweaver" not so accurate anymore.
It's looking like I may not have time though. I think I may get blank rectangles made at an office supply place and then have stamp cut instead. I really hate the 500 peices of useless paper that i have left of my old business cards anyways, it's a total waste of paper. In the ecosystem of web development my new business card will porbably be archival in another two years and I just don't give out 1000 business cards in that span of time.
Anyways, it's noon now and I only have another 3 hours of time left at this connection better get some work hours in.
I love the Guardian, but I am having second-thoughts about Second Life
July 6, 2006
Erratum
Thta first paragraph there was meant to be in blockquotes. it has just spent the past 12 hours out of blockquotes giving the world at large the totally incorrect impression that I am a writer of "The Guardian" calibre. I think this paragraph aptly proves otherwise. This morning I accidenty wrote my blockquote tag as "blcoqkuote". My humble apologies to the author of the following paragraph.
Also in case you were wondering, I did not write about the "conundrum of suicide bombers" last week. I never think in big words like that around these parts.
When I wrote in this column a few weeks ago about the conundrum of suicide-bombers, the eminent military historian Michael Howard dropped me a line to remind me that European soldiers had been sent into battle in the first world war with the message that there was no higher honour than to die for your country. Not to live, to fight, to kill for your country - to die for it. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. In this respect, conservative Americans are closer to the mental world of pre-1914 Europeans or ancient Romans than they are to that of most contemporary Europeans.
From:
Between cheese-eating surrender monkeys and fire-eating war junkies
I think The Canadian mentality falls somewhere between the barbarian Picts and secularized Jews of the the Turkish empire. How do you like them apples?
My new morning ritual involves sitting in front of the 'puter drinking coffee and reading the Guardian Blog which is called "Comment is Free". The footer of which reads, "..but facts are sacred".
Why is British media so smart!?
Get a Second-Life
Has anyone made that pun yet?
Second Life is on the CBC again, apparently morning radio is obssessed with the fact that you can make-money, live, and fall in love ( etc.. etc..) in this" virtual space". They can't get enough. This last interview was with some woman who used finances won through shrewd second-life dealings to divorce her husband and move out of the house - ostensibly, so she could play second-life unencumbered by the demands of a real and unsatisfactory relationship. She mentions how Second Life gave her the self-esteem to divorce her beau and get her life back - I am not sure which life she is talking about though.
The interviewers question - "why is this new form of living so incredibly attractive to people?" got me to thinking. What makes it so much more attractive to do/aqcuire all these things you can do in the real world, online? He said; "Maybe second life and spaces like it, are replacing our 'first-lives'".
I would hazard a guess, that the reason places like Second Life are so attractive is that they satisfy very difficult desires easily, and they do not reflect the reality of our environment or actual political conditions. For example the announcer made the comparison; "In Second-Life you can easily have a beach house, even if your character that never requires sleep and doesn't have a day-job to escape from, it's simple enough to acquire a beach house, so people do".
In real-time, beach houses are exhorbitantly priced, most people cannot afford a beach-house based on their real-time income. Add to that the fact that most waterfront property is totally over-developed or ruinously polluted and you have conditions of scarcity and political inequality that render the beach houses a dream, thus a second life reality for most people and a first life dissapointment.
Rather than addres the problems inherent in over-developed waterfront or consumer culture we're all going to switch out of meat-space and go to a place where real estate is virtual and there's an infinite number of robber barons waiting to make their fortunes.
It's not much of a solution to our problems is it?
More thoughts
And yeah I know most games are about wish-fulfillment, that's a given, and I am certainly not some horrifying utilitarian asshole that thinks all art and imagination should be in service to the revolution. Totally no. But I do find it funny that if you read Second-Life as an escape from burdensome reality. The most cherished escapes revolve around very common activities. Like shopping all the time and finding pants that actually fit you, or having lots of noncomittal sex with people dressed like Trent Reznor. It's bit distressing, it must mean our day-to-day lives are so far from satisfactory that we actually imagine better day-to day lives. IMHO fantasy, generally speaking, ought to have very little correlate to our own lives, that's why it's an escape, right?
It's the difference between Peter Pan and Pornography. Now you're all going to think I hate porn. I don't hate porn, but I hate fulfillment substitution. Fantasy should be it's own fulfillment - not a subsitute for a life you find wearying, or the fact that you aren't getting laid ahem... But sometimes one looks at porn when they are getting laid? Whatever, I leave writing posts about porn up to other people. I am still reading the juicy bits from 'Written on the Body' to get my kicks.
We're getting off topic, goodnight.
You know porn is probably the worst example ever because it serves so many function in society and being the lonely boy or girls panacea is really only one of them, (she says eyeing her well-worn copy of sexing the cherry).
I like the line about Peter Pan it stays.