Previous: Inbox dreck and other rude internet acts. Why I'm not feeling very patriotic these days. The Media and Me Sports. Fuck'em. |
Chapter Five: Ah, Summer... Hello, player. More prattle from El Jefe. I spent the last weekend of June at the North East Art Rock Festival in the dismal town of Trenton. The festival was a frenzy of great fun. I got to see Steve Hackett play live for the first time ever, saw some great performances by the legendary Nektar, Japanese madmen Gerard, and a late-night show by personal favorite Mastermind. Made some new friends and goofed off with old ones. Being a seasoned vet of many science fiction and comic conventions I thought a two-day indoor music festival would be a walk in the park, but by midnight on Sunday I was running on vapor. Still, I hope to make this a yearly pilgrimage. We haven't had a good, soaking shitstorm of rampant information-without- context in months. Thank (insert diety here) for the "Under God" ruling. The resulting fury of uneducated vitriol against a regular guy over a free verse poem written by communists to sell magazines borders on absurdist art. If you needed any proof that our government and intelligencia have abandoned productive thought for cartoonish bickering, look around. Those of you following along in your hymmbooks can entertain yourself for hours by checking The Secular Web Newswire for daily updates on the neverending battle. Personally I find it a bit creepy that this happens just as cracks appear in the Big Bang. As it is too hot to drag my frail and pallid bodkin outdoors I have been spending more than a little time soaking up cathode rays and unfiltered information on the web. I've gone trolling for new and strange places to surf. My current new favorite hangouts are: Interesting Motherfuckers: A little biography section on the Acid Logic site. Sort of a Behind the Music for obscure figures in recent history. Tersely written and (thankfully) irony-free. Viper Wire: Cool "Nanotales" by Richard Kadrey and posted weekly on the increasingly enjoyable Infinite Matrix science fiction site. Micro "Twilight Zone" episodes in the vein of Grant Morrison or Warren Ellis. Borderline Magazine: A very slick magazine about comic books that you can download and print on Adobe. Notable for its handy "landscape" format. Each of these sites goes well with scotch or dark ales. Find more fun places to visit on my Links page. This Chapter's obligatory moral outrage comes from a little thread of articles I found on Memepool: people who have photos of their miscarried children retouched so they can be posted on the internet and deemed "born angels." These people are dangerous. Even moreso are the near-parents who dress the stillborn corpse up in their sunday best and photgraph them. These people are beyond sociopathic, they are reality-pathic. The fact that they claim that making such revolting contributions to electronic perpetuity helps them deal with their grief show that they have no inkling as to what grief is. The only way they see fit to cope with pain is to dress it up? Red flags should be rising en masse. Now, it is not the act itself that I find offensive. Victorians photographed their dead quite often. And what is a wake if not a line of folk looking at a made- up dead person? I fully expect, upon my death, that my friends will prop me up in a ridiculous costume and take photos of me. In fact I insist upon it. I expect this because my death will not come as much of a surprise to anyone, and they will be acutely aware of what behaviors I expect of them after my passing. It will be my life, and my abject refusal to take any part of it seriously, being celebrated. As opposed to these disturbed men and women who divert valuable mental resources from the human process of mourning and, instead, celebrate death. This is what offends me. This is a pure and clear emblem of contemporary western philosophy, the wholesale devotion to the idea that death needs to enshrined and encapsulated, that the scab of loss must be forever picked at. In the eyes of too many people (especially after September 11) it is a moral requirement that everyone tithe a certain percentage of their emotional faculty to the unspeakable agony of such loss, keeping this pain like a program running in the background. This is mental self-mutilation, plain and simple, on par with the society from World According to Garp who cut out their tongues. You cannot live a functional, meaningful life on this earth if you watermark yourself by the death of your child. Keeping such a dead spot fresh in your mind can only cause harm. Furthermore, I am certain that somewhere in their minds these people think that this gaudy display of their grief somehow ennobles and elevates them into heroic beings. They will be seen as brave and special. Hmm, where have I heard that before? Watch. Within five years we will learn about one of these freaks killing off their living children because they "deserve to be angels too." JP |
Eager Anticipations: The Moebius online series Arzak Rhapsody. New postage stamps featuring Harry Houdini and Andy Warhol. Landron's Hip Flask Comic. New Discs by A tour by Project Object Terrastock Music Festival Pinup Show in NJ. The SFX Expo in Boston And even farther ahead: The 2004 World Science Fiction Convention returns to Boston. |
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Observations at a Distance |
Eager Anticipations: The Moebius online series Arzak Rhapsody. New postage stamps featuring Harry Houdini and Andy Warhol. Landron's Hip Flask Comic. New Discs by A tour by Project Object Terrastock Music Festival Pinup Show in NJ. The SFX Expo in Boston And even farther ahead: The 2004 World Science Fiction Convention returns to Boston. |
Chapter Five: Ah, Summer... Hello, player. More prattle from El Jefe. I spent the last weekend of June at the North East Art Rock Festival in the dismal town of Trenton. The festival was a frenzy of great fun. I got to see Steve Hackett play live for the first time ever, saw some great performances by the legendary Nektar, Japanese madmen Gerard, and a late-night show by personal favorite Mastermind. Made some new friends and goofed off with old ones. Being a seasoned vet of many science fiction and comic conventions I thought a two-day indoor music festival would be a walk in the park, but by midnight on Sunday I was running on vapor. Still, I hope to make this a yearly pilgrimage. We haven't had a good, soaking shitstorm of rampant information-without- context in months. Thank (insert diety here) for the "Under God" ruling. The resulting fury of uneducated vitriol against a regular guy over a free verse poem written by communists to sell magazines borders on absurdist art. If you needed any proof that our government and intelligencia have abandoned productive thought for cartoonish bickering, look around. Those of you following along in your hymmbooks can entertain yourself for hours by checking The Secular Web Newswire for daily updates on the neverending battle. Personally I find it a bit creepy that this happens just as cracks appear in the Big Bang. As it is too hot to drag my frail and pallid bodkin outdoors I have been spending more than a little time soaking up cathode rays and unfiltered information on the web. I've gone trolling for new and strange places to surf. My current new favorite hangouts are: Interesting Motherfuckers: A little biography section on the Acid Logic site. Sort of a Behind the Music for obscure figures in recent history. Tersely written and (thankfully) irony-free. Viper Wire: Cool "Nanotales" by Richard Kadrey and posted weekly on the increasingly enjoyable Infinite Matrix science fiction site. Micro "Twilight Zone" episodes in the vein of Grant Morrison or Warren Ellis. Borderline Magazine: A very slick magazine about comic books that you can download and print on Adobe. Notable for its handy "landscape" format. Each of these sites goes well with scotch or dark ales. Find more fun places to visit on my Links page. This Chapter's obligatory moral outrage comes from a little thread of articles I found on Memepool: people who have photos of their miscarried children retouched so they can be posted on the internet and deemed "born angels." These people are dangerous. Even moreso are the near-parents who dress the stillborn corpse up in their sunday best and photgraph them. These people are beyond sociopathic, they are reality-pathic. The fact that they claim that making such revolting contributions to electronic perpetuity helps them deal with their grief show that they have no inkling as to what grief is. The only way they see fit to cope with pain is to dress it up? Red flags should be rising en masse. Now, it is not the act itself that I find offensive. Victorians photographed their dead quite often. And what is a wake if not a line of folk looking at a made- up dead person? I fully expect, upon my death, that my friends will prop me up in a ridiculous costume and take photos of me. In fact I insist upon it. I expect this because my death will not come as much of a surprise to anyone, and they will be acutely aware of what behaviors I expect of them after my passing. It will be my life, and my abject refusal to take any part of it seriously, being celebrated. As opposed to these disturbed men and women who divert valuable mental resources from the human process of mourning and, instead, celebrate death. This is what offends me. This is a pure and clear emblem of contemporary western philosophy, the wholesale devotion to the idea that death needs to enshrined and encapsulated, that the scab of loss must be forever picked at. In the eyes of too many people (especially after September 11) it is a moral requirement that everyone tithe a certain percentage of their emotional faculty to the unspeakable agony of such loss, keeping this pain like a program running in the background. This is mental self-mutilation, plain and simple, on par with the society from World According to Garp who cut out their tongues. You cannot live a functional, meaningful life on this earth if you watermark yourself by the death of your child. Keeping such a dead spot fresh in your mind can only cause harm. Furthermore, I am certain that somewhere in their minds these people think that this gaudy display of their grief somehow ennobles and elevates them into heroic beings. They will be seen as brave and special. Hmm, where have I heard that before? Watch. Within five years we will learn about one of these freaks killing off their living children because they "deserve to be angels too." JP |
Previous: Inbox dreck and other rude internet acts. Why I'm not feeling very patriotic these days. The Media and Me Sports. Fuck'em. |
