A Million Stupid Bastards with A Million Guns!

It all starts with information.

Information makes the world move forward. It allows us to grow as human beings. It helps us plan for future events, and understand past ones. Information protects us from poor decisions, or shows us the outcome of these same decisions. Information is the soil from which ideas grow and blossom.

So more information is better, correct?

Of course not! We have more information than ever before, and it's so readily available that with little to no effort or financing on my part, I could download and print the world's news for the past week and distribute it to everyone in my nearby area. And I could post the link to all of it on this here blog, and facebook, and twitter, and all over the damn place. I could attempt to educate the world.

And I would fail miserably, because the world is full of stupids. And these stupids seemingly refuse to be educated.

The easy availability of information does not encourage folks to do research and understand issues that they feel passionate about. They simply have an easier time finding one (usually unreliable) source and bleeding it dry, copying and pasting and reposting the information that pops up first when they type two words into the Google.

I feel that the availability is directly leading to these problems. Before the internet and file sharing and wikipedia and all that jazz, if you wanted to know about something, you had to physically research it. This involved long hours in a library, flipping through books and reference materials and microfiche and cross-referencing and fact-checking and pulling all-nighters and such. And you wanted to cover all of your bases, because one disputed fact that you couldn't account for, and you were in for another night at the library. So you became well-educated in your chosen topic, and you made rational assumptions and reasonable concessions to refuted points.

Now, it takes little to no effort to shout one poorly-articulated point, and then flood your adversary's facebook wall with link after link to supposedly factual websites by people who probably did more work than you did.

I realize this isn't true for everyone, and there are plenty of people out there that do their research and understand something before they start talking about it. And there are people (like me) who may have wrong information, and may mention it to other folks, but we're willing to own up to mistakes and admit that sometimes we just don't have a clue what we're talking about. But these aren't the people I'm talking about. And the people I am talking about have a much bigger army.

There are millions of stupid bastards out there, and they're all armed with unlimited information. And they only need a little bit of it to drive you crazy.

100 Word Story - Unicorn edition

So, I posted a thing on my Twitter, asking for a story idea. I would write it in exactly 100 words. I got fully one response. So, without further bull-hooey, here's a story for Brenna, in 100 words.

Chocolate cake is a rare commodity in the land of Rainbolivia. It is rich in nutrients vital to the wild unicorns that prance about the landscape, engaged in petty chicanery and gentle stabbing. The only obstacle standing in the way of these horned creatures are the machinations of the nefarious clownfish. He's a puddle-jumping monster, sneaking into the cakes and condemning them to disgusting flavour with his fishy scales. But there is one special unicorn. In his youth, he burned his taste buds on chocolate lave cake. He tastes nothing. He's got the fish in his cake. And he's hungry.

More to come. Send me ideas, I'll keep doing it, for reals.

V.

Shuffle Repeat. Forever.

I'm thinking back to the days before music came in readily available online doodads, downloaded from whatsit sites using Gigs, or whatever.

I used to know every word to every song on Weird Al's Greatest Hits Volume 2. Don't laugh, it was the first CD I ever owned, and I listened to it a thousand million times. The words and melodies were ingrained into my subconscious, and when provided with the most subtle of cues, I could burst into song if the need should arise. When I had enough cash on me to buy my own CDs, I listened to them constantly, to the point of burning holes clear through the discs. I couldn't afford a ton at a time, so usually there were 3 or 4 in rotation. When they died, I would get new ones.

And I learned all of those songs too. I could recite the lyrics from any song at any time. I could sing the lyrics to from one to the rhythm of another.

I also learned to appreciate music this way. I discerned quickly what I liked, and what I didn't. There was no time for messing about with bands and songs I didn't want to hear, or that I heard once and enjoyed, but didn't consider it a long term thing. I learned that I didn't like listening to sad music when I was sad, because it made me feel worse. I like happy music most of the time, and angry music some of the time. And when I listened to CDs, I could choose the tunes that best fit my mood.

Fast-forward to 2010, when I finally got an iPod, and I started throwing all kinds of music on there. A little farther forward, and I figured out what a torrent was. And now, I have hundreds of songs on a constant, unending loop playing in my car. It's probably playing right now, with no one listening to it, and no one noticing one way or another.

My appreciation for the finer things in music waned. It became background noise, a generally ignored soundtrack. Some of the songs are my personal favourites. Some were downloaded on a whim. People gave me other ones. Most of them, I don't even care about, and I skip right through looking for the gold. As I download more, the odds of me finding something I want to actually hear diminish. It's something like a 1 in 20 chance that I hear what I feel like at that particular moment. When I was buying actual physical CDs, my odds were 19 in 20.

I'm not lambasting digital media, or the ability to rip off the record industry at an alarming rate, and jacking up the price of actual physical CDs. I'm just saying it's changed the way I listen to my music. I suppose I could turn off shuffle, and take it off repeat. I could pick an album on my iPod and roll like that for a while. But it's already on shuffle. And the next tune will probably be good. Well, maybe the next.

And shuffle. And repeat.

New Title for a Book: "Do Not Disturb: I'm Reading, Ya Bastards!"

Sometimes, when I'm sitting alone, on a park bench, or in a coffee shop, or the break room at work, or on a plane, train, automobile, or anywhere that it is possible to sit, I'm accosted by a very strange person.

This person feels that a book is just a harmless pastime. They're not wrong. I'm not studying for a class or anything. I'm not deeply engrossed in philosophically pondering the repercussions of cybernetic parts implanted onto a human body. But I'm trying to be.

I have the urge to go to the places that these people call homes and walk in on them watching TV or doing word searches, or whatever it is they do with their time, and I'll start talking to them about how those are things that I don't do. I'll say, "Yeah, I was never really into the TV-watching thing. I mean, I don't have the attention span for it. I was more into books." I'll continue on in this fashion until they see how I feel.

Equally obnoxious are the people that sit down across from you and wait with expectant eyes, like I'm about to break into song or something for their benefit. I'm afraid they're expecting my act of reading to be a little more exciting than it's actually going to be. But I feel no shame, no regret. Reading is a personal act, and I'm doing it for me. If they want me to read out loud to them, all they have to do is ask. But they're probably not going to understand what's going on, and I'm definitely not starting over.

In RE: the title of this blog post, I feel that a banner should be placed along the top edge of any book, both front and back cover, that says "Do Not Disturb." Maybe then people will start getting the idea.