• Sep. 7, 2006
• By Shawn
• In Ramblings and Rants
• No Comment
• 0
• Tagged: Ramblings and Rants

Hey, look at that. I’m already bored off my tits and don’t want to be here. Who am I kidding? I was bored in the car on my way over here.

Speaking of the car, when I got out of it this morning, I suddenly remembered all the shit I wanted to accomplish last night. How’s that for a pisser?

Speaking of pisser, that’s sort of where my mood’s been in the past 18 hours, and I don’t really know why. I technically shouldn’t be in a bad mood about anything, but I keep stumbling into waves of other people’s stupid, negative, inconsiderate and generally annoying behavior just about every corner I turn. Compound that with things I’m already frustrated with, and hey lookie there – shitty mood.

I almost wrote the word “modo” back there. I don’t know what it means, but I like it. I think it’s what happens when Scandinavian designers redesign your dojo. “Ya, velcome to your new den of zen awareness and physical destruction. This is not a dojo. It is a modo!” You look in the corner, and that sparring totem pole thing has been replaced by a giant blue plastic figure with no descript features or sharp edges, but it’s pleasing to look at. The rounded blue androgynous being makes you want to listen to Tosca, and you think that you really could live in South Beach, but only in a place with a lot of bamboo and the lighting adjusted so it always looks like the last minute of dusk, while you sip on dark rum and ginger infused cocktails and think of new ways to use the word “infused.”

Speaking of words that have no meaning, it’s official: people who use the word “infused” in cooking references – they’re full of shit. It’s just extra syllables. It sounds like there’s some kind of chemical process involving goggles, precision tools and blue flame. It means “in”. “I had the encrusted scallops infused with Cointreau and braised with a carmelized reduction.” That means you threw Cointreau into the pan with the scallops. Or you marinated them. Either way, there’s Cointreau in the fucking scallops. And reduction? That means you let the pan sit on the burner, but the art is apparently riding the line of laziness that determines how long you can sip you’re glass of wine and stare at the pan before you finally have to move it (and consequently yourself) so you’re not eating briquettes. It’s like a game of chicken for people handicapped by their own ego.

I think about writing in my journal all the time. But I never do. Is it the climate, myself or both? No one’s around anymore, except three people and a bunch of lurkers. Everyone’s lost interest in the interaction. Which is fine, and I can’t complain. I’m one of them. Waiting for one of you fuckers to entertain me. It used to be quite the clubhouse, but like all things, the novelty wore off. And people got busy. Or something came up. I was out of work and at home for a year and a half. I had better things to do than stare at everyone’s diaries and links to weird shit. Not that I don’t like you all, but let’s face it, would you rather do something constructive or read crap by people bored and stuck at work?

Exactly.

Well, now I’m bored and stuck at work. And while I could post an actual journal, I just feel like that kind of self-exploration is both boring and, well, rather personal. And believe me, there’s nothing worse than boring personal melodrama whose drama relies in the fact that it’s trying to be more interesting than it really is. Because it’s not. Interesting that is. In other words, it is not infused with interest. And you don’t care anyway. Well, maybe you do care, but I don’t care if you care, because I don’t care. And if I don’t, why should you? That’s kinda creepy.

New theory: the Internet is turning people into flagrant assholes.

It enables people to exhibit and practice shitty behavior from the comfort of their own home without fear of repercussion or being smacked in the mouth like they should have been a long time ago.

Here’s an example, so you can see where I’m coming from on this. Go to digg.com and poke around on a bunch of posts with a lot of comments (look for high diggs.) Soon, you’ll find a comment lambasting another, calling them a name maybe and telling them why they’re an idiot. Strangely, many idiot comments are because of a typo that someone made.

Typos happen. They’re going to happen a lot when you hand out keyboards to the general public who hated the two English classes they had in high school. However, I missed the memo that said one person’s typo was another’s free license to criticize the living bejesus out of them. It’s not hard to see that the critic criticizes because it empowers a false sense of intelligent superiority, and more importantly, because they can get away with it.

And it’s not just a grammar police thing. People sling their opinions against the wall like they own the place, and then treat those who disagree with the same care and empathy as the White House does for anyone who “dissents” against the War on Terror.

It’s easy to look at these people and say, “it’s just one guy.” Sure, some nut job finds a way to angle something to empower his white supremacist philosophy. That’s one guy. But if it’s just one guy, how does that asshole show up in more places than Isaac on the Love Boat. It’s a lot of people. The behavior encourages others to do it to. It’s behavior by example playground rules.

Digg is just one example. Any public Internet forum has it. Remember livejournal’s heyday, back when all y’all posted treatises on personal philosophy and other things that might make people think? On the other side were fanatics pounding their foreheads into monitors, threatening death if you didn’t love your neighbor, unless your neighbor was a homo. Good times, good times.

Of course there’s also the theory that people were assholes anyway, and the Internet has just enabled them to come out of their little world, or hole, or closet or where ever they come from.

Maybe. But there’s a big difference between talking smack to someone’s face and anonymously posting it on a giant electronic bulletin board for the whole world to see. Sure, they were assholes anyway. But now they’re encouraged.

And none of this is anything you don’t already know. In fact you probably know it so well, you already came to that conclusion cognizantly or indirectly a while ago and said fuck it. Maybe you realized it was just easier to not post, to not delve into the land of typo-infused risk, and to just keep walking and watching. The journal more or less became an offseason spectator sport.

Or perhaps you have succumb to the zen warmth of your modo and can’t be bothered with that whole journaling thing. If that’s true, be warned – eventually, the blue guy will creep you out. I promise.