Sunday, October 5, 2008
Consolidation of Identity
What is the real function of blogging? To help us consolidate our identity. We are saying to the world "Here I am. This is me. See for yourself." Unfortunately, while this seems like a great opportunity, it is actually a terrifying prospect. It directly confronts us to answer this question: "Who am I?" It challenges us to communicate this in a fairly open format. The answer is "I am me.", but this is, in reality, an impossible task. There is no "me" which is static and unchanging. I think this today, but not tomarrow. I believe this today, but not tomarrow. The process of blogging underscores the futility of identifying our own identity. Unlike our own, the memory of the computer is not selective and does not change. A blog keeps us accountable, though, in reality, we are not really accountable for our actions in the past as much as for our actions in the present. Write from the present moment, and let the chips fall where they may.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
O.E.B. Extra
Okay, yes, oeb.blogspot is taken. Old English Bulldog. And yes, it's an O.E.B.
It says the following:
"Just playing with the BLOG and thought maybe there were OEB owners who want to discuss their dogs."
Just playing with the blog?
One interesting note on this one: I noticed that this blog had four responses, so I checked em out. I figured on Old English Bulldogers, but instead it was all strange solicitations. My favorite response to the Old English Bulldog blog's only entry:
Get any Desired College Degree, In less then 2 weeks. Call this number now 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Get these Degrees NOW!!! "BA", "BSc", "MA", "MSc", "MBA", "PHD", Get everything within 2 weeks. 100% verifiable, this is a real deal. Act now you owe it to your future.
It says the following:
"Just playing with the BLOG and thought maybe there were OEB owners who want to discuss their dogs."
Just playing with the blog?
One interesting note on this one: I noticed that this blog had four responses, so I checked em out. I figured on Old English Bulldogers, but instead it was all strange solicitations. My favorite response to the Old English Bulldog blog's only entry:
Get any Desired College Degree, In less then 2 weeks. Call this number now 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Get these Degrees NOW!!! "BA", "BSc", "MA", "MSc", "MBA", "PHD", Get everything within 2 weeks. 100% verifiable, this is a real deal. Act now you owe it to your future.
(((I'll bet you didn't know you could get your PHD in two weeks. I called to get mine, but it turns out they do it by sending you to another dimension where you already have a PHD. Unfortunately, the process costs $100,000 and takes 10 years off your life. Crossing the dimensional barrier is a very painful and unpleasant experience, often resulting in permanent psychosis.)))
This is a sad one too. I imagine some old guy who's only love in life is Old English Bulldogs, and he writes this blog, reaches out to the world, tries to connect in some way to another human being somewhere, and what happens? Bogus college degrees. The earnest plea snuffed by some charlatan selling lies.
Alphbetical Blog Creation
The more I examine the world of blogging, the more interested I become. The one entry blog (O.E.B.) is a very telling phenomenon, but telling of what? I've decided to explore this phenomenon further. First, I need a random cross section of blogs to examine, in order to get a handily on the idea of exactly how many of the blogs (I'm limiting my examination to the "Blogspot" blogs for now) are O.E.B.s. (O.E.B.s may actually have anywhere from 0-2 entries (posts), although Z.E.B.s may say something significantly different that O.E.B.s or even T.B.E.s. But for now...). For my random sample, I'll check the alphabet blogs, a-z (example: g .blogspot .com). Lets see what we see...
A, B, C, D, F, H, I, K, L, M, P, Q, R, S, T, W, X, & Z are O.B.E.s
O and J may be.
The longest running in the Alphabet series is G at just over one year.
Here is something brief about the non-O.E.B.s and some of the more interesting examples of actual O.E.B.s.
E is... interesting. Sad. 9 posts over three weeks. Young guy obviously has crush on girl, says too much, she disappears. Sad.
G is fantastic. It spends a little over a year following the life of a nineteen year old girl in a NCY college. One thing I enjoyed about this one is it tracks a period of time between April 2001 and February 2002, so it spans the whole 9-11 thing. She says at some point, excitedly, that she has a view of WTC from her dorm room. Try reading the transition days between 9-9 and 9-12 posting. As I read this blog, and there is a lot there, I really felt like I got to know this girl, and after it ends deliberately with a final post reading "see you space cowboy...", I was...sad. These blogs are so depressing, but why? Anyway, g.blogspot is well worth checking out. Makes for a nice short story.
J is open only to "invited" bloggers. I was not invited.
N is a recent and active (2007-2008) blog, entirely in Chinese (could be Japanese, Korean, etc.) Couldn't understand a word, though it did start to play some kind of pop music...
O has four pictures, no text beyond labels. Written is Spanish.
Q is a O.E.B., but it is a good example of one. Two lengthy entries posted at different times on the same day. Thats all.
T is interesting O.E.B. example. 5 or so entries writen on the same day over six hours.
Y is possibly active; 4 entries from 2007 to 2008. Some guy from Turkey and it's writen in Turkish so your guess is as good as mine (unless you speak Turkish). Gobble gobble.
Next time, the number blogs.
A, B, C, D, F, H, I, K, L, M, P, Q, R, S, T, W, X, & Z are O.B.E.s
O and J may be.
The longest running in the Alphabet series is G at just over one year.
Here is something brief about the non-O.E.B.s and some of the more interesting examples of actual O.E.B.s.
E is... interesting. Sad. 9 posts over three weeks. Young guy obviously has crush on girl, says too much, she disappears. Sad.
G is fantastic. It spends a little over a year following the life of a nineteen year old girl in a NCY college. One thing I enjoyed about this one is it tracks a period of time between April 2001 and February 2002, so it spans the whole 9-11 thing. She says at some point, excitedly, that she has a view of WTC from her dorm room. Try reading the transition days between 9-9 and 9-12 posting. As I read this blog, and there is a lot there, I really felt like I got to know this girl, and after it ends deliberately with a final post reading "see you space cowboy...", I was...sad. These blogs are so depressing, but why? Anyway, g.blogspot is well worth checking out. Makes for a nice short story.
J is open only to "invited" bloggers. I was not invited.
N is a recent and active (2007-2008) blog, entirely in Chinese (could be Japanese, Korean, etc.) Couldn't understand a word, though it did start to play some kind of pop music...
O has four pictures, no text beyond labels. Written is Spanish.
Q is a O.E.B., but it is a good example of one. Two lengthy entries posted at different times on the same day. Thats all.
T is interesting O.E.B. example. 5 or so entries writen on the same day over six hours.
Y is possibly active; 4 entries from 2007 to 2008. Some guy from Turkey and it's writen in Turkish so your guess is as good as mine (unless you speak Turkish). Gobble gobble.
Next time, the number blogs.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
A Tree Falls in the Forest...
Okay, I am starting to see the difficulty with blogging. You have to at least imagine that somebody will read the damn thing. Well, maybe not, but I think most human beings, when deciding a course of action, must consider the reason for devoting time to any task, especially one which requires more than passive level of participation, such as watching or listening. If I am going to exert a certain level of effort, I want a commensurate level or return on my investment of time. Even now, precious seconds of my life are ticking away, which could have been spent on passive entertainment (such as watching television, listening to radio, meandering around You Tube), so I have to make a sort of mental calculation. Is it worth my time? Will I revive an equal or greater amount of enjoyment from blogging? If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a noise?
Well, I've kind of screwed myself, philosophically speaking, because I have already set up the premise that the nature of blogging is to quit. While there would be a certain irony (or possibly hypocrisy) to quitting now, I feel I must press on, even if the whole thing ends up being a dead-end. I'll tell you, the amount of effort which must be exerted just to continue writing, without a well developed sense of purpose, in almost unassailable.
Oh, I'd just like to say "Hi There" to anybody who happens to be reading this. Hi there. I'd like to assure you that anything you read here comes from the heart. I'm trying not to over think it.
Anyway, how about some philosophy? I took a Gideons bible from a hotel room a while ago (I've heard that's okay, as long as you read the thing from time to time). Apparently, Jesus (whom I understand is a key figure it the philosophy of the Christian) was asked a question (by a lawyer) to tell him the great[est] commandment in the (God's) law. The reply, apparently, was "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." The second great commandment is the good ol' "Love thy neighbor as thyself" line. Okay, there you go, the basic description of God's great commandments as laid out by Jesus himself (with the understanding that the philosophy of the Christian is inextricably linked to the words within this document, in that the philosophy is derived more or less entirely from the interpretation of these words). Okay, so God's first rule, the "great[est]" rule of them all, the one thing "God", conceived by the Christians to be the ultimate authority (a supra natural entity of effectively infinite power; if there are any rules in our reality, this is because God set created the conditions for that rule, be it gravity or morality), is to "love" this entity (Love? A tricky work there, but I think I get the gist of it; utter and willing devotion.) with all my heart (not literally I assume, though ALL means there is no room for loving other things or people. If I command you to "give all your marbles to God" and then "give some marbles to your neighbor too", this is factually impossible".) All my heart, soul, and mind. What is the difference? Heart... meaning emotionally. Soul... meaning...soul? What the heck is the soul anyway? How do I does it different than heart and mind? And mind? Meaning thoughts? Meaning my rational capacity? My logical mind? Love God with all my mind? Hmmm... Here's my problem: How am to obey God's #1 rule? I can't love something that doesn't appear to exist in my reality? Seriously, I don't see it. I don't smell it. I don't hear it. I don't perceive God at all. Now, if some have suggested that they "hear" God's voice in their head, like a scitzaphretic [sic, however you spell it] person (I'm not trying to be derisive here, it's just the only phenomena I'm aware of that is like it), and I've just got to say, I don't hear voices. Even back when I did believe He existed (really believed it!) I never heard voices. Now, I had thoughts, sure, but I try not to mistake thoughts for God. Now, if I'm wrong about that, if thoughts are the voice of God in my head, I am startled by the things He is telling me. If fact, everything I'm writing now starts as "thought", so your reading the voice of God right now! How about that! God is telling me that only those ignorant about the nature of reality believe in the existence of things they can't perceive, based off the credibility of the records of what other people did perceive. God is telling me that I'm rambling, and He's right. (well, He would be, wouldn't He?) So what? My thoughts (or God's voice) do seem to wander around quite a bit. The point is, I cannot generate an emotional context for the imperceptible. I think the trick to it is what I might call "wishful thinking". I would (really) like it if there were a supra natural entity (with the power to change or control the very nature of our reality) who was hearing (or generating) my thoughts and who, in return for following his rules (chief among them being, "Love Me", makes promises of happiness (since it makes this entity unhappy to perceive our lack of love for him, I suppose. (Perhaps God cannot experience love at all, except by sort of "stowing away" in our perceptions of reality, emotions, and thoughts.) I would like this to be true, so if I believe it is (in spite of the lack any actual perception of It) it will be effectively true, as true as anything else I believe to be accurately perceived by myself. Now, I know my perceptions can be misleading. To the extent it is possible to see things that don't exist (this does beg the question: "Does anything 'exist' outside of our perception." In other words, "What is the difference between reality and the reality we perceive. In the philosophy of reason, of science, there is an objective reality, of which our perceptions are sometimes inaccurate. This particular conceit is necessary since science seeks to answer questions about that an objective reality. Weather this objective reality exists outside the context of the scientific philosophy itself is not relevant, since it is the central conceit of the philosophy, just as weather or not the Bible is accurate is irrelevant with respects to the perspective of the Christan philosophy). So, can these two philosophies coexist in the human mind? Well, yes and no. Logic (in that the central conceit of logic is that effect follows from cause, with each effect becoming it's own cause. The so called chain of causality) operates to some degree within the minds of all humans. In fact, it appears to me that ones "sanity" is rated by how closely are minds are able to link the right cause to right effect. Logic works well when it comes to getting what I want (provided that what I want exists as part of that objective reality I spoke of), though not so well at getting the things outside of reality. So the question is, should I really seek things outside of objective reality (God, for example). Well? I'll have to think about that...
Well, I've kind of screwed myself, philosophically speaking, because I have already set up the premise that the nature of blogging is to quit. While there would be a certain irony (or possibly hypocrisy) to quitting now, I feel I must press on, even if the whole thing ends up being a dead-end. I'll tell you, the amount of effort which must be exerted just to continue writing, without a well developed sense of purpose, in almost unassailable.
Oh, I'd just like to say "Hi There" to anybody who happens to be reading this. Hi there. I'd like to assure you that anything you read here comes from the heart. I'm trying not to over think it.
Anyway, how about some philosophy? I took a Gideons bible from a hotel room a while ago (I've heard that's okay, as long as you read the thing from time to time). Apparently, Jesus (whom I understand is a key figure it the philosophy of the Christian) was asked a question (by a lawyer) to tell him the great[est] commandment in the (God's) law. The reply, apparently, was "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." The second great commandment is the good ol' "Love thy neighbor as thyself" line. Okay, there you go, the basic description of God's great commandments as laid out by Jesus himself (with the understanding that the philosophy of the Christian is inextricably linked to the words within this document, in that the philosophy is derived more or less entirely from the interpretation of these words). Okay, so God's first rule, the "great[est]" rule of them all, the one thing "God", conceived by the Christians to be the ultimate authority (a supra natural entity of effectively infinite power; if there are any rules in our reality, this is because God set created the conditions for that rule, be it gravity or morality), is to "love" this entity (Love? A tricky work there, but I think I get the gist of it; utter and willing devotion.) with all my heart (not literally I assume, though ALL means there is no room for loving other things or people. If I command you to "give all your marbles to God" and then "give some marbles to your neighbor too", this is factually impossible".) All my heart, soul, and mind. What is the difference? Heart... meaning emotionally. Soul... meaning...soul? What the heck is the soul anyway? How do I does it different than heart and mind? And mind? Meaning thoughts? Meaning my rational capacity? My logical mind? Love God with all my mind? Hmmm... Here's my problem: How am to obey God's #1 rule? I can't love something that doesn't appear to exist in my reality? Seriously, I don't see it. I don't smell it. I don't hear it. I don't perceive God at all. Now, if some have suggested that they "hear" God's voice in their head, like a scitzaphretic [sic, however you spell it] person (I'm not trying to be derisive here, it's just the only phenomena I'm aware of that is like it), and I've just got to say, I don't hear voices. Even back when I did believe He existed (really believed it!) I never heard voices. Now, I had thoughts, sure, but I try not to mistake thoughts for God. Now, if I'm wrong about that, if thoughts are the voice of God in my head, I am startled by the things He is telling me. If fact, everything I'm writing now starts as "thought", so your reading the voice of God right now! How about that! God is telling me that only those ignorant about the nature of reality believe in the existence of things they can't perceive, based off the credibility of the records of what other people did perceive. God is telling me that I'm rambling, and He's right. (well, He would be, wouldn't He?) So what? My thoughts (or God's voice) do seem to wander around quite a bit. The point is, I cannot generate an emotional context for the imperceptible. I think the trick to it is what I might call "wishful thinking". I would (really) like it if there were a supra natural entity (with the power to change or control the very nature of our reality) who was hearing (or generating) my thoughts and who, in return for following his rules (chief among them being, "Love Me", makes promises of happiness (since it makes this entity unhappy to perceive our lack of love for him, I suppose. (Perhaps God cannot experience love at all, except by sort of "stowing away" in our perceptions of reality, emotions, and thoughts.) I would like this to be true, so if I believe it is (in spite of the lack any actual perception of It) it will be effectively true, as true as anything else I believe to be accurately perceived by myself. Now, I know my perceptions can be misleading. To the extent it is possible to see things that don't exist (this does beg the question: "Does anything 'exist' outside of our perception." In other words, "What is the difference between reality and the reality we perceive. In the philosophy of reason, of science, there is an objective reality, of which our perceptions are sometimes inaccurate. This particular conceit is necessary since science seeks to answer questions about that an objective reality. Weather this objective reality exists outside the context of the scientific philosophy itself is not relevant, since it is the central conceit of the philosophy, just as weather or not the Bible is accurate is irrelevant with respects to the perspective of the Christan philosophy). So, can these two philosophies coexist in the human mind? Well, yes and no. Logic (in that the central conceit of logic is that effect follows from cause, with each effect becoming it's own cause. The so called chain of causality) operates to some degree within the minds of all humans. In fact, it appears to me that ones "sanity" is rated by how closely are minds are able to link the right cause to right effect. Logic works well when it comes to getting what I want (provided that what I want exists as part of that objective reality I spoke of), though not so well at getting the things outside of reality. So the question is, should I really seek things outside of objective reality (God, for example). Well? I'll have to think about that...
Monday, September 22, 2008
Defying the Odds: A Second Post
Hay, a second post!
I like that I can put a warning on my blog for "Adult Content". I should post some dirty pictures or something. Well, you've been warned, so if I happen to use foul language or adult topics, you can't blame me. This is the internet for God's sake. No holes barred [sic]. Seriously, you can see footage a man pooping into someones mouth. Now that's entertainment! (And the partisipants are always speaking German. What does it mean?)
I like that I can put a warning on my blog for "Adult Content". I should post some dirty pictures or something. Well, you've been warned, so if I happen to use foul language or adult topics, you can't blame me. This is the internet for God's sake. No holes barred [sic]. Seriously, you can see footage a man pooping into someones mouth. Now that's entertainment! (And the partisipants are always speaking German. What does it mean?)
Saturday, September 20, 2008
The Real Blogging Phenomenon
The really amazing thing about blogging is the increadible number of blogs out there with one or two entrees, usually ending many years ago. They often start with, "This is my online journel. I'll write more later. Oct 12, 2002." And that's it! Nothing else ever, but now, nobody can ever have some really cool blog-name because somebody never bothered to use or cancel the friggin blog. It's true, just type in "X".blogspot.com (where "X" can be any short phase or word you can think of and you'll likely get a blog, and 95% of the time, it's got less a half a dozen entrees, or no entrees (the "thisisnotablog" blog for example only says, "this is not a blog") and even if there are numerous entrees (or logs) then they stopped some time back in 2004. Hay, blogspot, time to clean house guys. What a friggin waste of digital space and potenial creative... potential. Seriously, try anything... lets see... how about "asscrack". Hey, it's there, and this is what it says:
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Hey dudes. This is kyle... I'm kyle... my names kyle...
posted by Kyle : 8:37 PM
That's it! If you want to understand the real phenomenon of blogging, try it and you'll see. It's kinda sad. Many of them start with things like "I'm having a midlife crisis and just want somebody to empathize with me." The saddest one I saw said somthing like: "This may be the start of new chapter of my life." That was the only entry. Others say things like, "This blog will be the start of a new community of art lovers." One entry. Why is it that nearly every blogger looses interest in blogging the very next day after starting the friggin blog? Maybe I'll find out for myself.
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Hey dudes. This is kyle... I'm kyle... my names kyle...
posted by Kyle : 8:37 PM
That's it! If you want to understand the real phenomenon of blogging, try it and you'll see. It's kinda sad. Many of them start with things like "I'm having a midlife crisis and just want somebody to empathize with me." The saddest one I saw said somthing like: "This may be the start of new chapter of my life." That was the only entry. Others say things like, "This blog will be the start of a new community of art lovers." One entry. Why is it that nearly every blogger looses interest in blogging the very next day after starting the friggin blog? Maybe I'll find out for myself.
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