writing

I've been mostly done with fiction writing. I had stopped looking to it as a medium through which to...channel ME. But I'm in a fiction workshop right now, so I've been doing it, writing fiction, and so I've gotten to think about it a lot. And this results in a lot of meta-fiction. I don't go in thinking, "this is gonna be meta-fiction," but instead go in thinking, "ok, this is gonna be a story," and then half-way through I wonder "what am I doing? what have I written?" so I have to go back through it and figure that out, figure out what I've been doing, and what I find there, I make into the story.

Anyway, I wasn't even planning on writing that. I was more interested in where I potentially could go with writing. If writing is a thing I'm interested, I need to figure out where to focus.

Things I think I know for sure:

1. I am mostly interested in tone. A strong narrative voice.
2. I'm not very interested in creating images. I'd much prefer to create a feeling.
3. I hope that if the narrative tone is strong enough, nobody cares about what the setting looks like, they just want to hear what the narrator is saying.
4. Fiction has lots of cool devices, but I'm not sure if I can get behind them like I used to.

This leads me to this conclusion: I'm mostly just interested in narrators. I'm mostly just interested in a voice talking. I kind of resent being expected to have more.

Is this a genre? Is it a columnist? I feel like it's a bit different from columnist, in that columnists have this expectation to...i'm not sure.

I'm a bit sad that I'm not as enthusiastic about literary devices anymore. They were always so exciting..so much mystery. I'm just much less into decoding now. I really just want to feel....hm, although I recently watched Mulholland Drive and that was pretty fun to decode...but that's different.

Um. I shall work on this...via...writing more. I'll try and remember that this blog exists, and I'll write in it.

Yeahh. Word.

Web Comics

Web Comics often have a pretty specific sense of humor. They could be on vastly different topics, but they are often the subtlest of subtle you can find. And if not subtle-subtle, they're a meta-joke, a joke about the joke, a joke about comics, drawings, the characters making the jokes unknowingly at themselves,

And, I think, to find them funny, you have to be in a pretty fricken good mood. For example: Dinosaur Comics (www.qwantz.com). I used to read it every morning. I loved it. Now I read it, and I understand why I would crack up every morning, but I don't right now. I'm just not in a good enough mood to find the subtle play between the character's awareness, his words, and the comic's premise "lolable."

Try it. I could be totally wrong. But next time you're in a really good mood, on a kind of high I suppose, go to qwantz.com. It's hilarious. You just sit there thinking about the guy writing it, and how many tiny jokes he's putting in, and you recognize them, and they all combine to be ridiculous AND hilarious, and so there's a lot to appreciate.
But then go when you're not feeling high--can you relate to the mindset of the guy writing it? He had to be happy while writing the comics...and I think you have to be happy while reading them. Otherwise, they're just not that funny.

Favorite Albums?

I'm just posting this to have a non-loseable way of keeping track of this.

But, I wanted to write down some of the albums that I think of as my favorite. Where no matter how many times I listen to them, they have a similar effect as when I first heard them.

* Acrobatic Tenement - by At the Drive-In

* Young Effectuals - by The Helio Sequence

* Broken Social Scene - by Broken Social Scene

* The Garbage Man and the Prostitute - Kill Me Tomorrow

That's it for now, I'll have to categorize these. In fact Broken Social Scene may not even fit in this category of "have listened to a million times but still has same effect."

privacy vs. non-privacy

So, is the idea with privacy really as simple as:

If we don't have privacy, things we'd normally do in private, we'd HAVE to do in public, and so they'd become acceptable (they'd have to), not frowned upon as things to hide.

and so therefore, we wouldn't be living in a society that often ignores real issues and desires of the people. Currently, we deal with issues, but since they are private and technically not admitted, they are much harder to deal with.

So, if things were forced into the public, issues would be more clear and easy to take on.

is that the idea?

our dollars go 35% less far

we're eating lunch, having a grand old time, talking laughing, and then

it's time to pay.

All conversation stops, faces become grave. The transition from gaiety is severe and heavy.

do we need to do away with currency to solve this? OR, should we simply pay before eating?

*.) oh yeah, and um, why I think conservatism is shot term thinking...

I'll probably come in and revise this, but for now, here are a few snippets of why I've developed that view that a conservative philosophy is based around short term thinking and a liberal (that is, socialist, anarchist, etc.) philosophy is based around long term thinking.

--This brief article by Joshua Clover: http://janedark.com/2008/10/apocalyptic_capitalism.html

--that conservatism seems to be based around the idea of a free market. The free market rewards the now, pretty much always since, that seems to be human nature, and so a philosophy based on this will functin like this.

Ok, I just realized something. Right now. And I'm not going to edit this entry.

I think that, to me, I associate conservative ideals with free market ideals, that is, capitalist ideals. And so when I say conservative vs. liberal, I'm mostly saying capitalism vs. marxism/socialism/whatever.

I say mostly because even within the realm of the capitalist world, liberal parties tend to invest resources in the long term (certainly not always) while the conservative fix tends to take the non-near future and community into account.

So, sorry about any confusion!

3.) "Truth has a liberal bias"

Please just hang in until the end:

So, throughout human history, people tend to act with short term self-interest, right? Apparently they prefer it.
However, acting for the long term is always a better idea, and eventually morein everyone's self-interest, right?

But it's harder to prefer this. Just like it's harder to prefer a tabloid headline to a dense essay----Immediate short term gratification is hard to resist and easy to hold onto and get behind.

And, is not short term self-interest at the center of conservative philosophy?

And, is not long term community interest at the center of liberal philosophy

And, is not conservative radio, like tabloids, much more profitable and harder to resist than well...the basically non-existent liberal radio?

Basically what I'm saying is that conservatism appeals more to base urges of humans and takes less intelligence to latch onto. It thinks more like someone on a coke binge, ignoring the inevitable come down as long as possible.

Max, anybody, plz tell me I'm wrong. I feel like an ignorant ass making these assertions, but, I also feel very logical.
________________________________

Rupert Murdoch's father succeeded in the newspaper industry by printing tabloid headlines in "real" newspapers. People couldn't resist. Murdoch himself said, "If it made money, I'd have a liberal TV station tomorrow."

The thing to note is, people like what is easy. Some say, give people what they want, if they want tabloids why not give it to them? Well, if you're a parent and your kid is exposed to heroin and wants more, are you going to give him/her more? No.

People don't always want what is good for them, they want what is easiest and most readily appealing.

Conservatism is easiest and most readily appealing. This does not mean it's good.


Am I overlooking anything major here?

(oh yeah, and, this basically all also applies to the "free market," just because it sells doesn't mean it's good...McDonald's, KFC, etc.--diabetes and obesity didn't exist in China before these places came in.)