2001-09-11 - 1:43

Good luck getting a horse to eat dog food

I came up with a new bit to entertain myself. Well, actually, Greg came up with the idea; but I'm rolling with it.

To explain, I'll have to provide some background. I don't play EverQuest, but I have hung out and worked with Greg and Don enough that I've been exposed to the game. In particular, I'm familiar with one of the message boards that some players use.

As a non-player, I have little interest in reading about the game itself; but I have been amused by an area set up specifically for starting flames. I only really started reading it last week, though, after somebody posted something so blatantly racist that I was angry enough to want to verify that they were shot down. (Unsurprisingly, the mentality behind the racism was completely unable to mount an intelligent argument and was soundly beaten on every point.)

Sometime while I was reading, an idea was presented that suited me perfectly: I have now signed up for an account on the message board strictly for the purpose of responding to as many threads as possible with an appropriate Simpsons quote.

Yes, this really was the highlight of my day. Quit looking at me like that.

Okay, the other high point was receiving the new Bj�rk CD in the mail. Yes, it has been out for a couple of weeks; but I had to order the import version for the extra track. After giving it one proper listen (plopped between the speakers on my good stereo downstairs and paying attention, not just using the crappy blaster in my room), I'm very impressed.

Bj�rk is one of a few artists who I find particularly intense and who always conjours up a lot of associations. I liked Selmasongs, but it didn't have enough to it for me to consider it a "real" album of its own. Vespertine, though, clearly seems to be a worthy successor to Homogenic, which is very high praise for me. I will be very satisfied if Vespertine also grows stronger for me with age, as Bj�rk's past albums have.

And the concert is less than a month away (woohoo!).

Speaking of strong impacts, I'm about 80 pages into Ham on Rye. Wow. I think that this will be the book that I recommend to Liam as an introduction to Bukowski. Bukowski writes about life in a personal way that is so simple as to be undeniable; and he pulls you into his viewpoint. The bleakness, the ugliness, the violence and stupidity, the comedy, the beauty, and the resiliancy of Life, of a life--it's all there. Give me another 200 pages and I'll let you know my full impressions.

The book, along with my recent reads Post Office and Last Exit to Brooklyn, are definitely resonating with the lingering ideas from a conversation that I had with Greg the other night about humanity. This entry is getting long enough, though, so I don't want to rehash the whole discussion.

What it boils down to is a simple thought. Consider how little you've come to expect from humanity. Sure, you're a cool, open-minded, nice, reasonable person. You hang out with cool people. But you know that the majority of humanity is mean, selfish, petty, and close-minded to the extreme. That's why you have to lock your doors.

Think how little effort it would take by each individual for the world to be a much cooler place. What should be the easiest, most basic level of civility is not there in the world and it never will be. I'd like to be more idealistic--I am only 24. But by any reasonable measurement, I don't know how to assess the whole of humanity as anything other than a great failure of potential.

Yeah, I'm all over the place with this entry tonight. Since I don't really find room to give the serious thoughts their own space in here very often, though, I'll let them crack open when they can. I have no real follow-through or deep analysis, but these are more of the thoughts that are in my head, which is why the journal is here.

I guess what I'm really thinking is that we should start our own game, where people throw ducks at balloons and nothing's the way it seems.

J.