You Are Not

Watching Fight Club again. I loved both book and movie, for very different reasons. I’m too sensitive. I will have the feeling of the movie for a good week to come. I can’t read books or watch movies and be left alone. I will think in that narrative for a while. Maybe it’s a sign of a weak mind. I probably need more sleep. More food. More sex. At this point in my life, these types of movies are too dangerous for me to watch. It makes me want to undo myself. Past week I wanted to just wither away. Now I just want to explode. I’d do something with my life, if I knew what to do.

I thought it was absurdly hilarious when they are in the car arguing about their relationship and it sounds like Tyler is breaking up with the narrator, and then Tyler yells “just let go,” of the wheel. What I found funny was the fact that they all buckle up. With all their death talk, and nihilism and space monkey quotable lines…they don’t actually want to die. What they want to do is come the closest to death, in order to feel more alive. Toy with it. Fuck with it. But really they don’t want to die. They don’t want to let go and give it all up. I’m sure this is a realization I’ve had before, and you’ve had before as well. Still. I found it a riot tonight.  That they want to cling to life so hard.

I want it so bad…

So long, good friend

VHS is finally dead.

“The last major Hollywood movie to be released on VHS was “A History of Violence” in 2006. By that point major retailers such as Best Buy and Wal-Mart were already well on their way to evicting all the VHS tapes from their shelves so the valuable real estate could go to the sleeker and smaller DVDs.”

I know, not my usual shocker article, but I’d like to pay homage to the VHS.  After it was made mainstream by porn, VHS has entertained us for something like three decades, really taking off in the 90’s.

So I’d like to write about some memories that I have with VHS. A eulogy, of sorts. Feel free to add your own memories in the comments section.

I remember still being in Russia, so I was under the age of 6, and how I thought my Grandpa was something close to god (secular Soviet home) because he could make TV stop, rewind, and play at will. I watched endless reruns of the same episodes of Gummi Bears (in Russian of course). I thought the TV power solely belonged to my Grandpa. Sure, I didn’t know it was a trusty VHS that held my joy on it, but there it was, a token of  my early childhood.

In case you’re curious as to what Gummi Bears sounds like in Russian..

You can only imagine my sheer happiness when I discovered that this strange new land, America, also had Gummi Bears, albeit in it’s own language. America also had those adorable little cheese wrapped in wax (Babybel), which I first met on the plane coming to the USA, where I promptly ate the cheese, wax and all, until some nice lady took pity on me and explained to me that I can take the wax off.

Oh VHS, I remember the sheer control. I could put it in, record anything I want on TV, play it back, record over it again. I remember recording mistakes. I remember footage being lost. I remember the joy of finding it again, accidentally, that as you’re watching some old cartoon, for nostalgia value as now you’re too told for the cartoon, that you recorded at a very tender age that would get interrupted midway through by the porn that you recorded from the TV at that same tender age.

I remember feeling so powerful. I could capture moments. I could rewind and play at will. I could erase. Maybe this sounds so geeky, but the idea that one could take memories from the TV without permission. We don’t have that anymore. We pay for it. We are also watched. Someone else knows what we record. What we prefer. The privacy is gone. That was really the glory of VHS, video home system, the privacy in your own home. Obviously this was primarily for porn purposes in the beginning, as it’s nicer to watch it at home instead of some peep show theater. With VHS we had our own personal cinema. It was so revolutionary. It was so intimate. I loved hitting pause, and then play and watching everything move very very slowly. I loved the noise of the machine when it would fast forward or rewind. You could feel the little guy working.

I remember the anticipation of tracking. When the tape was too old and it would be fuzzy and not so perfect, and you would hold your breath hoping that tracking would fix it. I remember actually the days before auto-tracking and how that was a bitch and a half to set the levels just right. It was a sense of pride and accomplishment every time I made a video look good.

I loved the working technology as a kid, but I also loved it when my parents gave me the important task of destroying videos as well. I’d pull the black tape out and out and dance with it in the house. Sometimes I would rewind it manually with my fingers. See if I could put it back together. See if I could undo it more. I would braid it into my hair, then take it out because I wasn’t allowed to look like that outside the house. I loved how tangible VHS was.

My college house still has a ton of VHS tapes. Old Disney movies, not digitally remastered, that we gather around and watch. We bask in the feeling of being young again. Of the tape sometimes being soft around the edges. How everything wasn’t so perfect, and that is, and was, part of the appeal. Nothing more exciting than taking that clunky VHS tape and watching the VCR eat it. No menu screen with options. Just ff and then play. No DVD that sits and keeps replaying the menu screen over and over.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the new digital world. Yet sometimes I miss the fuzzy memories of my youth.

So goodbye and so long, VHS. You done good. I know others will make a far more creative and artistic omage to you. You might get some gallery installations. Some modern art pieces. Maybe a movie and documentary. Maybe a porno.

But you will never again teach young immigrant girls how to capture memories on their own. Don’t worry, VHS, your memory is already captured. It keeps playing inside. My generation watches your graceful death. You embody the death of our childhood.

National Obesity: Stage Orange?

“Because of the overall increase in obesity, CalorieLab this year shifted the color coding used in its map one percentage point higher to maintain an approximately equal number of states per color.”

“Millons of homecrafters face bankruptcy after Jan 20 from new law”

The January 20 2009 deadline for millions of American homecrafters to object to a new law requiring expensive testing of their products, is approaching fast. Child-products without certificates proving they have no lead content, will have to be scrapped.

The new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act – passed hastily to bar poisonous foreign products – also will require millions of American homecrafters to have each of their products tested at huge cost, ranging from $500 to $4000 per product – including their old stock which was manufactured before this law had even been thought up.

No more selling old things on eBay or Craigslist…
And all the products sold on eBay or Craigslist will also require such certificates of compliance or they will be breaking the law. Also affected: millions of charities, which will no longer be able to accept donations without a certificate of compliance. And this certificate can only be obtained through expensive testing by an SCPC-accredited laboratory.” Without such certificates, billions of dollars worth of uncertified children’s products will have to be destroyed because they can’t be legally sold without an CPSI-certificate of compliance, and this will cause major environmental problems,” said Massachusetts campaigner Kiki Fluhr.

“Larger corporations that can afford testing will incur thousands, maybe millions of dollars in fees, and this expense will be handed down to the consumer, probably making the prices for children’s products go through the roof.” Fluhr: “This law will put thousands of manufacturers of children’s products out of business -hurting our economy and causing even more loan defaults. Though this legislation was well-intentioned, it cannot be allowed to stand.”

“This law affects every stay at home mom trying to help put food on the table and every grandmother knitting blankets for the local craft fair. It makes the thousands of us who have found a niche in the burgeoning handmade market have to make a tough decision – continue to produce items illegally and possible incur a $100,000 fine, or close up shop and maybe not be able to pay the mortgage this month….”

That really sucks. What will wonderful websites like Etsy do? Why are we trying to kill off small-time artisans..especially with this economy? Is our land really the land of the corporate?

Gosh. I used to buy diy items on Ebay all the time. Special little items that someone else used and can now sell to me rather than throwing it away.This will only encourage people to buy new products rather than invest less money in more durable items. No more hand-me-downs. No more individual craftsartists.

This really makes everything seem so bleak. If it’s not factory-mass-produced, you can’t have it. What a crazy monopoly that we are presenting to large businesses. I’m rather distraught about this. If you click on the above link to the article there is a petition you can sign. As useful as that is.

Golly gee, can you imagine a black market for used products? People trying to sell their hand-made soap and jewelry? We could write dystopias on this.

But again, it’s not just the trouble of having a harder time consuming cheaply…charities are affected. I remember before I left England we randomly found a soup kitchen workshop and we asked them where we could donate our clothes and blankets since I can’t take them with me. She told us to bring them over tomorrow, they’d wash them for us. It was nice just to pack bookbags of clothes, blankets and other trinkets and give them to an organization directly.

The law isn’t evil, it’s trying to protect. Yet within this protection there is an excess. Sure we’re trying to keep people safe, but within the zealotry people get hurt, small businesses suffer, small people who can’t even count as a small business suffer.

Textbook Buy-back

If the Real World Used Textbook Buy-Back Policies

Buyer: I’ll give you $5,000 for it.
Homeowner: Are you crazy? I just paid $100,000 for it in January. Haven’t you heard of value appreciation?
Buyer: All I’m hearing is that your house is used.
Homeowner: Hardly. I spent like 2 days there in March and then 6 hours yesterday. This house is in perfect condition.
Buyer: Oh yeah, what’s this note above the backdoor?
Homeowner: It says, “Low door. Mind your head.”
Buyer: Low door, huh?
Homeowner: Yeah, but that’s not a problem. It’s just a feature of the house. It’s supposed to be like that. That’s just a helpful note in case people didn’t notice the height of the door.
Buyer: It sullies the whole house. The whole house is crap because of that note!
Homeowner: What are you talking about? This isn’t even a pretty house.
Buyer: So you admit it!
Homeowner: Yeah. It’s a stupid looking house on a boring block, but people still want to buy it. Haven’t you heard of supply and demand?
Buyer: Nope. And I’m not going to give you more than $5,000 for this dump. That’s just policy.
Homeowner: What are you talking about? What policy?
Buyer: Just policy.
Homeowner: Well, maybe I won’t sell it to you. Who knows, I might need this house in the future. It’s got pretty cool…faucets. I might want to use those. Ugh, fine. Give me the stupid 5 grand.
Buyer: Great doing business with you.
Ex-Buyer: Attention, all prospective buyers! Who wants to buy this fantastic, mint-condition home for $90,000?
Ex-Homeowner: What?!
Ex-Buyer: Sucker.

Blergh

So there’s often a rather vociferous, angry, and generally grossed out response to furries…

Why is that not okay…but this is?

For some reason people who go on Second Life, bloggers, and WOW gamers are demonized…but that shit is allowed on the tele for mainstream viewing and purchasing?

I guess we’re starting our kids early on furrydom.

Blahblah market blah blah conversations blah blah please hold blah

72. We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are creating it.

73. You’re invited, but it’s our world. Take your shoes off at the door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!

74. We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.

False prophet of the internet age. Deluded in the idea of the meek inheriting cyberspace.

What do you mean we are creating it? What about digital enclosure? What about websites tracking your interests and selling them to companies? What about Facebook owning everything you put on there, even if you take it off? What about warrantless electronic wiretapping? The Patriot Acts? We’re helping big corporations get more out of us, sure…but creating it?

“Immune to Advertising”? Check out Emotional Branding or how about Born to Buy. Sure, maybe you are immune when you are an adult that was not brought up around advertisements or markets, but not when you’re young and you’re getting a very expensive education from companies.

(CBS) In 1983, companies spent $100 million marketing to kids. Today, they’re spending nearly $17 billion annually. That’s more than double what it was in 1992.

Marketing firms and advertisers are looking to a younger demographic, increasingly targeting tweens and even younger children. And these kids have huge control over the flow of parents’ spending, statistics show — 8- to 12-year-olds spend $30 billion of their own money each year and influence another $150 billion of their parents’ spending.

Sure, you as an adult can be immune to advertising…but if children were so immune why would the companies spend so much money on making these children loyal from such a young age? They’re investing in their future consumers.

Markets aren’t really conversations. I don’t really know what ClueTrain means by this. That the CEO is talking to his consumers? That WalMart is treating their employees right? It seems like going through the internet is the best way to ignore conversation, considering you don’t have to see someone. It’s not like someone coming into your office demandning answers. Demanding discourse.

I think it’s important for our class to move into the direction of the market perspective. It is unavoidable as somehow it seems to me that everything on cyberspace is commodified. Everything is for sale, and everything is an object.

Blocked

Gosh, it sucks to be a poor consumer-whore. No amount of steely nerve, of rational arguments, of feeling superior for not allowing temptation or “useless purchases” to find their way into one’s home…really stands up to the stuff in the windows. One could try to feel frugal and smart, but at the end of all of the excuses, one’s cheeks will be tinged with green.

I wonder what it feels like to buy something few people can afford to…and not feel guilty about it?

Writing about my consumption and gift practices is really freaking me out. I feel that I constantly falling into one trap after another of a “typical consumer” and while I know it’s unavoidable to be a part of the system, that even rebellion has a well-defined place, I cannot feel an itch to at least feel morally superior, because I economically suck.

I guess that’s why I took the Consumer class, but sometimes I become truly nauseous when I reflect upon my habits and attitudes. I wonder if anyone else has such a visceral reaction to personal introspection?

Edit; 4:05am: Why do I always blog at such crazy times? I am such a vampire.

Do objects become more desirable because we cannot have them? I guess that’s a silly question. Sure they do. We generally want and like things that we cannot have more than the things that we do. Once we have them, we generally take them for granted.

“I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.” Elbert Hubbard 

 

I wonder if it is the same with people. A friend mine told me of a conversation he had yesterday where his friend said that once he is a relationship he begins to desire other people more, and even people he had not though of desiring before. My friend expressed the opposite opinion.

Yet, does it work that once you are in a relationship, people begin to desire you more? Maybe it’s just me, but when I am finally committed and off limits, that’s when people come out of the wood-works to tell me that they couldn’t sleep from the hard-on they received from thinking about me…even though we have not said more than 10 words to each other so there was no bloody way that I was leading him on. Just as a past example. 

 

I don’t mean this in every case, but do you guys think this is the case in general (desiring others when committed, and having others desire you when your committed)?

 

 

 

Lost on the Market

Thinking back to my post on the lack of a defining overall movement or characteristic of my generation, except disappointment at our political system and economy, I wonder if this lack of a concrete label, except something as amorphous as the “Dot Com Generation,” is the reason we are so obsessed with labels?

In other words, are we so label-orientated because we don’t have one? I suppose this is a basic summary of a postmodern identity, and maybe all my years of theory finally hit home, because unlike anyone older than me, I feel that being born in the late 80’s made me lost. I didn’t even have a time of identity illusion.

This isn’t just another lost puppy “who am I?” question, but more of a, “i?”

I wonder if the lowercase i means anything. It is that “i” that defines my generation. The one where the self isn’t prime. Maybe that’s a good thing, the “I” begins to take less precedence. Yet I don’t see us becoming any less selfish. Narcissism seems to be frolicking with all of our “i”-pliances, our technological prosthesis. It makes me think of Allucquère Rosanne Stone’s book The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age, where she discusses how Stephen Hawking and his machine that allows him to communicate are not separate from one another. I can walk away from my computer and still be “me,” but for him, without it he is silent.

I wonder if it is becoming so hard to market ourselves. There are no easy categories to cling to. Yet we haven’t escaped the need of them. Do we need labels of every other product out there because we don’t have labels ourselves?

So are we lost or have we transcended? Have we become meat? Have we escaped our meat status with our communicative technologies?

What grade meat would you be?

I think since I’m free range, I get lots of exercise and good, clean, organic vegetarian food (so no worries about diseases), perfect vision, no allergies, no high fructose corn syrup..Advanced education, multicultural background, bilingual, great at cooking Asian and Southeast Asian food, no hormones, marketable skills, high resistance to heat, Expert in Microsoft Office Programs on Macs and PC’s, graphic design skills, research capabilities, debate skills..strong teeth, good back, lots of energy, good sense of humor… Yeah I’d be pretty good on the market.

What are we? “We” meaning my generation.

Last class we were all silent. It’s not that I haven’t done the reading, I didn’t know how to respond. Defintions have become so difficult because we grow up aware of so many circumstances that we cannot make choices anymore because we are constantly walking on eggshells. I suppose I can highlight aspects of my identity, my personality, but which ones? I have a really hard time answering questions as to my generation. I feel we are all so fractered. We have no cause to rally around. We have all this wonderful technology to bring us together but it’s hard to make a community. We create online communities around random things like lolcats…yet, what actually happens is that the lolcats creates the community and defines us. We are defined by our interests, our facebook profiles, our black and white artistic myspace photos. They are not are reflection of us, but are our prosthesis. Without our Blackberries we are very silent Hawkings. Without our easily defined boxes of name/age/location/favorite movies (because none of can ever name one)/artists, quotes, mottos…nice clear boxes…We’re not a ‘we’. Perhaps because without all of that we cannot connect to others. It’s like saying “Oh, hi! I am a real person. Here is my business card. You decide if you want to associate with me.”

What’s real anymore?