Recury>Pule

I'm Deleting my pictures off of facebook, deleting my account. I feel ripped off, but it feels good to do it. I'm receiving much satisfaction from this removal of my face from the book. I've copied the important information, and I may or may not write some letters. An old Autechre song is playing, i'm falling into it again. Its redundant, repeating, sounds like someone is walking around in circles, big circles, but not large ones, and everytime the circlewalker gets to the spot where they started, they sound a horn. The song ends in a long wash of brown noise, yes, brown noise, its similar to white noise, just filtered differently. Its a different color. After the brown noise abpruptly stops, organic sythetic steel drum phrases. Now I've never taken heroin, but i wouldn't be surpriesed if these bell sounds that this Manchester duo devised, were soaked in a long bath of heroin. And when I say a long bath...you know, scratch that, this keyboard line has been smoking some really really dirty opium, really. Its now puddling on the floor, dripping, thinking of its few childhood memories, remarkably desperate at this point.

Hits

Everyday this new world becomes more and more strange. In a desperate search for a new job, I signed up for an amazon beta site called "Amazon Mechanical Turk- Artificial Artificial Intelligence." Its a site which aggregates different tasks, which employers have posted to the site. For example, an employer was looking for a 350-500 word document on Renting Limos. It paid $4.50. And after further investigation, and emersing myself in this web-based application for the better part of two hours, I had the distinct dizzying feeling of what must be like that of brainwashing. Although it could have something to with me coming down after having a massive cup of black coffee. But just in case you an interest in the same bizarre experience as I had, it will follow something like this: Sign up. Just like other sites, there are the formalities; giving your name, address, email, and password, and then a confirmation after setting up an account to receive payment for the "work" you do. At this point, you sign in under the "worker" link and you "find interesting tasks" searching for 'Hits' or "Human Intelligence Tasks" as Amazon has titled them. So at this point, you are scrolling through the different 'tasks' available, and you decide to pick, and I'm not kidding you here, "Write a romance novel of approximately 50,000 - 55,000 words, and be rewarded $20.00 to your Amazon Pay Account. Instructions for this Romance Novel? Must be original, and not computer generated. Godspeed.

The Clean Energy Scam?

In Time Magazines article, "The Clean Energy Scam," Michael Grunwald (far right in picture of The Time Staff) makes the case that the drive for "biofuels," (yes, all of them), has had the unintended effect of accelerating the destruction of the rainforest, removing precious carbon storing land, while simultaneously driving up the prices of food. "By diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry." According to reports from the New York Times, congress most recent energy bill would work to double the current level of ethanol production. But its important to note the existence of clean energy options which don't effect food prices: hydroelectric, wind, and solar energy which are not counter-intuitive like the current corn-based ethanol. If government policies are favoring conventional ethanol over cellulosic ethanol (they are) then those incentives should be removed. The Time article asserts: "Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline." Yet, in an Minnesota Public Radio interview, U of MN researcher David Tilman commented : "We find we actually get more net useable energy coming from an acre of prairie on this land than we do from an acre of corn that is used to make ethanol, and that really surprised us because corn's a very productive plant." Additionally, "..(the) biomass removes from the atmosphere the same amount of CO2 that is returned upon conversion and utilization." (Lynd, Dartmouth College). "Less green than oil-derived gasoline"?

"The Big Overwhelming Cup"

In the Book, "The Big Overwhelming Cup", author C. Jean-Baptiste tells the story of a small town in North Dakota, and its early citizens who settled there after World War II, and concentrates on the following era of the late 1970's early 1980's when the "white flight" drew a mass of new tax payers to the city. The book begins a detailed description of H. V. Mueller, a prominent business man in the community, who had managed the local general store for over 30 years and handed operations over to his son Ev. It is the relationship between Ev, and his son Vincent, which Jean-baptise concentrates on for the most of the book which in and of itself is a rather dull affair. Capturing the disagreement between father and son, Ev sells the general store off to a local grocery chain during the Russian grain embargo when the price of wheat and other commodities where inflating the price of goods, making business more difficult. Jean-Baptiste's stylized narration of a inner city family's woes is told in parallel, and how the effects of the white flight, and food prices affects the Black family. Eventually the book intermingles the two stories, and It is at this time when Vincent, who lusts for his mother, gouges his eyes out after his father Ev is burned in a fatal tractor accident.

Interview

I am desperate for a new job. I read about rising food prices, barrels of oil, commodities, all getting more expensive. The money in my pocket is not worth what it once was. I'm on the cusp. I met a newspaper man, a meeting set up through a relative. Something like 90% of people are hired through networking. He was a sales guy, told me he just kind of did it because thats what his father did. He was dressed real neat, black rimmed glasses, black coat, expensive shoes. I asked him questions about journalism, and he talked about sales, and terms specific to printing papers. I went home extremely disappointed. I caught a quick glimpse of him slipping out of his fake smile as he noticed a cat hair on my shirt. I went home and applied for 4 different positions online. I got a call back that afternoon, and set up an interview.
I woke up this morning, put on the "neat" seiko watch my Dad lent me, "thats the one people always comment on." We went to Target and bought their Khaki's for $12, a belt for $15, and shined up my dock shoes, or whatever their called. The pants were probably made in Asia, from what I understand, much of the textile industry has moved overseas. Drove to the suburbs to the non-descrip office building. The rear wheel tire of my mid-90's Japanese car is low, its been low for awhile now, it has a nail in it, I just put air in it every few days. I pull in to the parking lot. Inside, everyone that passes me is in jeans and sweatshirts, the receptionist tells me that its casual day. I spend 25 minutes filling out the application. Drivers license? yep. Leagal? Yep. Felonies? Nope. Fired? Nope. Do you agree to release all sense of privacy so we can send all of this information to consumer reporting agency? Sure! Do you mind if we give all of this information to the government? Sure, go ahead.

Prepare For The End Of Civilisation

From The Times
March 24, 2008

The Easter message: prepare for the end of civilisation

Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, gave warning against materialist greed yesterday and prophesied the collapse of civilisation. In his Easter Day sermon at Canterbury Cathedral, Dr Williams said that the luxuries we took for granted could not be sustained forever. We faced a culture in which thoughts of death were too painful to manage, he told worshippers.

Criticising modern society’s approach to mortality, Dr Williams said: “Individuals live in anxious and acquisitive ways, seizing what they can to provide a security that is bound to dissolve, because they are going to die,” he said. “Societies or nations do the same. The individual grabbing the things of this world is in fact the mark of an inner deadness.”

The denial of death was also at work in societies that assumed that there would always be enough oil, power and territory to meet their desires, Dr Williams said. “We as a culture cannot imagine that this civilisation, like all others, will collapse and that what we take for granted about our comforts and luxuries simply cannot be sustained indefinitely. To all this, the Church says sombrely, don’t be deceived: night must fall.”

Secularists have said that Christianity, in celebrating the Resurrection of Christ on Easter Day, denies the reality of death, but Dr Williams spelt out the opposite message. “Easter is not about denying death, and the Resurrection does not make the nightmare death on the cross unreal,” he said. “Death is exactly what the artists and scientists and psychoanalysts say: it is a full stop to human growth and response, it is night falling on everything we value or understand or hope for.”

He said that fear of death was natural. “Do not attempt to avoid it or deny its seriousness . . . When the tradition of the Church proposes that you think daily about death and prepare for it, it is not being morbid but realistic: learn to live with the fear.” He added that Easter was not about how Jesus survived death: “It is about a person going down into darkness and the dissolving of all things and being called again out of that nothingness.”

Vendredi 23 fevrier

"There are no new waves, there is only the ocean"
-Jean-Luc Godard