Journal Entries
Well thats it really
Posted Dec 20, 2004
The more you change the more you stay the same
the song goes on and but the track changes
what is the story in your head
was it so wrong to be unfed?
I cannot see into the future anymore
its all just a blurr
I want to know did you lie or did you die or did you sigh?
at the sound of the gun
did we have fun
well thats it really
I want to know these things because I want to know its right
to have feelings like this, feelings like fright
why am I so scared
To say what I believe
To say my parers
To the lack of self confidence that I have held so long and deer
but it seems that tomorrow it will all be better again
at the going down of the sun
and then in the morning
I will remember what it was
to be who I am
to say what is right
in the morning I will fight
I will have the strength and courage to go on
Will the hart of sunrise bring me strength?
If It does not, I don't care
I don't give a flying spare
Its all raw
its all the last straw
and well thats it really
I can't go on like this anymore...
anymore
like a song thats gorn old
like a wrong thats been done
three fold and three fold again taking back what was said cannot be done
its all in the past
its all why i break my fast
take it in your arms
cradle it well
let it grow and destroy you
or let it show and annoy you
take a step in the shoes of a poor man
the former self reborn, you find yourself starting back
Discuss this Journal entry [5]
Latest reply: Dec 20, 2004
Rumors, Speculation and Media Hype
Posted Dec 14, 2004
*BONUS RANT*
Rumors, Speculation and Media Hype
Now I am one who has been the spreader and victim of many a rumor in the toast and jam world of the interpersonal nature of rumors. The more rumors you can spread sometimes, the more power you can gain. Thus being the character I am, I quickly became more of a victim then a spreader, and therefore have made myself a rung pretty low on the social spectrum. However from this low rung I can perceive many a person who is higher than me and I can tell you right now, I really don't want to climb that much further using this age old method of obtaining social status. Some however do.
Now rumors are sometimes very speculative. However they are not speculation. There is a major difference. Its somewhat like this:
Rumor:
A: "Did you know that X is having you know what with Y?"
B: "No. But I shall certainly make a note of it"
Speculation:
A: "Do you think that X is having you know what with Y?"
B: "I dunno. Might be the case."
Now you see speculation leaves it up to person B to make there mind up about X and Y were as rumor is telling person B the "truth" from A's universe. Now these two things are COMPLETELY different in the media world of interpersonal communication [1, 39]. You see if B believes that A is better or in higher status or of better knowledge, and this is the weird one if A is perceived to have more social capital. Now social capital is a nasty and confusing part of the world of communication its hard to explain and even harder to use. But basically everyone has invisible tendrils of social capital that we can each perceive by our knowledge of each other and our interactions. The basis for this capital is very confusing and takes years to fully study or understand. However you know basically what it is from its name. Social Capital means like the name, that you have and other people have a price or a costing of the knowledge and bounds you perceive. This costing is measurable, but its hard to achieve an adequate costing for different people. This is because everyone has a different perceiving of your social capital. It depends on what they know of you, who they think you are, when and were you are, what views you have expressed to them, and what rumors you have had spread about you. Now I am saying that social capital both makes your costing and gets you your costing, and as your mind goes *BOING* in the reciprocation of social economics there is yet another problem. This great problem is that there is also nonverbal communication. In a interpersonal situation your nonverbal communication plays a big role. Who you look at, for how long, when, why, and all of these things are analyzed by your conscious and unconscious [1, 85]. And you can draw your own conclusions and they can be modified by other peoples perception. All this ends up in a massive collaboration that is then quickly thrown away when you have your next thought and only sees the light of day at some later point when your thinking of the nights events. Or possibly not. The point being is that you cant really define what a person may or may not get from a rumor using this method. The best means of achieving a result is buy watching all there interactions and then seeing the result. This will then get you 1. charged with stalking and 2. give them avid paranoia. A nice result all round.
Speculation as we pointed out before is a hazier concept. As it is a "opinionated" idea. In mass media we have this speculative thing that has been given light. Say we are asked if we think the rap star "M And M B Daddy" Is homosexual. Now there are three responses that are generally seen, yes, no, and don't know and or care. These choices are the ones that most sentient people like me will analyze and use for statistical choices or for anything else for that matter. However the opinionated in this case is that you are not told if "M And M B Daddy" is or is not homosexual or not and we enter our new medium. The reason we call it opinionated is that it "give you an option" in this case yes, no, and don't know or care. The choice is yours. Now the problem is that you will now go to our friends, other interpersonal relations and basically everyone else we can think of and talk about "M And M B Daddy" wether he (or she) likes it or not [3. 2, 41]. Now this speculation can go on for WEEKs on end, you can have every commentator and his dog give his opinion and once finally all the hype is over we are back were we were at the beginning and accusing some other poor sap of say molesting children and giving our opinions on that. And I have to say that it makes me sick to think that someone happily living there life can be speculated and used as such a product of the media. A useful tool for the money making fat cats who sit on there idiot behinds all day only caring about there next meal and giving a few thoughts to there close nit family. I have to say that the way that the media acts is not my fault, and I don't like it. However I have to live with it and we will all have a even smaller world of the internet to live with very soon. Quite a lot of people have got onto the net already and its now no longer seen as a last refuge for the strange and geeks. Think how quickly speculation a rumor will spread here? Like lightning it goes WOOSH across the digital world. Any second now there will be a "We hate darakat" site set up.
The media hype that we have come to know and hate has come to a new boundary and once again humanity is in need of a new frontier. If we are to get beyond this useless life of name calling and speculation and rumor we are then to grow beyond the thing which well makes us childlike. It would be much of a lost and much of a gain. I have to say overall I am actually happy to live in a world were anyone can ay pretty much anything about anyone else, and anyone can reply to that. Unfortunately this is not actually the case and it would be stupid of me to say it is. There is a nice quote I want to use at this point from ( http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1212-28.htm ) "in the absence of governmental checks and balances present in other areas of our national life, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the areas of national defense and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry - in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government" So really what is being said is that there is no free and fair press? Wow. Thats news to me. Note the dripping sarcasm.
Well I hope that gets you thinking. The media and the hype and the speculation. Is it worth it or not? Well who knows. I am darakat and this is my rant.
Enjoy the hype.
[1] Lewis. G., Slade. C. (2000). Critical Communication, 2nd edn, Prentice Hall, Frenchs Forrest
[2] Cunningham. S., Turner. G. (2002), The Media and Communication in Australia, Allan and Erwin, Crows Nest New South Wales
[3] O'Shuighnessy. M., Stadler. J. (2002). Media and Society, 2nd edn, Oxford University Press, New York
Discuss this Journal entry [18]
Latest reply: Dec 14, 2004
Giving Thanks
Posted Dec 14, 2004
Giving Thanks
No
I am the grass the trees and the air you breathe
Says the one whos words are not to be treated lightly
I am not your rolling wing, I am the night
I have been everything and nothing and all of them are wrong
But this is the day that I have no longer to lead astray
The night is young and old all the same
Blue light around a halo of innocence
Give in to natures bidding
And forget your animal instincts
And take the fruit from a tree
Give it to the
And when the dawn comes
And when all is said and done
Its all the same anyway
So its just time to say thank you
Thank you for your innocence
Your ignorance
The whisper of wind in your hair
The days that are long and make you care
all the stories you say and tell
the questions you ask and put in shells
justification of the truth
pirori and empathy in the south
kill all you can
it won't make you any more of a man
what your spirit does and doesn't say
its not going to take you away
I know more of the truth than I let on
and don't give a word about the day
poems of distance education
Indian ocean on a window
makes a different sounding weirdness in my home towns grounds
individuals are singing to a chorus unaware
and it makes you want to go spare
Don't say your sorry
Don't say your prayers
Don't give into justice
Don't make it aware
In the high note singing
A mode of commutation is lost and born again
Say thanks for the same depends
three two a town and broken
stones are round and shocked
aprons all around
the freemasons are not found
nor is the highlights or the singular possession
say thank-you
for the apple on the tree
as it could not have saved you or me
it was because they looked cold
it was not a single soul
in a foundation of the mold
a man to beat the rush
a women to have no thrush
every single time its said
you can here the angels wipe there heads
on the clouds so high
nearly reach the sky
its a note of single empathy
or is it
just the words
thank you
Discuss this Journal entry [8]
Latest reply: Dec 14, 2004
Forgotton Loves
Posted Dec 11, 2004
Yes I know this has been going on for a few weeks, I am sorry to neglect my blog, but you guys understand. Don't you?
Oh and btw I have got a new rant or two in the works, watch this space. In a few days time you will have a new rant, and then a bonus rant before the new year as a "christmass" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmass ) (we don't really celebrate it in the traditional or indeed that well at all. We have presents, family and food, thats about all the similarities, we certainly don't go to church) present to all my readers. And no its not on "chirstmass".
Ah procrastination was dire and it served me well, but now I have been taken from it. Thanks to my forgotten loves. That is:
Gardening
Cooking
Writing (normal)
Writing (songs and poems)
Reading
Music
Meditation
These forgotten loves are grand, I love every minute and I try to do as many as possible at once. Only thats not necessarily possible. I can't read and meditate or cook and garden. But you know what I mean. I am REALLY REALLY sorry for losing my passion for all these forgotten loves. But thanks to the holidays and my sudden need for things to do I have rediscovered them, and I can't go back. Nor would I want to. Remind me if you think I am.
What else?
A little story about today.
Today has been a good day. A VERY good day. I started off doing my work at the undeguide, then went to the fishwick markets with my parents we also went to the desk store (closed), a shade cloth store (didn't think it only sold shade cloth, needed to visit another store), a awning and blinds shop (open, yay for saturday services), and finally came home. All this time I was driving! I have my P plates now. In case I forgot to mention it. Which I rather think I did.
Then did a massive amount of work at underguide archives ( A2112490 ) posing as U223413. Haven't quite finished yet, but I have fixed a lot of the major usability problems and the things that stop it from being a formal archive according to keeping archives 2edn (btw this really is the universally excepted book on archives, make friends with an archivist and get him to show you it).
Then proceeded my love of gardening, a friend known currently only as teiwaz reminded me what a great day it was outside. I was infused to take up the rest of the day that I was missing out on and proceeded to shift two barrel loads of compost from the compost heap (that makes 6 in total from the last 3 days) to the new veggie patch. We plan to eventually have 6 and "crop rotate" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_rotation ) them all so that we can get rid of most of the pests and the soil fertility problems you can encounter otherwise. You have to add more compost and shit (no literally cow manure, sheep manure, chicken manure) and a bit of dead fish ( http://www.charliecarp.com/ ) every now and again of course. I am about to go out again after having my hair cut by Pam a family friend who cuts our hair. One more paragraph I think.
What else? I have been really making my self busy with all this rediscovering lost passions but I have found time to research my pet topics of hyrdrogen and its uses, philosophies and who can forget replying to all my h2g2 threads! I have found I really have a lot more time than I thought. Its a good thing to.
Oh yeah and I have been thinking long and hard about a few more things, just to keep the old cerebellum juices going.
darakat
Discuss this Journal entry [25]
Latest reply: Dec 11, 2004
Standard setting
Posted Dec 8, 2004
I have a very high set of standards, excellent news means something on a logarithmic scale (which in fact mean there is effectively no limit). Being one very high state of excitement, somewhere around orgasmic. However excellent is about an 8. Let me show you:
0 - No excitement or joy, or possibly made me feel worse
1 - Bad, Shite or Hopeless, item was no good, but 10 times better than nothing at all
2 - Slightly Better, 10 times better than bad, this is like say receiving news that it was syphilis, not cancer
3 - No good, 10 time better than slightly better, this is like say hearing that there was something there after all
4 - Ok. This being 10 times better than not good and 1000 times better than nothing at all its pretty good. This is approaching the great word "Alight" but not quite. If something is Ok it means that I have enjoyed it, but its not something to write home about.
5 - Alright or Average. My average state. Almost everything gets here and not much further, don't be alarmed if I say something is alright. Its 10 times better than Ok and thats pretty damm good in most peoples books.
6 - Good or Great. This means I really enjoyed it. Its the state I enter when I first enjoy something. Coffe made in the way I like it will put me in this state, so if you want me to enjoy myself get the kettle on and make me espresso, everything after that is like "Wow dude you can see the music".
7 - Brilliant or Sufficient. This being 10 times better than good. I have to say that this is somewhere around the state I reach when I get news from old friends that there still alive!
8 - Ecstatic or Proper. I have to say that this is like what you feel when you have a first kiss with that special someone. 10 times better than Brilliant this takes a lot to achieve. The ALIA new grads meeting for me made me Ecstatic.
9 - Excellent or Orgasmic. This is a RELLY BIG thing. This means that we probably just had sex, or something close to it. If I say something was excellent it means that I not even just enjoyed it, I will probably remember it for as long as I live. I am planning on that being a very long time.
10 - Kumlamulafastone or Indescribably Great - This is the high that one may experience say the first time you realize your in love with someone. Or when you receive a blank signed check from a rich guy. This is like a perfect moment of indescribable joy. It may not last long, but having me reach this high will mean that whatever let me achieve it is to be worshiped as a god. Not many have done so, but those tender few who have can read this explanation and see that they have helped me reach 1 * 10 ^ 10 * better than nothing. Which I have to say is pretty dam good.
It must be said however that this is a LOGARITHMIC scale like the scale the measure earthquakes on. This means there is in fact no theoretical limit. At all. This means that the is in fact possible states beyond 10. But they are POSSIBLY things that can only be reached with probably the help of mind affecting drugs (which I have incidentally never had).
Now why these high standards? Why the complicated and possibly confusing logarithmic scale? Well I am glad you asked those rather complicated questions and its all to do with my Youth. Now because I know dam well that boring you with a story about my youth is exactly not what most of you need right now so I am not going to tell you exactly how this scale came about. However I can say that I always felt that other people set there standards to low and my fascination with the fact that the logarithmic scale is a funky curve (yeah it is) and also that I knew that there could be no theoretical limit to how good you feel. This was because I also knew there was no limit to how BAD you feel and logically speaking the reverse has to in fact also be true. So thats how I scale things. This by the way is my first "real life blog type entry" in a while.
Discuss this Journal entry [36]
Latest reply: Dec 8, 2004
darakat - Now with pockets!
Researcher U200300
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