oh, speaking of a corporate machine that only cares about profiting from us.... in gossip news, i'm very, very interested to see what people say about the new 2pac album. he talks about 2005, and at the beginning of an eminem-produced track says "drop that shit, em." verbatim, right there. 

study political economy.

The glittering mecca that is modern popular culture is a beautiful electronic skin stretched over a vast corporate machine devoted solely to profiting from you. Maybe apocalyptic metaphors aren't the most scientific structure of inquiry, but nonetheless, they do have some dramatic effect, and in this case, is an utterly effective description of the market model. Sure, the advances in technology and in affective quality of life have been vast under the capitalist system, but all have been effected by that vast, shrieking corporate machine, whose true goal is profit. (note three uses of effect/affect/effect, all different meanings. weird.... derrida just rolled over in his grave) Sure, the profits allow those corporations to reinvest into new technologies, and further enhance our 'quality of life,' but at what real cost? Often, the relationship between this disturbing machine and the populace that feeds it is a relatively symbiotic one. Yet consumer interest, the market model's ultimate arbiter and guarantor of equal opportunity, is a fundamentally skewed concept. As Chomsky points out, its political analogue is a voting system weighted by income. We cannot help but observe in our day-to-day interactions with the capitalist system that consumer interest does NOT always dictate business practice. Driving home from the (24 hour) grocery store tonight in the middle of the night, I remarked about how, if it DID always dictate business practice, everything would be open 24 hours a day. Someone might want to buy something at conceivably any time, so in a mythic utopia where consumer interest really did all that neo-cons say it does, stores would be open at .... ANY TIME. But that's not how it works. Sure, it might be patently ridiculous for all stores to be open at all times, but the point stands that there are other forces, more concealed and powerful that fuzzy-wuzzy consumer interest, at work in the market model. Just like in the bastard, flunky political complex it has spawned.

Let's go back briefly to the power of the corporate machine to improve our quality of life. More frightening than the costs of having a profit-oriented corporate machine as the base of our economy, an economy which subsists by bleeding one sector of the population as dry as possible in order to fatten itself, is the troublesome and never fixed concept of 'quality of life.' More specifically, the implications when the very definitions of 'quality of life' are in the hands of that same corporate coalition? Because that is what happens when media, the distributor of ideas is subsumed into the big humming corporate machine (to belabour a metaphor). Okay, well, I've got no problem reassuring myself that the happily brainwashed disciple of the capitalist cult that is the corporate media will totally restrain itself from perhaps, modifying our concept of quality of life so that it's skewed a little bit more... towards their interests? They sure wouldn't have any desire to turn the planet into a nation of fat, consumer whore junkies sitting obediently in front of their televisions awaiting the next message from on high about what to buy. Phew... I'm gonna sleep easy now.

Fuck.

STUDY POLITICAL ECONOMY

"here's american gladiators ... sit there and watch these two pituary retards bang the fuck out of each other ... go back to bed america, your 'government' is in control"

bill hicks, another dead hero

my new blog. oh, oh .... emo ... oh god ....

blogs remind me of being emo.

which, i must observe... is ludicrous. i used to have a blog, when i was emo. and i would use it to whine about girls, etc. etc. why i was a nerd, that type of thing. it was really, um ... lame. i think that lame would be the most accurate word to describe what it was.

but now i've got a new blog. it's not going to be about girls, or about how i have no friends, or the shades my nails are painted. (yeah, i used to paint my nails. what ... what of it. it was badass, ok?) well, that's a lie. probably some of it will be about girls. but it won't be stupid emo shit.

basically, i want to write... soooo, i figure, a blog will help me just... start... writing. cos that would appear to be the hardest part of the process. as a whole. and then after i've got a bunch of shit down on the proverbial paper of the miracle that is the internet ... i can go over it, and maybe do something interesting with it.

so, yeah. this is just going to be a whole lot of random musings... usually not about anything in particular, or me as a person, but just ... on ... stuff. concepts. not even always reflective of my own opinions. i guess... you could say. and probably a lot of these digressionary self-referential tangents where i talk alot about nothing, and generally put off any actual thinking. because, well... i'm probably going to be stoned a lot of the time.

i wonder if anyone will read this? ha, ha... i'm sure as fuck not going to TELL anybody about it. i might catch emo, and start wearing sweater vests. listening to bright eyes, perhaps.

FUCK, i hate bright eyes.

um. done. that was my introduction.

ive been thinking about doing this for a while, everytime that i came up with some weird observation. but usually i was busy eating, or getting high, or more likely, both, and then moved on to something else. sooo, the thought that popped into my head and inspired me to actually DO this (actually, it was the fact that i was close to my computer when i thought of it) was such.

i edited out what was a particularly rude segment of this post, so that people i know could actually read it, cos i realized that a blog that nobody reads is a blog that i don't write on.

word!

this is the picture that i want to use for my profile picture. i don't fucking understand this at all. i'm kind of high ... normally i'm a little more computer literate.