Posters.

I wrote this after reading this comic.

—

He’s sick of all the pictures on his walls. All they do is advertise the respective businesses that created them. The music industry, the art industry, the newspapers, local night clubs and that alcohol industry. He’s only just realized that his walls are real estate. They’re not his walls at all though, they belong to the company that he’s renting them off. So he thinks this; why should the corporate world own all of his environment?

He wants to go out to each of his friends and ask them all to make something for him. Something that will go on a wall. It wouldn’t matter to him what each thing was, just that it was made by someone he cares about, not by something that he doesn’t.

But he’s pretty certain that he won’t actually ask anyone to do this for him. He might tell people about what a cool idea it would be, but he doesn’t reckon that anyone takes him seriously enough to do him this quite obscure favour. Still though, if it is a pipe dream, it is quite a nice one.

I like the internet because it makes constructing an identity so simple.

The person who I portray myself to be online is not who I really am. That guy is the one who people see the worst of, when he has no idea where he is, throwing up in a club somewhere then waking up the next morning to find cuts all over himself and wondering whether this will make a good story to tell to people. Well it does, so I do tell it, because it allows me to paint myself using the colours that I want. The internet allows this thanks to it’s slower pace, relative to real-life, you can think about what you say before you say it, doctor an image before you show it to someone, lay out your personality in such a way as to make it pleasing to the people you want to please.

The wide variety of social networking sites, forums and blog websites facilitate the engineering of a personality which is not my own, but the personality which will most appeal to who I want to be in contact with. Facebook is a place where I can show everyone just how zany my exploits can be, and this blog is a place where I can prove how articulate I can be. Forums, which I still occasionally visit – such as EuroFusion, run by my friend from Xbox Live – allow me to basically piss on a few tree stumps and gather allies about myself. I read reddit so that I have stuff to post on here in the hope that someone worthwhile will read it and get in touch with me.

With regard to the construction of an identity, I do it because it is a kind of false comfort. The knowledge that even if I get tired of my life in reality, I still have a multitude of users online that still see me in the way that I want them to see me. I have this back-up identity, a safety net which I can use to legitimate myself.

Now, I’m not saying that I do all this entirely consciously, that would be a rather chilling prospect, rather I am laying bare the drives behind all that I do online, and perhaps in reality as well.

Violent media and little girls.

Recently, I’ve seen quite a lot of horror media that features young children playing roles that a child should never play. Thankfully I can say that the worst instances of said roles have been in video games, such as Bioshock and F.E.A.R, both of which use little girls as horror devices. F.E.A.R has a character called er, Martha or something, who’s this wee girl that your character keeps having disturbing visions of. My friend tells me it’s because she’s psychic.. and is the mother of a clone army. I didn’t get that into it though. Bioshock on the other hand has what the developers call ‘Little Sisters’, genetically enslaved girl-children who are conditioned to mutilate the corpses of dead ‘Splicers’ in order to harvest their super-power fuel, called ‘Adam’.. or ‘Eve’, I don’t remember. I think it’s Adam.

But why children? Oh, it’s because the idea of a child playing such a role.. no, not playing a role; actually being that thing which is depicted, is reprehensible to the human heart. Children, who we try to keep as innocent as possible for as long as we can – to protect them from the harshness of reality – invoke such powerful feelings in adults as to immediately terrify them when a child fills the role of villain. Not just villain though, the children in these two games are veritable psychopaths. Fair enough, the Little Sisters are engineered that way and Agatha from F.E.A.R is something beyond the realms of morality and indeed reality, so the children cannot be blamed for their actions. I think that though, is what the designers of these stories want though. They want their audience to feel torn between hatred for these vile individuals and sympathy for their poor shredded souls.

This method of horror-telling is, I believe, underhand and devious to the extent that these devices are being employed for no reason other than to give the story weight that it otherwise lacks. Bioshock in particular would have had literally nothing going for it if it didn’t have these creepy little girls running around sucking the God-knows-what out of dead peoples’ torsos. Remove the Little Sisters and you have a closed environment with a linear plotline with the occaisional boss fight. Oh and some power upgrades. It’s basically Sonic for the new generation.

The reason I post this is because I was reading Kotaku and noticed this picture, look at the print at the very back:

See what I mean? It’s a giant monster and an innocent little girl. Oh no wait! She’s not innocent at all ’cause she’s in league with a monster, but is she in league? Oh God I don’t know what to feel, I’m so emotionally challenged by this game!

Give me a break.

I did just end up watching some videos though.

And this one caught my interest.

Went climbing.

And man is it fun. I need to get better strength in my arms and stuff, but I think i could be fairly decent at it.

In response to ViewsAskew’s comment on the RLS post; first of all thank you for reading, secondly I’m surprised that someone actually picked up on something I wrote and thirdly.. well I don’t actually have a third. But anyway, that post was just made on a whim because of something I saw on YouTube, I’m glad my thoughts linked up with someone in the real world.

Can’t be bothered writing much else, I am actually tired enough to sleep.

Restless leg syndrome?

Alright, so I set out to write this post about how ridiculous this disorder must be, but since reading the Wikipedia definition of it, I feel a bit guilty about jumping to such a conclusion;

Many people tap their feet or shake their legs resulting from a nervous tic, consumption of stimulants, drug side-effects or other factors; this is usually innocuous, unnoticed, and does not interfere with daily life, quite distinct from Restless Leg Syndrome. Restless Leg Syndrome is very different. With a nervous tic, someone does not necessarily notice it, but in RLS it is very noticeable. With a nervous tic, someone may tap their leg or foot, but with RLS you feel an undescribable sensation in your legs that can most closely be compared to a burning, itching sensation in the muscles of the legs or arms.

Apparently it is much misunderstood.

I got this topic from the Wired Science video podcast, which portrays the different sides of this.. debate? Whatever, anyway, this reminds me of this thing called alien hand syndrome that I heard of once. It’s a disorder which forces a person to do things with one or both of their hands that they have not chosen to do, like switching on a light or knocking over a glass.

If I were not undecided on the veracity of this disorder I would pretend to have it myself. For laughs.

Here’s the Wikipedia entry on it though.

Old photobucket images.

I was just looking through my photobucket archive, which goes back a few years now, and I noticed a screencap of my desktop with both Trillian and Google Desktop open on it. Now, this doesn’t seem that interesting, but when I noticed the number of contacts who I’ve lost and the things that were in the to-do list, I realize that I forget my old self so easily.

One of the entries in the tasks list was ‘Get Hay a present…’, if I remember rightly I got her a DVD of the Mighty Boosh series one or two. One of the contacts I have lost touch with is Natty, one of Hay’s friends. I was never really that friendly with her, we never met, but we had a couple of fun conversations.

My point here is that I’ve burned through some friendships without even realizing it. I once took the time to get someone a birthday present, something which I haven’t done in years really. And I once made a conscious effort to speak with a friend of a friend. I know though, that I wasn’t doing any of those things for those people. I was doing them for me, ’cause I was always pretty self-centred. I’m trying to grow out of that.

I’d post the image but I tried to shrink it to fit this page and it is now so small as to be useless. C’est la vie.. an old Tom saying. And presumably used by other people as well.

Stage completion a bit closer.

Alright, erm, where did I leave off. Yeah, the creation of a middle-class of folks like du Bois-Reymond (whose name I stumbled over in the workshop today, much to the amusement of all), though Paolo did say that guys like him and Helmholtz were not part of the middle-class which Lenoir is referring to. I think this middle-class is the pool of labourers like engineers and people like that who knew how to work the equipment which was necessary for the progression of science in laboratories. Thus, guys like our two stars (both born to bourgeoise fathers) would have mixed a lot with their social lowers.

Paolo also asked where the best place to study disease was, the answer to which is the laboratory. Specifically the labs of men like Magnus, who unlike Johannes Muller, the previous master of du Bois-Reymond and Helmholtz, had only the one microscope, because learning centred around him. His students were expected to study science not to further its practical applications, but to identify the overall spirit of design in the universe.

Our stars did not work well with this method though, they simply could not understand why they were doing it, when they could be at the Berlin Physical Society with Gustav Magnus, studying medicine in such a way as to benefit Germany, even though Germany itself did not exist at the time, du Bois-Reymond and Helmholtz both strongly desired unification of the Germanic states. The advancement of medicine would help this process along, as it would bring investment, international recognition of ‘German science’, as well as improving communication between the different German states. Above all though, the lab of Magnus was a place of networking, just like the old hospital, for intellectuals would work with engineers and a great variety of other professionals, further encouraging national growth.

I think I might have rambled a bit here, but there is a point somewhere.

Stage partially completed.

So I’ve read just over a quarter of Timothy Lenoir’s discourse on the revolution of institutional medicine in Germany during the 19th century. It has a lot to do with changing of philosophy, over a very short time really, between two generations. The first boasting individuals like Felix du Bois-Reymond, advocate of Kantian philosophy, the second generation boasting his son, Emil du Bois-Reymond, who departed from his father’s philosophies in favour of Fichte’s humanist approach.

Christ I can barely remember any of it without looking at my notes. There was also a guy called.. Helmholtz, whose father was also a member of the first generation. Helmholtz was a volunteer in the Prussian force which fought Napoleon and strongly desired a unified German nation, not just a disparate collection of small states. He professed his opinions to his students at his Potsdam Gymnasium, but was censured on the eve of revolution because of these overly-liberal notions. He threatened the stability of the old order, that to which men like his father held.

Lenoir’s discussion of du Bois-Reymond and Helmholtz aims to describe their roles in the formation of medical institution in the nascent industrial power that was the Germanic lands in the 1800s. Newly available tools like the microscope seemed to push science in the direction of laboratory work, which in turn helped to create a middle-class of German bourgeoise intellectuals such as du Bois-Reymond and Helmholtz.

I’m gonna try and add to this once I’ve been through the workshop ordeal.

I’m awake. This is wrong.

I’ve been up since about half five thanks to last night’s bevvies. Partially to get up and do my reading finally, but that has yet to transpire, since I’ve just been dicking around online, downloading semi-useful apps like Miro. Oh and posting useless information to this blog of course.

Except is it useless? I know not a lot of people are gonna be reading this, ’cause there isn’t all that much to read about – I’m not about to start actively working to make this blog readable either, I’m too fuggin’ lazy for that. This log will be just that for me, a log of what I’m up to, for me to read back over in later months and remember what I used to be like.

So today, I am going to try and do these things:

• Read about the ideological roots of the institutional revolution in medicine
• Get onto those appointments I need to rearrange
• Take a look at essay questions
• Mither Cat Morgan about possibly getting some help with 211 (likely, huh?)
• I kinda want to chuck a disc around as well, but I always kinda want to do that
• Oh, ring mum and tell her about that little elephant I got for her
• I also sort of want my brother to get a facebook account, maybe I’ll ring him as well

Well that seems to be it for now. I’d note those down but I cannot be arsed. I’ll just get through today and review them at a later date.