Sensitivity, the bane of society, demonstrated through biscuits

Sigh! Hullo again good sirs!

Well, happy and anxious times ahead. My last formal class, i.e. the last time I was required to attend University, is now 5 days ago. I can’t believe I have gotten through four years of university study, just a year in and I was failing fundamental subjects, oh man… I look back at myself then compared to now and I have gotten old fast… like… super old style. Anyway, I should probably get back to why I decided to post again.

So… this has been building for a while now, while randomly jetting about Australia’s cities, I distinctly remember an incident in Sydney… Accidentally bumping into an overly large and bawdy man in a crowded city train (I think I drew attention to him staring down a moderately attractive girls bra… however, she probably had the intelligence of a small mole). So he turns around and yells, “Hey! Watch it!” (wow, now that I think about it, it sounds like a cliche audio clip out of GTA), and, basically, I had to get off the train because I only just realized it had stopped at the right station, so I just kept on walking!

OK, so you’re thinking… What a rude bastard! But, I’ll elaborate on it in a second… granted, I will probably still seem like a rude bastard, but at least I have my reasons

So, tonight, on today tonight (I JUST switched on the telly and it was on! I SWEAR I don’t watch that spewer of fecal matter), apparently Coles is rebranding a cookie from “Creole Creams” to “Gollywog Cookies” because some aboriginal rights idiot complained about it being a racial slur, (does he even know what creole means?).  What… And Gollywog isn’t? Noddy the claymation was stopped because of political correctness like this… It’s seriously idiotic (psssst. I wont ever refer to the source of that information because it’s terrible)

Sam Watson from Uni of QLD (the person who brought this up) was quoted saying (Brisbane Times, 26/10) not only that things like this are to keep us from being desensitized to the issue of racism (which in itself is bullshit) but also,

“The word Creole comes from a period when people’s humanity was measured by the amount of white blood they had in their bloodstream”

Are you fucking serious?! Granted creole has a double meaning, french american people and mixed european people, even a style of food popular in America, but how the fuck is it an offensive word?! How the fuck can you interpret it in that way! How the FUCK can you skew the meaning of the word to relate to racism?!! YOU, SIR, ARE PROMOTING RACISM!

How about, fucking accept it! Banging on racism is like picking at a scab! It only serves to inflame it!
(this follows the whole harry connick jr farce… ooh! hey! inflammation demonstrated! HAHA! Go the media to follow through!)

This leads me onto the next thing. People nowadays are far too sensitive, like we are all King Henry V, we are too quick to crucify anything that doesn’t affect our fairytale view of an Utopian reality (btw, just FYI, economic trade promotes the closest thing to peace… peace is purely the absence of war, not some lovey dovey feeling or emotion). If we could all forget about the placing importance in politeness (which in itself is an outdated traditional ideal that conservatives living in the elizebethan era feel they need to bang into our heads, and people without the intellect to comprehend its meaning often do take it into their head… unfortunately they have no idea how to use it… But these are the people who give the greatest flying fuck… the very people who don’t understand it…) we could have a much more efficient society the way I see it.

For example, imagine the hours and hours that could be saved per year if people forgot about the words please and thank you, which have absolutely no communicative relevance to any situation apart from making the respondent feel more valued.

Mull on that kids, and yes, I am a harsh bastard, and I don’t believe in religion, politeness or useless political ideology unless, under critical discussion of it we find it is useful to society (which is highly unlikely and anyone who tells you otherwise is pushing an agenda… yes, really… Think about what they are saying, what are their views? Why are they promoting the idea? You’ll see), but let me leave you with this…

As  Australian comedian Ronnie Johns said while playing the caricature of Mark “Chopper” Reid,

“Harden the Fuck Up”

P.S. If Sam Watson happens to come across this blog and he is reading this. Here is a message for you Sam. That issue that you just brought up probably earned Coles more money than they could possibly earn by explicitly advertising “Creole Creams”. Cheers for progress!

P.S.S. I will elaborate on why I think small shops will always exist and so will shopping centers and department stores at a later date. It’s all to do with target market, and shopping experience.

Coke has secretely added new ingredients to Mother?!

HA! Insomnia is good for you! More rationale to sleep less!

(refer to post below about validating your own views)

This is a direct reference to the American Medical Associations archives for general psychiatry (although some would argue psychiatry is psuedo medical practice) Vol. 59 No. 2, February 2002.

Mortality Associated With Sleep Duration and Insomnia

Daniel F. Kripke, MD; Lawrence Garfinkel, MA; Deborah L. Wingard, PhD; Melville R. Klauber, PhD; Matthew R. Marler, PhD

Figure 1

Figure 2

The hazard ratios for various sleep durations adjusted for 32 covariates are given in Figure 1 and Figure 2 illustrate that, among both women and men, the best survival was experienced by those reporting a usual sleep duration of 7 hours, which was 1 hour less than the modal sleep duration (8 hours recommended). Participants who reported sleeping 8 hours or more had distinctly and significantly increased mortality hazard: the longer the reported sleep, the higher the mortality hazard. When reported sleep exceeded 8.5 hours (as occurred among 7.5% of women and 7.7% of men), the added risk associated with long sleep exceeded 15%. Reported sleep had to be less than 3.5 hours among women (as occurred among only 0.1%) or less than 4.5 hours among men (0.7% of men) for the added risk associated with short sleep to exceed 15%.

Capped: Addicted to New Media? You Decide. Via this new Mobile Poll!

Are you addicted to New Media?!
Comment: Yes/No 
Results will be tallied for the next post!
NB: If you answer "No" I will assume you are in
denial and proxy vote "Yes" for you.

It is the second month in a row I have gotten capped… At first I thought it was my over-reaction to finally getting a ridiculously fast Internet connection, but now, in hind-sight this could be a reflection of what Evgeny Morozov recently talked about at his TED conference.

We are verging upon the intersection of the physical and virtual worlds (Go watch Surrogates people! Granted it is horribly “Hollywood-ized”, but the general premise is there). This is the point of no return; we cannot escape the clutches of mediated imagery… Ok, now I’m approaching the theory of simulacra (thanks Baudrillard =_=) and that’s a whole other kettle of fish, but, considering we are coming to a point where we cannot escape (like my cousin who paradoxically announced on his Facebook profile that he would regularly update his web of acquaintances on his journey of “trying to escape the intoxicating addiction to media…”) do we really want to be intrinsically intertwined with the content of the Internet (because that seems to be the information repository of today)?

Oh, but I hear you exclaim, “the Internet promotes freedom of expression, it allows organizations that promote these ethics to find a voice without litigious rigmarole and the conduit through which we can all project our views upon the world!” (I especially like the latter reason and my futile scrawls on this blog are a demonstration of this… seriously… Are you still reading this? Wow! You must be super-dooper bored). Really? Does it?

Consider this. If the Internet is an overwhelming demonstration of freedom of speech, why is it that 99% of the world uses only 3 search engines (soon to be 2 with Microsoft’s Bing and Yahoo merging)? Why are the top five viewed websites all owned by overwhelming conservative groups originating from the US and the top fifty have no other purpose than for entertainment purposes? When was the last time you used the Internet to do something like defending human rights (which is also another contentious philosophical issue… Human rights? The foundation of civilization or a cover for some of us to get exploited silly (think carefully about that and I will refer you to the current state of the American healthcare system… yes… choice… say what? Choice is defined by wealth? Huh? Say that again? The wealthy are the least vulnerable from socio-economic dilemmas? Wait! Does that mean in order to exercise this choice we need to work ourselves silly? … Ok this dribble is just becoming a hippy argument conforming to the overwhelmingly paranoid arguments presented in the film Zeitgeist (don’t watch the 2^nd one though, I almost threw a brick at the screen))? Is what is on the Internet really the truth or is it framed by its constructor, who’s view is framed by his owner and so on? Is every bit of information put on the internet really free to wander as it pleases? Who owns the teat from which you squeeze “Interwebs” from? Lastly and probably most importantly, what do you REALLY use your Internet connection for? What occupies the MOST amount of your web surfing time? No, really…

But, I hear you exclaim, “what about the atrocities in Iran and the media blackout that was only ended by a Twitter!?” A couple of things are wrong with that. 1.) Iran was (largely) able to create a media blackout 2.) The person who twittered forgot he had placed his entire life online.

As Evgeny Morozov stated in his speech, (and he was from the USSR so you KNOW this is true! HA! “In Russia, Information owns you!”) In the old days the KGB would torture information out of you. Nowadays all they need to do is click a few things, type a few more things, and voila!

This might sound like an old fuddy duddy Big Brother rationale, and, in reality it is (Damn you George Orwell!). We are in an age of New Media Hedonism. Our views are narrowing as we find more and more ammunition to validate our twisted paradigms, such as the idea of racism, which in my view is a self-defeating argument peddled by the truly lazy or the truly indifferent – let’s not engage in the issue and discuss it critically… NOOO its far too taboo, let’s label it, call it un-Australian (don’t get me started on the atrocity that is the word (or symbol, more accurately) of un-Australian) and then slap it on anything that offends anyone at all… which is everything, of course (notice what I did there? HA! I just manufactured a whole heap of ammunition to support an arguement, which may or may not be truth, but how are you to differentiate this relative truth from absolute truth… in fact, how is anyone to understand absolute truth, anyone that claims to is just lying now… Are are they….?! O NO, PHILOSOPHICAL LOOP), and we cordon off stylized identities to suit situations, for example I am an Artist, a Designer, a Gamer, they’re all me, but to the outsider they are three different faces (Social identity masks discussed by Goffman and entrenched in such Eastern cultures as Japan, Korea and China, where the idea of “Face” is more important than one’s life). This is our attempts at self-deification – to know all, be all and have all, if not physically, than at least virtually or perceptively (if the other person doesn’t know any better, then that fake “Proda” bag is, for all intents and purposes, is a Prada bag (holy crap! Baudrillard again >.<). (PS This is my attempt to deify myself through knowledge)

I have no idea where this leads… So I’ll just stop there because this is about to spin out of control (it’s about to revert back into the Gramsci argument about hegemony). But, I will say this. Am I addicted to New Media? I am surrounded by several computers, several portable media devices that connect me at all times to the Internet, if I’m not actually at the computer then I’m probably on the phone, on my DSi or listening to my iPod (that reminds me… I need a bigger one. My massive song collection I am hoarding cannot fit on my current one!). I am a self-confessed media junkie.

Is my splurging of all the philosophical issues a result of my denial to admit this? To admit I am becoming overwhelmingly conservative, converging with the ideas of the great over mind we all suckle on? You tell me… on Facebook of course!

And lastly, support the Arcade Fire! They rock!

And so does The Arcade Fire

Penn and Teller vs. the view that Video Games are Bad

So Sorry guys about not posting for a long time, I have been on a music tour
Nevertheless I have been hard at work on a new Design Document detailing a game I’ve had in my head for the last few months.

About halfway through it, looks like a decent sized proposal!

Anyway, I was watching Penn and Teller as you do and their latest episode from series 7 talks about the effects of violent video games on children.
Take out all the swearing and you decide… Keep in mind this is an MA rated television show so the swearing is extremely profuse… but funny… but profuse… but funny… and profuse… but really funny

http://www.wisevid.com/view_video.php?viewkey=jk2bukzbugecqgg26262#

Do video games really make kids violent? Personally, I am totally with these guys. It is a message I have been trying to bang into people, PnT are a hell of a lot more eloquent at it thats all
I will be detailing this later, but I hope to hear some responses from you guys!

PST, Jack Thompson (barred for life attourney crusader against video games) is in this.

NOTE: I did not host this video!

I’m Beached Es!

While I’m writing up my latest review on Sims 3 I decideded to show you guys my favourite Youtube video.
A whale finds himself beached in New Zealand. It’s such a big thing now you can buy T-shirts with the slogan “I”m Beached Es”.

EDIT: Hullo fellow beached whale enthusiasts! ABC has seen fit to make this into an 11 part series! Catch it here at:

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/beachedaz/

I found the making of clips particularly hilarious.
Sam Niell: “Fuck you”

ePeen growing larger! This is my portfolio

Hullo people.

Due to my current predicament I am looking around for work But that is OK! Because there is always a new place to start and it will give me a chance to get out of my rut. Been too long at the same place.

Anyways, here is a selection of work from my past:

1 – Website created for a chamber choir.

http://megaswf.com/view/6040022f126bb68da0bd7499e0972e9c.html

(PS here’s the final website live http://www.exaudi.com.au)

2 – Essay on the collapse of our perceptions of reality, a homage to Baudrillard’s theories

http://thechum.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=140

3 – A short story created using William Burrough’s Cutup technique – A cheese guitar

http://thechum.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=141

4 – A character design document I co-created

http://thechum.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=139

5 – Fictional newspaper clipping

http://thechum.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=143

6 – Another fictional newspaper clipping

http://thechum.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=142

7 – Fictional advert from Sony

http://thechum.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=144

8 – Another fictional advert from Apple

http://thechum.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=138

Have a look, see and gander, hope you like my work! A lot of the work is downloadable PDF files. Feel free to share them around but noone is to publish this work without express permission from its author (me and sometimes another person).

PS I created a twitter account (dunno why, all my friends are on facebook) catch me on http://twitter.com/chum115

Short Story – Memoirs of a Proletariat

Hullo people!

I have just finished my latest short story. It won’t be published, its a bit crap. Anyway, here it is for all of you to download and read if you wish, it’s not long, but, if you want to get some of the underlying meaning in it you can read the explanation at the end. It has bits of truth in it, think of it as a historical semi-fictional peice.

Anyways, I only got 3 hours sleep last night so I will be getting some more now….

[Snore] Zzzzzzzzz… [Snore] Zzzzzzzzz….

Attachment:

Guitar Hero Metallica vs Rock Band The Beatles

OMG!
Two of the all-time greatest bands going head to head as posers strumming fiddly small plastic guitars mash their buttons as fast as they can… Rhythmically.

There was a time when rhythm, music based games were relegated to the arcades where there was always a geeky asian kid with more coins in his bag than you had hair follicles that would scare you off with his freaky skills.

But, with the advent of the fake band phenomenom by (originally) Harmonix and Red Octane (who have split to from the GH and Rock Band franchises), suddenly the games that required $500 accessories for you to begin playing have come roaring back into the limelight, kicking and screaming, driven by adolescents with a need to feel like a Rock Star without the practice that goes into it.

Metallica, although not the first band to plant their name on a gaming franchise (Aerosmith and ACDC were the last incarnations of expanions by GH and Rock Band), Metallica was an unusual choice by Neversoft (consequently, I found out that the introduction of An Endless Sporadic in Guitar Hero III was no accident, the guitarist works there. Btw, their progressive rock is awesome! Keep it up guys and everyone go buy their EP Ameliorate from iTunes… There! some free advertising!):

1. Because, although they personally weren’t against the digital revolution (they were against stealing music), they’ve been given a bad rap lately as being fearful of technological change

2. Their music, while having a huge hardcore fan base, is not the easiest music to get into if you’re not already familiar with Metallica and/or not fiendishly good at playing Guitar Hero (which a lot of people are nowadays… It’s like World of Warcraft, 20 million hardcore players and counting). If you are new to the franchise its best if you start on the original GH World Tour. Guitar Hero Metallica will bitchslap you back to China (incidentally, that is where GnR (correction, just Mr. Rose, GnR is now Velvet Revolver (or… was until a short time ago)) was banished to for over a decade before releasing their unanimously crap album, Chinese Democracy… Yes, I have it and hate it too).

Never the less, it will be interesting to see the feedback from this release and the upcoming The Beatles expansion onto Rock Band. Although Rock Band will probably not reach the heights of popularity that Guitar Hero has, so it is unfortunate that The Beatles chose to showcase their greatest music on an ailing franchise, not all of us are prepared to spend hundreds of dollars just for Rock Band, when GH and a collection of The Beatles albums will suffice (Revolver…. mmmmmmm).

Time recently released a video covering the release of GH: Metallica at a concert (don’t remember where).

Video Here

EDIT: I should probably clarify, for those of you turned off Rock Band because I said it costs hundreds… well… not really, it just costs under a hundred $AU (I’m guessing around 60 but my price list hasn’t come through yet). But I am saddened that Rock Band has become an ailing franchise. From personal experience trying to retail these two games, often the casual gamer will stick to what he or she knows best (I, in fact, am very fond of the Rock Band playlist mmmm… Coheed and Cambria… mmmmm…). Also, consumers have been turned off the fact that the intruments and Rock Band game come separately.

Also, for those of you under a rock, Beatles Rock Band will be released 9/9/09. There isn’t much info out there save for a first trailer, but suffice to say it is going to be awesome. Built from the ground up, The Beatles Rock Band will be a standalone edition of Rockband (as opposed to a side grade as GH Metallica is) and is looking very schmick with duet singing (ooooh yeah! time to test out those harmonies) and a selection from the entire Beatles collection. However, due to licensing, I think this will be the only game featuring these pioneers of rock. As far as I am aware it will not be seen on the existing Rock Band, any future Rock Band sequels and any Guitar Hero. Still, if anyone is to revive the franchise there aint much better than The Beatles.

Ponderings… On Marxism and its derivatives

Raaaaah! And back again after a long hiatus.
Actually… No, I lie. I’ve always been here, hiding under my pile of unfinished posts. Yes, lets see, thats about a million drafts (I even have a draft from 1999 for some reason). But I WILL finish this post. I have even written a draft on paper.

Anyways, while I was attempting to write a historical fictitious short story on the start of the Cultural Revolution (it centers around Mao’s insecurities getting the better of him, he feared his legacy being considered inferior to rulers of the past and immediately called for the destruction of all of “Old China”) my mind wandered. Why do social theories such as Marxism and its interpretations (Leninism, Maoism, Socialism, Communism etc.) fail so horribly in their implementation?

And, I came upon one argument that Marxists (especially those around my University. Did you know the Australian Socialist Movement is based on Melbourne? No wonder I keep getting bombarded by (now I realise) contradictory messages of “Support Marxism” and “Stop Conflict”, which I will get into later) like to bang on particularly noisily; that the bourgeoisie of society are the scum of the earth, only good for exploiting things for their own gain, not actually putting in any hard yards of themselves (well… In todays consumerist society that is partially true. Production is all based on information.).

But I investigated the origins of Bourgeisie further and came across a literal translation of the word. It literally means an inhabitant of the village. I suspect Marx worded his jealousy of others success into a theory on class, power, monetary and status upheaval. What Marx failed to realise (and Gerud (i think that’s who it is) did realise) is that the bourgeois were a class of their own and were also once of a lower status originally including any “inhabitant of the village” from serfs to merchants in the fuedal system. Only with the rise of merchant power did the definition of what was Bourgeois begin to warp. The “Bourgeois” began to evolve into a well off “Middle class” (more commonly referred to in Western societies), a form of economic revolution in itself and, in fact, the only instance in history of a successful “class” revolution.

Essentially, Karl Marx argued that society can only become a classless equal society through the upheaval of an “upper class” by a “lower class”. However, no matter the length of the struggle, in a world of vertically structured societies, what eventually happens is a new class of bourgeoisie is created and the vicious cycle continues (by the way, I will talk about the fallacies of “rights” and “equality” later).

So, if the final result of a governments (…in a true marxist society should a government really exist?) adherence to marxism’s criticism of a vertical class system is constant anarchy why did so many world powers adopt it? Why do so many backwards countries continue to adopt it?

Because the most powerful people in those countries were complete retards.

The ideals of this school of thinking are attractive both to the niave (equality in a classless society) and the tyrannical (a forced classless society was infinitely more controllable than a democratic one).

In the constant struggle for class superiority (under the guise of fighting for equality) a pseudo equality emerges. In anarchy no one entity can hold power for long enough to consolidate it before being pulled back into the morass that is the masses (like an extreme version of tall poppy syndrome Australians are notorious from suffering… Hey! We’re almost like communists! All for the Aussie Battler).

But in all this struggle, people forget – in a vertically integrated social order running on the scarcity provided by a monterary system, equality can never occur.

Just as nature intended, no one person is born and raised identical to another (yes… even you, twins); so it goes, no one person can fit into the “one size must fit all” mentality that emerges from Marxism.

Sure, we still hold some of the more attractive values to heart. Equality. Sharing resources. But, we are so far down the rabbit hole of laisse faire that we can never emerge from it (or… maybe in this economic climate we can be radical and forget about money all together… Nope, that’s never going to happen, people are too materialistically greedy… Like me!).

Lets look back. The most successful “so-called marxist” regimes have been dictatorships – the antithesis of equality. Starvation, poverty and terrible abuse of humans (notice I failed to use “rights”. What we fail to realise is that in a vertical society, “rights” only come to those who can afford to keep their dignity). Sure resources were shared but if you only have one bowl of rice between 10 people, no matter which way you look at it, noone is going to get fed.

Marxism and its derivatives have no place in the modern world. Marxism is synonymous with Anarchy. (Hey! I’m an Anarchist!)

“Equality = distribution of wealth =! motivation to generate more wealth = Everyone is equally worse off” – Chum, 26 May, 2009

Karl Marx didn’t explain his theories were an April Fools Joke