forty-six+two

I suck

I've been reminded that I suck many upon many times. I was most recently reminded by aingeal is after I left a mildly humorous comment on her site. She isn't the first and won't be the last. I'm probably gonna suck this weekend and sometime in the near future too. (Pssst... see that picture of a penis to the left... pretty cool, isn't it? I think so. But the guy who drew it is really smart and Irish.)

Needless to say my posting frequency to this blog is highly representative of my sheer suckiness. In a futile attempt to reclaim my presences as a B-Logger I've decided I'm gonna keep posts on the shorter side. And a little less ranting. It's actually hard work to rant! So I've opted for rambling.

So I've started using Google Calendar. I've realized that I'm a GoogleWhore (gWhore). I use gMail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Google Slave Trader, gCrack and Google Bookmarks. It's quite swarmy if you ask me. But this is all in an effort to establish my public and private life wholly online. I figure when my sex tapes float freely though the EtherWeb I'll have made. Then I can just sit back and eat chocolate popsicles all day.

So other than that, I've come to the snarky conclusion (I couldn't have used the word snarky properly) that Web 2.0 (I don't think anyone actually knows what this is) is more about personalized browsing than social tagging. Social tagging is more of a masturbatory activity mainly because it devoid of a mappable ontology. Whoa! I don't think I wrote that. What I'm really trying to say here is if we have no way to relate the words we use to label content on the web, the mere labels are floating in space. Even if in my head I know what a "Quizzibuc" is and I label several webpages with it, it won't mean a damn to you.

So personalized browsing. This has become really viable with all the firefox extension available. And it seems like Explorer has followed suit. If you were to look at how you navigated the web with out any extensions and then how I navigate the web with several different extensions, you'd be both disgusted and floored. I mainly use personalized browsing to manage content, manage my thoughts on content, speed up where I'm going, layout webpages I like and avoid content I don't care for. Easy skeezy.

Enough about personalized browsing. I could go on and on about how I use stick pads to keep track of my thoughts and Yubnub is awesome (btw its Bunbuy backwards). But I won't. Instead, I'll encourage you to attend the sixth annual Lebowski Festival in Austin, TX. I love Austin. It's a wonderful little city with so much green and sunlight. Also a shitload of music. But the Lebowski Festival is in honor of The Big Lebowski. If you attend, you too could be an Achiever!

That's all for me. Remember... be lazy, have incomplete pseudo-intellectual thoughts and underestimate everyone's worth (including your own) and you'll get far in life!

----------------
From the annals of dr. timothy leary
----------------
Think for yourself
Question authority

Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities, the political, the religious, the educational authorities who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing, forming in our minds their view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable, open-mindedness;
chaotic, confused, vulnerability to inform yourself.

Think for yourself.
Question authority.

posted by Mitesh @ 10:50 AM Your Musings: 1

Duke, DNA and Dirty Deeds

I was listening to the news and it was reported that there was no DNA evidence connected to the allegations that members of the Duke lacrosse team raped an African American stripper. This by no means is conclusive that the rape didn't happen, but it weighs heavily in that direction. It's certainly not beyond a group of young male athletes to behave like this.

NPR interviewed some students from North Carolina Central University where one of the strippers went to school. One young woman felt that "the whole DNA thing is bullshit". WHAT?!?? What the hell is she trying to say? I certainly don't disagree with her that maybe the investigation went awry. But to say that DNA is bullshit? How can you be in college and say that? That's beyond me. Isn't it a basic hurdle to believe certain scientific tenets before they let you into college? At least construct a convincing argument to the contrary? Don't just leave us with 'bullshit'. That's just a steaming pile of horse manure.

So this incident elucidated several racial, class and gender issues that still hold control over our culture. First, there were racial slurs addressed to these women. This is totally uncalled for and for young men of an elite university to still buy into this stereotype is unfortunate. But I think if we all look, we'll find some remnants of racism. You're very lucky if your devoid of those subtle traces. Hopefully, you're showing others how to rid themselves of those ever so hard to isolate tendencies.

There's a new show that pits rich against poor on the WB. Both groups exemplify certain stereotypes that we hold regarding the rich spoiled kid (surprise! A reality show exploiting stereotypes!). We tend to easily demonize the rich. And yeah robber barons, oil tycoons and politicians have all betrayed the trust of the public. But say that all rich people do that is insane. There have been many financial elites who have given uncountable blessings to this world, but we never seem to really understand them or mingle with them so we don't have any awareness of their situation. Only how our lack of money contributes to our pitiful situation.

And finally, my favorite: the gender issues. The general sentiment amongst many people is "Even though the DNA evidence is negative, I still feel that something happened." This is very different from having a suspicion of something happening. The situation was ripe for something to happen, but the conclusion that something did happen is a bit premature. I think this comes from a base suspicion we have towards men in general. Sports and fraternities are ad hoc masculine communities ripe with rituals and leaders. This community doesn't create a mature man because it has no vested interest in creating a mature man. However, society does. And by the sheer fact that universities are endowed with men of this age, it becomes their responsibility to mature men (and women). And so I point you to an interesting article on the responsibility of a university to create a conscious citizen.

Honestly, I don't know what happened. But I think I'm gonna hit up the local strip club and ruminate. Ahhh... ruminations!

posted by Mitesh @ 12:52 PM Your Musings: 1

Avatar

I came up with a new avatar. I hope you like him! I know I do. He is truly the highest expression of my artistic capacity. I'm truly proud of the line details and color palette. But more importantly, I think the emotion experience far outweighs any artistic techniques used to render my master piece. Alas, I must admit that he makes me smile.

posted by Mitesh @ 2:11 PM Your Musings: 2