There are two main types of the oblivious.

The first often seem to be happy-go-lucky types. This is only because almost nothing reaches them and they have no sort of feedback mechanism to gauge their effect on other people. They smile a lot and are the sorts who say “Have a nice day” to everyone and actually mean it.

They have no solutions to any problems because they can’t see any problems. This sounds good but let me give some examples.

They stumble around in the kitchen at 6 AM, banging pots around and then when you get up to see what’s going on they say with a smile “Oh did I wake you up?”

They shout into their cell phones really loud when they are on the bus.

Text or watch movies when they drive.

They are so busy talking on the phone or watching YouTube videos for hours that they forget to feed their kid. (or that couple in Korea who practically lived at the Internet Cafe playing with virtual babies that their own baby starved to death)

They will try to do anything without having a clue how to do it. And will not seek any sort of instruction or advice. This includes cooking, household repair, child care, health related things, business ideas.

Don’t have very good communications skills and don’t see any need to develop them.

Tend to be hard core New Age believers-Angels, Crystal Children, channeling. You name it they believe it.

There’s just so many examples of this type this list could be novel length. It’s like a bunch of bubble boys.

The second type are the assholes. They sort of see the world but through so many of their own filters that it’s quite distorted.

Here are some examples and characteristics too.

Every time you say something they assume it is about them. If you even slightly disagree with some idea of theirs they assume you hate them. They then go on a rampage about it, always in public, to anyone who will listen. It is impossible to debate anything logically.

Are usually completely uninformed about any opinions they have. And they are full of opinions.

Project the worst possible motives on everyone regardless of what the actual motives are.

Tend to be paranoid and assume everything is an attack.

Behave like they are entitled to be treated like royalty.

In both cases they:

-assume everyone sees the world exactly as they do if they’ve even bothered to think about other’s world views at all

-have no capacity for self-examination or self-reflection

-diligently seek distraction and are very easily distracted and get involved with any shiny thing that passes by

-live totally on emotion and satisfying themselves

-don’t realize other people have feelings

I’ve tried to figure out how this state of things comes about. I have no idea. I used to work with a lot of people that fit into both categories. There are subtypes of each. And I still encounter many like this. I don’t know if it is a failure of the education system, growing up with these kinds of role models or what. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with intelligence. Some science types have this kind of thing in the extreme. Maybe it’s like Asperger’s or something. I’m sure it’s psychological-some kind of developmental disorder.

But whenever I meet someone like that I find I want to yell at them “Wake the fuck up”, pay attention to what’s going on around you. But that would be a waste of time.

Most of the time I can ignore it but sometimes, when it comes in concentrated doses it’s a little hard to take. Like being around a bunch of cocoon people.

There are even a few sommeliers among the crowd. What is a sommalier you may ask? He’s not the average wine waiter who simply opens the bottle and pours it in that haughty way while waiting for you to pretend you know what you are doing as you take a sip and say to him “That’s fine” before he’ll set the bottle down and get lost.  No the sommelier is  basically a fancy dressed wine salesman. Or more aptly the wine middle man taking his cut by re-selling wine from wholesalers and vineyards. But call him that and wine will soon become whine. He develops a wine cellar for a restaurant, sources the products and then tries to sell them.  He’s the guy who stalks patrons of fancy restaurants trying to get you to bottle up (as opposed to have a glass) with the most expensive products in the house.

He has an entire vocabulary about these products too. The spiel generally contains phrases like nutty, nose, hint, ambient, color, palate, soupcon and other French words. He wears a fancy spoon around his neck and slurps wine from it like a cat slurps a saucer of milk. The delicate lapping and fussy face satisfaction are all part of the package.

It’s a complete production that adds that flair of drama to the ordinary night out I suppose. Or it’s a high priced way to justify drinking a lot of wine competitively on a regular basis.

I just don’t get all the fuss about bottles of spoiled grape juice. Here kitty kitty.

“feeling great joy”

“spread light to all beings”

“loving lightness of being in present”

Some days I get about 50 of these type of things on Twitter.   And some are re-tweeted by half a dozen people. Facebook as well but with less frequency and usually a bit of context. It’s like styrofoam filler in a package. Why does anyone think this is some kind of news? It sounds like someone’s been breathing helium or something. What are they supposed to mean? Do they have a meaning or are they just platitudes that one is “supposed” to say and feel because they meditate or something?

Who’s keeping score? The more of this nonsense that one pumps out the higher their “rank” in the Buddha realms? I don’t think so.

These things drive me a little mad sometimes. They’re like jello, no bones.

This got me wondering what the heck is this made out of? Seemed to be some oil based product by the ingredients list on the side of the package.  Should wash off easily I thought. So I took it in hand and with the hottest water possible tried to get it clean. Not much luck.

Then I took a powdered cleanser with bleach to it and a dish brush. This also was to no avail. So I went with a big squirt of the grease removing dish soap. Some luck. It began to loosen from the plastic and…ick…stick to the dish brush and the bottom of the sink.  It took about a gallon of hot water and 20 minutes to get it to finally dissolve.

So my conjecture is that this stuff is made from some kind of silicone based life form that has been discovered by astronauts and is being produced on the international space station for human consumption. Ohhh shades of Soylent Green.

I’ll stay with peanut butter from now on.

What I am talking about is video reposting. That means just adding a link to someone else’s video to a blog post, without commentary and considering it some kind of content.

I am not talking about video blogging with original content, which is great.

This blog laziness started some time back with individual bloggers just posting quote of the day type things interspersed with their own commentary. This soon became just blogs of irrelevent and out of context quotes. Now even words of others are being dispensed with and only random videos appear, sometimes even without titles or sources-though the sources are usually YouTube. And they are generally videos of people giving some kind of talk about something or music videos. They are not juxtaposed against some other content or even another video so there is no point of interface against which to ponder them.

It just reminds me of kids pulling faces at strangers when they drive by in a car. It is random and weird. And rather lazy.

Why are these things relevant to the blogs in question?  Without context they are just like a handful of photos strewn in the gutter-without meaning.

All I can do is keep putting the words out and try to buck this trend. Who knows maybe words will make a comeback on blogs some day.

What a nightmare that thing is. It’s like it was invented by a bunch of ultra-paranoid security agency freaks locked in a super secret facility smoking crystal meth 24 hours a day. Every 10 seconds a new popup appears asking for permission for this and that and then there’s all these warnings like the world is coming to an end or something.

For what should have taken about 20 minutes with an install and some tweaks (ha and I use the word tweaks knowingly you bunch of Frankensteining programmers!) took like 3 hours and stuff still didn’t work right.

I was just hooking up his new mobile phone so he could sync stuff and load music and that and every time the program had to go to the internet or access any system resources these lazy popups appeared. What I mean by lazy popups is they took forever to appear (and hey its quite a new computer so don’t blame the hardware).

All the fade-in and fade-out and fancy graphics took all the cpu time up and the programs hardly run. And those stupid widgets are such a waste of space on the desktop. I killed them all along with most of the crap in start up and any other cpu-hogging stuff I could find.

No wonder they are pushing Windows 7 up schedule-wise. I even read some quote in the paper today that Windows Vista was “wildly popular”. Of course this quote was from a corporate exec so what do you expect.

Give me back Windows 3.1. I could hack the whole thing the way I wanted and it was EASY. I shouldn’t have to have 14 university degrees in computer engineering to move a couple of songs from a computer to a mobile phone. Pullleeeez!

Who agreed on Saturdays? What’s wrong with Tuesday?

Statistics start dropping off on Friday afternoon and start to pick up again Sunday afternoon.

Maybe I’m too obsessed with blogging. How would I know?

I have no great ending to this post. Well maybe that’s the answer to the Saturday night problem. Running out of words at the end of a week.

Part of the problem is the education system which, in the early years is geared towards putting out good, passive citizens who won’t raise too much hell about things. There are no critical thinking skills taught and when these are raised by students they are labelled unruly and given Ritalin or whatever for their “hyperactivity” or such things.

It’s appalling that kids are getting as medicated as adults these days. If people were taught to stop being so scared of each other and scared of themselves rather than being “cooperative” to such a degree that everyone becomes doormats to the more powerful maybe there would be some real change in the world.

But that’s not going to happen any time soon. So it’s just more of the same.

Here’s another one for the complaint department. No wonder this catagory has more entries than any other on this blog.

Then here’s what happened in terms of pains in the ass about travel. I’m not even going to describe it just put it in point form. Some are small and some are big. Seems like the longer the travel the bigger the problems. Some weird correlation there.

-landed in India late (12 hours) and could not sleep despite being more or less awake for 3 days.It was real hot.

-We went to Mussoorie (9 hours from Delhi), 3 days later back to Delhi to pick up a friend who was coming to visit, next day back to Mussoorie. The air conditioning conked out in the car in 40C degree heat(more than 100F) on the first trip.

-Went touring around in the car and were beset by CD problems, air conditioning problems, tire problems, closed roads for a couple of weeks.

-Trying to get back to Canada from India wasn’t bad except for the over the top security due to the bombings in Mumbai. Plane left a little late from Hong Kong but not bad.

-Trying to get from Vancouver to Saskatoon.Was asked to divert from Calgary to go visit Medicine Hat Alberta-this would have cost me excessively and turn a 5 hour trip into a 14 hour nightmare going on the bus across the frozen prairie in the middle of the night to arrive at about 4AM. No thanks. Some people were mad a little about this.

-Booked a flight on Christmas Eve. Huge snowstorm. Was told via email the first plane would be leaving late and I’d miss the connection. After being on hold for 55 minutes I just canceled the flight. Then I went online to reschedule. Nothing available as Air Canada had canceled about 80 percent of its flights so everyone was scrambling to get on West Jet (the only airline I fly with in Canada). Managed to secure a flight on boxing day (26th).

-Boxing day flight snowstorm. Flight left one hour late and I managed to run for the connection in Calgary. Barely made it. The Westjet counter person , in a very uncharacteristic way was rather nasty at the airport. She must have worked for Air Canada previously.

-Trying to get a bus from Saskatoon to Medicine Hat Alberta. Schedule got me into MH at 2AM-ended up traveling on the frozen prairie in the middle of the night anyways.

-Now trying to get from MH back to Saskatoon and I’ve discovered Greyhound has canceled one of its daily runs and that STC (the Saskatchewan bus company) has canceled the Sunday run from Swift Current (where I have to change buses) to S’toon. Now I have to wait til 5PM, spend the night in SC at a hotel to get a bus tomorrow morning from there.

-I changed  my flight reservation twice from S’toon to Van due to stuff coming up here that I was asked to help with. And I am so off put by all this travel crap that I didn’t want to go so soon again anyways. But this cost me 50 bucks each time I changed it. But it was an outstanding seat sale so even with that it’s still 30 percent less than full fare.

-now I have to get my visa for India in order(photos, paperwork, 2 trips to the consulate in Vancouver) as well as try to get a ticket for the first week of March (and not get ripped off by an 800$ commission on it like one travel agent charged me).

There’s way more stuff than this to it but it makes me tired just to think about it.

I am writing this while I am waiting 4 hours for the bus to go to SC and a night at a hotel. Expenses I can do without. And all the luggage handling. With my back and forth travel I’ve become like a freight company for family and friends so usually end up with at least one more suitcase than I can handle comfortably. But shipping and stuff is outrageously expensive so I understand their requests.

And the saga of travel woes continues.

I hope Greenland can make it on its own but with a sparse population that can be difficult.

I’d be pleased if Greenland sought an alliance of some sort with Canada. Canada is mostly Arctic and sub-Arctic to the challenges faced by Greenlanders are the same as those faced by many Canadians. And we have some sort of army in case some “southern” nation decides it wants oil resources by force. Well not a big army but enough of an army to put up some resistance until Russia comes to our aid. You think they’d let some “southerners” grab that much territory! Ha!

Anyways I’m just speculating and pondering world affairs. Speculative future history might be the thought category.

Is there anything that isn’t in a quiz these days? I’ve checked the IQ of one of my blogs, and its gender, have subjected myself to religious check ups and even seen what mythological god or goddess I would be. A faux self-analysis that doesn’t really answer anything and is only for entertainment purposes. But its kind of fun.

Travel and food don’t mix well. I ate on the plane but not all of it. And I am just not hungry right now. Nonetheless my roommates believe that I must be starving-maybe because I’ve just come from India-if they only knew how much I eat there.

My request. Please don’t feed the travellers.

Cheesy effects such as melting letters and Swiss cheese holes as transitions in titles I ( just saw that one yesterday) make the productions look both amateur and cheap.The latter was like a 60′s style go-go title with polka dots leading into the next title. And it was a nature show! What’s the connection.

In movies and television series its all about the jump cut from one action shot to another. And they are so often put together in such a sloppy way that they just give a headache rather than enhancing the speed or whatever effect they are supposed to be doing.

Quality editing is rarely noticeable. It smoothly moves the action along and doesn’t get in the way and make a show of its own. Where are the directors that let this stuff get into their work. Where are the film aesthetics? Who teaches this crap? It’s like kids with new toys and they have to bend and twist them in every direction.

To all aspiring editors Please Please watch some of the classic films and those that have won awards for editing. They don’t include polka dots.

The foreigners don’t like anything including food, transportation, accommodation, toilets, the fit of the clothes, weather, other people’s personal habits, doing anything without having their hand held, making even the simplest decisions.

Local people don’t like the dithering while foreign people “just can’t make up their minds”, the perceived insult to food, country, hygiene, language difficulties, western arrogance, high level dependency about everything.

Put those two together and have it acted out in a veritable passive aggressive festival since neither wants to get me upset, me being in the middle, and I walk around with my teeth gritted all day and have nightmares of being locked in my room while the two of them whine it out and pout in the corridor. Arrrrrggggghhhhhh!  

Only 3 more days, I tell myself. Then the foreigners go and I get back to something like normalcy around here. And as with all passive-aggressive stuff it will pass. In the meantime I have shut myself in the hotel room, left each to their own devices, separately, and with mobile phones in case of emergency, and I do my own whining and pouting here.

I’d better write about something constructive to get myself out of this fuck-em-all kind of feeling.

So am adding something to that effect to my Photography Manifesto on RealityMontage site. Am trying to develop something of a photographic style/philosophy or more aptly trying to refine what I’ve always done.

Karma seems like the magic solution to so many mysteries in life. It has replaced superstition as the explanation of “Why things go wrong?” It has become a toss off phrase for any and every situation. It’s short and simple and seems to cover all bases but in that context it means exactly nothing. To say a situation is just someone’s good or bad karma is a dismissal and an easy excuse for not bothering to think too deeply about the answer or to take personal responsibility for actions that caused the situation.

Media doesn’t help matters with the glib sound bites. Simple answers like that give a temporary sense of false security but that doesn’t give any real help to those that are looking for real answers. Karma is intricately complicated in every situation but simple in principle. It is the action or mechanism of interdependence at work.

This entry will be the focus of a series of posts on The Enlightenment Ward blog

Institutions such as libraries and schools can purchase subscriptions to these databases and afford access to everyone. But this depends on available infrastructure and funds to pay for that access.

What bothers me the most about the media, particularly newspapers offering only a paid archive service is that print editions, with ads and subscriptions, have already provided the material and paid the funding for its production. Transformation of it into digital form does cost money but it is a one time cost. Current news websites are running and maintaining archives is merely an adjunct to that. Many older archives have been put onto microfilm that is freely searchable in public libraries-this takes some time but has always been free.

The point is, history is being recorded by modern media. The powerful mass media have a responsibility to maintain that history and make it available to all. Media does not own history though the media giants act as though they do. History is not a commodity.

Apparently the idea was to pass on comments amongst themselves that others in the forum couldn’t understand.

Now with the advent of Google Translate, Yahoo Babelfish and other translation software, no matter how inexact one needs merely to copy the text, slap it into the translator and push a button to get the gist of what’s being said.

So that’s exactly what happened. And someone else posted the translations directly below the Japanese. So what was the point?

There are very few languages that can be used as a privacy shield any more. As translators become more efficient and more common, language barriers will be a thing of the past.

Gone are the days when obscure aboriginal dialects can be used to code orders on the battlefield or one can take what they’ve learned in their 2nd year German courses to  encode their diaries so snoopy siblings can’t understand them.

So in that vein

मैं आप सलामी

(clue-Hindi)

Similarly I saw this photo site which had really good stuff on it and read the blurbs and so forth and left a comment wondering about copyright as all of the photos were from others on Flickr. This person with an incredible haughtiness informed me that of course they checked and got permission to put them on the page etc. Its really nothing more than a deluxe scraper blog. And badly designed for someone who has such pretensions of art snobbery.

It will be good to be away from this 24hr. high speed internet when I go back to India. I don’t have the time or opportunity to waste in comments sections and only concentrate on my own work and life there

I made this one into a longer entry for Monsoon Diary

My thought at this point is that it will be like photo montages and mashups from current images that evoke particular reactions. Maybe I can do my video projects in there too as I have some great footage of atomic bombs exploding that I want to use for something. That sounds rather nasty. Maybe I can put some kind of juxtaposed commentary over it or something.

Just a nascent idea that’s been planted for a while. Sometimes one gets tired of words.

Here’s where it’s at: Reality Montage