Tune out...

I haven't been around the internet as of late, and thank god! I am of a generation addicted to cheap information, and menial entertainment. We can't go a couple hours without tuning in. Our idea of human interaction is to get a group of our smart, intelligent, creative friends together in a dark room, and then sit silently while a movie of no real consequence plays on an illuminated screen. After the credits roll, well, the evening is over, unless of course, some of you would like to hang around and get drunk to further assist your slide out. I am just as plagued by this virus as the rest of us, and I know I want to change. TV, the internet, movies, theses are all way harder to kick than heroin. I'm not urging asceticism. No. By all means, we are a culture of commodity. Tap into that, react to that. Mix it up, hurl it around, break it, play it, rip it, share it, just don't revere it like we have been. Our entire generation is the result of a marketing campaign. We have been programmed since the beginning to value fun above all else, but if we're just watching somebody else's' version of fun (no matter how clever, or involving) we're just being entertained.

Humanity is at our fingertips. We have more connectedness than at any other point in history. Use it. Walk outside. Get your friends together who all know and respect each other, and put on a play. Not to take to the stage, but for your fucking selves. Stop playing music to be recorded and put up on myspace. Play music for yourselves! Write notes to send through the mail that don't make any sense. Invent new languages. Go climb a goddamned tree (they won't be around much longer). Ask personal questions of people you know (or don't know). Anything, just don't watch a movie for a while. Puproseless, unquantifiable, unprofitable human experience, they'll hate it. And once you tune yourself out of their barrage, because everything you do is EXACTLY what you're supposed to, you will be unreachable, and they're wont be a damn thing those bastards up in marketing will be able to do to get you back. Just forget.

We have a programmed fear of "missing out on life" if we don't turn on the TV every so often, or watch X number of movies a week, or listen to X number of songs. This stuff is our culture and our joy, not our responsibility; not our compulsions, or addictions, or fetishes. Have an armpit fetish, don't waste something that personal on the tubes. So tune out. Tune out. Tune out. Tune out. Sign off.

Biological Myths Debunked!

Originally posted on I'm So Smart Now

Alright, so this isn't news to me (because I'm so smart, duh!) but apparently there are alot of you out there who still believe stuff like this. ...A LOT! Could have something to do with that fact that we came in 33 out of 34 surveyed countries in terms of our acceptance of EVOLUTION! So anyway, you don't have to stop believing in God or Leprechauns yet, but let's at least put two big myths about us humans in the ground.

First up, the assumption (ASSUMPTION! This CAN and IS proven every day) that men have two fewer ribs than women, since God had to take a pair from Adam to make Eve. But dig this, that's not true. Men and women BOTH have 12 pairs of ribs. Period. There is no argument to be made here, just the calm acceptance of the fact that you have spent you life under a false assumption. Link if you still don't believe me.

Secondly, lets address the less biblical belief that oxygenated blood is blue. It is not. It is certainly a deeper, more purple tinged color, but a far cry from blue. It is our veins that look blue through our skin, it is not a result of the royal blue blood that floweth through all of our veins.

Longer, redder wavelengths, though, can penetrate more deeply into the skin than shorter, bluer wavelengths before reflecting out. A vein looks blue because red light travels far enough into the skin to be absorbed by the blood in the vein. If the blood vessel is far enough below the skin, however, blue light--which would normally also be absorbed by the vein--reflects out of the skin before reaching the vein. So the light reflecting from tissue over the vein contains less red light than blue, giving the vein a bluish cast.

From the MadSci Network. Try this experiment if you still don't believe anyone.

So sleep soundly with a slightly better understanding of yourself tonight. Know your own body if nothing else. Maybe next week we'll get on to the widely held bullshit that there is no separation of church and state in the Constitution. Yeah...we'll get on to that for sure.

Best Minds of My Generation

I've seen the best minds of my generation roll over. I've seen the best minds of my generation turn soft, and give up before so much as raising a finger. I've seen the best minds of my generation decide not to reproduce. I've watched as they've spent more energy writing off than writing. Shallow complaints and bitter self-defeatism is the legacy of my generation. The belief that we can't win anyway so we might as well cash in on our cut. The belief that the armor of this giant is impenetrable, and that our own minds are unreachable. I've seen the best minds of my generation ignore the rest of the minds. Preemptive defeat. Take marketing and advertising jobs, forget and ignore art, write off culture, scoff at change, debase content, and laud creativity. There's no movement because there's no movements. We are alone, inside our rooms, or in our clothes. We are too busy being cool, or too entertained to stay mad for more that 2 and a half minutes, which is not enough time to make it to Washington on a bus, car, or bike, and physically depose the regime which all of us admittedly despise. Our parents have left us for dead, and our children will be brought up in ghost towns. Our culture is absent. We are a barcode culture, a dollar culture, a sale culture, and a spent culture. I've seen the best minds of my generation bought and sold, because they were the best, but all we got is this lousy t-shirt.