internet

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Blah blah blah

I know one-hundred percent one thing that causes In. Som. Ni. A. It’s alarm clocks. The damn things have an amazing capacity to ensure I don’t sleep. No alarm clock set for the morning? In. Som. Ni. A. is highly unlikely. Alarm clock set? Guaranteed no sleep. I am not saying that no alarm clock is a guarantee of sleep. I have had In. Som. Ni. A. when there is no alarm clock. But it is much more unlikely. Damn In. Som. Ni. A.

I don’t like how the internets are anymore. Blogs used to be read and commented on. Now they’re just followed and liked, like stupid facebook. You know, there are lots of things that go on blogs that are not really things one should “like.” For instance, someone discusses their pain at losing a dog or some other trauma. Really, is “liking” that appropriate? But everything has become facebookified. Plus searches only result in amazon or wikicrapia. The fucking corporations won on this front too. Bastards. Also now I get tons of follows every time I post–tons of follows from internet “marketers” who think I’m just willy nilly going to follow them back. No damn way. I have no desire to fill my feed with a bunch of internet marketing crap. The whole internet has gone fucking capitalist crazy.

There was an anthropologist named Ruth Benedict who postulated that groups of humanity are divided into two types. The first type funnels wealth from the rich to the poor. In this type, there is little violence. Women and children are safe. Everyone has what they need. People are valued for how they treat one another rather than what they accumulate. In the other type, wealth funnels from the poor to the rich. There is a lot of war. Women and children are not safe. Most don’t have what they need. People are valued for what they accumulate. One guess what kind is dominant in the world today. Why is it everyone knows the names of rich people? Why should we care? We shouldn’t. But we don’t live in the good kind. We live in the bad kind. And the planet is dying because of it. Across the board, every ecological system is in major collapse. Good fucking job humanity. Those giant brains of yours are an evolutionary failure.

I am for sure going to be gathering all of my writings here and either moving them into pdf files or putting them on another platform or just shutting it down. It hasn’t been a place for writing for me for a long time, and it’s foolish to give them my money every year for something I don’t use or want. Plus I’m not happy with the way WordPress censors women speaking out for women. They shut down blogs when they don’t like what someone says. I think that’s just crap. So this is another reason to kiss it all goodbye.

Well, gotta go fold laundry. Later everyone (said like there are a bunch of everyones out there–ha! I know better).

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Our Illusion of Connectivity

Three years ago I wrote a blog post about the illusion of connectivity. It said:

“I go to Facebook. I go to email. I check all the addresses. I go back to Facebook. I check my blog. I go back to Facebook. In all, I find not what I am looking for. It is not satisfying. I see posts I share. I read here and there. On email I get Truthout, read through the articles. Find one that is really interesting. Read to the bottom. Post on Facebook. Go back to email. Go to Facebook. Read Salon, click on the link to “Continue Reading.” Go back to email. Nothing. Something from Powell’s. Something from Bug of the Day. Go back to Facebook. Share a picture of some cute animal or funny thing from George Takei, but overall, no connection. Not really.

To keep reading, please click here.

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Our Illusion of Connectivity

I go to facebook. I go to email. I check all the addresses. I go back to facebook. I check my blog. I go back to facebook. In all, I find not what I am looking for. It is not satisfying. I see posts I share. I read here and there. On email I get Truthout, read through the articles. Find one that is really interesting. Read to the bottom. Post on facebook. Go back to email. Go to facebook. Read Salon, click on the link to Continue Reading. In spite of my solid belief that this election is meaningless, I still recoil when a friend likes Romney. He’s such a self-absorbed, arrogant ass, an emotional toddler. And his running mate, ewww. That guy is a sociopath. I have a physical reaction to them and wonder what is wrong when someone I know thinks this person is worth supporting. Then again, I feel frustration at the Obama love too. He’s not the Jesus they want him to be. He’s worse than Bush. He gets away with more because the Dems have their man so no one is paying attention. Ughh. Go back to email. Nothing. Something from Powell’s. Something from Bug of the Day. Go back to facebook. Share a picture of some cute animal or funny thing from George Takei, but overall. No connection. Not really.

I go to these websites alone in my house looking for a connection but there is not one. I want to communicate. I want conversation. I want intellectual stimulation. I want to discuss philosophy, that amazing talk by Alain de Botton on atheism. I want someone else to care as much as I do about what we are doing to our planet. But it’s all futility, bytes and pixels and illusion that there is connection. Searching from page to page, hoping one of the people I know will actually speak to me, to ME, and not to the general public that is their online community, is an exercise in futility. We claim to be more connected than ever, but we are further from connection than ever before. Just because I can share a comment with a friend I met in the Hague last summer does not mean there is any connection. It’s so minute as to be laughable. I read a story that brings tears to my eyes. Instead of talking to a friend about the details there, I post a comment that says, “Dang, I cried.” “Me too,” she comments back. That’s the extent of it.

I long for stimulating dinner parties with friends. Or sharp banter about books over warm drinks in a cafe. Or even stupid, silly dancing and laughing with a best girlfriend. Yet I know this is an idealized version of community cultivated by movies and books. It doesn’t exist for most of us. It sure as hell doesn’t exist for me. I’ve tried to pull it together, to be the one who invites everyone over to make some feeble attempt at this, but no one ever shows up. I have a serious knack for being stood up at parties by all my guests. I think the problem isn’t that I’m some loser or something, but that I have an idealized idea of how these things should be, and that most or all of my friends have other things to do and are simply too busy.

So I troll. I make phone calls when I’m in the car and can’t do anything else (don’t worry, I have a car phone and I’m completely hands free). I write here and wonder if anyone I know will read what I write. They don’t, but I don’t begrudge them. If what I said was interesting, they would still be too busy, just as I am too busy too. It’s our 21st century, with its illusion of connectivity. It’s sad really. Sometimes I wish I had a big, ol’ front porch in a close-knit community where everyone came and shot the breeze. I know, I know. Too many movies like The Jane Austen Book Club, or Fried Green Tomatoes. It’s what some team thought of and put together on celluloid. I get it. Just like the teams that make families in catalogs look just a little too perfect. Just like Photoshop. It’s all an illusion. I don’t think we are better off. Not even close. It’s lonelier. It’s isolating. And I have no idea how to change it, at least for me.

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I Want the Internets

Ah, the internets…  I have been spoiled, having 24 hour a day access for years.  During the trip across country, we would choose motels that Expedia claimed had wireless access.  The first two did not.  Because of that and the fact Expedia had also advertised pets as allowed in motels where that turned out not to be the case, we gave up on Expedia and started looking for Motel 6’s, only they charge for the access so we only paid for one computer at a time.  Plus the week before we left, Boyfriend’s access was not working (he pirated off a neighbor’s wireless, so our access was limited to when that worked).  Now we’re here and have to hook up through a network connection, which means heading to a Starbucks to get access.  Considering we are trying to unpack and put things away, taking a detour to Starbucks (like this one) feels like slacking.

Anyway, we are looking forward to getting back online.  Modern citizens we.  Now we have to go again.  Boyfriend needs to get to the bank before closing.  Hopefully it won’t be another 2 weeks before I can post a decent post.

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Land of the Stupid People

I am the QUEEN of the Land of the Stupid People! I love being a QUEEN! It is so much fun. Do you want to know why I am the QUEEN of the Land of the Stupid People? Because I am, that’s why. Because I have had trouble after trouble after trouble after trouble with my cussword computer and my internet connection. I finally ascertained that it is something to do with my wireless so I went on down to the handy dandy computer store and purchased myself fifty feet of ethernet cable with which to connect via wire. I plugged it all in and viola, it still didn’t work that great. It did at first, but then it went back to the same old crap. I troubleshooted. I rebooted. I thissed. I thatted. I still had problems.

So tonight I was sitting here trying to do God knows what on the internet and my computer kept up it’s usual blather, quitting, running slow, running quickly for a minute to get me all excited, then slowing to a crawl or stopping altogether and on and on. I decided since it is near eleven, I would call Qwest yet again. There wouldn’t be a wait at eleven at night. I know this. I know the timing for getting a human rather quickly because I am an experienced Qwest technical support caller. I have called them MANY times. I know their number by heart. I know the words to say to the automated system in order to get to a person in the fastest possible manner. Something to note, saying Fuck You to the computer automated voice makes the voice say, I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that. It’s funny. Something else to note. Qwest hates me. I have called them and gone through every troubleshoot possible. I’ve had the wire replaced to my house since the wire came from 1945. I had the wire in front of my house replaced since it was frazzled and needed replacing. I have been through four modems and three computers. Over the last several years, I’ve had many technicians in my home. Sometimes they fix things, sometimes they don’t. It’s hit or miss. I have not called them in some time since I decided that the latest issues are my computer’s and related to this wireless issue.

Anyway, I called the little techie tonight. I went through the rigmarole of proving I’m me, verifying my address, verifying my phone number, giving my permission to access my account, all of this even though I am the one who called in and asked for help. Tell me, why would I call in and ask for help then tell them No, You don’t have permission to access my account? Who would do that? Actually, I might call in and try it just for the hell of it. Give some techie some fun. Just wondered what you would do if I said no.

The techie had me check some things. Actually, I was already where he wanted to send me. I went to the network connections place and saw that I was connected by wireless and not by wire. This even though the wire is strung across the middle of my house. The techie had me troubleshoot several things. No matter. The light for ethernet cable would not light up on the modem. Then he suggested I reverse the wire. This means taking the end from the computer and plugging it into the modem and the end from the modem and plugging it into the computer. Okay, sure. If you really want me to crawl under the desk and behind the computer and do this, hell, I’m willing to try it. I even keep a flashlight under there for rooting around in the back of my computer.

Guess what I discovered upon my visit to the back of my computer? Guess? You know. The ethernet cable was NOT plugged into the back of the computer. How long it has been this way, I could not tell you. How it became unplugged, I could not tell you. I plugged it in and waited a few more minutes to pretend to the tech that I was indeed switching the ends. Then I got on the line and said, It worked! What a miracle! Imagine that, switching the ends made the internet work.

For Christ’s sake, sometimes I have to wonder about myself. How many nights have I cursed this thing since getting that damn ethernet line and it’s all been because I’m the QUEEN of the Land of the Stupid People? Amazing. It is amazing I graduated law school and passed the bar. It is amazing I got an undergraduate degree with honors. Hell, it’s amazing I was able to complete KINDERGARTEN because a FIVE YEAR OLD could figure out that if you don’t plug in the cable, the line isn’t going to work. It’s as simple as that.

I’m going to go make a crown now and wear it with pride. That’s about all I can do.