Silence

An absence, removal, suspension or opposite. What remains when the noise passes, the sounds stop. Golden, awkward, uncomfortable and peaceful. We have canonized the quiet and exhausted our appreciation for it. We consider silence a universal force...

Silence can be exercised without the need for sound, unless you're reading aloud which changes any blog to podcast but that's another rabbit hole to stumble down another day. 

Silence of sleep

Silence of the grave

Silence of offline machines 

Silence of silence

Silence within silence 

Enjoy the sounds of silence. We don't appreciate silence enough. Here I sit, quietly, in another period of power outages courtesy of load shedding. The calm lets me listen to the surrounding environment while I wait for the computer to reload. I hear the background noises we ignore, they are interesting. My calming interrupted by the fuck awful text alert on a smart phone. The intrusions of junk technology. 

Do you know what it sounds like when technology dies?

Absolute silence.

Twist Ending Only Discovered in 2023

What if Covid-19 ended all life in 2020?

Who initiated the simulation?

When does it expire? (three years in at this point)

Where are the data transmissions going?

Ultimately, Why?

Ain’t Karma just a motherfucker: original post 04 06 2014

There is only one universal concept I believe to be true - universal balance. Call it what you will the concept remains this: the ideals of good and evil are kept in constant balance. We as people constantly shift this balance with action. Lets debunk a few things real quick: you cannot manipulate the universal balance for your own personal preference, there is no secret technique to do this so forget that shit. The balance does not conspire against you or anyone else, that’s just dumb. If religion is your thing then our personal beliefs are awkwardly structured around the universal law - let’s for all intents and purposes call it Karma. You, the cosmic being within the universe, can only do one thing and that is try keep the balance. Your life may be filled joy-joy feelings because you generally are a nice person but that does not make you exempt from bad shit happening to you so expect some somewhere. The severity of good and bad are in balance so try not to be super nice or super shitty because Karma is a bitch and levels us all from time to time. Now here’s how Karma does its thing: think Newton’s law of attraction where everything is equal and opposite. You are generally a nice person spreading nice with random acts of kindness, positive energy towards and thinking the world is bed of roses BUT you are being selective and as such trying to manipulate the system. Karma only gives you a certain amount of distance before the proverbial rug gets yanked. Bad things, as you see them, find their way into your happy little world and pleasantly pisses on your sunny day. Do you ever stop to think about it? 

Clearly the expression ‘bad things happen to good people’ is desperate words spoken because someone tried and failed at favourably shifting the balance. 

  

What in the world happened?

I had a normal day once, it was a Tuesday and it was horrible. Sometimes I stumble into the empty space between what came before and what is still to come. These tiny gaps nestle between the three universe of my being. My academic universe, my creative universe and my virtual universe. Each parallel and independent of the other, sometimes overlapping.
My academic universe is the daily struggle of reality we all fight to get by, being an adult sucks. This is where I spend most of my time.
My virtual universe is this conscript. The limited digital connection of my life to the digital world around me, a tool and nothing more. My means of connecting things and sharing them.
My creative universe. Beyond the limitations of the Multiverse. What you have seen of it I choose to reveal. The three are not in balance with each other, at odds for dominance and the reason for depression. We all want to play nice and get along but that's not how reality works. I would rather build magic blanket forts with my son and go on epic quests to eat pizza than waste what remains on my life working to pay bills and buy stuff because my knowledge base and skillset keeps the virtual world operating for thankless millennial muppets to watch tiktok videos and download apps. A modern age duality, it sucks. So, after some brief soul searching on YouTube I've discovered the pre millennium appreciation society. An informal community with a deep love of the analog era and a deep hate for the digital age in equals. To be fair my personal cut-off for when the millennial muppets took control is 2010, prior decades are fondly reminisced and while I cannot accurately point out patient zero ( as yet) the first decade of the millennium was a swan song to transition from analog to digital starting with selfies, hashtags, eating Tide pods and hating. The modern age is rotten with arrogance and stupidity that many are trying to abandon the lifestyle and return to analog years. My feelings are a simple hybrid. Technology is a tool not a basic  human right. Google and the wheel rank on the same level of usefulness. We don't need any social media, therein lies addiction and the fuel to rush everyone to impatiently accomplish nothing. Go out and experience life in the real world. Maybe there is potential to expand into hybrid living where communities can live a reduced technology lifestyle without the digital rubbish overwhelming us. Places where life is less balanced. I have imagined a hybrid living that is part modern in the use of  current technology and part the 1980s of my young; shared concept with others with whom I've discussed this concept, a technology current with a variety of decade mod preferences sounds ideal. Cosplay in each time where the community travels back in time for the most part but remains active in the modern age, it's still a fuzzy picture but you get the just of it. In my multiverse such things are possible, practical and preferable. 

Please remain calm, no need to panic the millennials

I wrote lyrics to a protest song to tune of Billy Joel's We didn't start the fire. Sadly the idiot technology on the "smartphone" I was using erased the content and failed to save. Fuck-fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck.
I could have rewritten it but these failures of technology remind me to never settle. Millennial minds don't comprehend the nuts and bolts of the mechanics they hold in their hands. They know how to code it, know how to load it, know what app to run and which to download. The limited physical attributes of the device. Welcome to the dress rehearsal for the Apocalypse. I, at constant impasse with millennial everything am frequently drawn into the "back in my day" comparative narrative. It's true I was a brain dead teenager awkwardly navigating my way into the millennium but I top trump generation smartphone with a near perfect score. There is a slow burn horror film to behold when the power goes out, the wifi goes down and neither laptop nor mobile can retain battery charge. Millennials cannot survive. I recall such scenarios where all I needed to survive the pre social media age was a Nokia 5110. The unkillable phone with a battery that outlasted eternity, a screen practically bulletproof and no camera because we didn't need selfies. We were resilient, independent snot nose punks with attitude with no need for online activity, we prefer the real world. By the time I finished high school I held part time employment to pay for my spelunking. I bought my first shitty car, went binge drinking, began chain smoking, dabbled in recreational narcotics and mastered proper condom use. Unbelievable to many, I emerged shining like chrome forged from fire. I come from the age of trials and tribulations, learning through the hardship of experience. Nothing was easy but it was fun. Where is the virtual rebuttal?
Gollum.
Their meta ceases when the tech goes dark. Withdrawal is ugly when you offline; eventually wifi access will become a recognized human right. But I cannot change perception, I cannot influence free will, I definitely cannot change anyone's mind any more than those previous generations swore I had it easy and back in their day of hardship a degeneration punk like me couldn't cut it. Perhaps. Perhaps we were the past generation where the world made sense, perhaps the elders were correct about our inability to cut it. Perhaps we're the root cause of this millennial mess nobody wants to clean up. The world as we know it will inevitably end and what we need from it will cease. I don't think technology is the key to our survival. I think therefore I am. A.I. does not think and we trust it implicitly. I do not champion my work by campaigning for its popularity, let it stand the test of time is all I wish of it. While some comparisons may be drawn  between me and the millennial muppets I take solace in the definitive differences between. Remember this when next to change out a light bulb or repair a tyre puncture or simply clean out the lint filter in your washing machine; somewhere out there a millennial is watching a video on tiktok on how to do those exact same things. Try to remain calm, anxiety from digital withdrawal is streamline to a human rights charter amendment, maybe even a new age commandment no matter the adrenaline fueled frustration surging through every fibre of your being as those slumped forward shoulder precariously perch hands in pockets drive your frustration skyward to meet vacant glazed over eyes staring into nothing. Take a deep breath, recite the lyrics to be prepared from the Lion King and channel every bit of the force to refrain from smacking them upside the head their 4kUHD will resync to 8bit pixels black and white. I stand in opposition to the current millennial menacr, loyal to my opinions I'll continue to share, feelings need hurting - toughen the fuck up because nobody is going to slow walk you through your virtual existence.