What's in a name:

GPS services suck. I travel from here to there by a combination of turns between intermissions of robotic instructions. Ask for directions and you get a pin drop, why?
Have we lost all sense of direction?
I remember being asked for directions by a slight panic looking Asian man entered the train station in London many years ago. 'Excuse me, where is Putney Bridge?'
'You take the next train on the city line, count four stops. This is Southfields station.'
In my youth everyone knew their way around by landmarks. You want to get to the city library, turn left on Kruger Street by the Corner Lounge Cafe (Sadly the Cafe is no more), we'd walk home from school passed creepy heights stopping to buy cheap cigarettes from Johnny's Cafe; everyone knew Johnny was cool, it was the 90s, things were cooler back then. I've put a lot of miles in the clock since then, I reckon I've driven around the earth at least once or maybe a decent part of the way to the moon and things change all the time but most of the street names remain the same. From time to time I'll turn down a road to meander along memory lane feeling nostalgic because of the street names. Every town has a Church Street and 5th Ave but what about Somerset Ave, Van Der Stel Rd or Livingstone Drive?
Who are these people and why is there a street named after them?
I saddened and embarrassed to say I don't know enough of the history about these names and their streets, except for the history behind Prince George Rd in Brakpan, Google it like I did. Names change, mostly, when someone did something significant to warrant a street renaming of 3rd Avenue to Nelson Mandela Avenue. It's infuriating when some asshole bribes some bottom feeding government fool to erase history and stroke their tiny ego. Africa remembers nothing so it cannot learn anything. America remembers, Europe remembers, Asia remembers, Oceania remembers...

'Hello, the fairy of tranquility here. Popped in here to pause this post so everyone can breath out all that nasty negative energy and breath in all that yummy positive energy. Everyone is loved and appreciated, our opinion isn't agreeable with everyone and y'all are encouraged to do your own research, reach your own conclusions and continue to make the world a better place.'

AWR10:TTMO.

Everyone wants to blame the bad guy when things go wrong, every story has a villain and the more sensational the better. Let's meet Gerald, the bad guy in our vignette. Gerald is the villain of South Africa, he's exactly what you expect. Gerald is everything, everyone, all at once, always. Gerald has zero redeemable qualities to him, he's stolen from you, lied to you and about you, cheated you out of many things. But here's the real nuts and bolts of the matter, you trust Gerald. You admire him, exonerate his deeds, seek his council and console but you neither trust him nor respect him and when conditions are favorable you betray him for another Gerald. Africa has no memory, none can remember what happen the day after yesterday. History is mystery and life is an endless circle because nobody learns from the same mistakes being made. Gerald knows this, he knows how and when to use it. Gerald can turn friends into enemies, a crowd into a mob, good people indifferent. He conquers by division, dissention and desertion. He controls with chaos fueled by controversy, he feeds on the social disruption. I sniffed around social media for an honest state of the nation, well done. Every thread unraveling to opinionated mud slinging, to my frustration it's not worth the effort to post a comment. I quietly pursue my rebellion of one, immigration.

Bother:

Having never used Craigslist or ebay to sell my items of intrinsic value and seeing how the Pirate Bay and Silk Road are permanent on Santa's naughty list I tried the Market Place on Facebook. The online classifieds haven't changed all that much since my previous outing; post a picture, write a brief story and wait for the weirdos to come sniffing. I recently acquired a pair of analog credit card transaction machines, the slide and slide action that rubbed the raised imprint of your credit card details onto several layers of carbon copy transaction receipts that made you look super rich and irritated the bank tellers if the numbers are illegible. I'm examining these two antique machines when I notice the raised plate was missing, usually the plate was cut for the merchant operating it but my curiosity ran away and I dropped this little gem under the picture: analog plate printer, single print slider, print plates not included. The response was weird. Several DMs from a third world counterfeit syndicate and an official looking administration post flagging my suspicious activity. Those Interpol folk are mighty understanding, I'm not selling contraband material but if I were the selling of machines and key components together lands you in the Gulag but selling them separately, to different buyers is not illegal. My misinterpreted post was neither. My misleading the weirdos online is certainly trying the patience of  the digital police. Still I wonder if I could modify these two machines to reproduce a rudimentary reproduction of paper currency, anyone having a spare plate?
I would successfully construct my personal printing press to produce an unlimited supply of Monopoly money, everyone loves playing Monopoly. 

End.

répondez s'il vous plaît:

Racism exists because people refuse to let it go. Racists choose it. Racism doesn't bother me, it's human nature, I'm not expressing my opinins on race, politics, gender or religion as they are my personal expressions that are easily misinterpreted by idiots bur this bothers me;

Now, we must all fear evil men. But there is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. Social media goes viral when a racist becomes a bully pretending to be the victim while the gathered audience uploads their videos online. Defeating our goal for global unity, such behavior is despicable and stupid. 

I'm done nit-picking the modern age, free will bitches and I'm just better than y'all.

🖕🏻💩

Back into the online turd pool:

After a two and a half year absence from social media I was compelled to dip a virtual toe back into the Facebook turd pool. No surprise at my absence going unnoticed as my return went unnoticed too, the soulless algorithms remain artificial. Right, time to fuck with a.i.

I never recycle my Digital Garbage

Seeing another book store close its doors brings a tear to my eye. Does this mean the digital domain is greener?

I'm doubtful because I never recycle my digital garbage. The Cloud is vast and infinite, my document storage is minimal and small file sized but just how much landscape is all that social media crap occupying?

Let's do an experiment, traditionally user storage is limited to device space, so what's the Cloud limit?

I intend to upload all my digital garbage to the Cloud because I'm done sending it to my recycle bin. This might take some time, I'll keep you posted.

A creepy fact: you never die online. I've encountered profiles and scheduled reminders from recently deceased contacts of mine. You die in the real world but your Roblox profile doesn't?

Usually social media profiles are converted to memorials by the friends and family of the departed. Where's the Instagram cemetery?

Where do dead avatars go?

In the game world you respawn in the Graveyard but that's just silly. I think the virtual world isn't ready to embrace mortality because fiction cannot die, the virtual world doesn't have an understanding of reality. In reality finalizing a virtual estate is equivalent to finalizing a real world estate. The machine is absent of mortality. Because of that social media platforms need cemeteries where the virtually dead go. Let's not stop there, Roblox needs a real world beatdown. An economic crisis, mass unemployment, increasing poverty, avatars resorting to crime and maybe a virtual invasion. None escape reality. None of that unpredictability is there because virtual zombies express zero emotion, emotion we read on each other's faces. Desperation, concern and worry, seriousness and occasional excitement or joy. Feelings pixelated and replicated remain virtual, meaningless and irrelevant.

Back into the turd pool:

After a two and a half year absence from social media I was compelled to dip a virtual toe back into the Facebook turd pool. No surprise at my absence going unnoticed as my return went unnoticed, the soulless algorithms remain artificial.