Intermittent Rant

OK, so I don’t want to be a hater. I don’t. I’m not a hater. Really! I’m not.

But I really really really really really really hate Lolcats. I don’t quite get it. What is this phenomenon? How has it gotten so popular?

Here’s my impression of how it came about:

Gosh, gee, golly, gee-whiz, that sure is a cute picture of a cat. But no, I, I can’t just send it to all my friends and family and co-workers and passers-by and strangers and such. No, it’s missing something. YES! It needs a caption of some sort. Yeah, as if the cat were trying to say something. Like as if the cat has ATTITUDE! Boffo!

But wait, I have an even better idea! (Gee, golly, I’m so clever!) What if I misspelled the captions so that the cat’s not only got attitude but he can’t fathom our quaint human world with our rules of grammar and bizarre social customs.

OMG, GENIUS!!!!!!!!!

I mean, they’re cute and all, but it’s like pushing cuteness to a whole new level. It’s like punching someone in the face with cuteness.

But won’t someone please think of the children…I mean, cats? It’s like you can’t take a cat seriously anymore. You see a cat pooping and instead of recoiling in disgust, you think, “I Shoodna Eatn Dat Hole Ding!” or two cats fucking and you say to yourself, “OOPS! Where my junk go?” I mean, don’t you remember when you looked at a cat and simply thought, “Meow.” This is borderline animal cruelty. And I’m not afraid to say it once and for all.

UPDATE: Apparently, they’re being turned into a musical. I believe this is one of the four horsemen.

First of all, I begin with a simple postulate, that all men are fallible; that is to say, all human beings are capable — and even given to — declaring a falsity beit knowlingly or not. More simply put, we are all capable of being wrong by virtue of being human. Secondly, I observe that all religious teaching is passed along by and through humans, and furthermore that all religious knowledge comes to each of us from another human beit a pastor, a parent, a teacher. Thirdly, the first two points being made, one must conclude that the entirety of religious knowledge is capable of being false being that it is handed down from human to human and humans have the capability — and even the propensity — for being fallible. Therefore, I ask: how can I trust this knowledge? How can I be sure that it is true? How can I know that it was not misinterpreted in some way having been marred by the hands of history. How do I know that these are indeed the words to escape the lips of God?

Imagine Moses atop Mount Sinai receiving he Ten Commandments. One can say that God made Moses’s ears ripe for the listening. One can say that the words in and of themselves are such that their anunciation creates the perfection of their understanding, that is to say, the words are so powerful that they cannot be misintereted or falsified. And yet how am I to know what is and isn’t the word of God? Because I am told so? How do I trust THAT? And so we return to our dilemma.

One could also say that religious knowledge is true by virtue of one’s knowing it is true. In other words, it is true because I know that it is true and, through free will, I am able to distinguish between truth and untruth. And yet what is often the case is that one man’s truth is nonsense to another. You see, when we say this, we step away from reason and into the realm of faith. And in so doing we circle back to our original dilemma.

We are left with the simple conclusion that all religious knowledge is fallible. If this is true, then whether you are a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, you must ultimately ask yourself the question: Can one speak for God? In fact, wouldn’t it be a sin to speak on God’s behalf? Couldn’t it be the greatest sin of all?

Seems like the History Channel these days has more and more programming revolving around end-times. There was a program called Nostradamus 2012 a few months back and just today there was a program about the Seven Signs and Armageddon. And tonight there’s something about the “next” Nostradamus. It seems like it was only yesterday all you could see on the History Channel was stuff about The Da Vinci Code and the Bible Code. And it seems like weeks ago that the History Channel had programs about Jesus.

And it seems like eons ago that the History Channel had programming about history.

UPDATE: Here’s a breakdown of the History Channel’s lineup: http://graphjam.com/upcoming/?pid=11861

Yeah, I know…pun intended. I confess I have somewhat of a man-crush on Hitchens. Sure, he’s out there and is a proud contrarian, but that’s why I like him. It’s important for people to be pushed out of their comfort zone. It’s important for people to be challenged. I think that is the moment when you can create real openness. It is when you are surrounded by people that agree with you that prejudices are born.

This video reminds me of Sartre’s famous lecture Existentialism Is a Humanism…for some reason I dunno.

And of course the pièce de résistance:

The last 5 seconds speak for themselves…

Everyone’s in LOVE with Twitter. Yes, everyone’s a-twitterin’ and a-twatterin’ away on their computers, cell phones, blackberries, iPhones, abacuses, chalkboards, stone tablets, and papyrus scrolls. The media’s doing it. Hell, Congress is even doing it. Everybody’s tweeting, or twittering, or twatting, twitting, twooting, twutooting, whatever…

The first reason to hate Twitter: the overly cutsie name. It’s hard to believe we now live in a world where grown people talk about “tweeting”. It’s enough to announce to the whole world for no particular reason, “Hey, everyone who barely knows me and barely cares about what I’m doing, this is what I’m doing right this minute!” It’s enough to say, “!” It’s enough to shout out, “I want to gossip about nothing important and feverishly typing away on my cell phone gives me a euphoric sense of self-satisfaction that…oh, wait a minute, this is so much fun I think I’m cumming!” But to call it “tweeting” gives it that special “retarded” touch.

And Twitter wallows in the mundane and the superficial. Take Facebook for instance. How many friends do you have on Facebook? Now how many “actual” friends do you have in real life? Is there a disconnect? Probably. Be honest. That’s the nature of social networks. We want to connect through them, but they are public by nature and so it is almost impossible to be oneself fully and therefore connect in a genuine way. Take being on camera for instance. When you are on camera, you act different. You put up a front. You play the part of yourself. Because you’re exposed. Social networks are much the same way. Many of us act different on social networks because they in their own way shine a spotlight on us. And as a result, they are anti-social. Because we are not wholy ourselves, we are encumbered from making true connections online.

I am reminded of the old days of IRC. In those heady days when people got online, entered chatrooms, and gabbed with random people they’ve never met, you had a sense of anonymity. You could be whoever you wanted. You could say whatever you wanted. You could be a lover, you could be a smoker, you could even be a midnight toker. And ironically, people are more themselves that way. It’s when your imagination runs wild that you reveal the most about yourself. Nowadays, people no longer have that anonymity. Instead you see people building up their individual profiles, driving up their friend numbers, and generally putting up a face to the world. We get so easily wrapped up in the superficiality of the medium, that we lose sight of ourselves.

The last reason for hating Twitter stems from hype. I’ve heard everything about Twitter. How it has/will change the way humans communicate. How it fundamentally alters your life. How it is a game changer for the Interweb. It’s 140 characters, people. 140 fucking characters! It’s a glorious way to say to the world, “I just typed less than 140 characters!!!” Like all social networks, it’s built on the presumption that the world cares. The world doesn’t care. I’m sorry to have to break it to you. The world does not care! Sure, maybe you’ll touch the life of some migrant worker in Central Zimbabwe with your stunning review of the bag of popcorn you just ate, but that just seems really unlikely.

Ultimately, most people want the web to change our lives. I am reminded of the philosophy discussion group I ran for a while. People clambered for an online discussion and someone finally put up a forum on their site for people to participate in philosophical discussions online. Almost no one participated and it eventually died. Why? I think it’s because you lose the dialog. Admittedly, this is where I think Twitter has the ability to shine. It allows you to have dialogs — albeit badly. Dialogs allow you to connect. But dialogs are hinged on immediacy. When you don’t have the immediacy, everyone having the short attention spans that they do will move onto something else. And there’s nothing social about that.