I spend so much time lost in fantasy
that it feels strange to feel so terrified
at having slipped away for an instant
but I ask myself what if this woman
had a voice that sounded like the actress
who played “Lana Lang” and had noticed me
looking at her and had smiled and said, “Hi.”
I don’t think I’d be here typing these words.
I don’t have much today, and what little I do have is a bit sadder than I like to post, but this is all I have right now.
I’ve been sad ever since I heard the news about Gore Vidal passing away.
And other things are difficult right now, too.
Almost all the corporations we interface with to deal with the internet are fighting among themselves. And they are all making changes to their software to manipulate users—one way or another—in their damn corporate squabbles.
So Microsoft is making changes to Windows. And Hotmail. And Google has made changes to Blogger, forcing people to use their Chrome browser. And Google has updated Chrome, causing lots of little glitches. And Adobe has updated Flash causing lots of little glitches.
It’s the 21st century and nothing works.
The whole online world is radically different than what it was when I started this blog six or seven years ago. Back then the online world was a world of individuals. Now it is a world of corporations.
And things do not seem to be getting better. In fact, there doesn’t even seem to be hope for things to stay the same. Rather I expect the corporate maneuvering to become more intense, and I expect users to be forced to make stranger and stranger choices about what software to use to deal with the internet.
I’m a pretty opinionated and judgmental guy to begin with and I strongly dislike all these corporations engaging in practices like this.
I can’t imagine what will be happening a year from now and, to be honest, right now I don’t want to try.
*
When I’m unhappy I almost always turn to astronomy or music, and much of Thursday I spent sitting at my keyboard workstation playing music. Playing this, and endless variations of it:
I’ve been sad ever since I heard the news about Gore Vidal passing away.
And other things are difficult right now, too.
Almost all the corporations we interface with to deal with the internet are fighting among themselves. And they are all making changes to their software to manipulate users—one way or another—in their damn corporate squabbles.
So Microsoft is making changes to Windows. And Hotmail. And Google has made changes to Blogger, forcing people to use their Chrome browser. And Google has updated Chrome, causing lots of little glitches. And Adobe has updated Flash causing lots of little glitches.
It’s the 21st century and nothing works.
The whole online world is radically different than what it was when I started this blog six or seven years ago. Back then the online world was a world of individuals. Now it is a world of corporations.
And things do not seem to be getting better. In fact, there doesn’t even seem to be hope for things to stay the same. Rather I expect the corporate maneuvering to become more intense, and I expect users to be forced to make stranger and stranger choices about what software to use to deal with the internet.
I’m a pretty opinionated and judgmental guy to begin with and I strongly dislike all these corporations engaging in practices like this.
I can’t imagine what will be happening a year from now and, to be honest, right now I don’t want to try.
*
When I’m unhappy I almost always turn to astronomy or music, and much of Thursday I spent sitting at my keyboard workstation playing music. Playing this, and endless variations of it:
I originally conceived of this little melody as a kind of duet for flute and guitar. On a keyboard workstation I can actually play it as such, with my left hand playing chords as a strummed guitar sound and my right hand playing flute.
But instead of playing the chords as written:
A C A A G G
I make it more interesting by playing:
Am7 CM7 Am7 Am7 GM7 Em7
Or something similar.
I know it sounds stupid for me to say this because I wrote it myself, but this sounds so beautiful to me that I just get lost in it. I haven’t made up any words for the melody yet, I just love listening to the synthesized flute sound quaver and fluctuate as the digital signal processors simulate breath moving against the flute.
I love having this kind of technology around, I mean the keyboard workstation, that lets me listen to a flute and a guitar playing together. It doesn’t have anything to do with the internet. It doesn’t have anything to do with a corporation. It’s just music I make up, music my fingers strike on the keyboard and then the sounds become real.
I’ve written a lot about a cartoon I once drew of a young woman and a llama. I drew that many years ago. If I remember correctly, I first drew that, I think, before I was regularly visiting the internet. It was just me and a blank sheet of paper and a couple of good pencils.
This is all I have. Sorry for being so sad.
But instead of playing the chords as written:
A C A A G G
I make it more interesting by playing:
Am7 CM7 Am7 Am7 GM7 Em7
Or something similar.
I know it sounds stupid for me to say this because I wrote it myself, but this sounds so beautiful to me that I just get lost in it. I haven’t made up any words for the melody yet, I just love listening to the synthesized flute sound quaver and fluctuate as the digital signal processors simulate breath moving against the flute.
I love having this kind of technology around, I mean the keyboard workstation, that lets me listen to a flute and a guitar playing together. It doesn’t have anything to do with the internet. It doesn’t have anything to do with a corporation. It’s just music I make up, music my fingers strike on the keyboard and then the sounds become real.
I’ve written a lot about a cartoon I once drew of a young woman and a llama. I drew that many years ago. If I remember correctly, I first drew that, I think, before I was regularly visiting the internet. It was just me and a blank sheet of paper and a couple of good pencils.
This is all I have. Sorry for being so sad.
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