The Diary of A Simple Man

In a decent world, "kiddy porn" would be pictures of candy and toys.

Over on Askville, someone asked "How do I turn on a girl using just words?". I answered "Have the words be said by Johnny Depp."

Holy crap. I just looked him up, and Johnny Depp is OLDER than me!

Which would you rather experience: The Lord of the Flies, or 1984?

In other words, chaos, or totalitarianism?

I've now scanned a second old zine, Rack & Rune #10, and have annotated both of them. Since the old layout of the zines page on my site was rather awkward, I took the opportunity to redesign it. Now I'll be able to add new (old) zines much more easily.

While I was at it, I re-read a few of the old zines. And I was struck by a slight but surprising insight: zines, and particularly APAzine, were the forerunners of blogs! Far more so than diaries. Diaries were, after all, solitary. No one ever seriously kept a personal diary without some expectation of privacy. On the other hand, APAs had both the personal quality that would be a hallmark of blogs and a social aspect which is key to blogging. So in an odd way, even though APAs are gone, they live on - in places like LiveJournal.

How odd!

Update: Whoops! I neglected to upload the annotated zines to my site. So until tomorrow the non-annotated versions will be there instead.

I'm home sick today. I'll spare you the details. If only I could spare myself the details as well!

Here's an epigram I just derived from an answer I wrote over an Askville about the "risk of faith" in being an atheist:

"We are feeling beings that think, not thinking beings that feel."

I've been pondering the whole issue of the loss of community lately, and it seems to me that although there probably was never a conscious decision on the part of some star chamber group of uber-corporatists to encourage the dissolution of local American community ties, the consumer culture has both encouraged that dissolution and simultaneously benefited from it. Time spent interacting with neighbors is time NOT spent buying. The ideal society from a corporate viewpoint is one in which each individual or purchasing unit (i.e. nuclear family) spends as much time in isolation as possible, watching commercials, consuming at a maximum rate, or buying goods to consume.

Social interaction just impedes the efficiency of the purchasing/consuming cycle.

A wild idea: Perhaps the ultimate corporate goal would be to use the human need for social contact by replacing lost communities with an ersatz corporate-based community, centered on marketing and consuming. I wonder what form it might take? I was going to work this towards a joke of sorts, morphing the corporate replacement for community into a parody of LiveJournal, but that would be a bit lame. The truth is, the problem with an electronic community is that it can't connect its members as tightly as a real-world community; it's too easy to just end contact by hitting the delete key (a much more difficult proposition when you're dealing with physical neighbors).

In fact, I'd think that - say, this might be an interesting idea for a story, if I could flesh out the plot somehow! As I was saying, an electronic community would be vulnerable to attack by a real-world community. I can envision a corporate electronic community, say, one centered around a particular TV show or other marketable interest, being attacked by a real-world community formed by a smarter corporation: the human social instinct would make such a conflict relatively short-lived.

Lots for me to think about here.

I haven't chatted online with ANYONE for the past several weeks. It's not so much that I've been avoiding it, although I have been a lot busier lately than I used to be. But even when I'm available for chat, usually nobody's around. I'm not sure why that is. Nor do I particularly care.

At the same time, the incidence of drama in my online life has virtually disappeared.

I am not complaining.

I'll admit that I approach certain journals on my flist with trepidation. Let's face it: some of you people lead pretty damned chaotic lives. There are times when I feel like a Victorian time-traveller trying to make sense of the interplay between the Alphas and the Betas.

So I read your journals, but tend to find myself without anything meaningful to say in the way of comments. Mind you, I actually DO want to comment - it's just that I can't find anything worth saying or listening to.

I saw a question on Advicenators recently that led me to think seriously (for about fifteen seconds) about infidelity. Whoops! That didn't come out quite right. I meant about the topic of infidelity.

Specifically, the genetic consequences of infidelity. I like thinking about evolutionary psychology, even though I'm not at all qualified; it's a fascinating field.

After pondering for a few minutes, I reached the conclusion that for a heterosexual couple in a theoretically monogamous relationship, infidelity is much more of a threat to the male than to the female.

(Panic attack: is this obvious? Am I making an idiot of myself? Probably.)

If the female is unfaithful, the male may, without knowing it, lose the chance to reproduce. That is, genetically speaking, a death sentence.

If the male is unfaithful, however, his spouse doesn't lose anything genetically; it is, after all, impossible for her to be deceived as to the parentage of her children. She knows that she's the mother, and at a minimum will know that the father may be one of several men. Her own reproduction is not threatened.

So it's worse for a man when a woman cheats, than for a woman when a man cheats.

I will now issue a couple of disclaimers:

1. Disease is a factor that I didn't include. What effect do you think it would have?

2. The emotional impact of infidelity is certainly something to be considered. Is a male who is unfaithful to his spouse more likely to leave her and any children they may have? Possibly. But the same applies to females - a woman who cheats is more likely to leave her spouse, too, and probably to the same degree of likelihood as a male. Isn't she?

Incidentally, I didn't answer the question on Advicenators. The only answer I could have given wasn't something that the questioner would want to hear. In my experience, that usually means a low rating or no rating at all. It's not worth it.

I have not forgotten that story (for the record, it will be called 41° 59' , -71° 31', rising). I've started it. But it's not going to be done tonight.

I don't know if this is going to be worth posting, but I was with Teri in the car today and I put something into words in a way that I hadn't before. Teri didn't think it was a great insight, and I suppose it wasn't. Still, it intrigued me.

What I said was this: Basically, it makes sense to try new things in life. Because if you try something new and you hate it, you won't do it again; you'll have had one bad experience, and that's it. But if you like it, you can do it again and again, for the rest of your life.

So even if you don't like nine out of ten of the new things that you try, in the end you'll come out way ahead.

Of course, that doesn't mean you should try stuff that's likely to get you killed.

Actually, I was mostly thinking of food when I came up with this. And if anyone who knows me well is reading this - particularly any of my family - they're probably either staring in disbelief at the screen, wondering who the hell wrote this, or they're laughing.

Say you were given a once-in-a-lifetime chance to send a message back through time to yourself at an earlier age. It can be up to five words. Your past self will know that the words came from future you. Paradox does not apply; if your past self acts on those words in any way, it will not negate your sending of them. But your life as it is now may change.

Question #1: How old would you be when you receive the message? That is, what age "you" would you send the message to?

Question #2: What would the message be?

I'm still thinking about my answers. I'll post them once I come up with them.

Once again, I'm late for bed. But I've got to squeeze in one post before I sleep.

I've been thinking about popularity on LJ a lot ever since I was put on that "LiveJournal As A Social Medium" panel at Arisia. Too much, to be honest. It's hard for me to think about the subject without eventually feeling like a whore.

Because most - hell, all, really - of what I write is me. So if I go around promoting myself, or make all my posts at 8 AM eastern time because that's when you're most likely to get feedback, I'm going to either feel like I'm selling out, or I'll have to find a way to come to peace with it.

I think I write a good journal, mostly. And yes, it's hard not to feel that I don't get the volume of readers and comments that I - look, I know this sounds bad, but I'm being honest - deserve. I'm also quite aware that there are few things more repulsive to read than the sort of stuff I'm writing now.

Suddenly I have an urge to delete this post and forget about it. It's not going the way I wanted it to, or meant for it to go. I don't think I can even comfortably get to the question that I wanted to ask. And...damn it...you know, asking a question is yet ANOTHER recommended way to coax comments out of readers.

Is this just how it is? Is that the way the world works? Is this what it means to be human in the 21st century - to sell yourself, to worry about who likes you?

It's like junior high school all over again. Only it lasts forever, until you're dead.

Sounds a lot like hell to me.

Okay, obviously I have a lot to think about. And I really DO need that sleep. Before I go, though, just a note: I have another piece of fiction in mind. Don't know how it will work out, don't know when I'll write it (soon, I hope), but at least when I think about that I don't feel like a whore. Even though I just promo'ed it here.

I wonder why?