17 July 2007

Carried Away on the Wings of a Sidebar

This one's gonna be a quickie.

And aren't quickies the best? At least, according to "Quickies are Best" volumes 1-15 or so. But I'm not going to dwell on XXX material, because let's face it, porn is SO 1995.

I have a quandary for you. But before I get to it, I have to interject that I mistakenly thought I knew how to spell quandary. I didn't. And the saddest part is that a dictionary, yea even and online dictionary (i.e. those sweet people at Merriam-Webster) couldn't help me. Because I couldn't spell it. Oh, I knew the word existed. I use it in my verbal vernacular all the time. But thanks to the failings of the Utah, California, and Colorado (mostly Utah) education systems, I couldn't spell it.

I attempted the thesaurus, since I did know and could spell, the meaning, but had difficulty finding a hit that would bring up quandary. So what did I resort to? That all knowing, that all-seeing, self-proclaimed God of the Internet:

Google.

Yes, that's right, I used google. Because as sad as it sounds, I knew they could help. Sure I use google to search the internet; sure I have a gmail account and love it; sure I've even accepted google as a verb ("Oh Cathy's quite famous. Google her, you'll see," said my last table of the evening who weren't very good tippers. I don't care if I can google you and get results - it probably means you're on adult webcams. Not tipping well, however, certainly insures you to be an asshole, particularly when the service was great, if I do say so myself. But then who I am I kidding, "Cathy" probably knows all about the servicing industry...).

But when Google starts moving into areas of my life with definite boundaries, like looking up word definitions and etymology, it makes me uncomfortable. I love a good beer brat with kraut, at a summer barbecue, hell, those things are phenomenal. But if one shows up at 7:00 am on my breakfast plate, I'm not going to be happy about it.

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So how did powerhouse google help me? I knew that if I misspelled the word on google, but came reasonably close, it would suggest in the results that I meant something else - the actual word.

Know what? I was right. And off by an A. Quandary, not quandry.

All this proves one thing: I am a product of the digital age. Not until college did I take a class that addressed media and the internet. How long has this technology been around? Years and years, as any once-pubescent boy can tell you (delighted by the ability to get ahold of naked pictures without having to find a way to physically purchase them). It seems that finally schools are realizing sooner or later they'll have to deal with technology.

Which stems another thought - there are now rules, at least in our area's school district, whose newsletter was mistakenly shipped to us, that kids will be suspended or expelled for looking at pornographic material on their cell phones. This is an elementary school newsletter, p.s.

Where are the parents letting their 3rd grader have a fucking cell phone, is what I want to know.

To me its a strange indication of the evolving times. My point is, that where the ridiculous multitude of english classes -always my best subject and therefore through no fault of my own, but the generous teaching strategy of coddling the lowest common intelligence denominator - have failed me, my own self taught usage of the internet, computers and digital technology allowed me to solve my problem.

Truly everything is changing - from the influence of common nobodies, like myself, who are able to influence elections, out celebrities, expose right-wing conservative douche bag sham artists (and former porn-stars), even create their own porn and show it to the entire world with ease- and strange times we live in.

As I said before, I'm a product of the digital age, and not the scholastic age. The unfortunate part of this statement is that right now, I'm at the forefront of feeling that influence. My generation is the generation where for the first time, adults play video games, indeed video games are geared towards us. We're the generation where piracy, once limited to giant corporations or sea-dwelling vessels, hangs out in our bedrooms, worrying hollywood and the music industry to no end. We're the kids who blog to create change, and gain voices through a medium that nobody can truly control. The gap between the professional world and the amateur world has started to close and truthfully who knows how that will redefine they way we live?

All I know is that this advent, this shift has shaped who we are. Shaped who I am. But I'm only the beginning. Right now, I'm saddled somewhere in the middle. But if there are children, albeit children into hardcore porn at age 7, who can carry cell phones in elementary school, then it will be interesting to see what is coming next. My generation is the change, but we're the fulcrum of the raised-on-digital-technology-pendulum.

Wow that is really not what I wanted to talk about.

Actually this was to be a relatively brief blog on how I need to upload some videos, since I am a "rogue filmmaker" and therefore should have something to show. I do plan on uploading empty, though not perfect. Our fan film is in the works (I ought to blog on that, with photos of middle earth to boot - no, it is NOT a LOTR fan film) and will of course be posted when finished...

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The Face of Terror

What I am curious about is if people want that classic of classics, The Mutant Trashbag or not on here. Its been hailed as "the greatest film ever made", or maybe it was "the first film Peter ever made." I can't seem to recall which. Anyway, you, the readers are welcome to comment on this blog. Both aspects, actually. Videos I've done, and my rant about growing up in a digital megaverse, or as I like to call it, DigiMon. Whatever. I'm out.

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