Nighttime Reverie

I ambled home
In the quiet damp street
Bearing witness
To the loneliness of the night.
I trundled slowly,
Up the tired grey hill,
To see for myself
Such loneliness, such night.
And there I stood
To take in the howling dog noises
And the chirping crickets chirping,
Because together in it all,
Was a lonely lonely night.
I examined the eve
Where coarse dews wept upon my brow
Without them, no night to behold.
I took stock of the banter,
Of the atmosphere as it swashed through the night.
I was there.
Crippled by its wakeful light
The street lights there, examining the shrubs.
And yes, I was there.

Moment's Shred

A. Protruding veins from my arm bulge
limitless with potential.
Why then, do they drop me here?
Befallen by a moment I care to question;
Moment:
why hast thou forsaken me?

It answers.
The sun beams.
The wind blows.
Nothing.

B. The trees rustle eagerly
to and fro in the distance.
The young day envelops the world
with warm yellow sun.

The contents of my guts
whisked away to the fiery depths,
the sewers of iniquity.
The cadaverous dungeons
of ramshackle extents
for which we are all destined,
alone?

A squawking pen with nothing to say,
So many thens in paper cases on display.
A goosepimpled arm for others to behold,
An enmeshing mind with other consciences to enfold.

Times seem so strange
in a blue summer haze..

Is this chaos or its absence?

Critical Environmentalist-Citizen Bangs His Head on a Crop Circle

(could this really be the bottom of a spaceship??)

This may seem like a convoluted idea, but press on, fellow reader; it’s focused on developing the most positive aspects of media and about public absorption of information in the present day.

A common element of popular news media today takes aim at affecting the emotional or sentimental layers of the reader. In a 1998 book by Bjorn Lomborg entitled, The Skeptical Environmentalist, this process of media attention-grabbing is critiqued at length. Primarily, Lomborg describes and demarcates a model of philosophical skepticism for the reader. A number of environmental “fallacies” are unpacked as specific efforts by interest groups to garner a higher readership. One of Lomborg’s most effectively demarcated environmental fallacies refers to the term, "threshold alarmism," and how some media writers stimulate concerns about the future without offering conclusive information for worry.

These dramatic emphases on vague, potential harms have in some cases generated a strange sort of superficial media-borne energy, where a great deal of individuals feel strongly about an issue such as climate change and can, so they do, harp on to their peers, focusing on the most alarming peripheral details in order to generate a response. This is one of the interesting processes that we are currently befallen with: a lot of critics, a lot of commentary, and constant exchanges of information and knowledge. What happens then when a potentially uncritical mind is influenced by a party that is interested only in personal profit? It is my contention that the ideological priority placed on capitalism and personal finance is why we have witnessed the kind of stagnation that has been occurring with positive environmental action, as with the conference in Copenhagen.

This just underscores the type of framework that I'm dealing with, that now, when the world demands action more than it ever has before on this issue, it’s still a mass of verbiage that the powers that be continue to hide behind. It is slightly repugnant, but ultimately it is symptomatic of our late capitalism existence and a world that remains daunting and unpredictable. Because without a communal investment in knowledge, effort, hell, in actual profit, we won't be able to evoke any serious change. But aha, my friendly feathered friend, people in our society are definitely not interested in a communal sort of profit in the way that I'm saying. Hell, even the word profit is problematic here, but I'm using it to describe a collective profit, outside of monetary wealth.

The thing about money, about capitalism, all of that, is that we are currently advanced (?) enough to live highly individualized lives, for example, the number of single men sustaining solitary lifestyles is rising, while marriage numbers have been declining. If we're stuck competing for money all the time, how are we going to do anything but continue to put up walls and divide ourselves further? Mad notes escape the dreamer. I'd better say now that I'm not moseying in some Marxist direction, I have yet another point.

The other night, somehow, my housemates and I got into a conversation while we were studying philosophy, about crop circles. I suppose it was stirred up by a science versus unexplained phenomena discussion. I’ve always had the feeling that I belong to a “Mulderien” school of thought (that is, quite open to the unknown, no matter how apparently false). This especially informed by my desire to believe things that I oughtn’t necessarily believe (at least with a scientific and objective mindset).

I do feel strongly about aliens, UFOs, flying saucers, little green men, all of that, but not so that I would do something like accept any of the 50 minute hoaky youtube video that we found to proceed our conversation. It appalled me in fact, that such a swindle had been conducted, and certifiably occurs daily, in all kinds of places. Just because of the desperate psychology rooted in searching for life out there. I mean, yeah, I usually see that the average person I discuss these matters with accepts the statement that life must occur in some otherworldly form in some lost jellycosm or other. It’s all conjecture, but based on the “size of the universe” theory (very big), it seems at least plausible to picture life in another, or multiple other, manifestations.

But mostly, it’s us. Yeah, I said it. I’ve been studying a great deal of folk literature, religious doctrine, not to mention Calvin and Hobbes, both the theologian and the kid, the philosopher and the stuffed tiger, and it is evident to me that most accounts of supernatural or at least abnormal phenomena are products of disorientation, contextual setting, or simply of imagination. It strikes me as a strange concept that immediately following World War II and an undeniably atrocious first half to the 20^th century, the story of the EBE, or Extraterrestrial Biological Entity emerged from the air force base in Roswell, New Mexico. Would this be the new spiritual entity to tantalize the human mind in years to come? Yes, for some; they want to believe, they thrive on that factor of the unknown, they revel in possibility. It seemed as though a lot of the stories that make up humanity got severely tarnished, damaged, some lost forever in that war. It is my contention that UFO stories are merely an offshoot of the hopeful and complex primate intellect that humans possess. In a time denoted by literary theorists as the era of Postmodernity, itself characterized by the fragmentation of space and meaning, these stories are symptomatic of our undying urge to have real stories intact that we can share, so that things such as mystery and curiosity could strike us today.

They’re not succinctly bad stories, either. One of my favourite television shows growing up was the X-Files, because I thought that it illustrated so well one individual’s drive to find meaning and truth in places where meaning and truth had been tampered with noticeably. It realistically (well, semi-realistically) placed two FBI agents to investigate scene after scene of strange mysterious phenomena. These would range from American or European folktales to urban legends and, of course, interspersed amongst these was a plot driven by notions of UFOs and extraterrestrials. Normally, the bureaucratic hand of reason is there to stifle Mulder’s discoveries, which is fitting because most of his investigations are rooted in ideas of the fantastic.

I love these stories, I like that we’re still telling them, I like that aliens can stir one or two people up, make them say, “What if?” as they go about their day-to-day life here on greenest earth. But, if we are to reify noted ills to our society that have been caused by industry and capitalism on steroids, we must do so with conscious, critical attention.

This is a very convoluted idea for a paper, I apologize… but as you could probably tell I feel super strongly about it. My main objection with the film, “New Swirled Order” it was called, was that it didn’t provide disclaimers as to the nature of the investigations (done in a very low budget Mulder/Scully sort of way by the brilliant BLTResearch team, cited from BLTResearch.com). The whole way through, I wasn’t sure who in the film was faking it or who believed it. I wouldn’t waste my time watching it if I were you, but it is mildly entertaining, to be sure. And implausible, did I mention that? Highly implausible. I just have a problem with the profiting individuals, the ones making the crop circles, the ones in charge of distributing that crappy video, because they were attempting to be edgy, suspenseful, and worst of all, authentic.

In a world on the brink of, what is it now? Tomorrow? I guess that’s all we’re on the brink of for now, but after that, I’ve got a feeling we’re in for more of the same. More tomorrows that is. And masses of useless media like New Swirled Order, while itself not being very influential, desires to influence others into tomorrow. It wants to affect a sort of consideration in its viewers that is coupled by awe, excitement, intrigue, even hope. It won’t with most, I think. And gee, am I glad to have seen it for free on youtube. I can’t honestly picture one person interested in owning that atrocious film, unless it was some bizarre, disclaimer-less artistic expression. I am sure (and we know that I can only feel sure because of subjectivity laws and all that, but seriously, I feel that I know that I’m sure, to be sure) that the film is exactly what it looks like: a creative money-grabbing scheme, predicated on the false and synthetic hope offered up by numerous trippy images. This desire to influence one’s hopeful conscience for a private profit like that is unethical.

It’s a ridiculous example, but I love it because for me it really intersects a number of very thought-provoking issues. On one hand we have the human intellect, conjuring collective records of what an extraterrestrial entity might look like. On the other we have constant production: texts, newspapers, films, journals. It is considered good to print intrigue because such generates interest and thus an increased readership. The type of alarmism stirred up in the media these days is often a direct result of myopically pessimistic broadcasts, just the type that Bjorn Lomborg warns us of in The Skeptical Environmentalist.

Well, I’ve already mentioned in my borderline communist beeline earlier that the greatest hindrance to change in this world is money. The main vice that it brings with it is the myth of security. Essentially, if I have the same money as everyone else, it becomes reasonably comforting to merely focus on accumulation of more, and leave everyone else up to themselves. Isn’t that what’s been happening for a while now anyway?

Who knows. Who knows what’ll happen. All I’m saying is, that if we’re grappling in one mind with the environmental situation, trying to utilize good information as well as make positive critical decisions about future options, we can’t afford to allow BLT Research and their crop circles to influence us at all (although they are but one meager example of junk science).

I am firm in the opinion that it is an unethical practice to play on someone’s beliefs, particularly for profit. Being a bit of a UFO nut myself, I took specific pains to see the notion of extraterrestrial life get bandied around with the so-called crop circles and the so-called crop circle experts. It seemed like a large waste of time, faking all of that evidence. What a waste of time and effort and resources! For what? To turn one or two heads I suppose. But this century has given me whiplash. And in every single direction, you can find good information, but you can also find heaps and heaps and heaps of bad information.

My New Swirled Order example is itself perhaps a bit useless, other than the fact that it speaks to the psychology behind UFO sightings, which I am very much interested in. Other than that, I think it’s a great example of people’s desire for profit by coercion (emboldened because that key phrase is the one thing we should always be conscious of as critical citizens). We are already drowning in a sea of poor environmental rhetoric, punctuated with sayings like, “Now its time to go big or go home with sustainability.” (to which I respond, “Pardon moi? Where did you hear that statement, a Redskins game? Go big or go home? Aren’t we already too big? Where is home?!”)

Don’t get me wrong, the “idea” of sustainability brings me great cheer. It’s kind of like the idea of hope. It exists, cos I just said it. Hope. Hope, hope, hope, hope, hope, ok I’ll just have to remember the word for later. All I know is that it’s really easy to sound good talking about this stuff. It seems almost, what do you call it? Noble. But the more we talk, letting tomorrows become yesterdays, beating around the bush, the closer we come to the uncharted alarmist threshold of change, and some action will happen. And we need all noggins on deck!

Blurred Words (2 orders)

Order #1

I'm the nuclear bomb
out of all my friends
and I know it
share t-
-o know-all
thunder

Thing is, no one minds,
not here, not even me,
I'm an explosion,
an uncanny expression.
all the right words
in the most
ironically
mad
order.

Serving moments up to myself
chomping on discounted
carrots leaving
orange gunk in
me teeth,
my eyes,
clearer

As the plummet plummets deeper,
and like a bad rhyme ,
discounted like a leper,
confused confused
when i smell
my breath

But it's ok because
I have a place
on an unwritten
contract that
no one thinks
about it
much
more
than
me

Sculpting a vision
of an empty befalling,
baffled,
befuddled,
Can't help but
crawling

Scrawling with ink that I
found in a pen
that I found
in a hand
that I found
in a me
that they
named

But I just want
to tell you
what I'm scrawling.


Order # 2

1.
I'm the nuclear bomb,
thing is, no one minds,
serving moments up to myself,
but it's ok because,
sculpting a vision,
scrawling with ink that I,
but I just want

2.
Out of all my friends,
not here, not even me,
chomping on discounted,
and like a bad rhyme,
I have a place,
of an empty befalling,
found in a pen,
to tell you

3.
and I know it,
I'm an explosion,
carrots leaving,
discounted like a leper,
on an unwritten,
baffled,
that I found,
what I'm scrawling.

4.
Share 't,
an uncanny expression,
orange gunk in,
confused confused,
contract that,
befuddled,
in a hand

5.
O know-all,
all the right words,
me teeth,
when I smell,
no one thinks,
that I found,

6.
Thunder.
In the most
my eyes,
my breath,
about it,
crawling,
in a me.

7.
ironically,
clearer,
much,
that they

8. mad,
more,
named

9. order,
than

10.
me

This word experiment is purely experimental

Honey I Shrunk the Bees

Honey I Shrunk the Bees

Bees line up
at the bee line
in the distance
and I see buzz-
ard overhead
at the beeline brink,
at least I won't get stung
So much.

Not by bees...
never by bees.
Maybe by hornets as big as my thumb!
Less bees bugging,
a third less food to share,
nuts, fruit supplies,
seeds no longer
in supply.

Buzzing off is hard.

Infinitesimal dag-nabbits
continuously befall us in
the hope of the honey gold sunset.

Conjecture on "the Salt of the Earth" and even Capitalism

It sometimes occurred to me as obscene that we did this. Or that I did this, that I thought this. I couldn’t speak for everyone else. It seemed like waste was the new hot commodity here. To create waste, that is. Like, what has value these days? What, really? What is valuable but a mythological past, itself surrounded by a corporate present? What has value? What is worth contributing to? Nothing, one disgruntled critic might say. Nada.

But ourselves. And if one could be themselves for just those crucial moments that that them sold or caught on to just enough eyes. That would be the dream, to sell exactly what you are to a group that want what you have: you. It’s the biggest smack in the face to those who say, “Hey moaners and groaners alone, you needn’t do that, come, join me, flog products for minimum wage, or join some cult that sells vacuum cleaners or broadcast that SARS is back with a vengeance at supper time,” but ah, then the maniac on the line gets cut off, cut off by archetypal protagonist under consideration, who says, “Please, good sir, pardon me, but I’ve produced something more important than your nonsensical beeswax. I showed people that it could be fun to think again.”

“Thinking? What fun is thinking?” Mr. Phone Line Chastisement was probably thinking. But the conniving dagger-dodger is eternally incorrect. Thinking will save us all, i think. I don’t think thinking will be our great undoing.

But I do think that it is easy, sometimes even desirable, not to think. That was something I mentioned in the very first blog. Or at least I separated those two partitions of the human mind, the one that finds bliss in empathetically accommodating various mind-frames, and one that is merely glad to be.

I think it can be fun to think. Thing is, it can also suck. There are so many available thoughts, so many troubling thoughts, so many distracting thoughts.

What do I think about? The inventory, the contents of this page? I guess if this crud were all I thought about, I would hardly be worth my salt. I want to be worth my salt, to be sure. And this page, while not necessarily providing valid and robust saline statistics, at least extends a desire, to chat about things whether or not those things chatted about are completely worthy of merit. To back up fellow Canadian Douglas Coupland, these blog-like wisps contain traces of storytelling, and they encourage it. Storytelling is one of the most important things there is; we must never lose sight of that, for fear of losing the majority of the value of our internal salt!!!!

Type Semantics; talking about graphic novels

I am so taken by the art of graphic novel production that I can easily find myself drawn into a world felt so dearly in my youth, of comics: peppered with Dilbert and Calvin & Hobbes and Beano, Dandy n Beezer.. and of course, Tintin. But now, beyond that, struck with Watchmen, one of the most epic beasts of literature in all fields, with full illustration to boot, itself a wonder of parallel narratives, endless connected tissues throughout mankind’s repertoire making the text actually infinite.
Otherwise, I’ve experienced other adult comics that also seem to employ the mass appeal of the square box graphic in similar fashions, using windows to share theme through numerous focalizers while depending on a variety of complex and non-complex visual art. Watchmen itself was nearly all highly complex art, Curses, another recently acquired favourite by Kevin Huizenga, utilizes a mostly simplistic drawing technique, a feature with a lot of open, blank space for areas of textual breathing, of reader absorption and deep consideration. The book explores a great deal of theological philosophy, mirroring each comic in motive but never in expression. The nuances between each piece within the text are moderate while explicit, unexpected while brazenly indiscreet. Like Watchmen, it reaches deep into the soul of humankind, the lonely wretched product of a masterful evolutionary process, but unlike Watchmen, which does its delving from a bleak sense of postmodern pragmatism, Huizenga’s Curses challenges the exquisitely obscure primate intellect through a rich and attention-filled look at its own deep culture of folklore, one that has not lost its significance in the world today, if perhaps the attitudinal reason behind such significance.

This said, Huizenga’s book is an extremely contemporary read, one that makes informed connections between the ever-growing history of theological reason, folklore, and the era that such concepts have led us to, whether we can gladly accept that or not. In any case, such notions give endless justification to the ongoing study of language and its communicative transmission, and, oh yeah, stories.

No matter what, even if (god forbid) in (knock on wood) so-ever-many-years-from-now when the planet’s inhabitants have run of luck (as it were..), and Earth has thus been reverted to a Wall-E-esque existence of post-sapien proportions (can barely picture it), these graphic novels would remain significant long after the last fading novels of pure text, of yellowed script and smudged ink were gone! So any graphic novels left on this beautiful and remote lush island of the universe could be left to whatever alien entities (oh gee whiz, there he goes!) that might happen to traverse this spatial plane at one particular moment in later time! That they might piece together the wonders that were, the joys beheld, the beauty perceived, the essence realized. For here on Earth, life is good. From my meager n feeble subjectivity I can perceive a balanced and comfortable idea of “good”, and I know of this good in my own self. My essence is realized in my happy comprehension of these facts, and in the contented effort to contribute my feelings and ideas in moments that I can to those that might be receptive.

Why the Desire For Nonsense Exists (verse)

in a world that is curled,
by an unfurled span,
attached to new castles,
an unshy mass
that litters the ground,
even Ms. Mitchell groaned,
that it doesn't make cents,
worth copper's weight by the pound.

Nothing here rhymes,
so what's there to do,
You don't have a clue,
so why should I try,
Then I realize I'm
not, push onward again,
commenting on my version.
My version of the pestiferousness of pestilence,
The pretentiousness of polyethylene.
The patience of impatience,
as it watches
with a mad glint
in its eye.

What happened?
This.
But before I?
That.
So?
put down the pain, writing's turgid and flat.
Words from me: unhand that tone; words
from thee are not condoned.

So glad for a present,
not tainted by the future,
So glad to be away,
from a glintingly painful past.

The hogwash I spout,
has depth meaning and texture,
though I fear often that
rhyming behaves as my censure,
and for poetry's sake maybe I'll put my hair in a tonsure,
or head to the east,
training to be a fencer.

(I do look forward to a space not governed by rhyme,
where Dr. Seuss and William Blake evade my mind,
and the pugilist is left with digested literary rinds.)

I Saw It, so I Said It: Ads and Observations

So, after finally managing to navigate the oblivion of the blogosphere and carve out a blog, I thought I’d next write down something about my user logo. I’m not sure what it appears to be. In some sections I’m called TStans and my picture is a vast cluster of stars. In other versions, I’ve seen my user name presented as Tristan, and the image consists of part of the SmartCentre logo. SmartCentre is a plaza development plan that joins together a number of large corporations including the likes of Walmart and Canadian Tire, among many others. The logo itself consists of three emperor penguins, presumably a family, as they wave either hello or goodbye and aptly clasp their luggage. These creatures, while being endangered, mind you, are bound to struggle with increasing Antarctic temperatures. It just seems… off… ethically speaking, allowing this image to champion the identity of a company set to continue increasing climate temperatures in no uncertain terms. So, I made it my logo when I started an account here. But not the whole SmartCentre logo, just the very middle, so it said (artCe). It was art! See?
And besides this one example of environmentally awkward advertising, I remembered the bees. And how honey bees are declining in oddly fast numbers in the Northern Hemisphere. This Guelph Ontarion article succinctly covers the facts, one of the most important being that bees are responsible for pollinating one third of the food that we are used to eating. The whole issue, which came to my attention three summers ago, seems to link oddly well to the image associated with Honey Nut Cheerios, the cereal! Reaching, I know, but, as “Cheerio” is a statement meant to colloquially denote a goodbye, couldn't the phrase “Honey Nut Cheerios” be reiterated to mean, “Goodbye nuts, honey, and bees”?! Also, nuts are one of the food items that we rely on bees to pollinate for us.
Well, these two examples might be decidedly meager, especially the second one, but I know that more examples exist out there. Hopefully by pointing out these two, I will increase my own resolve to find more. If anyone knows of any bizarrely ironic advertising with an environmental double-entendre, share it with someone, and I do hope I get to see it.

Ideology and the Vagueness of Blogging: Ide-blogogy

Since so much blogging is afoot these days, I find it prudent that I get with the times and contribute some textual content to the mass of 1s and 0s we’ve all come to know so well in recent years, the Internet. The content mostly tackles an individual’s interactions with the universe, reacting frequently to art and various politics while attempting to sculpt or perhaps build upon a type of known, personal ideology.
It is the belief of this blogger that ideology is not so devious an entity as it is so frequently made out to be, though its manipulation at the hands of various media outlets poses ideology as a free entity ripe for the profitous pillaging. On its own, ideology belongs to the individual, is his or her “own”, and it may be observed and analyzed as often as is the desire of said individual.
I believe it was Socrates who once said that “the unexamined life is itself not worth living.” Food for thought, certainly, but what this Classic Greek aphorism fails to acknowledge is the infallible pleasure to be found in moderate exercises of the mind and body, relishing in the presence of an unaccommodated conscience; “living” in the most physical and tangible sense.
Yes, while it is our bliss as humans to treasure the moment, to encapsulate time and indulge in the art of others, it is also perhaps our responsibility to seek connection with our proximal environment and to share time challenging ourselves. What I hope to find in the midst of this tangled circular discussion is a balance, a balance in lifestyle, in meaning, in blog, that balances both the individual’s responsibility to combat the “obviousness” of ideology as Althusser would have it known, shifting and redefining to refresh one’s world perspective while at the same time grasping comfortably the reigns of a life not merely bent on existential definition, but also on laughter! And merriment! And poetry! And somewhere in the muddle, those two cherished realms of life, perhaps identified by Roland Barthes as “plaisir” (pleasure) and “jouissance” (bliss), may touch. In the mean time, I would merely acknowledge my aim to serve both ideas equally.