Author: Jeremy Clarke

So I finally have some time to work through all the content that’s accrued here and move it over to a new server with my host. THUS please be aware of the following things (this is mostly just for friends and active users of the site)

• The forum is going to topple. It had its moment but has been freakishly dead for a long time now. If you have something there you want to save (or whatever) do it now.
• The gallery is also going to be cleared out and reinstalled. There will be a new one but if there are any photos there you’d want to save do it now.
• The blogger blogs should start working again soon.
• The site may be a bit crazy in the next few days, my apologies, it’ll settle down eventually.

sorry if that had nothing to do with you, keep enjoying this freezing season.

I hope you are warm with someone you like, comfortably solitudinous or being crushed by a horde of stampeding boxing-day shoppers. Whatever hits your fancy.

As a favor to me though, I’d appreciate if everyone could take a moment to ponder the simulation. Consider this biggest of birthdays and consumption periods and try to find its true meaning. (Hint: There is none, the meaning has been crushed by everyone who ever took part. Have some eggnog.)

I hope you got good presents, something fun and something useful. I got an amazing graphic novel (worth far more than its 40$ price tag) and a light bulb for my lava lamp. I am enthralled and funky both.

If you’re free give me a call, I’d love to hang out.

Readers may have noticed that there has been little written here lately, this is because dozens of pages of papers and exams have been written instead.
Because I am just that kind of lame, I’ve posted my Media Theory final under the fold of this post (click “continue reading…” to see it). It’s not particularly entertaining but seemed to keep me interested, so if you’re feeling bored this holiday season it might be worth your time. Here’s my favorite paragraph, from the end of the Baudrillard question (Baudrillard believes that we inhabit a world composed entirely of the simulation of culture, with no real substance underneath):

Despite this massive and all consuming disconnection from reality, others and the media that define them, Baudrillard maintains that the members of the society of simulation are not in fact alienated. Instead, as previously stated, they embrace this isolation from reality as a means of escaping the responsibility of existence. Baudrillard says that the deepest desire is perhaps to give the responsibility for one’s desire to someone else, a feat accomplished by the simulated individual in their dependence on the media and reality-schema which define the simulated world (Baudrillard 125). This radical denial of reality, the strategy of resistance of the masses, is accomplished by sending back to the system its own logic. . .reflecting, like a mirror, meaning without absorbing it (Baudrillard 108). The masses thus exert, through the media, their true power, that of irony and antagonism.

Continue reading “Exam highlights”

Just in time for the holiday season, the mathematically insane creators of Eigenradio (a computer program that listens to dozens of radio stations and plays back only the most entropic/mathematically interesting parts) have released an album of condensed and optimized X-mas music for your listening mild-discomfort.

Really though, it’s sonically intense and actually pretty festive (in a Tim Burton kind of way). Math is the new instrument folks. this noise is its new music.

LINK to A Singular Christmas album.

(image hacked from eigenradio site, linked by BB a while ago)

(click on image to see larger/clearer view)

I guess it’s kind of interesting that the whole gaming/internet obsession axis has developed to the point where it’s reasonable to mix its imagery (the mouse) with that of heroin (arm strap), but it seems a bit too edgy for its own good.

Its obviously got shock value, which is what they were going for, but I’m not really convinced that it totally sells the product (a subscription service where you can download/rent a selection of “150” commercial game titles for the likes of 15$/month). I mean, what are the games? Looking at the admittedly well-crafted photo (the design of the rest of the poster is a bit mundane, with the depanneur/convenience store logo for “Couche Tard” being the best branded element) all I think about is the social connotations of computers, though I suppose I’m not the target audience anyway.

Of course, I’d take it over some of the other urinal-riders any day, if only because it actually gets my brain going.
(note: I think urinal ads are great, if there’s one place in the world where I want to pay for my presence with my eyeballs its when I’m standing around bored and emptying my bladder. Is there a similar feeling from the ladies with stall-ads, or is it just that I’m looking for an excuse to stare forward?)

Found on the creepy creepy baby jesus head website.

(babyjesus via. BoingBoing, why don’t you just go read it already?)

From the Target, promotional publication: