Simian Uprising by Jer Clarke

it’s weird that i can sit in front of a screen for two hours, scrutinizing and judging a film, trying to extricate ideology, meaning and flaws, and constantly noticing technical errors, and yet still end up crying at the end.

either i’m a sucker, or big fish is an amazing film.

it’s the kind of post-modernism that’s actually good for us, replacing all the irony driven sarcasm and self-referential exploitation and violence with a magical kind of meta-sincerity, leaving you feeling confused and wonderful. it gives us permission to LISTEN to the kind of stories we want to hear, without demanding that we consider them too closely, that we accept them for “what they are” or that we even think about them at all.

it’s the kind of story that makes me want to get off my ass and do something to re-create my own narrative, to re-discover my voice, and to say all the new and old things i’ve been meaning to say. it seems like the kind of movie that can really inspire people, can bring something new to the table.

or maybe i just cry a lot. the jury’s still out.

it seems that the whole notion of being a person falls way short of describing what we actually are.

as i understand it, our brains go because of the bioelectricity that is pumping through our nervous system. it flies around in our brains firing neurons (or maybe it IS the firing of neurons, i’m not really clear on that) and activating our stored memories to reference with current sensory input. it also travels throughout our nerves to control our muscle movements. pretty simple right? i mean, that’s how we move, it’s how we function.

but what are our thoughts then? the most common answer is that they’re something akin to magic. most people just don’t seem able or willing to conceive of their stream of consciousness as just a buzz of bioelectricity permeating some misunderstood grey matter, but isn’t such an explanation sufficient? forget the “unexplainable complexity of thought”, when there are more possible brain states than particles in the known universe (taking into account every combination of neural firings that’s possible) then there isn’t a whole hell of a lot that electro-neural activity CANT account for.

especially considering what our thoughts are actually like. my brain doesn’t read like a book, or like a speech or anything like the wonder of the mind is generally conceived as. it’s more like a cross between a broken record and a dog (is it just me or do animals always seem to be thinking about the word of the thing they’re looking at over and over: “person, person, person, person, BONE!”), repeating itself and always buzzing with total shit. i mean, obviously something productive occurs or i (also you, and you.) would be unable to function, but the volume, the sheer uncalculable and unbelievable quantity, of mental excrement that passes through my head is could be nothing but proof of the essential materiality of the functioning of my brain. it’s no amazing and finely tuned machine, more like a goat on a jewelry store, consuming as many valuables as possible and creating montains of excrement, which hide within themselves the treasures.

i think that’s the most important part of what sartre was getting at in nausea. our brains prize quantity over quality, and somewhere in the evolutionary process we realized (!) that if we just thought ENOUGH, some of it would have to be worthwhile. which leaves us now with brains that go non stop. like a stock ticker you can’t turn off, even if you want to. we have this crap, this multitude of LAYERS of crap that is constantly occupying us, always chugging away hoping to come up with something of value, and it’s fine and it’s dandy so long as you don’t mind. but don’t start to dislike it. don’t question whether it’s necessary.

i think that’s where crazy people come from.

that and texas.

happy new year, did you realize that it’s totally not the nineties at all anymore? like we’re officially “mid-zero’s”! that means that now it’s the 80’s AND 90’s lunch hour on the radio! and that eighties clothes will get EVEN MORE popular.

also i am old, and you are older.

i am good. school is done and now i am working instead, which means that i call people for seven hours every day and bother them. but it’s not so bad ’cause sometimes they dont’ mind.

i still have one exam but it’s not a hard exam and i already passed the course so it’s cool.

today i saw my friend joel from work do his comedy routine called 42 short plays by the new humorists. it was good but no one was listening because they all just wanted to see the band “lesbians on extacsy”, who were also good, but a bit gay.

steph really likes that band.

i’ts been at least a month since i drew a real comic. my hands are atrophying but i still don’t feel like doing any. am i broken? am i cheating the people? do you still want a shirt? i still have them.

i want a chameleon for christmas. that’s what you have to get me. their feet aren’t even really like feet at all, more like something that ISNT feet. also, they are awesome when they eat, but it’s hard to feed them cause you have to touch bugs.

i’ve been playing Neverwinter Nights a lot lately. it’s like d&d but it lives in my computer instead of in the hearts and sould of the other dorks. it doesn’t love me like they do but it loves me when i need it to.

i like my mac. it’s like a pc but it’s more beautiful. that’s not important.

love,

jer

“I am, I know, I love; for if I am deceived, I am; I am also not deceived in knowing that I know. For as I know that I am, I know also this, that I know. And when I love these two, being and knowing, I add that love as a third thing of equal importance to those things which I know.”

-augustine (de civitas dei)

Found on an older blog and posted here for historical purposes.

Looking at pictures of yourself is such a strange thing to do. i mean, who the fuck is that person? is that me? does my nose really stick out that much? are all those curves actually part of my face?

usually i try to stay behind the camera, but i know i’ll regret if later if i have no images of myself so i let people steal the fire when they ask. but it really does kind of phase me to look at the results. i find it hard to believe that my girlfriend can have sex with me without laughing for example. also, i tend to feel fat, which i don’t believe i am, or at least not really…

it’s a usefull philosophical tool though, like we tend to just look through the window of our vision out at world that we process instantly. the things we can do without having a single thought are amazing. but when you look at a picture of yourself you’re confronted with the fact that you’re really out there. not just your eyeballs and brain, but all of you. When you see a picture of yourself, especially one that really doesn’t represent your “residual-self-image” you’re confronted with that part of you that you really can’t control, maybe it’s the auto-pilot that gets caught in the photo (which would repudiate the traditional cultures that claim that photo’s steal your soul, maybe they just steal everything else?), and, being forced to look at it is what makes viewing the photo uncomfortable. i dont’ think we like to be reminded of our mortality-limitations-just humanness, at least not in such a dynamic visual way (it’s easier to brush of the existential unease of a question like “why are we here” than it is to look at yourself making a face in normal conversation that you would grimace at if anyone you were talking to made it).

maybe it’s just me that thinks that though, maybe everyone else just looks at photos and says “yup, i’m ugly” or “yup that’s just me”. i’ve always had a weird relationship with my body, and rarely do i look in a mirror without having to re-confront the stranger i see there.