No leather jacket
An uncool, uncouth collection of unconsciousness.
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These days: a slack-jawed libretto in every small room. And we get sick
of ourselves. And we don’t wear condoms. We equate loneliness to
symptoms like varicose veins— vomit kaleidoscoped backseat
upholstery into every survival story. Our homes no more
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Whoa. I’m not Tom Cruise’s biggest fan but this movie is a fairly interesting take on what Earth might be. Just. Look. At. That. Poster. This movie will probably be pretty spectacular as far as the vistas go. Directed by the folks who did the new Tron (meh) movie it could shape up to be really, really pretty. Tron: Legacy was by no means a great story, but some of the environments it showed off were awe-inspiringly cool. I’m hoping it’s good, but I’ll watch it for the destruction regardless.
Pretty cool motivation, right? I’m writing my paper on the whole concept anyway, so I might as well admit I love looking at massive scale destruction and over-grownness. The movie doesn’t talk much about why most of us abandoned Earth but I’m hoping it’s a climate change message. Then again, is talking about how we all fled a cop-out? Would we so readily abandon Earth?
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I’m a fairly boring and closed minded person I think. I came to this realization when I tried to think of something important to say for the tumblr journals I’m way behind on. I’m not passionate about much. I like videogames and music and poetry. But only very specific instances of most of them. I like movies and TV shows but not enough to become obsessed like a Twilight moron or a Star Wars elitist. I think that life is chaos and I see no purpose in what we are. In the end I think that this is why I don’t do much. There is no fate, no grand purpose for my life. I simply am, and I’m totally cool with not making waves.
Maybe this rant seems too self-deprecating and emo. Most of my poetry and inner dialog is anyway, so I guess you get what you are in your ‘creative’ outlets. Anyway, I’m not saying I’m not worthy of life or that I shouldn’t care about things, I just don’t get so fiery and passionate about much. I haven’t formed my ideas on abortion yet, I don’t know if I believe in God and I can’t really decide if I’d prefer capitalism or socialism. I’m 20 years old and a bit behind my peers as far as intelligence goes, of this I am sure. I hope that one day I can persuade people the way others have persuaded me to be the person that I am, but I wonder if I ever will.
In the end, it doesn’t matter because I live well and have great friends and do fun, safe things. I suppose it would be an incredibly sad life not loving what you have, even if you didn’t have anything. I have many things, and I’m thankful for who I am and who I want to be and the people and things that make up my existence.
Materialism is hard to deny, so I didn’t. I like my technology. I like my posters and DVDs and my pointless and small coin collection. I like my books and my Kindle. I like this campus and my roommate. I like my teachers and my classes and struggle just enough to make them feel worthwhile and challenging. Aren’t facets of life that are beyond objects almost substantial as objects? Don’t we view the friendships we have as commodities? Is our education not summed up by a piece of old looking paper draped with praise and Latin? It doesn’t matter who we think we are to others in the end because to everybody else we are what they think we are. I’m pretty alright with that depressing idea…
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Climate Change music?! I was looking at new album releases and saw a rapper had released an album called “Global Warming.”Sort of stunned/interested I almost listened even though I know I’m not a fan of mainstream (non-hipster) rap. In the end I passed it up, I doubt it had much to actually do with it, but it got me thinking. So here I am presenting you with a song about climate change and the human mind. The imagery of “I want nature to suffer/I want nature to die/I want nature to spit in my mouth” is superb. It fully encapsulates the conflicting ideas a lot of us have about handling climate change. We want to consume and be well-off, but do we want nature to take its revenge? Do we want to be insulted (or rather killed) by the change? How do we rationalize our lifestyles with our environment and still be comfortable?
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I had to watch this documentary for my Geology of Climate Change and Energy class. It was very informative because it talked about recent developments in Climate Change deterrence. I was especially surprised to learn of China’s interest in carbon sequestration and clean coal as well as their other green initiatives. I think many Americans are simply ingrained with the belief that China is cheap, massive (both in geography and population) and dirty, and this video proves that this is not so. Are the Chinese surpassing us in the caring about climate game? Could this be the spark we need to initiate a new arms race? A flexing of American scientific and environmentally conscious muscle? Perhaps this is the motivation we need. Perhaps this won’t go anywhere, it’s an interesting thought to consider and the video really makes a few points about climate change very important.
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Mocking the mainstream. Everybody does it, why not. Nickelback sucks, Lost went batshit insane and Weight watchers doesn’t work. More people believe its occurring than not. It is simply something that crazy left-wingers believe to many deniers still. Regardless, this video shows very readily the pitfalls of belief and denial. A juvenile trick played on gullible people. They exist on both sides, ignorance is everywhere, get over it. This is upsetting not because it was done, but because anyone was willing to so readily believe that this would change things. It seems even some of the general climate change minded public do not get the facts.
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This article may not be scholarly, but it raises some great points about why love dystopias so much. In the end it comes down to character relation and somewhat Social Darwinist ideals. Each of us wants to believe that we are best fit to survive post climate change or nuclear war. We all want to reaffirm that what we are doing can survive a worst case scenario. Most of us are not outright training for the end of the world, but that doesn’t stop us from thinking how we’d retrofit our home to protect ourselves from zombies or food scarcities. We all want to know that we could make it, and that’s why we relate to and get pleasure from the dystopian. Maybe we also just like seeing our world destroyed, blown up buildings are always cool…
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This is one of my favorite explanations of Global Warming. Not because it’s super funny, (though it is) but because it is very simple, yet accurate. It’s a clip pulled from Gore’sAn Inconvenient Truthwhich was pulled from an episode ofFuturama.Now obviously, the whole giant ice cube part at the end is very, very wrong, but the whole denialist creed “Once and for all!” is rather great.
I guess that if I had to explain global warming to someone I would use the beginning of this video and just elaborate more. Bravo Matt Groening, bravo.
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The above video is for perhaps one of the greatest examples of video game narratives as art in existence. Bioshock was announced a while before I knew anything about it. When I first heard of it I thought it looked pretty bad, but once I saw this trailer on a tiny little TV on vacation in Maine I was hooked. I went out and rented it with however little money I had and played it for hours. Arriving at the end I discovered it was one of the best things to ever happen in gaming. The twist! My goodness thetwist! So without spoiling it in case you’re genuinely interested in playing it, you should just know that it will turn your conception of video games on their head.
This is not a mindless shooter. It is a masterpiece in every way. Even when you’re mindlessly shooting things are going on below the surface that will blow your mind. And then let’s discuss the world.
The world is an underwater utopia for Ayn Rand readers in every walk of (well-off) life. Poets, artists, politicians and more flee the world of the average for a life of very opulent seclusion. Since I’m writing a paper on the climate change narrative of video games, I guess I should say that this game story could be about climate change. Fleeing one environment for another one, an environment completely different and jovial. Can we view these people as climate refugees? They are choosing to run from what they view to be a problem: society, much like societies would flee from what they see as problematic: rising seawater. I will obviously go into greater detail with my paper, but I just wanted to form some ideas.
I recommend you play this game and its sequel and its upcoming third iteration: Bioshock Infinite.
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This collection of poetry I’ve written over the course of many months and years is a good insight I think, into my mind. I can sort of trace back my thoughts like a journal and see what I was doing when. I write about my current readings and what I’ve been learning about. It also highlights the things I’ve been going through or recently remembered incidents of my past. I don’t know why I suddenly love sharing so much but I guess I might as well share these things with people who I’m meant to discuss English stuff with.
