To write, you need momentum, you need to keep moving ahead, anything to avoid sitting like a lump, clicking from one stupid thing to another. I promise that I will stop after the next image. Just one more website. One more. But I keep doing it…like a child. Absolutely nothing in my head. Until finally I decide to blog on that very thing, my inertia. And do it. And then get back to actually writing again, a character suddenly stepping in.
I stay focused, and then…lose my step, damn it, and think of what I might be missing. And open the browser again.That’s a cute fucking dog. Can’t deny that.
Social media – yes, like you are reading now – is fatuous and inane, worse than anything ever produced on radio or television – and that includes The Bachelor. Facebook posts on the death of David Bowie serve as sad exemplars.
Mark Pautz06h30 this morning. I was awake. Strange, as I’d only got to bed four hours earlier. But it was then that the musical soundtrack of the first 55 years of my life came to an end.
Terry BoydI am 43 and I have always known David Bowie to be singing he was an iconic singer, and there will never ever be another David Bowie of his kind.
William LemosDavid Bowie a true hero
What is it about any of these people – indeed anyone, you or me – that makes one a David Bowie expert? Our facile love of his music? Our hyperbolic connection to his lyrics? Good god, even The New York Times sounded ridiculous in their piece on how Bowie “transcended” music and art.The truth is his music didn’t transcend anything. He was a great musician, and all of this blather only acts as a depressing testament to how lonely everyone is too scared to admit. While keeping up to date with each other’s life moments on social media can be a nice thing, as is watching cute red pandas, reflections on the importance of an artist for an individual is irrelevant and utterly pathetic.Someone to claim us, someone to follow Someone to shame us, some brave Apollo Someone to fool us, someone like you
According to Buddhist belief, those who have done evil in their lives will spend the next incarnation in the shape of a rat, a frog or some other low animal.(Zuckerberg) intends to provide against this danger. He would devote his closing years to good works, which would pile up enough merit to outweigh the rest of his life.Probably his good works would take the form of (a for-profit charitable organization). Four (billion), five, six, seven – (his wife) would tell him how many – with carved stonework, gilt umbrellas and little bells that tinkled in the wind, every tinkle a prayer.And he would return to earth in male human shape – for woman ranks at about the same level as a rat or frog – or at worst as some dignified beast such as an elephant.*
(*Adapted from pp.3-4, Burmese Days, George Orwell)
My facebook subscription to NASA provides updates on space missions as well as remarkable photographs of the universe. NASA also posts photographs of our planet, including a recent shot of forest fires in Idaho. This photo has been ‘liked’ by over 2,212 people, to whom I posted the following comment: Facebook is weird. Why would you ‘like’ these images? The electronic world just makes everyone further and further from what is actually real.
Moose Mellios replied: You can appreciate the technology of an image without liking the subject.
I posted a reply – That is what I mean; we are distancing ourselves from the subject – but I get the feeling that Moose, and many others in facebook world, just won’t get the point.
Yes, I am on facebook. Well, not right now, but generally. And I admit that it is good for staying in touch with many people, but in the end, I have to say that I dislike the whole platform, as they say.I have shared and posted and, yes, even liked, but I have always been bothered by the fact that facebook trivializes everything. It’s all one-liners, giggling or aghast. It is as facile as tweeting and blogging. Oh, uh…well, yeah. Laetitia Sadier sings it best: We communicate more and more/in more defined ways than ever before/but no one was got anything to say/it’s all very poor it’s all just a bore. In facebook world, we share silly pictures and comment on issues of great import – massacres, gang rapes – on the same weirdly awful page. We are like infants, screaming out and giggling at our farts…which is fine, for what it is.But I still dislike it. Maybe we’ll all give it up in 2013! (Smiley face here)
I promise that I will stop after the next image. 
Just one more website. 
One more. 
But I keep doing it…like a child. 
Absolutely nothing in my head. 
Until finally I decide to blog on that very thing, my inertia. And do it. 
And then get back to actually writing again, a character suddenly stepping in.
That’s a cute fucking dog. Can’t deny that.
