09 December 2009

Get your motor running

It's a brand new day. Last night sounded terrible, rain and wind and such. Now there's the sun. I'd be willing to put a big stake on the thought that a great deal of the artistic beauty produced throughout man's history was in part inspired by a sunrise after a storm. There's just something so striking about it.
So. Zeitgeist. It's one of those words that, to me, totally encapsulates its meaning, really sounds like it. The literal German is "spirit of the age", coming from the words for time (zeit) and spirit (geist) which come from the same roots as the English words tide and ghost.
Interesting etymology aside, zeitgeist is an interesting and often unspoken concept. A senior says "It was different back then", he's talking about it. Parents don't understand the choices their kids make; they're fighting it. Barack Obama became president because he read and rode the zeitgeist. All this, it's not noticed, normally, in the now. Usually, for the unthinking, it's only ever really noticed in retrospect. But I think if we try to understand why the grand collective mind of humanity is thinking the way it is, maybe we can make the worlds a better place or some other positive thing like that. I'm just saying it's interesting and potentially worthwhile to check out once in a while, so long as thinking that hard doesn't hurt you. Don't want to encourage the average American past their pitiful capacity for thought.
Y'know, in the past, I thought Chad Ochocinco was ridiculous and just needed to shut up and play the game. He's still ridiculous-the man's name means eight-five, for goodness sake, but he shut up and has really gotten down to business. I can at least respect him for that now.
For the first and last time I'm going to talk about Twilight here. I think it's just another Harry Potter thing. It'll go as soon as it came, in the big picture. I don't really care. But I can't lie. I'm really freaking annoyed by it. Not by it. By people's obsession with it. With vampires. I don't mean to insult your fantasy, if that's what you like, but I think it's dumb. Also from sources I trust I've heard that Meyer's writing sucks. So yeah. All I can say is, if I had a daughter right now, it's not that she wouldn't be reading Twilight, but she'd definitely be also reading other, worthwhile material. A Bronte or Alcott or one of those ladies who really knew what was up.
On a more humorous note, I recently heard something in connection with this picture:

Now just think-if it were a group of middle-aged men reacting similarly to a 17 year old girl, do you think you'd have the same reaction? Lol@double standards.
Something I might talk about tomorrow/whenever I post next-Rebranding

08 December 2009

Ooops

I hate when I don't do something for a while. After a certain uncomfortable period, it becomes such that even though I need to do it, I get scared of it, and I do nothing about it for even longer. Sometimes it bites me in the ass. Sometimes it has no negative repercussions. Kinda like not posting in my blog for months. But w/e. Here I am. Just try and dislodge me now!
(It probably wouldn't be that hard)
The last three minutes or so of Korn's "Dirty" off Issues is just static. Now you know that. I just learned myself, so don't feel bad if you didn't know. I hadn't yet listened to that album full through. Now I'm listening to Korn. Good stuff.
Words are funny things. They gain and lose meaning so much based on personal experience, and yet we expect to be able to properly communicate. Granted, we've got somewhere over half a mil words to explain stuff. But still, it's a strange assumption that everyone will understand you.
The way language-oh man, I love the song Clown-behaves in the personalization of it be all of its users reminds me of the different ways in which animals evolve, based on environment, given that they come from the same root. Like say there is one large island, flanked by two smaller ones. One day there's a huge storm. A flock of sparrows from the main island gets blown into two smaller flocks. Each half ultimately finds port on a different smaller island and remains there, theoretically interminably. Return in centuries or whatever and they'll have developed in divergent directions, to some degree. I mean, that's a pretty weak-sauce example, but it's the principle. This is something that actually happens. And yes, I was thinking of Charlie when I thought this example.
But anyway, that's how language acts in all our heads. I think it's pretty neat. That's where dialects come from, on a larger (and communal) scale, and even separate languages, if you want to go that far. Personalization based on experience and/or personal perspective shapes so much about our world.
Things to think about-Zeitgeist.