19 Nov, writing about 2000

When I was at Critical Path, that was the only time I had a full blown panic attack. I had locked mylsef in the unisex bathroom, I was cowering under a sink, on the phone with my therapist. To this day I have no idea what set me off - it must've been just a general unease with my whole situation. When you are losing touch with paying attention to yourself, things can add up and you are not in contact internally with what is causing it.

Critical Path was never something I beleived in, it was just this dull going-through-the-motions. I was not checking in with myself if it was something I really wanted to do. Wanting to do something is important. If you do something just because you're going through the motions, then that's a recipe for disaster.

I used to have a lot more fun - being totally in the moment. Stuff like that is important. it is the essence of living.

You have to be honest with yourself - this is the key to mental health.

I don't think I was fully present at Critical Path - not like I was at Netscape. I enjoyed being there, I loved being there.

Netscape was purpose, Netscape was meaning. I loved being there. For a myriad of reasons; I fit in; I felt comfortable. I loved going to work everyday. I looked forward to it. I was proud walking in the door and swiping my card. -

13 Nov

I was thinking about this time one year ago - I was in San Francisco, in a radically altered state. A couple steps away from homelessness. Acutely aware of the homeless plight up there. How hellish the city can be when you don't have money.

Why didn't I just spend the money on my own room? And have the peace-of-mind to then look for work, to take the next steps. I shouldn't be afraid to just spend the money.

But it was more than that. My mind was not all that great. (Hence, the bad decision-making.) I was preoccupied with tons and tons of thoughts, and it interfered with my ability to make sound decisions. Everything was surreal, dystopian, haunted. I was under constant duress. And this with no grounding, footing, or sense of money to be a cushion.

It led to a lot of experiences, all as vivid as day. But it was all a blur, a dream, due to my state. I was never enjoying myself or relaxing, finding only split-second snippets of joy or pleasure, never really letting myself slow down my thinking enough to enjoy. I was always full of thoughts, and my needs were upside down.

And it never even occurred to me to call a friend. Never even occurred.

The isolation, in the mind, was disorienting and surreal.

There were alot of 'characters', of people: Judy, or whatever her name was, in her 60's, who was one step away from homelessness herself but had a more collected air: and was also talking about the illuminati, which disturbed me. There was always something off about her, like a subtle, manipulative way she'd learned to behave, from being on the streets, in whatever capacity she was. She was pretty cool when we'd hang out and talk outside - it was the buddy I'd missed - but I felt weird about her when we were inside.

After I started to feel too weird about her - just an instinct - I began avoiding her, not hanging out with her. Something was off in her in that she'd sense that, and want to reestablish the link - oblivious to the fact that I had a problem with it.

But when we first hung out, it was great.

To be honest I didn't make much of any other friends while at that first hostel, she was it. It was first in a laundry list of problems *I* had: not being able to make friends, not talkative, just wanting my own space and privacy. Which immediately put me under duress being in a hostel environment. I relished late at night when no one was in the kitchen area, or when I was doing laundry in the tiny laundry room, where it was impossible for anyone to be there. Or when I was in the shower/bathroom - then I could unpack my toiletries stuff, lay out my towel on the sink, felt like I had my own room. Those times were bliss.

The sleeping areas were rows of bunks, two levels, with a curtain for each unit. I had a better time the previous time up, when I was mentally healthier and more sociable. At this other hostel I was at it was all open-air beds, like a dorm room, we were all in it together. I still relished the quiet time, but the together-time was more bearable - having everybody together like that meant more accountability, for someone coming in late and making noise, for behavior in general. Meanwhile, curtains for each bunk maybe made things creepy, bizarre, even though the intent was more privacy. Open-air beds were definitely better for everyone involved.

I had a less of a problem noticing the homeless too, at this other place. Reflection of my internal state. It's what you notice that defines you.

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I have been projecting Albert onto Stef -- when Stef is not Albert.

I have been projecting who knows how many women onto Dabs .. when Dabs is not those women.

1999 moment: "My parents drop-kicked me down the stairs" - Tamera Ferro

Through movies, we get to experience things we might not ever experience .. both in the outer world and the world of emotion.

Somebody out on the grid wrote, "I wish I could Google search for things in my house." This is actually brilliant.

Some kind of a combination of Kinect, the Internet of things (assigning everything an ID, to track it -- you couldn't hang a device on everything, so there would be some way to scan and track everything .. a Kinect-like AI that recognizes everything once you tell it what everything is -- Kinect, or something even deeper, using wifi or radio waves to scan and ID everything), and you can Google search internally for every item --

but you have to initially scan *evvvvvverythingggggg) first

you'd have to assign 'virtual IP' addresses - an IP that the source ties to an object, but the source is running and tracking ID of all those IPs .. they're not actually physically attached to each object.)

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Never have I read something that so mirrors my own experience. For me it was lots and lots of motels arrived at by car throughout the western US : Arizona, many places throughout California. The same kind of alienation and rote repetition that disillusions you, disorients you. The realization that what you are doing one day is not fun anymore. The same alienation about place, about where you are, about where home is, the same kind of problems mapping onto where you are with significance and meaning - seeing other places mapped onto where you are.

It started the same way. Fun, chance, frivolity.

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I miss the days when i was seeing Pacific Rim in the theater and I noticed that the Charlie Day character was a direct homage to J.J. Abrahms

Part of what made me so dystopian and depressed in San Francisco in November was the realization that climate change is pretty much unstoppable. Scientists had already been sounding the alarm that we may have passed the point of no return. And NASA has been investigating ways to colonize Mars and Venus, not for their own amusement, but because, in the words of Elon Musk, we need to find a solution now, to get off-planet. This is the burden of knowledge that the world's finest minds have.

Meanwhile, the "public" is squabbling over their typical climate-change-is-made-up / climate-change-is-real competing religious modes of thought, typical of a populace that is unwilling to hear the scientific evidence.

The future we have to look forward to is rising temperatures, harsher extremes, dwindling crops and food supply, disappearing species, more and more dangerous storms, rising sea levels taking over the coastal cities --

I'm really regretting not going to New York.

A search for domo-kun polaroid dj brings up my pinterest entry third and fourth.

(and this page got a lot of comments: domo-kun dj)

Ok, this is kind of a shock: if you do a search for "star wars oona goota solo" (the last three words being the opening line from Greedo), my page comes up first:

google search: star wars oona goota solo

How is that possible? My page can't be the most popular out there, surpassing the star wars wikia, and others ...

And while we're kinda on the subject, my video for House of God" by DHS was referenced by Frankie Bones: Fr

Fifteen years later I'm regretting not meeting Dennis Muren, liked I was invited to. Think of the opportunity that could've been explored. But I was scared of meeting a hero, too self-conscious - I just felt like I didn't have the social skills, to do it right. I'd be too nervous, too starstruck, and that puts people off.

Saw Taki Kogoma standing in the self-checkout line; in fact I was right next to him as we both checked out. he ahd not changed; nothing had changed. He was still wearing his backpack, still wearing a hat, still wearing a blue-and-white perpendicularly-striped shirt as he had to look at the checkout screen up close with his face right up to it. Felt an odd sense of compassion toward him, or what he represented: we had a lot in common.

Joel Hodgson favorited my tweet:

https://twitter.com/vson4/status/590107358619041792

Trace Beaulieu was making a joke about TV's Frank, I riffed on it,
and Joel Hodgson liked it.

The daring future of youtube: dailydot
These Google X 'moonshots' will change the world

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"Sorry, I have to ask this .. would you like to buy a pastry with these?"

It was the nicest, most down-to-earth human I encountered in San Francisco this time around. "Sorry, I have to ask this --" A sign of respect. A stepping out of the role, the fakeness ..

The girl from Amsterdam showed me her sunburn from San Francisco sun .. apparently the sun is harsher here.

She told me of Amsterdam's anything-goes attitude .. and she sounded a little sick of it. She wanted to move here.

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A week in the city was not the same as a week in New York, that's for sure. A city I *already* knew? That's no fun. Not only that but I wasn't there on my own, for my own reasons.

I did so much walking - and not sure if there's a correlation here - and I was eating so little, that some days I'd forget to eat or not want to eat .. it's almost like my metabolism was changing.

I kept wanting to buy things to drink though. I was drinking more and more. I couldn't get enough of water, and the occasional vitamin water / vitamin enriched drink. But food I was shying away from.

I didbn't want to eat that much when I did - I wanted to stay on my toes, had to keep moving, and food slows you down.

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GTA Physics:

If Driver is pulled out of car,
Driver (now Pedestrian) will run up center line of street indefinitely;
    will only change course if street turns left or right

The thing about the protestor, (if you look at video of it) he's defiant, not brave. "Brave" implies something he's scared of doing, but does it anyway. There's nothing scared about what the guy is doing. He's pissed. He's scolding / telling off those tanks (and tank drivers) .

People can think he's being brave, but that's just projection. WHat's actually going on with him in his head is different.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson: Argument from Ignorance

i.e. the inability for humans to leave unanswered questions unanswered .. which, interestingly, is the basis for all religions)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSJElZwEI8o&feature=youtube_gdata_player

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Knowing that the 777's have had autopilot problems or errors (the Asiana crash in San Francisco was due to the autopilot landing system miscalculating the distance to the runway), the fact that the autopilot system took Flight 370 8 hours off course, something must've happened to the crew and passengers, and the autopilot went on flying the plane until it ran out of fuel ..

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<-- Is there any way to make my life right again? -->

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"Meg .."
"Tilly? Meg Ryan?"
"That girl with the blanked out eyes .."
"Meg Foster -"
"That's it .."

I swear, if Pat and me were on 20,000 Pyramid, answering questions from sci-fi movies categories, we'd do extremely well.

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Good photography anticipaes human nature. You have to know what's going to happen. It's a bit like being a magician.

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http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/HRP_Feature/

So let's consider the Mars mission for a moment. The astronauts are going to spend 2 1/2 months in space, and be on Mars permanently -- a series of transformative events. They need to adjust to basically being in reality of traveling, floating, untethered, through space, for months, and not coming back -- one way of looking at this is they are delving into uncharted territory, similar to how one would forge, carve new paths in the wilderness. Another is that you are *completely* alone and isolated. The latter would have a definite psychological toll. To connect with the former, you have to feel like there is a way back. But what if there isn't? Can you still maintain this mindset?

Being connected is the only way to survive, psychologically, to prevent oneself from going insane.

A manned mission to Mars, as it stands now, is unreturnable. Therefore you are going to a new place to colonize, and stay.

Preparation will no doubt be researched to such a degree that it is foolproof - missions like these are not assembled with a 'chance' factor, that's just not the way they work. They do not gamble lives, and to a lesser extent, equipment, on unknown variables.

NASA has said, obviously so, that a manned mission to Mars requires extensive planning and research, to such a degree that variables are ironed out before it becomes doable. Short of that stage they are, obviously, not going to do it. Gambling is a silly endeavour when it comes to science, and aeronautics/astronautics.

Check out this video by Julie Payette on just some of the most basic basic variables that need to be addressed before a mission is even feasible:

https://www.youtube.com/wa tch?v=Dpyq-05-TtA

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http://www.buzzfeed.com/alisonvingiano/these-people-might-live-on-mars-for-the-rest-of-their-lives

Ignoring the fact that this MarsOne 'mission' is a total farce, and if they were to actually attempt it it would almost certain result in death for everyone involved .. you can't expect a civilian agency with no experience and an approach for making this a "reality tv show" to know really *anything* about aeronautics/astronautics and the wealth of knowledge and experience that NASA has .. ignoring that, this is an interesting exercise in the selection process.

I read Sara Director's text below her video on Buzzfeed and immediately thought she has it ..

You have to be used to isolation, and have an isolationst mindset - to be able to field problems alone, to exhibit resourceful thinking, to not be so emotional and scatterbrained as to panic but to deal with stress and problems level-headed, and a certain fatalism to your situation as well.

Based on what I read, Sara Director is a shoo-in. Has the right mindset psychologically.

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"A neuromarketer would tell you that the brain loves curves but detests sharp edges, which sets off an avoidance response in our subconscious."

Yep, I always hated the iPhone 4 for this reason, liked the iPhone 3Gs. Would'v e been much happier with a curvy iPhone. -

Iv'e been a performer for a long time.

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--> When I had the car, I had an instant prediction about google glass:

 "Google Glass won't be popular until it looks seamless, indistinguishable from regular eyewear."

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What if i told you we were fighting for justice, and truth, and freedom, and liberty?

"Welcome to America."

I dreamed an action movie.

I really like the new interface for rapidshare. It's very windows-8. Very pleasing to the eye, very comforting, spartan, simple.

I agree with this:

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/07/rashida_jones_has_had_enough_with_the_pornification_of_pop_stars/

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You want a movie with good character interplay / psychological interplay and character nuance? Red Eye with Rachel Macadams and Cillian Murphy. Now that's a well-written movie. The way the characters push and pull off each other, the dynamic between them, that's what characters should be like. Brilliant.

Characters need to suffer, they need to be torn, pulled at, distraught, under fire. This is what makes good movie making.

http://thoughtcatalog.com/alex-mann/2013/12/12-insane-things-that-happened-on-my-night-out-with-bill-murray/

I've had surreal moments like this, in San Francisco. Problem is, I don't remember them concretely. Isn't that sad? Maybe I should go under hypnosis or something to retrieve them.

Selena remix track had delightfully 80's/90's drum fills ..

I think I experienced the old New York just under the wire; went there right after 2001, and again in 2003, before all the change took place. When people sat in theatres watching shows without all those g*d***n cellphones and smartphones lighting up their faces DURING THE SHOW; when there were still stories to be told on every street corner, wherever you would look. Life around you.

It was a scary time, but I was used to embracing fear. I called up Jeff on a payphone from god knows where around 9 or 10 at night; I figured the phone might have been broken so I talked into it - and him - just in case he could hear me. He could, turns out.

A year ago I wrote that the Google Glass concept won't take off until frames are produced that look indistinguishable from regular, stylist eyewear. Even then, it will be a huge ethical concern. Google Glass as it is now won't gain social acceptance - it is too cyborgian, too much of a fringe trying to muscle its way into everyday society. Seems this article agrees with me.

But even when something is made that looks indistinguishable from regular eyewear, the ethnical concerns of 'cheating' in life remain. How will this change society? And would it be better if technology like this had built-in monitoring, to regulate what the wearer does with the technology?

The whole thing is a mess.

vson2

Posted to boingboing re: Max Headroom thread

edit: added Max Headroom clip on youtube

With all the insanity flying around on the Internet, we need science now more than ever.

Edited the Get Smart wiki (wikia): Rhonda - Carla - Prince Sully of Ramat

It's insane the number of Star Trek guest actors in just Season 1 of Get Smart. Kind of reduces Star Trek to just a tv show.

I made the same observation after being out on the open road for months.

Da da da dum.

radiolab: War of the Worlds

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/bonus-video/worlds-interrupt/

http://www.radiolab.org/story/91622-war-of-the-worlds/

http://www.radiolab.org/story/91624-could-it-happen-again-and-again/

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