3.25.2003 | Blue-Collar Drama
Uh, there's too much to say about the war to say anything, but—
You just can’t watch the news because it’s like watching the WWF: It’s so utterly fake and histrionic, but at the same time the level of deception is detailed enough to make it somehow convincing to the receptive and the uninformed. It’s disgusting to watch the networks slobber all over themselves, headlines changing online by the hour, by the inning, by the down, play-by-play.... Ted Fucking Koppel out there in his pressed and starched battle fatigues desecrates the seriousness of the thing. The idea of a super-advanced military taking its own media into war with it, out of confidence of victory and show of might, is eerily reminiscent of the oppressive regimes depicted in Verhoeven sci-fi films. You know the point of those films; you know what you wanted to happen to the oppressive enforcers: you wanted their collapse.
I catch myself wondering if the media’s famous liberal bias was shelved in juicy anticipation of the biggest story of the year. But that’s too close to conspiracy and I check my imagination at conspiracy theories.
Aaaaaaa!
OK, well, I will say that the link-by-link news feeds on the Internet rock and far too few people access them, I’m sure. Tom Tomorrow’s got it going on with the filter and commentary, even though he discounted himself and everyone else in a response to an article that reported how blog coverage is ahead of traditional media. My thought is that it’s a collective analysis that increases all of our analytical capacities. Following the branches of links and commentaries puts me in touch with a larger knowledge base than I myself possess. Whereas the standard news reports and commentary are whitewashed and propagandized, through informal feeds on the Internet, I get to tap into other people’s knowledge bases and the result is a de facto increase in my personal analytical power. Uh, like, those theories of distributing processing power across machines—In other news, I went ahead and bought a friggin’ expensive computer. This is in anticipation of a big project coming up in a few weeks—that is, the promise of big income. But it’s hard to push the button on a transaction of such size and complexity, and I’ve been nervous all day. Besides, I already have a laptop and my stubborn aesthetic sense is troubled by the redundancy another computer would make. I like technology to be high-powered and unintrusive, which is why I love laptops. But the truth is that I’m developing shoulder problems from using this machine all day and my physical therapist has been chanting "desktop" since day one. And she’s right, not only do I slouch like crazy to get my head in line with this tiny screen, this laptop is on its last leg—the case is cracked and parts have fallen off, and it’s starting to lose data without explanation!
So I did it: Dell Optiplex SX260, pumped up almost as far as it would go. I get an 18" flat panel, and the box is smaller than my laptop. I’ll be wireless now, to my great relief: If I’m going to have two computers, I at least want to be able to transfer files between them without a wire.
And finally, The Insomniax café on 15th makes coffee so good I’ve started drinking mochas regularly. It’s totally uncool and will never have the hipster customer base of Victrola or Vivace or other V-named espresso joints on the Hill. The place can’t decide on a slick image—its atmosphere is a wreck—and it doesn’t look like it cares. I love going in there because it doesn’t remind me of anything—it’s its own thing. Mike, the Polish guy who owns it, chats up customers in a European way even though he’s been in the States since he was a teenager. He also plays fast-paced eastern European-sounding pop music, which guarantees you won’t stick around for long. But there’s always a few friends hanging around and chatting with Mike. The other day it was an 80-year-old Polish guy and a neighborhood mailman, who failed to get Mike to switch off the staccato pop music for war news.