rantrantrant

How 'bout these commercials these days, huh? What a bunch of garbled non-information screaming desperately for your attention!
Sometimes, I like to imagine a Day (maybe tomorrow!) in which the only advertisements we are exposed to actually enrich our lives. Not these bogus, two billion byte per second monstrosities you're assaulted by for a full third of your television experience.

Yellow teeth?!
Unruly hair?!
Not enough stuff?!
Too fat and ugly to get laid?!
Sad about that?!
Painful side-effects from anti-depressants?!
Not enough money for everything we tell you to buy?!
We have what YOU NEED!!!!!

Clothes, accessories, medications, the latest technofad (with all the newest apps), legal counsel, banks, movies, bodies, souls (for a limited time only! GET YOURS TODAY).

Step one: capture attention
Step two: convince viewer of their inherent failings as member of society
Step three: push product
Step four: illustrate what viewer's life will be upon their acquisition of said product
Step five: shot of scantly-clad, impossibly-built woman

And all this in five to ten second explosions of visual and auditory stimulation, overwhelming the senses and stunning the mind, faintly reminiscent of a seizure or stroke. Nightmares are more enjoyable. At least they make you feel something deeply instead of exercising only those parts of your brain which are most impressionable, and least intelligent.
On my Day, commercials last anywhere from thirty seconds to five minutes; each one consists of a message to the world sent by a fellow passenger on this glorious sphere careening through space and time. They always have a point but it's never to sell anything; it's more to communicate something someone feels inclined to say. These shorts are made with love and passion, crafted to tell a story, to educate, to share with humanity the happenings within one human being. Every one unique, inspired, imaginative, beautiful in its own right and each one food for thought. This way, watching television is a wholly productive activity, one which enlivens the mind, culturing it as opposed to washing it.
To tell a person what they 'need' is to imply that they don't know what's right for them, an insulting insinuation at its core. Especially so when the 'necessities' are stupid, materialistic, inhumane, illogical and diseased bandaids used to patch over our deepest wounds. It's all just things. And things should be the least of our worries.

The television is a misused medium. Let's reclaim it as another tool for the ol' utility belt.

Blast to the Past

I'm home. Home as in childhood home. Childhood home as in the town in which I was born and raised. Town as in Boulder, Colorado.

And what a town it is! Wow. The mountains, my invisible friends, are so god blessed beautiful. They put everything in perspective for me; Iowa lets me feel big and important under its low-hanging sky; here, though, there is no illusion of grandeur on my part. Only awe and wonder at what our mother can create. Such glory. Wow.

And then there are the people. The people who knew me when I was half the mass I am now, and smaller! The people I recognized as a part of myself before I knew how to spell the word 'of' (uv?). They have the ability to put me back in places past, to remind me of who I once was. Each returns to me a unique piece of my whole which I lent to them long, long ago. He makes me feel the feeling of my first crush, she makes me feel like the free-wheeling, friend-dealing little monster I was, they make me feel sheltered and awkward and stoned, she makes me feel profound in my utter ignorance, he makes me feel beautiful and wise and loved and in love, he makes me feel like a cynical, arrogant, punk-ass bitch, she makes me feel like the big sister I never was, and the list keeps going on and on. These are my ghosts of Clares past. The value of this trip lies in realizing them, solidifying the apparitions haunting me, remembering the armored suits of feeling I once lived in and reexamining them. It's quite fascinating, really. A valuable life reunion.

Heed the Whistle

The tension is mounting.

Can you feel it?

Everywhere everyone is getting antsy.
The storm's a-brewin'!
Everything's moving so fast and going so far and never slowing down only speeding up speeding up constantly racing around and around to create a feverish, cacophonous whistle screaming in everybody's ears and we all want to scream MAKE IT STOP PLEASE MAKE IT STOP but we don't because we are afraid we won't be heard for the whistle drowns out even our own voices in our very own ears.

IT'S SO LOUD

Everywhere!

Everyone!

Let the whistle zap a call to arms into your brain!
It screams for you, for your frustration, for your humanity. Listen to it, know thine enemy and make it work for you.

We're Human Beings, goddamnit!
EVERYTHING IS OUR TOOL, EVERYWHERE IS OUR HOME, EVERYWHEN IS OUR MOMENT OF TRIUMPH AND EVERYONE IS OUR VERY SELF!

WE SHALL OVERCOME