As doom approaches,


Maybe Kerry's not the perfect choice, maybe he's even a serious suckass choice. Doesn't really matter to me, as long as I don't have to live near a coutry led by Dubya.


Impressive election-time efforts from bright people:


Marc Perkel spends a couple grand setting up a direct line to offer Fahrenheit 911 for download off his site. You can just go there and get it if you haven't seen it, especially if you are an American voter. (My personal issues with Michael Moore aside, this is an important film for everyone to see, if only to balance the unbelievable bias of most American media institutions)


Also, Errol Morris. documentarian of the century and creator of the Apple Switch ad campaign, has created a series of "switch" themed ads for toppling the Bush regime (former republicans saying they won't vote for Shrub) , worth checking out.


Bummer: My American teacher, and apparently a large group of other ex-pats from Pensylvania, won't be voting this year because whoever's in charge dropped the ball on absentee ballots. Democracy shows itself to be circumstantial once again.
posted by Jer Clarke at 23:52

Quote of the day: John Perry Barlow



"TV in America created the most coherent reality distortion field that I’ve ever seen. Therein is the problem: People who vote watch TV, and they are hallucinating like a sonofabitch. Basically, what we have in this country is government by hallucinating mob."


-Found in an interview with Reason magazine (via boingboing). Barlow was a writer for the Grateful Dead before becomming active in the politics of cyberspace and was the co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a technological freedom advocacy organisation. Also of interest by Barlow : A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, a delicious and intense peice of cyber-philosophy if there ever was one.


-Also, tricked into watching CNN because it was playing in the pizza place, I couldn't help wondering what value can be derived from watching constant coverage of a hurricane that cannot be helped. Are the viewers at home gaining any knowledge because of it? Will it improve their lives somehow? How is this pointless data being sold as news at all? Isn't there a corrupt and stupid politician they could expose or something? (also, why does CNN have to constantly assert that they are the most trusted source for news? Does the station worry that the public will forget how much they trust them?)
posted by Jer Clarke at 22:50

The Blind Leading the Blind


In the world of internet building, one of the biggest issues you end up dealing with is web accessibility, an aspect of web standards and design that deals with the necessity of developing web content that can be clearly understood by those with dissabilities. Example: Images used for navigation (links) that aren't properly labelled (with a tag of text for when the image isn't shown) mean that a blind person is unable to get where they're going within your site, and text that is too rigidly sized cannot be made bigger for the hard of seeing.
Thing is, the whole concept of designing whole chunks of code for the disabled is that they always seem more like a concept than a reality, like they are just these ghosts that the W3(a standards consortium) uses to scare us into behaving properly. But the other day I met a blind guy in my Presocratics class who's JOB is going from website to website (public/government sites only) and evaluating their usability with a screenreader (software that reads the text out loud a la Stephen Hawking).


He said that a lot of them were awful. And this was only sites that are REQUIRED to comply to accessibility standards, let alone the whole internet.


Obviously most people reading this are not web designers, but anyone who is should definitely take a look at that page and try to be as accomodating as possible to those less web-fortunate when you're coding. It seems that the handicapped have even more to gain from electronic media than the sighted/well do (as newspapers don't come in brail in the morning), so why not give them the best chance possible?
posted by Jer Clarke at 17:58

artbusting


Most people have heard of addbusting, or culture jamming. The idea that the best way to fight fire is with fire, and that culturally we must re-appropriate the images that swarm around us for our own uses. Advertising and billboards become, in the eyes of the Adbuster, material for composing a new dialog with those around them, a way to convey ideas that would normally attract no attention at all (hint: people will actually look at something more if there is a stupid logo they have been sold on it, even if they'd rather not).


Good idea right? So good, apparently, that the advertisers themselves have decided to get in on the act, using the visual splendor of public art to draw eyes towards their repetitious and numbing billboards (Click Picture at right for larger view)


This was one of the finest and most prominent pieces of semi-spontaneous urban art in Montreal. It made excellent use of the space, both physically and psychially provided it, and generally spruced up a neighboorhood that was lacking in such colorful creativity. Now it's just a big eye-grabbing backdrop for a demi-food hocking corporation.


Seriously though, is anyone else craving a bacon salad?
posted by Jer Clarke at 08:51

amilial coincidences, brave fucking kids, and blaming chernobyl


August 16, 2004



Today, A Brother is forced to drink four liters of a liquid who's goal is to rid his piping of the various substances that make him a human, and, unable to complete this task, is forced to take medication which removes the natural urge to expel said liquid orally.
Today, A Brother has bucket's worth of water passed through his body, hungry and miserable.
Today, A Son tells his mother that she should not cry, that he did not mean to make her cry.


Tomorrow, he will sleep as his body is altered forever, brought up to par.
Tomorrow he will have new and improved insides, a head full of drugs, and several weeks of intense boredom ahead of him.


Now, he just wants to sleep.



also,


August 16, 1986


Today, a new son is born, named Peter, for the rock.
Soon, he will be taken from all by the malignancy of his own mind. By a brain which could not handle this world, nor it's radiation.
Still a toddler the universe ends for him, a memory never truly grasped.
Eighteen years from today his younger-brother-to-be will enter hospital, on the birthday of majority that will never be.
Neither will drink alcohol to celebrate.
posted by Jer Clarke at 22:50

in the depths of this funk


in the depths of this funk i sit,
and also stand.
with a churn in my stomach,
that is really just worry,
but feels more like meat.



in the depths of this funk i wander,
from place to place in the rain,
with louisa,
talking like scientists,
dissecting the corpse,
of a love that died so suddenly,
ruptured and deflated.
we posit, and conject,
re-consider and forget,
comparing the misdeeds of today,
with the evils of the past,
and the infidelities of the weekend.


in the depths of this funk i hug Her,
as She boards a bus,
more bags than years,
and tell Her that the summer was fun,
and that school will be great,
and that i will write to her,
and that i regret nothing,
and that She has lighted my life,
like a window,
in a room,
already lit,
with too many curtains...
and what i do not say,
what i cannot say,
involves all of the above.


in the depths of this funk i walk,
by myself down the street,
in the heart of The Village,
swinging a yo-yo,
in front,
and back,
attracting the looks,
of the men in the cafes,
fishing,
as it were,
with my white wood,
and string,
for the compliment i need,
for an empty, lusty stare,
for a moments distraction,
i watch the toy fly,
i watch and i focus.


in the depths of this funk i look forward,
a book about existence beside me,
that tells of decision,
of responsibility,
of freedom,
but all i can feel is its dread,
of a clear day waiting to be filled,
of pavement reeking of tar,
of a clean drinking glass,
and What To Do eludes me,
and Where I Am is lost again,
and My Stomach Rumbles,
and perhaps it wants meat,
but it cannot have any.
posted by Jer Clarke at 17:49

"what are you most afraid of?"


if he did have one fear, it would probably be of being wrong, or maybe of not being at all (as wrongness is both relative and a necessary step towards true correctness). He is afraid that he is not, or will not, consider the world around thim adequately. That he is/will not effetively understand why things are or should be. He's mostly afraid that the thoughts that come out of his head don't so much flow (let alone torrent) as much as trickle, and that out of the resulting pile of mental excrement very little of value for him, or for anyone else, will result.


It seems likely that he's afraid of being stupid.


When he was in grade four (9 years old, the age when one first starts becomming aware of their own thoughts) he questioned whether those around him were sincerely them-selves, or just actors. He asked this not because he thought that the was in a television show, or that he was being maliciously manipulated, but because hesuspected that those around him were too much smarter than him to be in the sme class.


He thought that he was in some way mentally handicapped, and that he was being deceived into believing that he possessed normal intelligence so that his feelngs would be spared.


One could argue that such thought in fact display precociousness on the part of a child. But thatwould not comfort young Jeremy, and the anxiety associated with this consideration would seem to be the most common example of fear found throughout his life. It would also seem relevant to note that on the few occasions during which Jeremy considered the possiblity of not being, it was his academic life, rather than personal, that instigated the loathesome doubt.


He is also extremely scared of large insects, to which he attributes more intelligence and danger than they could possibly deserve.
posted by Jer Clarke at 01:16