After a long absence, during which a lot of things happened, things that made writing on a blog seem futile and trivial, I decided to come back to it, still with the intention of writing about media, books and art, but this time with a more personal touch to it.

This first post is about how, in my imagination only, the band called Pink Floyd wrote Time from A Dark Side of the Moon. This is a fictional piece, not in any way related to the actual Pink Floyd or the lyricist himself, who, Internet tells me, is Roger Waters (apparently – who else, right?). I came up with it, because the lyric “in a relative way” strikes me simultaneously as both odd and apt. It’s awkward, yet accurate.http://mediabooksart.wordpress.com/wp-admin/media-upload.php?post_id=72&type=video&TB_iframe=true

If you decide to read this, please don’t try to imagine the actual Pink Floyd in this conversation. Imagine them as generic, Hollywood-movie rock stars. Why? Because it’s funnier this way. Oh, and if you think the following piece is not funny at all, then I am sorry. And another thing: The thicker the English accents, the better!

Here it goes:

The Sun is the Same, in a Relative Way, but You’re Older, or, How Pink Floyd Wrote The Dark Side of the Moon

Floyd 1: …so, after the bridge, you sing: The sun is the same, it burns with its flame, but you’re older, shorter of breath, a mo…

Floyd 2 (interrupting): “It burns with its flame”? Really?

Floyd 1: Why, what’s wrong with it?

Floyd 3: It’s ghastly, that’s what’s wrong with it.

Floyd 1: Come on, dude. It’s accurate, it rhymes.

Floyd 2: It rhymes? Since when do we rhyme?

Floyd 4 (drunk…or stoned): And since when are we accurate?

Floyd 3 (ignoring Floyd 4): Well, we do rhyme…sometimes…not very fanatically though.

Floyd 2: Granted; but it’s still a ghastly lyric.

Floyd 1 (annoyed): You said so already.

Floyd 2: I didn’t. He did (pointing to Floyd 3).

Floyd 1: But you just did.

Floyd 2: Then you shouldn’t have used “already” in your sentence.

Floyd 3: And what’s with the “but”?

Floyd 1: Whose butt?

Floyd 3: Bit of juvenile humor there, huh? I am talking about the “but” in the “but you’re older” line.

Floyd 1: What about it?

Floyd 3: Well, it implies that there’s a direct opposition between the fact that the sun is hot and you getting all wrinkly and shit.

Floyd 4: You do get more wrinkles if you stay in the sun all the time…

Floyd 3: Yes, but that indicates a causality not an antithesis. Instead of “but”, you should have used “so” or “therefore”.

Floyd 1: “But” goes to the first lyric anyway…Besides those don’t sound very good.

Floyd 2 (yelling): Neither “it burns with its flame” does.

Floyd 1 (also yelling): Why, what’s wrong with it?

Floyd 4: Deja vu, man.

Floyd 2 (ignoring Floyd 4 again): Listen, and please don’t get offended. I believe that this is the ugliest lyric you’ve ever written and it totally ruins the whole song. It cries that it was put there to fill a gap between the stability of the sun and the futility of life.

Floyd 1: Shit, man. And what do you want me to put in there?

(Floyd 1, 2 and 3 look at each other with puzzlement.)

Floyd 4 (still drunk…or stoned): You know…the sun isn’t always the same, right?………….I mean, yeah, it has billions of years ahead of him, but it will die out……………Sure our lives are like seconds to it……………….but it’s all relative, right? I mean, it has billions of years ahead of him, but it will…well…you know.

Floyd 1: So, what are you saying?

Floyd 4: I don’t know, man…………The sun is changing, that’s what I am saying. You can’t say that it’s the same, if it’s changing……..Well, you can, I am sure…………”The sun is the same”……..there I said it………..but the sun is the same in a relative way, you know?

(Floyd 1, 2 and 3 look at each other with amazement.)

Floyd 2 (to Floyd 3): Don’t say “are you thinking what I’m thinking”, please don’t.

Floyd 3: I don’t have to, you said it first.

Floyd 1: And that’s not an awkward lyric? “In a relative way”?

Floyd 2: But it’s fun-awkward. Not bad poetry-awkward.

Floyd 3: And it fits. In the grand scheme of things the sun does change, but in relation to our lives, it doesn’t. It’s accurate.

Floyd 4: And since when are we accurate?

THE END

There you have it. The few jokes in there are probably from bad sitcoms, but I had fun writing it. Comment on it if you want.

Lately, I am more and more interested in the Internet culture. I’ve been visiting forums (or should I say fora), I’ve been reading blogs and articles, browsing funny websites and so on and so forth. The terms furries, lolcats, fads, internet meme, rule 34 and others actually mean something to me. I am not proud of it, but it has happened and I accept it.

My latest Internet “thing” is StumbleUpon. It’s basically a toolbar for the web browser, which you configure according to your interests and it lets you visit random websites that are related to your interests (or were declared by their owners as related to your interest, while in fact they have nothing to do with what you like).

Using this tool got me thinking. I could fill a whole website with things I find through it without breaking a sweat. And that’s when I realized that people are already doing that. I know of a few online columns that all they are doing is give you links to interesting websites. If I had to guess, I would say that they follow a few particular websites (like wired.com for example) and then use StumbleUpon for the rest of their content.

It seems to me that what is valuable in the age of the Internet is not the content produced but the tools to make it accessible. In this situation, it is impossible to know what is original and what is not; but in the end one thing is certain: the original content is most likely made for free by end-users like you who are reading the page. I am sure that StumbleUpon has sponsored “Stumbles” (and if it doesn’t, it will soon), which bring money to it. And while it is the user made content that make it a useful and interesting tool, it is StumbleUpon and its advertisers (who have all the uninteresting content, most likely) that make the money.

In that sense, people are getting paid to write columns, which link to things they found on StumbleUpon or a couple dozens of their favorite websites. So, we have a few web pages which actually provide new content and actually pay those who create that content, a lot of free websites around the world with remarkable content and those who use various tools to link to these websites.

I am wondering if this is illegal. I know that by writing something and leaving it to the public domain means that you don’t expect any money from it, but doesn’t it also mean that no one else can make money from your own work? I presume that if this blog is a StumbleUpon destination, it is not illegal, since by using WordPress means that I agree to the terms of use, which most probably contain a clause saying that what I write here is theirs to use and make money from. But there are thousands of independently hosted websites with content that belongs to the public domain.

So, big corporations are making money from pointing to content that is not theirs and yet the same corporations (or others of the same persuasion) are suing people for piracy and copyright infringements. All these may be legally doable, but ethically they are definitely not…

Here I am, complaining about capitalism again, while I am not even that big on anti-capitalism.

I recently ran across this website (via StumbleUpon – more on this on some later post, hopefully) that was trying to teach its visitor how to read at a great speed. It also listed the advantages of speed reading over normal (?) reading.

Now, I am a slow reader; not just that: I read excruciatingly slowly; sometimes it takes me up to three minutes to finish a page. Given my chosen potential career, that can’t be good and I should start thinking of trying to learn how to read faster. This site (I can’t link to it, I never bookmarked it and I really don’t want to look for it), though I was quite skeptical about it, had me slightly convinced, until it came to a point that went something like this (this is not an exact quote: “Words are just words. In the end, it’s the message that needs to stay with you, not the words you are reading. By skipping passages you think are insignificant, you can read faster and still learn all there is to learn”.

To this I can only answer: WHAT? Words are just words and it’s just the ideas that we need to keep? That is entirely false; not just slightly false; entirely. And not in poetry or fiction; it stands for every book ever written. Mallarme had once had a conversation with a friend of his. The friend was complaining that he had so many ideas, but he can’t seem to put them to writing. Mallarme then answered that books are written with words, not ideas.

I may be reading slowly, but at least I know I will not miss a beautiful phrase, a great argument, a clever pun, an interesting allusion. These are also the things that define whether I like a book or not, not just the ideas, which are highly important, of course, but only a small element of what makes reading appealing.

So, I will continue to read slowly, 3 minutes a page is just fine for me (the book was proposing an average of one page per minute and was a promising that it could get us to 100 pages per hour). I will just spend more hours with the book, making it my company and not something that I need to get through quickly. True reading is never fast.

PS: When there’s time pressure and exams or deadlines closing in, I may allow an exception. But speed reading should never be the answer anyway. That’s the job of time management.

And she went strolling up among the petrified thousands, still laughing. She paused about midway up the slope and faced me. She called down to me, ‘Would you wish any of these alive again, if you could? Answer me quickly.

‘Not quick enough with your answer,’ she called playfully, after half a minute had passed. And, still laughing a little, she touched her finger to the ground, straightened up, and touched the finger to her lips and died.

This passage if from Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. Out of the three books I have read by him (the other two being Slaughterhouse 5 and Breakfast of Champions) this is probably the weakest, but in no means a weak book; I don’t want to go into details why it is a good book, but not his best. I am not sure I even know why; what I know, though, is that the passage above is another gasp moment. In its tragedy, it has lightness and simplicity, just like how Italo Calvino would have wanted it. I read the paragraph (particularly the second one; I quoted the first one for context) over and over again, for all the reasons that make me love a book.

I don’t want to explain what happens in the paragraph and why she (whoever she is) dies. You will just have to read the book.

Just like many other people, I have decided to write about what happened in (and to) Greece the past few weeks. Maybe it’s not what this blog is about and perhaps I don’t have any really useful insights to offer, but the Internet allows me a voice and I will use it.

Some facts first in chronological order: Policeman shoots and kills a 15-year old bystander, thinking that he was threatened. Protests and demonstrations are organized all around the country. Angry people fill the streets. Angry people, anarchists and looters start breaking shop windows and looting the products from inside said shops. Another kid is shot by an unknown person. A police bus is shot at by two AK-47s.

Perhaps not all of these events are related but they do indicate that Greece is in a really bad shape. Some half joking half serious are talking about a civil war. Nothing like that is going to happen. I am not afraid of an impending civil war.

Actually, I am not afraid of anything, as far as this matter is concerned. I am sad, I am angry, but not afraid; because it all comes down to this: the only victim in this whole situation is a kid, who died. The shop owners will be partially reimbursed, the angry people will calm down and everyone will get on with their lives a little worse than they were before. But the kid is still dead. He was not a hero, as many of the anarchists try to say he was. Being a hero means being reckless for some cause and there was no recklessness, no cause involved here. Just bad judgment, bad training and bad education. And these three aspects continued to be apparent throughout all the riots and the looting.

There are many people to blame over what has happened in Greece the past few weeks. And these people are the same both for the murder and the riots. And these are all of us; for all the reasons you and I can think of. Anarchists are not the problem; the fact that our society gives birth to people who become anarchists is the problem. Bad cops are not the problem; the fact that we hire and use and think we need (untrained) bad cops is the problem. Two sides of the same coin: our world is imperfect: some people think it needs tearing down and become anarchists; others think that we just need more order and give power to the police and the army. There is a middle ground, which is where most people are, but being on the middle ground means that you are not a person of action; I am not the person to analyze this further, I could easily be wrong about this, but it seems obvious that a change is needed. But the change doesn’t come from the middle ground, where I stand. It comes from the extremes, with which I strongly disagree. And right now the extremes can’t bring change (luckily), because not many people are at the extremes.

I wish it could all come down to the simplest of forms: Stupid policeman uses a gun, he kills a person, he gets life sentence. No reprecussions to society, nothing to be “done” about it, nothing to worry really, but be sad and, at some point, get over it. But this is not the case.

The problem is that I can’t figure out what the case is. I can’t offer a solution, no one can yet. We could bring everyone to the middle ground, I guess, but that seems like a “Brave New World” to me.

I am confused and sad and angry. And, for better or for worse, I will get over it. Only the victim’s family won’t…

But what is there to do to prevent something like this from ever happening again? Any suggestions welcome…

This is disturbing…

And yet, who can blame them?

Writing an essay and getting stuck at the sentence “The point here is that…” is not a good thing…

About 12-14 years ago, while I was still a young student learning English, I stumbled upon a quiz with a title like: “What do you think will have happened until 2020?” (it might have been 2010, I don’t remember). This quiz was probably there to teach us a tense: Future Perfect (what a lovely name for a grammar rule – and an even better one: Future Perfect Continuous), but I vividly remember one of the points I needed to decide if they would happen or not. It went like this: “An African American will have become the president of the United States”. I chose to put 5 stars to this statement, meaning that I was absolutely certain that this would have happened by 2020 (or 2010).

This question stuck to my head. How could I be so sure? There was no indication of anything like that. In my young teenager’s mind, I just wanted people to love other people, but I didn’t have that much hope in me; except for that moment when I chose to be absolutely certain about a thing that seemed impossible.

And now here we are. An African-American has become (will become) the president of the United States. I don’t have much love for the US and their imperialistic attitudes, but pragmatically speaking, in our age of media saturation and bombardment, the US play an important (perhaps the most important) role in how things evolve in this world; and I am part of this world. What’s more, even though I disagree with the mentality, I cannot but admit that they have done great things in many areas. One of them was to elect a black president, voted by whites and blacks together. This alone is an accomplishment.

Now, I don’t know Obama or what he has done. I don’t really care to be honest. I don’t think much will change in their foreign policy. I just think that he is smarter than the previous one and that instead of making both bad and stupid decisions, we will get away with only bad ones; maybe not even those; maybe we will have a streak of good admirable decisions (but what’s a good decision anyway, since you cannot satisfy everyone? I am sure that the decisions I think are good will anger lots of his supporters in the States; and I have no say in his election).

I also believe that there is a great possibilty that Barack Obama is nothing more than a media construct. I am not saying he is, but I do say it is possible. For those of you who have followed my blog, you would know that I am suspicious of media; mainstream and otherwise. Everyone should be. You should even be suspicious of this blog you are currently reading. For all I know, Obama might be a mere puppet, as many liberal and leftist voices are saying. Still, I am not saying he is; only that he might as well be.

So, why am I satisfied, if not happy? This is because, media manipulation aside, this election means that the world has some hope in it. And I am using the word hope not in the way many people do: that Obama, they say, was the right choice and people looked past their prejudices to vote for him. Not at all. I am saying that there is hope, because, even if he could be the wrong choice, he managed to win and surpass whatever racial obstacles. In that sense he might as well be nothing more than a symbol, an empty signifier of a still fragile equality.

I saw an old black man crying on TV. He was yelling “We got there”. His life might not change; his attitude towards it will. It is not enough, but it’s a start.

PS: Of course, if Obama turns out to be a mere media construct, then these hopes can turn into destructive, false ones. Let’s hope he’s not.

PPS: There are obviously a lot of holes in what I say. Constructive criticism is welcomed, so I can fill them up.

There are many books that I love, even more that I like, but there are few books that have made me hold my breath, or breathe heavily. These latter books, I consider to be the masterpieces of my small literary canon.

Of course, when I say “hold my breath”, I don’t mean I am reading a page-turner and I can’t wait to see what goes on next. I’ve read and loved books of such kind, but it is rarely the reason for holding my breath. What does make me gasp, usually, is a beautiful phrase or a concept, so hard to grasp, yet so real to the reader during the actual act of reading. Still, this is hardly an explanation and, to be honest, there are a million beautiful things that can happen in a book, in a page, a line even, that can make want to read the same part over and over again, just to take it in.

If I were to name some texts that have done this to me, the first thing that would come to mind are Kafka’s parables. This is one very short parable that had this effect on me:

Give it Up

It was very early in the morning, the streets clean and deserted, I was on my way to the railroad station. As I compared the tower clock with my watch I realized it was already much later than I had thought, I had to hurry, the shock of this discovery made me feel uncertain of the way, I was not very well acquainted with the town yet, fortunately there was a policeman nearby, I ran to him and breathlessly asked him the way. He smiled and said: ‘From me you want to learn the way?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ’since I cannot find it myself.’ ‘Give it up, give it up,’ said he, and turned away with a great sweep, like someone who wants to be alone with his laughter.

I don’t want to comment on it; that would be an analysis and that can’t fit in what I want to say here. Maybe this story won’t have the same effect to other people.

More examples of the moment that makes literature one of the best experiences our intellect can have:

1. “The Library of Babel” by Borges; the part where he talks about the circular, never-ending book that is God.
2. The beginning of David Copperfield and of Great Expectations.
3. Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon; Mason’s reaction to Dixon’s death.
4. Tonio Kröger by Thomas Mann; the last 10 or so pages
5. The beginning of Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller
6. Hamlet’s line: “I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself King of infinite space; were it not that I have bad dreams” (I am quoting it from memory, so I might have said something wrong).
7. The final 100 or so pages of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot and the final 100 or so pages of Thomas Mann’s Dr. Faustus. These two novels are what turned me to literature in the beginning. The whole passages; one long breath.
8. “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, by Tolstoy, especially the beginning and the end.
9. Philip Roth’s “The Plot Against America”; the part where the young protagonist realizes that he has sent his friend’s mother to her death.
10. The joke: “He should have three votes” in the beginning of Heller’s Catch 22.
11. The whole of Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5.

The list could go on and on. It can’t go on forever though, because that would trivialize the greatest moments of literature. The anticipation of a gasp and the reward of it coming is why I keep reading. If anyone decides to comment on this post, I would like to hear about other moments like these.

Nowadays, it’s fashionable for the big corporations to show off how environmentally aware they are, how “green” they have become. We all know that this is simply bullshit, but sometimes it’s just so obvious that it is.

Personally, I am not really “green”. I try to recycle a bit, but don’t get crazy if something recyclable gets thrown out. I turn off lights (but not my PC), try to remember to turn off the TV with the button, so it’s not on stand-by, try not to use too much water when I shower and that’s all.

What do the corporations do? They have little schemes to show how green they are, while on the other hand they fill the streets with power consuming neon signs and keep the lights on at their offices all the time. I am not even talking about production techniques; one way or another they have to manufacture their products, so this is unavoidable. But what about all this needless advertising, this needless spectacle, while they hypocritically claim to care about the environment? I know the streets of New York only from cinema and television, but tell me, is it really necessary to keep all the lights on all the time? It’s advertising. It is supposed to give you an edge over the competitor. If nobody does it, then the proportions stay the same…and you save money!

Anyway, this has been on my mind for a long time. We are talking about saving energy and yet what we save, we use somewhere else. There is a limit to what individuals can do and I have more faith in them and patience with them. But all those supposedly “aware” corporations are the ones who can really make a difference.

How many cities could get electricity, how many trees had to be cut in order to have the first F1 Grand Prix during nighttime? I read somewhere that there are several thousands 2000W spotlights giving light to the fans and drivers. And everyone says it looks amazing. Yes, it does, but at what cost. And if it just one race, not very important in the big picture, what kind of example does it give?

This post came from frustration. It is not entirely related to the theme of this blog and, really, I shouldn’t be talking since I am not the most concerned person out there. But maybe I’ll change; and help others change as well, in the process.