Tag: Musings

The State of Affairs in the Cult of Pop

The world is recovering from COVID-19 but there are still parts of it going to hell in a hand basket. The bat virus has been utterly pervasive, spreading faster than butter on hot toast, but it has also overshadowed the ongoing psychological virus that’s been permeating the noosphere (for lack of a better term) for the past four or five years.

This psycho-virus, which is too big to be named, devours rationality with the command to make you acknowledge a worldview delineated by safety politics as the only view permitted in existence. Thus it ultimately leads victims to see their worldview as the only one that matters and is permitted – alienating the views of anyone else and ones found in stories.

The latest rampant flare up of this strain of secular totalitarianism is found in the backlash to the story leaks of the video game The Last of Us II from game developer Naughty Dog. Regardless of what these leaks are to fans, what has happened here shows symptoms of this psycho-virus on both sides of the matter, the side of the fans and the side of the developer.

From what has been reported, the developer seems likely to have been persuaded by a worldview outside its norm and which it then injected into the story of its upcoming video game. In some respects, these plot directions that were revealed reflect the natural current of the story from the last game. But in other respects seem to be plot directions that feel shoe horned into a world that never started with such a worldview. This is from the fans’ point of view, based on their reaction to the story’s leaks online.

On the other hand, the fans affected by the leaked plot points have turned to shunning and roasting the game and its developers before having the chance to experience the game and its story, thus placing their own worldview before the worldview presented in the fictional story of the game.

And that’s the ultimate symptom of this unending psychological virus, people afflicted by it will put their own worldview before the view presented in a story, fictional or otherwise. They will want a story to submit to their worldview regardless of any other, not actually giving the story the chance to be heard, viewed, played, experienced in its entirety before judging it on its own merits.

I feel sorry for both sides here. This virus stems from idiocy. Idiocy is an extreme form of narrow mindedness that exists in the shadows of the mind – if the mind’s shadow covers a large part of the cranium, then you are in the dark on most things, but if the cranium is filled with light, wisdom, insight, whatever you want to call it, then you’re in a good place. These people are not, and I as a casual gamer have been intrigued by the opera of it all unfolding on Youtube.

In this lockdown, your decisions should revolve around wanting to up skill – take to writing more or learning to play piano and a drum machine, like I have. Hell, spend more time catching up on good shows, like Cannon Busters on Netflix, rather than the terrible ones, like, well, take your pick.

Don’t waste yourself and devalue your spirit with the nonsense that follows in the wake of the only real viral danger to us all, the psycho-virus that is too big to be named. Stay safe, stay frosty.

Dreamland Express, all aboard.

You put your head down on the pillow and nod off to slumberland, where all notions hail from fluffy contexts, leaving the black and white world behind. ENTER into a kaleidoscopic rainbow awash in new colours and old shapes, spiral spiral, until you forgot where you just were. Now you run.

This was a typical dream in Eevee’s life, who had her fair share of hard knocks. A Sydney girl, she kidnapped a boy from home to leave for Europe with it, where she settled in at a pub working as a pushover, waiting tables nightly, trying for the ransom daily. The boy was her neighbour and inside this dream he was a big green meanie, chasing Ee across the floating rocks spasming with square waves and filtering out bad juju.

“C’mon, it’ll be OK,” the meanie said. “Like it’s another Tuesday and I got a kettle on for ya.”

But Ee just kept on running across imagination, never looking sideways, just ahead at the sun’s face, which looked like Shaq chewing a pineapple while looking at Ee’s friend Smith, a silly lad in overalls who was dreaming about buying electronics from Hawaiian Shirt Bill Murray, workin’ a beach shack down in Manly. He was rude that day to Bill Murray, so Ee yelled “You stupid idiot, come here,” as she jumped across dreams. But as Smith turned up to look above him, he didn’t see anyone up in the sky, nor would he, only birds and Cadillacs up there.

In the next dream, the meanie was gone and Ee was all alone in a vast space of burping sponges. As she looked around, there was a small cat-o-dile peering at her from above the nightmare foam permeating the Below. “Someone pinch me, I think I’m done,” she said. But she’s not anywhere near done, not until she makes it to the rapid drop fall off the bottom of the faraway hanging cliff. Dreams tend to go like that, she thought. They never end, they just keep going on with or without you. Aye.

Oz

Preserve the balance

I came across these quotes today from Hayao Miyazaki and they were too good to pass by:

“Success?I do believe in the power of story. I believe that stories have an important role to play in the formation of human beings, that they can stimulate, amaze and inspire their listeners.”

“Many of my movies have strong female leads- brave, self-sufficient girls that don’t think twice about fighting for what they believe with all their heart. They’ll need a friend, or a supporter, but never a savior. Any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man.”

“You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two.”

Hayao Miyazaki

The Cyberpunk Collection

When you’re locked down, the perfect late night genre to find solace in is Science Fiction’s dazzling young son, Cyberpunk.

In it, you will find dystopic futures where cybernetic, mutagenic, nightmarish low-lifes with high-tech fantasies are enthralled in the oncoming breakdown of a city’s social order.

The heroes are either cops or crims and usually possess or are in search of the key to unknowingly unlocking a more dangerous and promising chapter for the world around them.

Cyberpunk can be Film Noir with technology (Tech Noir), a police procedral with cyberised mecha or a crime drama with pretty much everything sci-fi.

To help you dive into the cyberpunk experience, I present to you this list:

Continue reading “The Cyberpunk Collection” →

Escaping Reality

The best thing to do sometimes is shut off from the world and just lose yourself in the worlds found in science fiction books. It’s the one place where things make more sense than all the made-by-committee dribble you now find on streaming services, the net or social media – which together form the triumvirate evolution of the idiot box – palatably made to keep you placid and flaccid.

There’s even more of a reality escape in the worlds of indie comics, which have been fighting the system for generations – offering black-n-white, no-frills action, drama, romance and brain frying concepts that weave wickedly divine stories about everything you want there to be. They make more abstract sense now than they ever did.

404 No One Is Listening

Apache/12.4.20 (Gibson) Server at http://www.self-isolation.net Port 85: netcasting into the digital grey yonder where carbon meets plastic. Society is losing face with the industries supposedly keeping shit together, the dregs are onto the Org’s scheme, as cracks form in the mis-information supply-chain and the capitalisation of the sick. The pandemic virus wastes the streets, keeping jobless norms imprisoned in their dusty hovels that are still being siphoned by the banks, forcing these shmucks to peck at their inheritances or use up their super funds, as the elite laugh from inside their gated residences and the little guys get the finger. The fat cats need to be shown and the alarms need to sound. Spread the word not the virus.