What shall we use
To fill
The empty spaces
Where waves
Of hunger
Roar
Shall we set out across
This sea
Of faces
In search of more
And more applause

Shell we buy a new guitar
Shall we drive a more powerful car
Shell we work straight through the night
Shell we get into fights
Leave the lights on
drop bombs
do tours of the east
Contract diseases
Bury bones
Break up homes
Send flowers by phone
Take to drink
Go to shrinks
Give up meat
Rarely sleep
Keep people as pets
Train dogs
Race rats
Fill the attic with cash
Bury treasure
Store up leisure
But never relax at all
With our backs to the wall

--Pink Floyd

Ok, I have nothing to say. I've typed the lyrics. Can I go to bed now? lol.

Oh alright, fine. I'll make a little original content. But I make no promises as to its quality, coherence, entertainment value, or anything else. As always, it just is. Some web surfers might be bored enough to read it. Who knows? Maybe in 10 years, I'll come back and say, "Wow, that was great!" or "Geez, did I really suck that badly?"

So, anyway, today was... relaxful. As you may have guessed, watched lotsa Pink Floyd The Wall shit. (Which may somewhat help to explain my wacked out brain state. Well, that, and perhaps my little recent visit to this place).)

Ate a mid-afternoon lunch with mom and brother at Woody's Woodfire Pizza in Longmont. He and I liked it (bouncing had been there before, and given it strong recommendation). She didn't.

Some readers might also be interested to know that I finally, for the first time since buying it, washed my car today. Woohoo. It did need it. That was for sure. I realized this even more when I began to wet it down, and discoverd little dried patches of bird shit... everywhere! Some of them required me to hold the high pressure sprayer at extreme close range for several seconds before they disappeared completely. Needless to say, it looks much better again. It also just felt better, driving home at twilight, window rolled down, fresh water droplets gradually evaporating off the hood. Oh yes. The good life. :)

Rented a copy of Blade Runner, as I've heard all sorts of people rave about how wonderful it is. I must confess I haven't actually gotten around to watching it yet. I was planning to watch it tonight, but then I got distracted with various things, and then it was after 2100, and I was thinking I'd watch Xena tonight even though it's a rerun of course (cause I was in the mood, and haven't seen it for a couple weeks), and since I hate to stop in the middle of a movie, I figured I'd save Blade Runner until I have time to watch it uninterrupted. So I watched my next X Files, Squeeze, instead. (Which rocked, BTW, even though I've already seen it probably a half dozen times before tonight in various other formats.)

Yeah, but then, when it finally was time for Xena to begin, it of course figures that channel 2 would be running a zillion years behind schedule. 2230, when the city of Denver is all ready and waiting to get our mythology fix, and they're still babbling some shit news. And of course, they have to have their precious "Friends" after that. (I actually have nothing against that show -- it's one of the few sitcoms I enjoy sometimes. I guess I just get tired of the lousy treatment scifi/fantasy fans always seem to get from that channel.) In past experience, when things run this latey, they tend to skip Xena entirely, so I figure it's a lost cause. Maybe it would have been one of the sucky mid-season episodes anyway. I haven't checked the schedule. In any case, kwgn's ever-continuing mission to alienate this viewer has once again succeeded.

And all that was supposed to be an explanation for why I didn't get around to watching Blade Runner tonight -- for had I had foreknowledge of these things, I would have planned accordingly, and proceeded with the viewing. As it is, no biggie. I'll just watch it tomorrow. :) (Cause right now, my brain's way to hosed to enjoy it.)

And if my brain is way to hosed to enjoy a movie, how is it that it's not too hosed to type this rambling? Don't ask me. I'm just a messenger. Or... wait a sec. That really didn't make sense now, did it? Because I am not just the messenger, I am the source of all this bs as well. Oh well.

And then there's the title I gave to this rambling. The blue pill. Believe it or not, there was a reason fo that title. But I still haven't gotten around to talking about the subject which the title was supposed to describe. Funny. Right now, I'm typing things much faster than I typically do when I write these. Probably cause I'm giving it a lot less thought. It probably shows through in the quality. Heh.

Well, I just think about how I sometimes read through other peoples web pages. It's like I'm always running. Always in a hurry. And in all but a few cases, I just race through content, vulturing like some sort of wild animal. Gorged, but still devouring. And it's all this shit that people have probably put hours composing or putting together. Journals, ideas, slashdot posts, art sites. And we just munch through it in a flash. Same thing with movies. It's like you realize this when you listen to the comments made by directors and other people who have worked on it. They spend hours, days, weeks, sometims months, on just a few frames most people won't even notice. Just to get it perfect. Well, at least the really good ones do.

And I realize that when I write these things, it's quite often that I'll spend over an hour on a single rambling (as everyone can plainly see, at least as of April of last year), but when I go back and read, it takes like a minute or two. And this is how most people will experience it. A sentence which I think about for maybe five minutes in some cases, querying my brain for all the perfect wording, will just be scanned over, and even for those who do read it, get lost in the enormous mountain of verbage from all sources which passes through our brains from all sources.

So then, I wonder if it wouldn't be better to always do it a little more like I'm doing now, and just spout out anything and everything, with minimal editing, thinking, or revising, and just focus on QUANTITY. Reiterate the same point five times in different sloppily composed methods, instead of just saying it once, and saying it right. Would that be more effective? More likely, the decrease in good signal would bore people, and they'd graze to other, more potent info-pastures.

So... The Blue Pill. The title of this rather rambling rambling. :) Even more rambling than usual.

I meant it as a reference to what one reader said (or maybe not a reader; I dunno. Given that the comment was made in meatspace, maybe I shouldn't even use that terminology, even if I know it's somebody who reads this page, which in this case, I don't. It just seems... unkosher, somehow, to mix and cross these worlds. I'm rambling again.). Ok, maybe not so much a reference to what this person said, but to my now reaction to what this person said.

Ok, here it is: I now have, as this person so eloquently put it, "a shrine to the MPAA" situated prominently in my room. I may as well frame a picture of that ass Jack Valenti and hang it on my wall, given the actions I've taken in the past week and a half. How have I strayed so far from the path? As Morpheus once said, "There is a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path."

And in case anyone's wondering, the irony of using such a source to describe the situation has not escaped me. lol.

If I am truthful, I must admit that my actions and words over the past few months, when compared against each other, must appear totally contradictory. They are. I suppose, in a way, I did take the blue pill. Did I cast off my morals? Did I give up the fight? Did I sell my geek brethren (and sistren), along with myself into a future of oppressive corporate tyranny, where freedom of speech means nothing, and the only law that matters is that which furthers the interests and power of multinational CEO's -- the Agent Smiths of the world? And for what? A nice bit of entertainment on the weekends?

Alright, here's my logic. Feel free to tear it apart, which I'm sure could easily be done by concatinating a few choice quotes from Thoreau, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King Jr, and whoever else pops to mind. In any case, it's this:

While I still believe that all that shit the MPAA and its associates have done is evil, I have lost faith in any believe whatsoever that anything I do or don't do is going to make a shit of difference by itself. Me buying a few DVD's, or going to a few movies -- or not doing so -- is not going to budge their profit graphs a single pixel. Even if everyone who has ever looked at this web page decided to join the boycott, it wouldn't be noticed. Even if all of the Slashdot readership at once decided to stop patronizing MPAA movies (which I see no evidence of), I don't think their budget would take enough of a hit to pay attention to. When compared with all the millions of people -- who, if they've seen the the Internet at all, it's been through AOL -- we clueful geeks who even realize what's going on are just too few to matter.

When faced with this reality, that whether I buy or don't buy, it's not going to make a difference, why NOT take my piece of the pie? Since life it so short, enjoy what it has to offer, and be glad I'm living in a time when DVD's exist at all, cause it sure would beat what they had a hundred years ago. Enjoy what is here -- for I believe good movies to be one of the greatest modern inventions -- and be glad for it. Appreciate things for what they are, and also realize that there are imperfections in the system.

I suppose one thing I truly fear in this is that I will become comfortably numb, getting caught up in all these finer pleasures that life has to offer, and forget what's going on in the rest of the world. Can one truly be happy wearing those comfy new shoes, aware that they were produced by the sweat of some underpaid child laborer? Does the music sound as good if the cd player circuts were constructed by sweatshop workers in China? Is watching a DVD as much fun, knowing that right now, people are being prosecuted for spreading knowledge of how it can be played under an OS not controlled by monopolistic forces? Is the steak still as yummy when one thinks about the poor cow, locked in an overcrowded feeding house, stuffed to the point of torture until it is slain, and utters its last dying words: "Moo!"

Or perhaps it would be better to realize the truth: There is no cow. Or is there? I'm going to bed.