Jotcamp
My friend and I have started up a new blog. I’ve been wanting to put more of a concentrated effort into my blog for a while, and I think this is the best way to do it. It would be awesome if you guys would follow it. If you like what I’ve been posting here, it’s going to be more consistent over there, and I’ve set up external hosting to let me seriously get into music blogging instead of being constrained to the one 10MB song a day that Tumblr let’s me post.
Here’s our description/mission statement:
Jotcamp is a pair of art students with some vague principles on media gluttony. We don’t want to just sit back and consume all the tasteful art we come across, so we’ve made this blog to compile and comment on that delicious media to keep our TV, music, and movies habit from becoming a one way conversation.
be cool, soda pop: KIDS OF AMERICA
Hey, kids, next time you give me an anti-affirmative action paper to proofread, give it to me without the sentence “This is reminiscent of the communist ways and beliefs of Adolph Hitler,” unless you want me to hurt my hand pressing the pencil down as hard as I’d like to press a knife into my…
Katie Coyle, you might be the best girl on the internet…
“An entire generation has disregarded copyright law.”
I used to read stuff like this and get upset. But then I realized that my entire generation knows it’s baloney. They can’t explain it intellectually. They have no real understanding of the subtleties of the law, or arguments about artists’ rights or any of that. All they really understand is there are large corporations charging private citizens tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, for downloading a few songs here and there. And it’s intuitively obvious that it can’t possibly be worth that.
An entire generation has disregarded copyright law. It doesn’t matter whether copyright is useful or not anymore. They could release attack dogs and black helicopters and it wouldn’t really change people’s attitudes. It won’t matter how many websites they shut down or how many lives they ruin, they’ve already lost the culture war because they pushed too hard and alienated people wholesale. The only thing these corporations can do now is shift the costs to the government and other corporations under color of law in a desperate bid for relevance. And that’s exactly what they’re doing.
What does this mean for the average person? It means that we google and float around to an ever-changing landscape of sites. We communicate by word of mouth via e-mail, instant messaging, and social networking sites where the latest fix of free movies, music, and games are. If you don’t make enough money to participate in the artificial marketplace of entertainment goods, you don’t exclude yourself from it—you go to the grey market instead.
hi http://napstr.tumblr.com/
CREEPER STOP CREEPING YOU FUCKING WERIDO!
did you create a tumblr just to follow people? get a fucking life loser.
I’m also being followed by a pack of wolves that don’t seem to have much to say for themselves either.
Wierd, I got the napstr follower last night too. I don’t have the wolves but I’m assuming it’s meant to be a joke like the ‘undercover cop car’ tumblr.
Edit: I just realized who napstr might be. I won’t out them but if I’m right, they have a reason for doing it this way.
They’re following me too! I just shrugged it off as someone who hasn’t started their blog yet.
Who could it be? This is getting interesting… And I’m really curious now. Whatta mystery!
Oh shi- tumblr conspiracy! Why are people getting freaked out? Follow that bastard right back!
ps this has viral marketing written all over it.
I now too have this person following me… so obscurity isn’t really a factor in who is and is not being followed. I still think it’s possible this person has either, a - not started his/her blog yet, or b - is using tumblr just to follow things s/he likes to read. Why not, right?
How it really is.
BBC’s Natural World Programme: Crocodile Blues, is a wonderful documentary telling the tale of the near extinction of the world oldest crocodile, the gharial, and its most dedicated and successful proponent, Rom Whitaker. I absolutely recommend it. It perfectly balances drama and education, revolving its airing around the recent mystery mass die-off that Rom managed to solve.
It’s equalling intriquing as it is heart breaking and frustrating. BBC rarely seems to put out a documentary not worth watching. You can find it over at EZTV.it
Fuck Yeah
So with the site less than a week old we already have over 300 followers! To commemorate the occasion you can now find us at fuckyeahneilpatrickharris.com !
Thanks to everyone!
- dagmarrr / gthus / thedevilsharlot
A Note On Nihilism
I’m not posting this to embarrass anyone, but I think that this beginning of a discussion I seem to be getting into is worth trying to get read to try and get a comment or two.
The question I was asked:
How are you not nihilistic once you realize how profoundly meaningless and Godless life is? How pitilessly indifferent it all is to humankind’s self-awareness and pathetic dreams of a higher power! I know you’re a dude without the whole emotional baggage thing, but still….
Now, I’m not sure where this question is rooted: a challenge or just curiosity, and I’m a little sad that I cannot answer it in full because I do not understand just what the second sentence means, but I did my best to satisfy the first question.
The answer:
A - Why would godless and meaningless ever be used as synonyms? One certainly does not imply the other. Meaningless things are not inherently godless as godless thing are not inherently meaningless. Communism is godless in the sense that it does not adhere to revering a meta-physical being (although it does ask that same reverie towards a physical one), but you can’t really argue that a philosophy that directed the course of the majority of our 20th century is without meaning. It just doesn’t have a meaning that pertains to religion as it is commonly understood.
Simply put, something without a god-focus is not inherently without meaning if you can take meaning in the broadest sense imaginable.
I won’t get into why meaningless things aren’t inherently godless because it’s not relevant and it’ll just come across as a dick thing to say.
B - Taking “meaning” to actually mean “purpose” (excuse the pun), then that’s a different matter. But let’s remember that nihilism is only taken with a negative connotation should one view the world as requiring some faith in a meta-physical being. In fact, philosophy itself, even the Kantian texts from which our society is largely based on and has been since his time in the Enlightenment, has been written off as nihilistic in that it can all be boiled down to a simple idea: nothing matters unless we think it does.
But all that is just to beg the question: what “greater” purpose is required to give something meaning, and why? Philosophy explains in great detail the purpose in and of itself, from social contract to ethics and beyond. What “greater” purpose is needed when we already have established our human purpose in the art and philosophy: to strive to better understand ourselves on both a macro and micro level and thus ease our co-existence with one another?
That certainly seems like a purpose, a point. You don’t need god to explain morality or societal constructs (which morality is one of, that’s a given in the light of such differing moral codes constructed independently throughout the world) or even emotion and where that plays a part in a human’s life. So at what point is it nihilism such a terrible thing? Where does the “greater” purpose become necessary in order to accept that life has inherent meaning?
Actually, it’s the theist that argues life has no inherent meaning and that it requires a religious injection of the sort.
