TheHead / hand-drawn animated short from parquerama on Vimeo.
27.2.10
15.10.09
my science is factyer than your science.
Check it out! This guy found a skeleton which shows that humanity did NOT evolve from apes, but instead that apes are an offshoot of a common, hominid ancestor, so in a way apes kind of evolved from humans.
Smug motherfucker. Look at him, crossed arms and everything, he's all like.
"Yeap. Just unveiled the most groundbreaking finding since, uh, pretty much since the inception of evolutionary biology. What?"
The worst part is he gets away with it, because everybody knows he's a total badass and will go all research-karate on your sloping brow. Read the article here.
Makes you wonder about the possibility of knowing when something that's taken for granted as incontrovertible fact by literally millions of people is shown to be dead fucking wrong. You at least have to question the nature of fact, and whether it's a purely human construction. Can something have a "truth" that exists somewhere outside of subjective experience? Or is it all in your head? And then that calls into question the whole scope of everything called "reality," and after that you pretty much start a blog and don't sleep again ever because. you. can't. stop. THINKING ABOUT IT.
Ahem.
Really, though, the more I think about it, the more it seems that "knowing" is actually a secular word for "believing." Scientists and atheists both get twitchy when you start throwing around words like "belief" and "faith," so they just coined another term for it. I mean, it makes me twitchy, too, because religion scares the hell out of me, and to think that I was somehow participating in religion... ooh, makes my skin positively CRAWL. So the notions that every fact is just an idol, that every idea just a belief, and that every time you think you know something you're actually taking it on faith - well, you might as well just go in for the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Invisible Pink Unicorn while you're at it.
Now, to me, there are only two sane responses to this potentiality:
1. Believe in everything
2. Don't believe in anything
Sadly, I don't believe either of those two options are actually possible. Anyway I've tried them both and they haven't worked for me. All I got was a feeling like, "Sorry! The human brain isn't set up like that!" And now I can't even lay the blame on monkeys.
"See? And you guys said it was all our fault. The raping, the stealing, the murder. Well, the joke's on you. It's PEOPLE, man. You won't have Kong-Kong to kick around any more."
So, uh, hey. Does this mean we stop arguing about evolution versus creationism now? No, but seriously, folks. Knowing is a losing game, and we're all playing it. Where, then, does that put reality?
Answers may be submitted, with links to any relevant research data provided, at the bottom of this or any other post.
Signed,
Doctor Apocalypse, PhDUH
Smug motherfucker. Look at him, crossed arms and everything, he's all like.
"Yeap. Just unveiled the most groundbreaking finding since, uh, pretty much since the inception of evolutionary biology. What?"
The worst part is he gets away with it, because everybody knows he's a total badass and will go all research-karate on your sloping brow. Read the article here.
Makes you wonder about the possibility of knowing when something that's taken for granted as incontrovertible fact by literally millions of people is shown to be dead fucking wrong. You at least have to question the nature of fact, and whether it's a purely human construction. Can something have a "truth" that exists somewhere outside of subjective experience? Or is it all in your head? And then that calls into question the whole scope of everything called "reality," and after that you pretty much start a blog and don't sleep again ever because. you. can't. stop. THINKING ABOUT IT.
Ahem.
Really, though, the more I think about it, the more it seems that "knowing" is actually a secular word for "believing." Scientists and atheists both get twitchy when you start throwing around words like "belief" and "faith," so they just coined another term for it. I mean, it makes me twitchy, too, because religion scares the hell out of me, and to think that I was somehow participating in religion... ooh, makes my skin positively CRAWL. So the notions that every fact is just an idol, that every idea just a belief, and that every time you think you know something you're actually taking it on faith - well, you might as well just go in for the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Invisible Pink Unicorn while you're at it.
Now, to me, there are only two sane responses to this potentiality:
1. Believe in everything
2. Don't believe in anything
Sadly, I don't believe either of those two options are actually possible. Anyway I've tried them both and they haven't worked for me. All I got was a feeling like, "Sorry! The human brain isn't set up like that!" And now I can't even lay the blame on monkeys.
"See? And you guys said it was all our fault. The raping, the stealing, the murder. Well, the joke's on you. It's PEOPLE, man. You won't have Kong-Kong to kick around any more."
So, uh, hey. Does this mean we stop arguing about evolution versus creationism now? No, but seriously, folks. Knowing is a losing game, and we're all playing it. Where, then, does that put reality?
Answers may be submitted, with links to any relevant research data provided, at the bottom of this or any other post.
Signed,
Doctor Apocalypse, PhDUH
23.9.09
21.9.09
Come and wash away teh pain.
17.9.09
That relentless sobbing? It's the parcel numbered seven squared.
In this scene from Thomas Pynchon's 1965 novel The Crying of Lot 49, our hero, Oedipa Maas, has had a bad time of it and decides to go to her shrink, Dr. Hilarius, who had previously attempted to convince her to take part in an experimental program to dose suburban housewives with LSD and other psychedelic drugs. Dr. Hilarius, an eccentric but seemingly harmless man, has apparently succumbed to a fit of paranoia and is wielding a WWII rifle, having shot at six people; Oedipa is locked in his office with him, he has admitted to performing (and attempting to atone for) experiments designed to produce "experimentally-induced insanity" on Jews in Buchenwald, and hapless police have just arrived to take Dr. Hilarius into custody.
Then she saw that Hilarius had left the Gewehr on his desk and was across the room ostensibly trying to open a file cabinet. She picked the rifle up, pointed it at him, and said, "I ought to kill you." She knew he had wanted her to get the weapon.
"Isn't that what you've been sent to do?" He crossed and uncrossed his eyes at her; stuck out his tongue tentatively.
"I came," she said, "hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy."
"Cherish it!" cried Hilarius, fiercely. "What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by its little tentacle, don't let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be."
*
Discuss.
24.8.09
Because I said so.
People are pretty weird. I just read about a reality-show contestant who apparently murdered his ex-wife and then killed himself. This in and of itself isn't so weird; if I were regularly featured on TMZ, I would have ended it all, too. Consider, however, the following:
1. The guy mangled this woman's body so badly that she had to be identified by the serial numbers on her breast implants.
2. Breast implants have serial numbers?
3. Possibly so the government can track all those radicals who are also porn stars and strippers. The thing they use to scan the serials is secreted away in the mouth of some rich, drunk asshole around your dad's age. Yuck.
4. The Yahoo! news article makes a big fuss about the town where this guy was staying when he offed himself being such a backwater. The place was called the Thunderbird Motel (which, as residents are quick to point out, is "kind of seedy" - well DOY) and Rambo was filmed there. Oh, and apparently the townies like to carve things with chainsaws?
5. The shows this guy was on? "Megan Wants a Millionaire" and "I Love Money." Yeah. Bitter tears of loss and disappointment on this one.
Think about this. The only reason that money is valuable is because governments declare it valuable. It isn't even a commodity that people want; it's just paper or cheap metal. This is called "fiat money" and pretty much every country who's any country uses it. And people say language doesn't have the power to shape reality! Pff.
"Hey, you know that stuff you want, like food and shelter? Well, funny thing; if you don't have a lot of these little pieces of paper, you're pretty much screwed. Also, we get to print the money, but in order for YOU to get it, you have to work. Don't ask me why, I didn't make the rules. OH WAIT YES I DID."
Did you know that refusing money offered cancels a debt in the same way that accepting money does? I sure didn't!
People used to barter and, more often, give and receive gifts to make their way in this crazy world. A lot of societies used real commodities, like grain, to determine what money was worth. And then, a lot of people used cowry shells.
Which are actually a type of these guys:
1. The guy mangled this woman's body so badly that she had to be identified by the serial numbers on her breast implants.
2. Breast implants have serial numbers?
3. Possibly so the government can track all those radicals who are also porn stars and strippers. The thing they use to scan the serials is secreted away in the mouth of some rich, drunk asshole around your dad's age. Yuck.
4. The Yahoo! news article makes a big fuss about the town where this guy was staying when he offed himself being such a backwater. The place was called the Thunderbird Motel (which, as residents are quick to point out, is "kind of seedy" - well DOY) and Rambo was filmed there. Oh, and apparently the townies like to carve things with chainsaws?
5. The shows this guy was on? "Megan Wants a Millionaire" and "I Love Money." Yeah. Bitter tears of loss and disappointment on this one.
Think about this. The only reason that money is valuable is because governments declare it valuable. It isn't even a commodity that people want; it's just paper or cheap metal. This is called "fiat money" and pretty much every country who's any country uses it. And people say language doesn't have the power to shape reality! Pff.
"Hey, you know that stuff you want, like food and shelter? Well, funny thing; if you don't have a lot of these little pieces of paper, you're pretty much screwed. Also, we get to print the money, but in order for YOU to get it, you have to work. Don't ask me why, I didn't make the rules. OH WAIT YES I DID."
Did you know that refusing money offered cancels a debt in the same way that accepting money does? I sure didn't!
People used to barter and, more often, give and receive gifts to make their way in this crazy world. A lot of societies used real commodities, like grain, to determine what money was worth. And then, a lot of people used cowry shells.
Which are actually a type of these guys:
Aw.
Moral of the story: don't get obsessed about money, because sea creatures are intrinsically just as good, if not better. A lot cuter, anyway. Somebody should probably mint a coin with that little charmer on it; they'd sell like gothcakes. Also, never go on reality TV, because you'll later murder your ex-wife and hang yourself in the town where they made Rambo. Wait, what?
Moral of the story: don't get obsessed about money, because sea creatures are intrinsically just as good, if not better. A lot cuter, anyway. Somebody should probably mint a coin with that little charmer on it; they'd sell like gothcakes. Also, never go on reality TV, because you'll later murder your ex-wife and hang yourself in the town where they made Rambo. Wait, what?
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