this is how the world ends

sokth @ 2009-11-11T13:39:00

2009-11-11T13:39:27Z

Meaning is limited by context via the author – only if we take the moment of production, of conception, as important to the meaning of a text, thereby mummifying and reducing ‘enjoying’ to ‘understanding’, do texts “depend” on the socio-historical forces of present at conception.

MW 2 and massacre

2009-11-07T22:46:16Z

I honestly didn't expect to see MW 2 present anything like that infamous leaked footage.

That said, it is an incredibly positive sign for the developer. It's good to see morality break through the bounds of RPG games (as the same time as RPG games challenge their own boundaries - Mass Effect springs to mind) and invade the mass FPS market. It's not the first - Bioshock, anyone? - but now we have "the decade's most anticipated game" doing it. I sincerely hope the scene is sickening and completely alienating (part of me wishes there was no way to skip it) because, if it is, we are witnessing another step in the rapid maturing of the video game as a piece of art.

And yes, I hope to be writing more often (and maybe even more coherently!) in the future.

sokth @ 2009-08-14T01:20:00

2009-08-14T00:20:24Z

before you reach God, the saints will eat you

This is me being deadly serious:

2009-06-21T19:47:48Z

meaning is a public phenomenon

the ultimate religion

2009-06-16T11:06:27Z

God is dead, and we have killed him. How will we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves?

EDIT: "Oh dear! Oh dear! Isn't he going - backwards?" Yes, but you misunderstand him if that worries you. He is going backwards as people do when they are about to take a great leap -

sokth @ 2009-06-13T14:30:00

2009-06-13T13:31:06Z

the epistemic level determines the semantic level determines the ontological level

sokth @ 2009-06-11T17:08:00

2009-06-11T16:09:13Z

damn this "solemn, sluggish, ceremoniously clumsy" tongue and mind of mine! To struggle with trochees and iambs whilst delighting in even the most subtle meaning; that is my curse.

sokth @ 2009-06-06T17:48:00

2009-06-06T16:49:48Z

the rat, the mouse, the rabbit, the fox, watch the roots. the lion, the tiger, the horse, the elephant, watch the fruits.

I bring you an excerpt from today's revision notes:

2009-05-29T13:39:19Z

Finally! NOT DIALECTIC. NO SYNTHESIS. FUCK YOU HEGEL

a mystic, emphatically

2009-03-23T16:09:40Z

Prisons are built with stones of law; brothels with bricks of religion.

(expect poison from standing water)

sokth @ 2009-03-13T12:06:00

2009-03-13T12:20:48Z

Well, I suppose as it's well into spring now, I should be resurrected in some form or another. Life chugs on as usual, and isn't really worth talking about in depth. However, WATCHMEN is.

I saw Watchmen twice yesterday. I'd like to note that I didn't think it was that incredible, but I went with two different groups of people, and didn't really mind seeing it twice (especially since I didn't pay for either trip). I'd been looking forward to it - I've not read the graphic novel (!!!) and was a little put off by Time magazine declaring it was one of the "best novels of all time". It may be good (indeed, excellent), and to some extent display features more commonly associated with literature (allusion, symbolism, artistic self-awareness, allegory - I think - etc), calling it a novel is simply wrong. Graphic novels do what is said on the tin; the visual art is an essential part of the experience, unlike in a novel. Furthermore, grouping a graphic novel with novels is, I think, to devalue the role of the graphic novel. It seems to imply that the graphic novel can never be accepted as a form of "high art" (O, modernism, where art thou?), and so the anomalous(debatable) achievement cannot be a graphic novel in the usual sense. Anyway! I hadn't read it, but, after reading some critic reviews that labeled it as difficult for people who had not read the graphic novel, I'll admit I dipped into the wikipedia synopsis.

I shouldn't have - it was completely unnecessary. The film is lovely. It's what comic book (graphic novel, whatever) movies should be like. Comic strips tend to make good storyboards, but there's more to that. Sin City was lovingly adapted, but remained a little too removed for me. I know that was kind of the point, but I couldn't help thinking that it lacked something. Watchmen does not have this problem. Essentially, it is a grimy thriller more than a superhero film - grimy in a way that makes Batman look like a fairytale. These 'superheroes' are real people, flesh and blood, and Watchmen gives a 'realist' account of their development - mental illnesses abound. However, it manages to retain a twist of wonderful, bittersweet and incredibly dark humour. Not to mention a plentiful serving of blood and guts. Also, the ending is so totally not like the usual boring Hollywood resolution. I thought the performances were generally good all round, despite labouring under a script that flagged at times (script straight from speech bubbles? anyone?). The exception was the Richard Nixon actor (a small part) - I wasn't particularly impressed by him, but I think I was just expecting something on par with the wonderful neanderthal autocratic Nixon (played by Frank Langella) of Frost/Nixon.

In conclusion, yes. Good film. Also, watch out for references to Nietzsche (Human, All Too Human) and (possibly?) Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five.

sokth @ 2008-11-18T18:57:00

2008-11-18T18:58:07Z

The grotesque, absurd irony of writing a commentary to Pale Fire does not, I think, elude me. My essay will be, at the very least, meta-meta-textual, at times verging on the meta-meta-meta-textual. It makes me smile, then, to remember Nabokov’s famous phrase: “For better or for worse, it is the commentator that has the last word.” But which commentator?

sokth @ 2008-11-18T15:47:00

2008-11-18T15:47:32Z

do not go quietly unto your grave

sokth @ 2008-10-19T17:03:00

2008-10-19T16:05:15Z

"The Germans have developed an excessive variety of everything solemn, sluggish, ceremoniously clumsy, all the interminable and insufferable stylistic genres ... The German is nearly incapable of the presto in his language, and we may feel free to conclude that he is therefore also incapable of many of the most amusing and audacious nuances of free, free-spirited thought."

These nets I will fly

sokth @ 2008-09-24T20:07:00

2008-09-24T19:21:13Z

what be the plan, my only hollow man? maybe should we dance all night long in meadows where the machine gods ran?

sokth @ 2008-09-11T15:04:00

2008-09-11T14:04:45Z

I choose this path down past the Catholic Church every morning past the bus station men and women and children waiting pressed onto the wall like they’re about to be shot. Bangbangbang. He couldn’t stand so they tied him to the chair. Stupid English what an image no wonder Collins and the others fought. The sun never set over the English empire because God does not trust the English in the dark. Whispering and scheming : darkness : the unkown : the other : the dark continent. Found gold in South Africa 1886. Before 19th century no major incursion but by 1900 only Liberia and Ethiopia remain. Zulus bled and died for the gold that could have brought them hope. No difference between missionary and settler. Catholic church. Firing line. Bangbangbang. Collins. The traffic is sluggish in the mornings like some kind of serpent but like that snake it can and will suddenly move and shift and burst and kill people. The biggest cause of death in 15-21 year olds is car accidents. What does that mean? Does it include pedestrians or is it limited to those inside the car? The facts are, unfortunately, against you. Luckily public opinion is on your side and we all know what triumphs – facts or the mob. Fear of the mob… founding principles. Majority tyranny. Madison. Ambition must be make to check ambition. Greatest theoretical document in the world thanks in part to the storming of the Bastille. The French died so that the Americans could be. If they had known they wouldn’t have bothered. Rather stayed at home with the curtains drawn and the radio on like so many drunks.

Roads are so busy in the morning but not as busy as the Grand Arcade on a Saturday. So full of people all blank eyes gazing at shop windows stripped of dignity with nothing left but consumerism holding on with torn nails to some last broken idol. God is dead. Politics is dead. Philosophy is dead. Everything is dead – we are all dead in a dead world. Hades. We are all in Hades and literature is our Persephone. Stolen away from the perfect plain of imagination by the human, all too human conduits. The author is dead. FR Leavis. TS Eliot. Hollow Men. Scarecrows amongst the cucumber patches. Capable of neither good nor evil.

sokth @ 2008-09-10T17:35:00

2008-09-10T16:42:24Z

let's change things around because I can't get the mortal taste of that forbidden fruit out of my mind. Original: Sin: Simony: Harry Potter. Let me write and see what comes out I'd like to think that you'd still burn me and censor me but not anymore: this is not the age we live in. Not with a bang but with a whimper. I'd whimper too, if I was him: Fawkes : Parnell : Adams : Bin Laden. Whats the difference all men who talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country. Clever man, Russell. Cambridge. Mathematics. A prison of algorithms and symbols and numbers. A prison for thoughts and imagination that panther that roars and runs and is shot outside Ill's laden. But no more of that it's over and certificated and a big stamp on it says 'deceased'. Like the panther.

Its the king of the jungle that's what they say. Panther Rex. But its not the king, not anymore. We've changed that and now its the barge that travels into the heart of all that is dark that rules the world. Conrad : Sailor : Napoleon. My first communion was the happiest day of my life. This paradigm the copious hordes follow so that they might stay out of the pits with four thousand mile thick walls : Get thee behind me, devil : Get thee behind me, hypocrisy. A world run by hypocrites and devils taking it in turns. My go then yours then mine then yours. Let's all sing along abeeceedeeeeffgee and pretend we care when the ballot paper gets passed around. It makes little difference we're all blades of grass at the mercy of the breeze. Albert would have something to say about that and so would Dr. Mersault and all the rats that spill out into the pavement to die. Let the dead bury their own dead. That book of lies but not without hope for together we can stand against Gabriel and the flaming sword that bars our path if we so wish but why would we want to return to that state of darkness in the womb of ignorance? the world is all before us our place of rest to choose and providence our guide.

sokth @ 2008-09-06T15:40:00

2008-09-06T14:40:22Z

His wooing of Nietzsche’s woman has become apparent to me – it is no more than a whited sepulchre. That is to say whilst to all superficial analysis the white walls are indeed stronger than those of Ilium (despite the artificer being considerably more ignoble) and four thousand miles thick the grey vulture wings of his knowledge that hide within have become apparent to me. And to this predatory bird whose sustenance is not the mortal taste of mine I say: non serviam.

sokth @ 2008-05-31T19:58:00

2008-05-31T19:04:17Z

WELCOME TO THE INTERNET

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Funny, If Immature

sokth @ 2008-04-20T04:33:00

2008-04-20T03:33:40Z

look at what we've become

revisited

2008-04-17T20:38:56Z

They have come for me. My first instinct is to cry out – to shriek, to holler. But this has been my fate since I came screaming from the womb that bore me into this world. I have inched closer and closer, and now the final apostasy is at hand. The “writing” upon the “wall” is in no script that I can understand, yet it need not be. My eyes have been opened; may they never close again. I had expected anything at this point… no, I had expected something. This is not what I prayed for. I prayed for euphoria, or perhaps despondence, but not this - not this throttling, crushing, ultimate pity that takes me. I will be lifted up by those around me – those who would see me confined to the deepest pits of hell – and all I feel is pity.

It will be a change; but I believe for the better. I do not know what awaits me up there, but I have rotted long enough in this relic of bygone ages, the suburbs stretching out from it like some terrible, charnel graveyard, ready to strangle anyone who tries to leave. This mechanical, heartless world. This broken cosmos. This lost Eden. But the skies have never been so light for me as today.

Why is it that we, as human beings, attach so much more importance to those images that we directly associate with that which is ‘real’, rather than the creations of our own imaginations; which are, by definition, many times more spectacular? At the end of it all, our entire lives, real are not, are just pictures in our brain; crackling, firing neurons and explosions of sensory data – and what right does anyone else have to tell me what is real, and what is not? And what when the things we had so hurriedly cast away as fantasy come roaring back, more real than anything else had ever been? One thing is certain; my dreams have never been as colourful as they are today.

Entombed within my own mind, I’ve wandered through many places, far and near, all of them eventually subsiding into what is, according to the enlightened sciences, ‘real’ upon my regaining of consciousness, screaming and tearing at nothingness in hatred of what nature has simultaneously shown me and forbidden me. They trap me here, tie me down – but they cannot hold back the burning, twisting spirit of my mind. This twisted reality of storm-wracked skies and warped buildings is not for me. But the corridors of the asylum have never been as silent as today.

I go now into obscurity. They have come, and with shining hands they will lift me on silver wings from this place. Whether I will live or die I do not know – but I know that I will not exist in the meaning of the word that the desperate, foolish sciences employ. Hah! They have not the faintest idea of the chaotic, writhing cosmos that they try in vain to explain. They have not wandered in the lush forests of the mind, nor scaled the vibrant peaks of the imagination. They have not dived the deepest seas of consciousness, nor struggled with the greatest demons of emotion. Blind, frantic failures of a world that will never understand; a world doomed to failure. And the cries of the physicians have never been as distant as today.

I will pass now, into obscurity. Answers will be given to me that could never have been given by ‘civilization’. Let them ponder the meaning of things – let their hateful spades dig ever deeper into the earth that hides the ultimate insanity. Upon these silver-winged avatars of the dreaming truth I will rise, untold secrets gracing my ears and filling my mind with all the vivid landscapes of my dreams. I know that I leave everything behind now – my family, my friends, my very body. But never have I been as free as today.

I go now into blissful oblivion, and there the truth awaits me.

sokth @ 2008-04-06T20:11:00

2008-04-06T19:14:24Z

If we accept that (A) "Wilderness", or unclaimed land, has no owner, and (B) that all people are inherently equal, then it seems to follow that (C) no person should be able to own more land than another.

sokth @ 2008-03-18T18:40:00

2008-03-18T19:15:23Z

Why I am an Atheist

Yes, I'm an atheist. To anyone who knows me, even in the slightest, that should not come as a shock; indeed, it should probably be self evident. Because I feel like it, I am going to lay down some reasons why I am a fool for calling myself an atheist, and why I am an atheist. Follow this if you can.

I'm a fool for calling myself an atheist - I'm an agnostic. And, frankly, every atheist needs some introspection time if they're truly an atheist, and not really an agnostic. Here's a few dictionary definitions. (courtesy of http://dictionary.reference.com)

"Atheist -
–noun
a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings."

and

"Agnostic -
-noun
One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God."

So there may be some confusion over why I label myself an atheist, whilst claiming to be an agnostic (and yeah, I stick by that). Frankly, I don't like the term agnostic - to me, it sounds like I simply haven't spent any time thinking about this topic; basically, that I'm lazy. I obviously have, and, whilst this dislike of the term probably stems from some stereotype, quite a few agnostics have probably just "not bothered".

Having said that, I technically fit into the term "agnostic". Here's why I'm not an atheist, but call myself one - it's easier.

In order to state categorically that there is a God, there must be proof. This is statement A. In order to state categorically that there is no God, there must be proof. This is statement B.

Statement A I won't go into much detail with - it's simply there to provide a comparison. To me, a single book, no matter how old, holy or truthful it may seem, can prove the existence of something like God. That rules out the Bible. Other proof, such as the argument from design (ever tried shaking a watch around in a box for billions of years, Aquinas?), has never hit a chord with me, and it's unlikely that anything ever will. Any believers who've managed to read this far, feel free to persuade me.

Now, Statement B. "In order to state categorically that there is no God, there must be proof." This is the problem. The very nature of God makes him difficult to prove - and, in the same manner, difficult to disprove. In fact, he is a deal harder to disprove than he is to prove. His omnipotence, transcendence, and all the rest of it, makes him very, very hard to disprove using normal empirical methods. In fact, I'm going to go and say that it is impossible to disprove God using empirical methods. Again, feel free to persuade me, anyone.

With empirical methods out of the way, the zealous defender of God moves on to the fortress of the rationalist. Now, the thing is, logic seems to present a real problem for God - at least, at first. A lot of philosophers have made a big mistake here - and Bertrand Russell is one such philosopher. I can't remember his reasoning precisely, but he attacked God from an ethical standpoint. He claims that the ethics that God gives us are a problem for God himself. If God truly means for us to obey these laws, then there are, to Russell, only two options - either he wishes us to obey them because they are "good", or he wishes us to obey them because he is God, and we should obey him. Now, if they are "good", this implies that there is some notion of "goodness" that even God is subjected to - and this removes him from the top of the pyramid, destroying the notion of omnipotence and effectively casting him down from his seat as a deity. Similarly, if we obey the laws because they are given to us by God, then we must ask ourselves what makes God God. His limitless, supernatural power is the answer. So, we are obeying laws because the entity that gives us these laws is powerful? Russell seems to be indicating some kind of supernatural dictatorship, which is surely no basis to worship God on.

It's quite possible that I have misunderstood his reasoning, and he surely words it better than I have, although I hope the general drift is obvious. The problem is that, as St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out a long time before Russell's logic, God (at least, the Christian God) cannot have the same logic applied to him that we apply to man. In other words, the logic we used, our last chance of attacking the existence of God, goes out the window. Hey presto, that's it. You can't disprove that which is disprovable. It's not disprovable because it's true, it's simply disprovable.

And here's another reason why I don't like to call myself an agnostic - I don't like any God I have come across. Sure, my belief that it is impossible to prove the existence of God may place me in the camp of the agnostic, but I am a firm atheist in my belief that no God I have ever come across is "good", or worthy of worship in the slightest. The Christian God commits massacres all through the Old Testament, continuously and without any regret - he even does it as a means of persuasion (first born sons of Egypt, anyone?). Nothing in the New Testament can give the Christian God any redemption - and, when I look around the world, and see the hatred and fanaticism that other religions also fuel, I cannot help but think that anything that can even be misinterpreted to that extent is not worthy of my worship; and that's why I'm proud to call myself an atheist - although I'm not, really.

A Crime Against Our Rights

2008-02-27T20:48:23Z

Labour is ripping our rights to pieces, right under our eyes. Look at this:

"Suspected drug dealers' assets could be seized on arrest rather than conviction under new plans for England and Wales.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said suspects found to be "completely innocent" would get their goods back."

(from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7266109.stm)

Holy shit, what the fuck? What the hell? Do you know why this shit stinks real bad? Because that goes against legislation that they've signed up to - hell, it even goes against legislation they wrote.

The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of the Council of Europe states that "Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law". Guess what, everyone? We're part of the Council of Europe.

It gets worse. Article 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 (yes, that's our very ownact) also states that "Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law". Needless to say, that means the presumption of innocence is also protected in the European Convention on Human Rights, which we have also signed up to.

What the hell is this? Not only is it hypocrisy, it is also dangerous - the state is showing more and more of the hallmarks of a dictatorship.

The True Chief Virtues

2008-02-08T21:37:21Z

Tolerance
Neutrality
Analytical Mindset
Conviction