Chiki-Ta

Hahaha, only 10 people in the world probably know what that means. But that's ok, I'm fine with being one of them. I have informed the other to blog while he's gone, as well as write new songs. He said he is looking to blog, but probably will start up a new technology blog. He's always been down with the tech, but with his coding skills, he is looking to blog more about that sort of thing. So it may be the case that I'm the one left holding Anarchy Inside My Mind in my arms, and that's cool. Maybe there'll be an overhaul in terms of looks and comments at some point in the future, but we'll see. I need more time to get that sort of thing done. The other also doesn't have a guitar overseas, so he may be making more electronica based industrial music so we'll see what he comes up with.


I'm still getting on with guitar and having a great time. Playing my own stuff is so much more rewarding than playing other stuff. I'll fix up my rig setup and record stuff and get some overdubs in. I'm tired, but I will get by with plodding on with work. I have two major projects to get through over the next 2 months and hoepfully after that I can work towards getting out of here.


I read an absolutely riveting piece on the New York Times yesterday by Andrea Elliott. It concerned a girl called Dasani and her family in New York (Brooklyn specifically), who are living in absolutely abject poverty, and their struggle to survive. It paints an intimate portrait of the cycle of poverty, drug use and dysfunction faced by african american communities in large cities in America, and how gentrification is working to screw people over. If it was a no hoper family or what not, I wouldn't care, but Dasani, an 11 year old girl, oldest child to drug addict parents, shows profound intelligence and insight for someone her age. She has the potential for academic brilliance, and she is gifted with incredibly unnatural athletic abilities for someone of her age and size. In a perfect world, she would be anyone who could accomplish anything, but due to her circumstances, she's trapped in a cycle of responsibility she shouldn't have to shoulder, complicated relationships with her parents, and a school lacking resources to help her, and a variable housing situation. Can she rise above it and be someone? Or will she, like so many others fall prey to her circumstances?


The expose was huge, I don't even know how big it was. I discovered it near the end of the work day yesterday and I was so transfixed I finished very late while I got to the end of the article. It was a great read, pulitzer prize winning material. It talked about gentrification and the failure of the New York City Government to tackle homeless and poverty issues. But it gradually stopped being a feature piece and got a bit into opinion territory with a (probably justified) cricticism of government policies. I don't think Journalism should work in that way. The issue is that a lot of journalists are putting their own authority on a piece and passing that off as fact, instead of just reporting on objective points. That's the problem with news today, as well as the rapid news cycle and the struggle to get ratings and hits - nobody checks sources, and sensationalist stories and celebrity scandals are now the lead out bits. The tail end of the news from 10 years ago is now the stuff all the news is comprised of. Places like news.com.au devote too much space to scouring the web for things like lifehacks, youtube videos, trends and what not. That stuff is not news, it is fluff, and that's what the majority of their news is. Since the NYT story has made waves (there were some great comments on there), there's no doubt that Dasani's family will get the help they so desperately need, but the question is what about the others? For every Dasani, there's probably 10 more we don't hear about. What about their story? Anyway, it was moving and the best feature I've ever read, without a doubt.


It reminds me of what I saw in Vancouver when I was visiting friends earlier this year. My friend took me to Granville and Main Street, and it is just insane. One side of the street is ultra hipster, rich WASP-y idiots who pay outrageous amounts for internationally sourced coffee and breads, and ther $1 million+ brickhouses, and on the other is the homeless, the drug addicts, the prostitutes. How does this happen? Gentrification only serves to sweep the homeless away from the city and price them out of previously affordable markets. It's insidious colonialism of the new order. It artifically raises property values and communities aren't really helped. People think the problem has gone away, but the issue is that it's just not as visible in the areas you tend to frequent. We walked past the club areas and there were so many homeless kids, teenagers in sleeping bags out on the street in big groups for protection. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. How naive am I? We had just spent the past 2 hours walking through all these waterfront properties in the exclusive part of town, and in the same suburb was this issue. And nobody cares. What does it say about us? We are an awful species, we don't deserve to survive.


I read the comments on the article out of interest, and it had a really good swathe of viewpoints. Conservative, liberal, middle of the road, violent, racist, everything. But one thing that bothered me was the number of comments relating to how Dasani's family was obtaining so much money yet still squandering it. People were saying "these people make more money than I make in a year". Well that may be true, but I bet the keyboard warriors don't have 8 children to look after. I bet those keyboard warriors don't have a drug dependency. I bet those keyboard warriors aren't crippled by a lack of education on financial matters. They are actually motivated by profit and jealousy. They say what they say because they only wish they had that amount of money. They are angry and jealous over people who live in poverty? That just goes to show how badly the middle class is failing. When the middle class has lost touch with the upper class, the middle class acts out, and will treat the lower class with utter disdain. They want someone to rule over. They want someone to chastise. If they're not careful, the future middle class will bear all the negative hallmarks of the upper class, without the money.


There's an often repeated quote about time travel - if it exists, why haven't we been overrun with visitors from the future? I've always pondered that, and I have a number of explanations. One: we are living in the primary timeline - the first, and we can't go any further in time. We can only go backwards from this point. Second is that if we do go back in time, the same atoms that comprise you can't exist again in the same world. Therefore you would go to another dimension. But going forward in time posts a lot of other issues. It means we have no free will, because determinism becomes a factor and it means the future can be decided if you can place yourself further in time than you are now. But I've thought about it, and I think I would prefer to go backward in time. I always talk about going to the future and seeing how far we have come and what advances we've made. But think about it, what would the world be like now to someone who is from the middle ages? Or from the BC timeframe? They wouldn't be able to comprehend what's going on. They would also be incredibly stupid. Why would you go forward in time and become that stupid person? In the past you can use your knowledge of future events for self-serving purposes at least. And with better education levels, you would be a genius and you could alter the course of history. Now that would be a pretty sweet deal!


But there is a whole other level of the Universe that we can't interpret or monitor. The very essence of what forms us and how it interacts with outside forces (dark matter, dark energy etc) is a true mystery to us. We can't experience the universe in that way in our current form because of physical constraints. But what if after death you're free from those physical constraints and you're suddenly aware and PART of that mystery? Maybe life and consciousness is overrated. That's a scientific system there, it could be based in fact.


Ahhh, the gym has been good. Made it 4 days in a row now. Tomorrow will determine if I can make it to my full 6 day quota. The thing about Saturday sessions is that you magically get all these ridiculously attractive girls in there who you've never seen before. How can they stay in shape when they go to the gym one day per week? And they don't really exercise? They just move about at a snail's pace?! It's a whacky world out there, I tell you. But I've been enjoying the view from my usual weekday sessions. There's a new girl with a dynamite body who runs, albeit slowly. I always have a mini heart attack whenever she pulls up her top to wipe the sweat from her face and reveals her sports bra and her toned torso and abs.


Don't mind me, just daydreaming about folk from the internet who I don't even know in real life! Hahahaha. Ahhh.


Another interesting thing I'm finding lately is this whole phenomenon of the angry white girl. They are just as bad as the typical angry white male, because angry white girls feel it is their moral duty and responsibility to be offended by absolutely everything. Sexism? Of course. Racism? Somehow. Inequality? Why yes! What strikes me as hilarious is that the angry white girl in question is typically well educated, probably attended a private or selective school, has gone to university, and has a well paying job. How is she being denied anything? How is she oppressed? This is misplaced entitlement at its sickest. The angry white girl mindset is disgusting because it is placed in an epistomology that (without acknowledging it) comes from a racist, colonialist, and an 'I'm always right' mentality. There is no sense of open-mindedness, and it's just as bad as the conservative view point.


I'm trying to look busy here! Damn, this has been one hell of an effort here and it's still early morning! Not bad at all!


What good is a person's word? Promises are broken all the time. And the times, they are a changin' my friend. Ahh, just 2 hours to go until I'm out of here. I'm still steadily getting by with work. I'm pretty tired and unmotivated, though. I've really gotta get away from the screens in my life. I just want to read.


With this heculean effort, I'm done for the day.


Joaquin out.