You may have noticed that in my blog posts, I tend not to talk directly about the political stories that you see in the news. My preference is to post about the things that you don’t see in the news. Found art, surreal events, philosophical ruminations, science-fictional concepts, notes on the craft of writing, day-to-day beauty found within the real life unfolding around me.
Whenever I see a news story, my first thought is: Why do “they” want me to think about this? Who are “they”? An age-old question. The one-percenters, the media barons, the commercial interests, sure. I’ve always felt that there’s no essential difference among the three elements of TV: (1) News, (2) Ads, and (3) Entertainment. All are selling fear of death, lust for glamour, and a desire to buy.
Having known a lot of politically active friends over the years, I’d also suggest that the news-cycle-spinning “they” also includes the political junkies and those with a perpetual longing for a distraction from daily life. “I can’t clean up the house while XXX are suffering in YYY!”
There’s always something terrible going on…somewhere…and I don’t like to give consensus-reality’s bad news a majority of my mind. I only have the one life—must I spend all of it waiting for when it’s officially okay to be happy?
Restating my position one more time: all news is in one way or another a lie, a hype, a scam, and a distraction from the warm human faces and the gnarly nature of the now moment.
So that’s why I avoid getting into political threads on Rudy’s Blog. I want it to be “about” the neglected topics other than the concerns shoved down our throats by the media and the countermedia news.
Long live transfinite mountains, the hollow earth, time machines, fractal writing, aliens, dada, telepathy, flying saucers, warped space, teleportation, artificial reality, robots, pod people, hylozoism, endless shrinking, intelligent goo, antigravity, surrealism, software highs, two-dimensional time, gnarly computation, the art of photo composition, pleasure zappers, nanomachines, mind viruses, hyperspace, monsters from the deep and, of course, always and forever, the attack of the giant ants!
January 31st, 2012 at 10:03 am
Accurate, but an extra dimension is filler. If there is nothing to post on a blog or G+, nothing is posted. However, 30 minutes of “something” will be extruded during a TV newscast, so sometimes its literally just fluffy filler, not trying for FUD or astroturfing or meaningless feel good, merely here is something other than dead air. Kind of like indigestible fiber in a digestive tract. I would estimate less than 10% of nightly network news is filler, but it approaches 25% on our local news.
January 31st, 2012 at 10:38 am
Thank you for this inspiration. It reminds me of this Red Hot Chili Peppers song: “Throw away your television, take the news off your ambition, reinvent your intuition…”
January 31st, 2012 at 10:43 am
Rudy,
Long live “Transgnostic SF”… I saw the term in my friend Andy’s copy of Semiotexte SF this past Friday when I went over for a visit … what a tome! That’s one to track down, as I’m guessing it’s not going to be reprinted anytime soon): (I just recently got copies of your two books from 2011 though!:)
Thanks for keeping this space clean of dream adverts and propaganda. Thanks for filling it with quantum agitprop and intergalactic goop.
Justin (where the overconnected slime molds drip between realities).
January 31st, 2012 at 8:01 pm
Vince, you do have a point that the “filler” pieces in TV news are less objectionable, although they do tend to be slanted towards alarm in many cases. But pure filler, yes, that’s what we really want.
I find much the same situation in history. The courses talk about politics, wars, and kings, and what you really want to hear is the filler about everyday life. Or at least the history of art, science, literature or bars, burlesque, and bowling. Filler is where it’s at.
January 31st, 2012 at 8:03 pm
Justin and Benoit, glad you are on the wavelength. Speaking of SEMIOTEXT(E) SF, I remember Bruce Sterling saying that his MIRRORSHADES antho was the palace revolution while SEMIOTEXT(E) SF was the accompanying street demonstration.
February 1st, 2012 at 4:13 am
I’m hoping the Ant virus or ChipMold comes along soon.
February 1st, 2012 at 5:33 am
And this is why my RSS feed includes your blog and not any of the news services: I want poke my mind into gnarly thoughtspaces, and then I want to get back to watching clouds and laughing with family and friends.
February 2nd, 2012 at 12:32 am
That’s why I read here! News you can read ona newspaper-page – if you want.
February 17th, 2012 at 12:18 pm
Even the decision to be apolitical is a political one.
What a great comfort to think that all the “bad news” of the world is a fabrication. The only reality is my comfortable, groovy life in the US.