David Innes resides in Perth, Western Australia with his cat called Benton. This blog is a place of creative writing and an outlet of random thoughts which might make some sense, somewhere...to someone.
Anyone can write a post on the internet and
claim anything about someone or something. They can distort, exclude,
exaggerate, insult, defame and such without any consequence or accessible
rebuttal to the reader viewing that page.
For example - I could make a claim about
someone or something today, here on this post and a reader could come along and see it,
concluding that what I’ve said is absolutely true.
This is a problem with the internet.
Fact checking has gone out the window. I
saw it on a blog post or a 5 minute you tube video or I read an article by a
random self-proclaimed writer…and that’s all I need. The truth isn’t really
important, just the tidbits of information for one to devour quickly, simply
and easily.
The fast food news feed is all one needs.
The assumption is why would they lie? Why
would it be untrue? Surely someone has fact checked the information, hence it’s
“published” on this webpage or that website. If this was the case, really the
case…then places claiming UFOs are real, reptilians walk among us or there is
a pyramid on the moon might just be true!
Seriously though, many people have been
defamed and misrepresented on the internet and despite asking for recall, it
still exists, And thus it proclaims to the world – it must be true cause you
can “google it”.
In Europe you have the ability to make
places like Google alter the search data giving you more control over your
privacy should misinformation or disinformation become part of the internet.
Unfortunately, the rest of the world has not caught up with this revolutionary
idea.
So just remember folks, the internet can be
full of misinformation…after all, the data on the world wide web was created by
humans - those mischievous creatures!
Fondest Regards,
David "cleaning up the net" Innes
from the beautiful city of Perth, Western Australia
YouTube presented me with a selection of videos with such titles as Ultimate Fails for June 2015 and Epic Fails for 2013. These videos, upon playing them, revealed a montage of human stupidity at both it's amazing heights and it's subtle lows.
Many things occurred to me during the visual spectacle of loud anguish, tickled laughter and the groans of mutual understanding that only sights of pain can deliver.
Firstly; one can only imagine the great savings that would be made to the various Health Services, if all of these creatively thick people simply didn't. Just didn't. Just said no!
Secondly; why aren't those rolling boards of destruction, these "Skate Boards", banned? How many more displaced bones and flesh ripping cement licks does it take before we recommend more PlayStation or X-Box time?
There are simply too many videos, too many people, to suggest that these are just a bunch of rare random occurrences by simple lay men. It paints a bleak picture of humankind's collective intelligence.
Perhaps the Pyramids were built by Aliens after all...
NEXT WEEK:Reptilians?! Are they behind the Global Economic Crisis? Fondest Regards
David "Hoping for Humanity" Innes Next to his cat in Perth, Western Australia
Some peeps dare suggest it's a bad thing or at least an activity that is unbecoming of someone in said maturity to play video games.
Yes, there is quiet mocking, perhaps gentle laughter...certainly behind the door snickering; kids play games after all - not us busy, mature, and sensible adults.
Piffle I retort!
Why wouldn't one indulge in a realm where one can fly as a dragon, battle a legion of the undead, rescue a town from an invading army, complete missions for a royal family and even levitate objects around oneself with arcane magic.
Or perhaps to spend some time to adventure into the endless expanse of space where one can mine, refine and assemble a variety of raw materials to creatively construct one's very own space ship.
To then, given the time, enter a virtual place where one can jump in the some of the world's most expensive vehicles and race around open roads with others or perhaps adorn my military boots and fight endless rounds of warfare in tanks, helicopters, planes and on the ground amidst the explosions.
And yes, one might even budget an hour over the weekend to head off to an island where there dinosaurs roam and play.
I mean why suffer the banality of bars, pubs and nightclubs having to endure marching through the traffic of people and their polluting automobiles in the city? Why travel to pay the inflated costs at restaurants when that microwave over there can provide all the low cost meals I can devour, including popcorn...oh my goodness, the popcorn!
And why oh why, during my precious weekend would I want to spend time pandering to the competitive world of "crap, I just broke my ankle" sports...
No sir! Give me my mouse and keyboard worlds any day. In particular, this Friday.
Warmest wishes,
David "Gaming Nerd" Innes From the foothills in Perth
This new generation seems to have developed an allergic
reaction to the grand language to which we all take for granted.
From participation in chat rooms, bombardment of the twitter-sphere,
and the casual preoccupation with SMSing; I have taken note the complete disrespect
towards the use of punctuation, grammar, spelling and the use of capitals.
Now, sure – I’ve probably made mistakes in my previous posts
and indeed fallen prey to err in this rant, however I can claim to at least make the effort.
No doubt
I’ve forgotten some of the principles to the elegant use of the English language,
but not to the point that my next sentence would look this…
wen i want 2 say sumthin i just 4get da need ta use any off
it word 2 ya mumma
Sure we could argue it’s still legible to understand but
would it have been all that hard to press the SHIFT key a couple of times, use
a comma, click on available spellchecker or for the love of all things beautiful, re-read
it before one pressed SENT.
Apparently not.
I too understand the need to reduce the amount of text you
wish to send due to the limitations of certain mediums…such as the maximum of 140
characters per tweet.
But does “Hey, check out this picture of a Koala hugging a
tree last Tuesday when I went to Caversham Wildlife Park in Perth http://imgur.com/a/zU5sH” have to end up
looking like:
check out da pic of me huggin a koala lol in da park ftw!!!!!!
Is taking offence to something a subjective experience? Could it be said finding something offensive is just a personal choice?
It certainly appears that what others find gravely offensive can also not be considered by another group as such. Or indeed, what was deemed to be offensive by past generations is no longer
considered to be such today.
For Example: You are a bloody idiot and your mother wears
army boots.
“I find that insulting” a cry is heard. “My goodness! That
is just simply offensive” an exclamation is made. “How dare you say such a
thing” cries another. “Wont somebody think of the children!” shrills a woman.
What! A woman you say? Oh sure. It would be a woman that shrills about
children. Women aren’t the only ones who get hysterical you sexist pig!!
Pig? How dare you label him as a pig? That is simply rude! Pigs
are mighty fine animals. Unlike boorish chauvinists, pigs provide us with a
diverse range of products from insulin to delicious bacon to go with my eggs on
a Sunday morn…
Oh my GAWD! Eating bacon is simply evil. As a vegan I find
your eagerness to murder and devour innocent life horrendously offensive and a direct
crime against nature itself! It’s people like you that make this world a
tremendously wicked place to live in.
People like you? It is that kind of hurtful generalization which fuels the hatred of xenophobic "us and them" divisions! I demand a retraction of your words via an apologetic admission of guilt in a
form of a novel for everyone on this planet to approve.
What? Just everyone on this Planet? What about life on other
planets you…you other-planet-species-ist! Your disregard of what other life forms feel
or think outside this planet is deeply disturbing. We demand a committal hearing
of epic proportions, to accommodate new laws, to prevent further outlandish
remarks from being uttered, against potentially possible existing life forms,
that may or may not understand, the pure bigotry of which you so casually utter
within infinite space.
Something has just happened…something tragic. It’s hard to reconcile how this could have occurred.
There just has to be more to it than this.
It
simply doesn't make any sense in this day and age. The information at hand seems incomplete.
Did it really happen as they said it did?
Surely someone could have done something, anything…so why didn't they? If only they had.
Those bastards! It appears that there is more to this than meets the eye. That piece of information was wrong, they clearly lied about that…though they told the truth there. The media says one thing then tells us something different…and the government claims not to know.
Cover up? But why? Of course. Join the dots, follow the clues and confirm what was known all along! They don’t want us to know, because they are guilty! Clearly!!!!
Something needs to be done to expose all this!
An Independent media needs to be created to inform the ignorant masses; to encourage the misled. To reveal the truth at last! To empower the passive herd to take action against the tyranny that oppressing them all through the blankets of lies! To remove the systematic control of our freedoms! To release ourselves from the strings of the puppet masters! To clear the smoke and smash those mirrors! To destroy our reptilian overlords and the genocidal shadowy elite that enslaves us all!
Or…
Perhaps we can all just chill out...and admit..."shit just happens".
Do you find conversations hard to maintain when one utilizes
interesting vocabularies that the other(s) involved in the discussion have
little or no understanding of?
You know...when one uses "big words".
Or does one find that linguistic gymnastics are sometimes
required to articulate collaborating points when addressing a dissertation
about an inquisitive topic when others have trouble reaching an agreement?
In other words…finding the right words to politely end the
argument?
Sure one could just nod in passive acknowledgement with a
“Yes, yes – quite right…say, how about the weather we've been having?”
directing a more mute topical shift. Or
yes indeed, one could simply announce a statement of “You sir are a buffoon!”
and proceed to walk away into the other direction.
But more often than not, do you...like me, feel obliged to
proceed into a flurry of words in order to prove some point, that clearly has
become an exceptional necessity to establish, before one can end the discussion
politely or otherwise?
Well…if you answered that with the affirmative; may I offer
an extension of endearing heart felt sympathies towards you and your inter-personal
conversational involvements with others.
However if you have no idea what the hell is going on in this post; I shall end by saying ever so politely..."Isn't spring just wonderful!"
Having a moment of quiet reflection, looking back at the history of ones existence with mature, aged and refined eyes, we pause to contemplate..."honestly, what the jumping kangaroos expletive, was I thinking?!"
Ah, the magnificence of hindsight...
"It seemed like a good idea at time", we might say to consul ourselves. Or alternatively, and perhaps more harshly, one can be tempted to blurt "My goodness, I was an idiot" as if one is now non-idiot-able.
Yes, the comforting tones of blame. "Had that not been, it would not have been!" we'll scream in defiant judgement, cleansing ourselves of the folly.
But why do we entertain conversations with hindsight? Can we really rely on the superhero of "should have known better" to help improve our future selves from folly and errs?
Afterall, where was the bastard during those moments we now regret?
Oh sure, he has all the wisdom of answers now...but how does that help? And no doubt, when one makes future reflective mistakes, the bloody blighter wont be there either! No, as usual he'll swoop down to save the day after the day has long gone and inform us of how he would have done it better.
The below transcript is from an interesting and inspiring talk given by Sam Harris back in April, 2012 at the Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre. "Sam Harris is a Co-Founder and CEO of Project Reason, a non-profit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. He received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA."
I actually want to talk today about death. Now most of us do our best to not to think about death but there's always part of our minds that knows this can't go on forever. Part of us always knows that we're just a doctor's visit away or a phone call away from being starkly reminded with the fact of our own mortality or of those closest to us.
Now I'm sure many of you in this room have experienced this in some form. You must know how uncanny it is to suddenly be thrown out of the normal course of your life and just be given the full time job of not dying or caring for someone who is.
But the one thing people tend to realize at moments like this is that they wasted a lot of time when life was normal. And it's not just what they did with their time. It's not just that they spent too much time working or or compulsively checking email. It's that they cared about the wrong things. They regret what they cared about. Their attention was bound up in petty concerns year after year when life was normal.
And this is a paradox of course because we all know this epiphany is coming. I mean, don't you know this is coming? Don't you know there's going to come a day when you'll be sick or someone close to you will die and you'll look back at the kinds of things that captured your attention and you'll think, "what, what was I doing?"
You know this, and yet if you're like most people, you'll spend most of your time in life tacitly presuming you'll live forever. I mean it's like watching a bad movie for the fourth time or bickering with your spouse. These things only makes sense in light of eternity. There better be a heaven if we're gonna waste our time like this. There are ways to really live in the present moment. What's the alternative?
It is always now. However much you feel you may need to plan for the future to anticipate it, to mitigate risks, the reality of your life is now. This may sound trite but it's the truth.
It's not quite true as a matter of physics, in fact there is no now that encompasses the entire universe. You can't talk about an event being simultaneously occurring here and one at the same moment occurring in Andromeda.
The truth is, now is not even well-defined as a matter of neurology. Because we know that inputs to the brain come at different moments and that consciousness is built upon layers of inputs whose timing to have to be different. Our conscious awareness of the present moment is in some relevant sense already a memory.
But as a matter of conscious experience the reality of your life is always now.
And I think this is a liberating truth about the nature of the human mind. In fact I think there's probably nothing more important to understand about your mind than that if you want to be happy in this world. The past is a memory. It's a thought arising in the present. The future is merely anticipated, it is another thought arising now.
What we truly have is this moment. And this...and this...and we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth repudiating it, fleeing it, overlooking it. And the horror is that we succeed. We managed to never really connect with the present moment and find fulfillment there because we are continually hoping to become happy in the future and the future never arrives.
Now even when we think we're in the present moment we are, in very subtle ways, always looking over its shoulder anticipating what's coming next. We are always solving a problem and it's possible to simply drop your problem if only for a moment and enjoy whatever is true of your life in the present.
This is not a matter of new information or more information, it requires a change in attitude. It requires a change in the attentiveness you pay to your experience in the present moment.
Motivation to do things, one does not want to do, seems abundantly difficult to gather.
Name it...
If you aren't keen, passionate, salivating towards or even mildly interested in it - one wont do it. Or at the very least one struggles to do it.
However most of these motivational challenges are happily rejected with a lofty hand to shoo it away as the nuisance it appears to be.
Bah humbug I say to such shackles! To quote from Churchill:
"A pessimist sees the difficult in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
Drawing philosophical muster from the above World War 2 Prime Minister's self-help guidelines; I am focusing upon the seemingly difficult task to re-train my diet and exercise routines (or lack thereof) for the opportunity of improving my physical and mental health.
To get back into a shape other than a circle.
Not that there is anything wrong with circle shaped objects. After all whom am I to judge the bountiful roundness of spherical patterns? The cuddliest soft puffiness of extra circumference...no sir not I!
I stand before my reflection...empowered to transform it into a different shape. Like an artist imagining the creative possibilities of manipulating a mound of clay, refusing to stand idle with diametric resentments. Like an conservationist recycling wasteful materials in order to improve our industries into a progressive, stable, and better environmental future.
Or like a fat bastard who needs to shed some kilos.
.png "Webcam Photo of David Innes")
.jpg "David Innes hugging Valentine Day's Gift from Rochelle D'amato")
