A glimmering of thought

It just occurred to me, as I'm listening to piano renditions of Disney songs set to a crackling fire, that the "wish upon a star" song has some truly horrifying implications. Specifically, the song clearly states that "no matter who you are". This would imply that even the most evil of villains could wish upon said stars and also get their dreams made reality. Also, what if two conflicting wishes are wished? I would assume the good side would win out, but how would that look? So many stories seem to fall apart when you look closely at the logic...

I was sifting through some of my boxes that clutter my room just now (I've moved so many times now that I don't really ever unpack so much as move various boxes about and pick the ((mainly)) books out that I want), and I came across a few old notebooks. Apart from the dozen or so old journals, of which I'm a little scared to look back through as I was at the peak of anxiety/depression/teen angst, I found one that looks to be maybe a dozen pages or so of fic, poetry, and musings. The one entry near the end dates it back to '02, which is right when Smallville came out and I found myself in a creative burst writing on a message board and writing various small ficlets. Several of the pages in the old journal were such.

It's...odd, reading old things one has written, particularly when you don't remember ever writing it. It's equal parts cringe mixed with interest and respect for my ideas and vocabulary (the latter has sadly dwindled somewhat). Despite a few edits I would quickly make to some of the sappiness or OOC-ness of my Clark (a bit too much Mary Sue), I am quite proud of my past self. It's pleasant to realize that my past self was not as inadequate as I often felt or, as I sometimes think I was.

The only issue I find myself with, apart from suddenly wanting to improve my overall written vocabulary here, is that my past self ended several stories with the page instead of with a proper end to the vignette. I several times turned the page to find what I next written, only to discover that I had not. Curses! Ending stories has always been the hardest part for me, but I find it most vexing to discover that it plagues me not only when written, but later when read as well. At least I can be grateful that, though at times a little...lame? my writing could be, it is still intriguing and captivating. They could almost be writing prompts, come to think of it: short stories meant to spur others (or myself) into an interesting direction.

I don't often think of how much I wrote during that period around the first two seasons of Smallville. The community on the message boards was lively and crazy fun, not to mention boundless in its creativity. I only ever started my livejournal all those years ago because everyone else was hopping on. And my longest friend to date is one I met there when I asked for her aid in proofing one of my fics. But anyway, I wrote so much during those two years. It was a bit of a perfect confluence of timing, free time, budding creativity, anxious energy (an oddly effective creative source), interest, and the perfect place to so do. The explosion of message boards, an interesting new take on a favorite superhero, a major crush on both lead actresses, similarly interested people, and a limitless potential (sadly much wasted) for where it could all go -- these all lead to a most fecund soil for writing and communicating. I partly wish at times I could have a log of some of those old threads we would take part in, though only partly.

It was so much fun, the time between episodes, particularly the winter and summer breaks when things had ended on a cliffhanger and we were left with nothing but time to fuel our imaginations and creative juices. I can't tell you how many amazing stories came about during those lulls, nor how many I wish were not lost to both myself and internet. Good ol' salad days, eh? I did not write terribly many fics that I actually posted, but I still wonder how many are gone forever. I have, thankfully, been somewhat decent at keeping backups of old files, but due to a number of sudden computer failures over the years, cannot be certain of how many have not survived. Having transferred my livejournal here, I do also have all those things saved as well, which is cool.

It's a bit funny, looking back on old writings. Like I said before, there are equal parts cringe and respect. There's also that faint pall of wondering what happened since. Dang, but I could be so funny! Of course, there's a real possibility that a good deal of my drive then was depression and anxiety manifesting; if this is so, then I'm okay not being as eloquent or interesting. Still, reading the old journal made me plop a notebook on my nightstand in case I have something to write. I've known for a while now that I'm a mimic at heart: when I see someone doing something cool, I want to join in and do so as well. When I was roommate with an artist, I ended up drawing quite a bit. Amusing to find myself inspired by my very own self, but a few years removed. Thanks, me!

So what's the deal with all the russian language on this and other web journals? I find it odd that english and russian seem to be the only main languages represented in the journaling community in general. English I get, because duh, it's mine and know my own culture well enough to hazard a few guesses as to why we find it so popular. I do not, however, know the Russian culture, nor why they seem to enjoy blogging as much as we. Perhaps more poignantly, why are there no other languages represented in things such as trending terms? Are there other major journals/blogs about that cater to specific country web suffixes, so I'm just speeding on by them without being aware? I can guess there is a Chinese equivalent or two behind the great firewall, which none of us would ever, ever want to use due to stringent speech policies, but what of other places? Dreamwidth.fr or some such?

Also, if perhaps there are specific language sites for journaling and whatnot, why still so much of the Russian bloggers? There is a mystery here, perhaps easily solved, and I am intrigued. I love languages and mysteries, so this seems apt.

I have an idea that I want to keep for future writin'. Simply put, I was thinking how we sometimes like the sky to a sea/ocean of stars, and it made me ponder what that would be like, to have it be a literal sea upon which to sail. Liquid sky, stars pouring over the oars, stuff like that.

I had an idea pop into my head as I was watching The Fifth Element just now (best movie ever, and anyone who says differently is a damn liar). Specifically, when the enemy is destroyed and is now in earth orbit and looks like a second moon. It made me wonder if it implies that earth's moon is itself a previous evil that got spanked. I love those stories where you read through it thinking you're on some foreign planet, some distant world, and in the very end, the reveal is that it really is earth after all. Think Planet of the Apes, but backward, is my thought; where it's the past and the future is the good one, or something. I love the reveal of the uncommon being the common, or vice-versa. I love the idea of there being no moon until the very end, or there being like three of them and somehow two get destroyed. It's the tale of how did we get here, but done in some new imaginative way. I also love the ones where it seems to be a very advanced civilization, perhaps imploding on itself or in someway coming undone, and in the end it turns out to be the far past and we have no idea that it ever existed. One of my most beloved games reveals near the end that history as they know it is not the original one; that at some point in the future, a research lab was sent into the far past, where it engineered the very structure of the continents. And when an accident occurred, all the future people were forced to go out and inhabit this world, becoming in only a few short generations the early cavemen that were to be the progenitors of the entire human race, thus creating one of those terribly fun time paradoxes.

Thinking of all this makes me want to write something similar, though I'm not entirely sure what. I just have this mental picture of a very young earth with three or five moons, or perhaps even ringed with moons, or something, and a very advanced society that can easily be mistaken for the far future. I picture a villain growing extremely powerful and changing the face of everything, in the end leaving the earth more along the lines of what we know now. I'm not sure whether I would want to leave it so that nothing whatsoever remains, or if the stuff somehow over time slags into the clay pots and such that we find now, or even if there are remains to be found, but only much further in the future; say if we're digging to the earth's core and discover it to me artificial, or surrounded by an enormous machine used for power. It's all terribly exciting to think about.

Slashdot linked to a rather interesting article (which itself links to another article, woo), regarding the state of the modern intellect and the effect the internet has had on our cognitive processes. Mostly it's a guy commenting, but he brought up some interesting points, and the conversation threads on Slashdot regarding said article has given me much to think about.

The basic argument a lot of people make is that while our general memorization skills have dramatically dwindled, that's not necessarily a bad thing, because the internet now gives us instant access to most any knowledge we could ever want. In essence, the internet has become the extension to our memory. Thus, the new form of intelligence is not necessarily focus on how much you can recall, but how well you can process and sort knowledge coming in from the internet. I disagree with this argument to an extent, and try to remember every bit of information that I can. However, I do agree that the ability to process is now a highly important skill to basic functioning.

However, there is a very large problem with this whole idea. The problem is that most people are actually using these enormous quantities of information in any sort of intelligent manner. They are not learning even the basic methods of sifting and sorting. If anything, this instant access to knowledge has made people far lazier and more stupid than ever before. It's as if the very possibility of accessing the knowledge is enough for people. I realize I'm generalizing, but it's a generalization based on my observations of many friends. And what I see is a distinct lack of interest in learning, or even finding things out. It's already out there, so they figure it's not important for them to look it up themselves. So not only do people not bother to learn the new skills, they don't even have the same amount of personally learned information that people used to have.

What the net has done is to make people lazy and complacent, and that is a terrible place to be in, especially when our connection is so very tenuous. If you've ever had the net cut out unexpectedly, you know just how much basic information you suddenly lose. You forget how to do even simple things because you can find it all online, so when it's gone, you suddenly find a number of tasks that you can't remember how to do anymore. So what happens if a large group of people suddenly lose this connection? Nothing but empty heads, bumping into each other...

Every time I look at my list of people I have friended and been friended by here, I realize just how few of them actually regularly post (yet somehow still remain active; is there no expiration date on ljs?), if at all. It then, inevitably, strikes me that much time has passed since I have spoken with this or that person, for various reasons. It makes me sad, to be sure, but it also makes me think about how easy it is to forget about people. Not just forget about them really, but forget the facts about them. Things they like, things they've told me and I them, their history and such. It's a bizarre feeling when you realize that certain people you were, once, at least minor friends with, have become nearly complete strangers again. As I have only my own mind to work with, I do not know whether this is a common occurrence with most people, or whether this is yet another peculiar quirk of my mind (I swear I have a memory like a sieve some times). I suppose that it does happen to us all to some degree. We return for a school reunion years later and discover we barely remember half the people we used to know. Still...
***

On an aside, I must say that I am having an on-going struggle with the use of semi-colons. I get the general gist of semi-colon use, but malheureusement (unfortunately), I do not quite have the same inherent, and natural, grasp of them as I have of most other english speech. Either I didn't read enough books with semi-colon usage to have picked up the how-to, or, uh, something. The problem I keep running into is that I very much feel that most of my sentences are not quite complete and need the semi-colon to continue, but I can't very well have nothing but semi-colons bounding about. Tisn't proper. I should get my hands on a copy of Pure Drivel again sometime. There's that one excerpt of Martin's where he uses only a single period in a rather large bit of writing, while still managing to keep the whole thing grammatically correct. Pure genius.

Okay, so I get absolutely, furiously annoyed every time John Mayer's song Waiting On the World to Change starts to play. I used to think it was a pretty song, and I guess it still kind of is, but I simply cannot listen to its inane, and utterly retarded lyrics anymore. I don't really have the proper adjectives to describe just how foolish and empty-headed the message is. Does he know nothing of history? How can you not even notice what happened in the sixties, when massive changes occurred because the people would not sit back and wait? Waiting on the world to change? Give me a break. Hardly anything in this world ever gets better by waiting for it. It is the nature of most all systems to degrade without energy or effort put into it. It is as much true of physics as it is of social systems. Most all of the world's best changes have come about as a direct result of some small group of people, with often little power, who stood up and took a stand. How can you not realize that sitting back and waiting only ends with something worse than when you started? We have many examples from our very own history, such as black rights and womens' rights specifically because people, who felt as if they had no power to change things, didn't care and kept on moving until they did change things. Oh John Mayer, how could you know so little. He who stands for nothing will fall for anything.

I've been mulling over a question in my head for the past few days and figured I should put it down before it slips away. The question is whether it matters whether a true and good message comes from an evil, bad, or really hypocritical person/source, and more importantly, whether it should matter.

The first part is an easier answer to swallow for most, and the answer is that yes, the source of a message does matter to most everyone. It doesn't matter how important, useful, or critical a message may be, most people tend to mostly to completely reject it if we dislike or distrust the source it comes from, even if the source is only repeating the message. It is often nearly instinctual with us anymore. We don't like the messenger, we ignore the message.

The second part is slightly more difficult, though more because we don't want to follow it. Also, it can sometimes depend on the situation. Anyway, the thing is, as long as the message is truly a good one, and we can verify that it is true, then the source should not matter much. Granted, if a person/source is malevolent, the message can be twisted or be completely misrepresented, so the verification of the message is pivotal. Yet, this too points to the message being important, both for verifying and for listening to if true.

I never really thought much on the subject, but I've been reading through the book of matthew the last few nights, and some of the things Jesus said stuck in my mind. The most memorable was in talking of the pharisees and rabbis. He said very clearly that the people should obey what they said and not follow their examples. The religious leaders were, to some extent anyway, instructing the people in the word of God in what was right, but were themselves hypocrites and white-washed tombs. So basically, Jesus said that when the message or teaching is right, but the teacher is wrong, it is no excuse for us to ignore the message. Food for thought I think.

* 2/17/08
I would now add that the source does indeed matter, for Jesus himself demanded demons into silence and would cast them out of people when they would try to speak the truth, that he was the Christ. But again, I suppose much depends on the situation and the subject matter.

You know, this whole uproar about illegal immigrants and multiple languages has gotten me thinking on the subject. Honestly, as in most things, I can see both sides of the issue, though I think I may be swaying more one way than the other. I have honestly no opinion about deporting the illegal immigrants, though I think it's not really feasible at this point. However, I do seem to have a thought about the whole language issue. On the one hand, it's almost cruel not to try to help people understand the basic necessities of life. When any of us travels to another country, we expect a certain level of understanding and help. However, when we want to live in another country, we're expected to at least try to learn the language (it does help that english is currently pretty much the common language of the world).

I think it's rather arrogant of anyone to come live in a country and then expect the country to start drastically changing everything to fit you. I definitely think it too arrogant if someone disobeys the law of a given country, sneaks in illegally, and then has the gall to expect the country to change for it. In the case of the U.S., I really don't know how fair our immigration laws are, but they are still laws, and as such, should be honored. I don't think we should flat out say english is the official language, completely removing all spanish language assistance, but I do think it's rather ridiculous that we have to go out of our way for their convenience.

I acknowledge that there is an increasingly larger population of perfectly legal mexicans, but I also know that there's a population of what, several million?, illegal immigrants here as well. I think it's a perfectly rational assumption that when one comes to another country, one tries to learn the language. I don't know though. It just seems to me that something's not right with every option.

What I do know, and this is just my personal feelings on the matter, is that I dislike a group of people moving to where I live and demanding that I accommodate them by learning their language and adding it to everything I do or make. I also don't appreciate the attitude I've gotten on several occasions, the one where basically someone barely knows enough english to carry out my request or order, and then gives the attitude that they don't care and I'm lucky just to get that. Though I suppose that's more dicks being dicks. A dick is a dick in any language.