Lady gagas uncanny valleys

   Anyway, so, I didnt really watch the vma awards or anything last night but I did accidentally see some of it on the news and two things stuck out to me . . .

nice . . . hat?

    First off, katy perry had a cube on her head. This made me think that maybe it was a model of a sodium chloride molecule. That was of course insane though! Who would have a giant salt molecule on their head! What was I thinking??? Turns out it was some mondrian(?) via dior crap. Ok so anyway the other thing was lady gaga . . .

umm, hi.

   She was doing her alter ego "jo calderone". The thing was I was watching it on mute when I saw this and I was like "who is this ugly little dude in the bad coat?". Then I realized it was lady gaga. As an aside, why the fuck does the "Jo Calderone" wiki redirect to lady gaga? Its not the same person! Also, thats it! Im not calling her lady gaga anymore! Im calling her stefani in order to differentiate her from her lady gaga alter ego and her Jo alter ego. Anyway I dont know why but when I realized jo was stefani the first thing to come to mind was the "uncanny valley" concept. It immediately made sense, this is why people are put off by lady gaga. All of these artists she references (stefani via gaga), all of these designers or whatever she wears are like some kind of bizzaro version of the modanna pop star people have come to expect and even admire. Lady ga is enough of a pop star to almost be a legit pop star but not enough to actually engender affection and empathy. Its not a real person, its a persona, lady gaga isnt stefani. Hence the whole "little monsters" thing. Almost human, but uncannily non human. It is this imprecise fulfillment of expectation that people are rejecting. Contrast the perceptions of lady gaga with the wholesome britney spears and her inevitable eventual breakdown into obscurity (totally genuine) or Xtina aguilera who started out kinda whorish but then went through a period of genuine redemption and then went into obscurity. There was also an instructive moment where britney didnt want to kiss Jo last night. Stefani playing gaga is some kind of bizzaro modanna. Kissing the genuine article was a sign of affection but jo on the other hand is a completely dissociated stefani. Some kind of human kludge. Inspiring revulsion.

*poke!*

    The constant reference and imitation however has another level as well in that stefani is consciously making this bizarre mishmash. Its not theft or repetition or even loss of the aura at all. Its a weird almost passive aggressive subversion of our expectations. Also, is this a play on the whole thing where people thought lady gaga was a cross dresser back in the day? Turns out she was cross dressing, but only as some kind of insane fashion/pop mishmash, not as a man (yet?). This reminds me of that superman commentary in kill bill 2 where bill (played by david carradine) talks about how clark kent was supermans loser alter ego, his critical examination of humanity. Is jo stefanis critique of men? Would it then follow that lady gaga was stefanis critique of pop and fashion? It seems to me not only plausible but almost mandatory. How do you reconcile the disassociation of your irl person with your media persona? Is lady gaga stefanis loser alter ego? Is this the "Fame monster"? Maybe if I actually listened to lady ga gas music rather than watching her on mute for 5 seconds id get someplace with this. I would tweet stefani but she would never respond. I dont know about lady gaga but stefani seems like she might actually be an interesting person to talk to . . . as long as she doesnt bring that grease ball jo around.

   So, I mean, lets just review; why do we even like celebrities again? They tell us who we are, they tell us how to act, they are our mirror and all of our nightmares and desires and loves all magnified x10 to a sort of pornographic unreality, an unreality but one that is still real enough to be arousing. Lets be really real then for a bit and try to describe the density of this grand trimulative. At some point stefani was actually lady gaga and maybe if you catch her on the right day of the week or when she is getting a little caught up with herself lady gaga is actually lady gaga but more or less at this point lady gaga is a self conscious creation of stefani. Gaga doesnt run away with stefani as she might of in the past. There is also this other character, Jo. Im sure there are a whole range of characters really, some of them very subtle, we all have them right? But stefani has this really overt one she does, lady gaga. In a sense gaga is stefanis own personal celebrity/pop star/fashion idol/mirror/doppelganger/whatever. Its stefani playing the role of a pop star in the hit new movie "LADY GAGA" starring lady gaga directed and written by stefani. Its like a thread that gets all knotted and then unravels and then gets knotted again. And if you think this sounds like self indulgent garbage, lady gaga may not be the one for you!

My libyan revolution image folder hit the one gig mark today

FIRST AS TRAGEDY, THEN AS FARCE

SUPRISE MOTHERFUCKAH!

 

FUCK YEAH FREE LIBYA

WHAT THE HELL AM I LOOKING AT?

   What exactly is wilderness? What is wild? What is a native environment? What is a national park? The more I sit around and ponder these things (and I do indeed sit and ponder at length) the more I cant come up with any answers. I dont mean I dont know the answer I just literally am starting to believe there is no answer. Wilderness is just one of these bizarre holdover colonial notions. Wild lands is land fundamentally freed of the influence of mankind, or some such. Yet all of these lands, any lands, on any continent aside from antarctica, have had human influence for thousands of years before so called "white" men found them. Was yosemite in a "natural" state before the europeans got there? Was it indeed so "wild" as we might imagine. There is no negligible influence on an environment. It is deterministic chaos, never in a constant state. Even the observation disturbs relationships. If then, if humans, "natives", existed in all of these "wild" "pristine" places then how is it that these environments where really untouched by man? You follow me on this? Like, humans are everywhere and have been long before european expansion and so every ecology is influenced by mankind to some extent. And the "wild" places untouched by man dont even exist. Only the environments that had been less impacted by sparse populations of natives rather than the more profound effects of europeans.

   Now, where does this put the national parks? We all know well and good you cant carve up an environment with roads or logging or mining and expect it to be unimpacted but even something so simple as aircraft flying overhead can impact environments. And as much as we might like to mitigate the effects of civilization (meaning "european" civilization, native civilization does not count as civilization in this queerly racist tract) we cannot but impact every environment as they are so interconnected. We might attempt to eliminate some type of grass or bug calling it "non native" but isnt this even more moralistic meddling on the part of mankind? At one point, say at the founding of this nation, the idea was that all "waste" land should be converted to productive land by the ax or the plough and made to serve the aims of mankind. Now however things are different we are more civilized and enlightened as to our own impacts on the environment. Now we have a notion that all land must remain "wild" or "native" or "pristine". As if it was untouched by man. By how do we accomplish this goal? Selective logging, controlled burns, controlled introduction of pests to pester our pests. Isnt this the same difference? Arnt we swinging the pendulum so far to the other side its back around where we started? Arnt we still introducing a bizarre and unnatural (lol) notion of morality and ethics to a more or less accidental (on purpose?) system, by which I mean nature.

   This is all so murky. "Wild", "wilderness", is it just a figment of our imagination? Invented to gratify our own notions of independence from and control of it? All of these notions of ours are inconsequential to the reality of the thing itself. What the hell is a national park? A zoos writ large? A weekend retreat? Historical reenactment for landscape architects and environmentalists? To what end do we preserve the presence of wolves in yosemite? Is this just another notion of "productive" land? Isnt that equally tenuous? How far do we "rehabilitate" a native environment and at what cost? Centuries ago ireland was covered with oaks but after centuries of logging (THANKS ENGLISH!) it was deforested. Now however its the emerald isle, celebrated for its beauty. Would it really be somehow moral or ethical to turn it back into a oak woodland? And why? No environment is static. No environment is right or wrong. Why arbitrarily try to freeze everything at 1492 and maintain it in that state? Nature has no concern for our petty moral concerns. She has sat idly by and let 99% of all of the species to ever exist go extinct (or something). Is mankinds similar effect of mass extinction even unnatural? Or abnormal? Or immoral? Stop laughing im not making a joke im being serious. Think of the horrible "imbalance" necessary to trap all those dead creatures at the bottom of the ocean and turn them into oil. Now we swing it back. How can a species be entitled to anything? How can nature "break down" rather than simply continue to change inexorably? How can mankind "disobey" natural laws (i.e. physics)? Why do these notions get so much traction when, it would seem to me, they are fraught with nonsense through and through.

   Isnt this really all about aesthetics? About mythology? About our own sense of moral obligation as care takers of all around us? Its ok that ireland was deforested centuries ago because today it looks nice. Wolves in yosemite are part of the american mythology, like cowboys and farmers and rebels(naturalists?) without causes. Its like in europe where they pay farmers to farm unprofitable land so they can charge tourists to come and look at it and experience the "authentic" italy or whatever. Isnt the "untamed" west the same in effect? Isnt this a manicured landscape, ornamental horticulture? Massive gardens on century long time scales. We have the boxwood hedges and the hybridized cloned orange orchards that symbolize mans domination and separation from nature (ostensibly). And then we have the managed wild lands, carefully burned and grazed and inoculated from foreign onslaught. At least in so much as it is possible. Trying to eliminate non native species of course is directly combating nature in the name of preserving nature. I think it is instructive to think of the national park not as a wilderness but as a garden. It is not untouched by the blight of man, it is pristine, but pristine in a whole different way than you first imagine. It is pristine in the same way a cut diamond is pristine. Its not a "natural" place, it is very specifically unnatural in the sense that man has pruned unwanted flora and fauna, that man has changed the flow of the rivers and the weather to suit his notion of "wilderness".  If we approach wilderness in this way it is not in the slightest bit wild, it is at best a manicured landscape and at worst a theme park. Just another 3-D "thrill ride" with surround sound but no comfortable seats.  Mere aesthetic. This then leads me to a conclusion I do not even like or endorse. That we do not need to be more in touch with nature. We do not need to leave the cities or walk in the forests. We need to become LESS connected with nature. Less connected with "wild" spaces. We dont need to reconnect, we need to disconnect. It has been our connection all a long that has blighted nature with clear cutting and roads and whatever else (if we for a moment will believe in a notion such as "blight"). We cant control what goes on in "there". Just wall the place up and never set foot in it again. Ignore it. Let whatever lives, native or otherwise, live, and whatever dies, die. Let it actually become wild again.

Dem bots man, dem bots

AS SEEN ON TV!

I just wanted to take this opportunity to make some more over-dramatic declarative statements, ahem:

   LIBERTARIANISM IS THE SOCIALISM OF THE 21ST CENTURY. ITS UNINFORMED, NAIVE AND LOFTY IDEALISM IS THE WORST KIND OF POLLYANNA NONSENSE. AYN RAND WAS AN INSANE OLD RUSSIAN BAG LADY WITH THE SOCIAL SKILLS OF A TWO YEAR OLD. NIETZSCHE WAS A FUCKING PUSSY. RON PAUL IS JUST TOO PATHETIC TO LOOK AT. IM SO TIRED OF HEARING SELF IMPORTANT PSYCHOPATHS WHO COULD NEVER HACK IT WITHOUT THE HELP OF OTHER PEOPLE SNEERING OUT THE TERMS "KEYNSIAN" AND "SOCIALISM" LIKE THEY KNOW WHAT THEY MEAN. ALL OF THIS "PRIVATIZING" OF EVERYTHING, ALL THIS XENOPHOBIC ANTI-SOCIAL PESSIMISM IS FUCKING TOXIC. I WOULD LIKE TO REITERATE, IT IS FROM THE DEATH OF THE SOCIAL THAT SOCIALISM EMERGES. THIS IS ALL FALLOUT FROM THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION OF THE 1960s AND THE CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE IN SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS THAT STEMMED FROM IT . . . ANYWAY, BUFFETS IDEA ABOUT CHANGING IMMIGRATION POLICY TO SOAK UP HOUSING SURPLUS IS KIND OF A JOKE AND I GET THAT BUT FUCK, THATS LIKE THE ONLY REASONABLE PROACTIVE SOLUTION IVE HEARD TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM (THOUGH GIVING HOUSES TO 12YR OLDS AND BURNING DOWN ANY OTHER SURPLUS IS A CLOSE SECOND). WE DONT NEED MORE POLICY DEBATES OR A COUNCIL OF NICAEA  OR SOME NEW HAREBRAINED POLITICAL IDEOLOGY, WHAT WE NEED IS SOME FUCKING LEADERSHIP. WHERE THE FUCK IS TEDDY ROOSEVELT WHEN YOU NEED HIM? THAT MOTHER FUCKER WAS JUST JUST LIKE, "TRUSTS? BUST EM'!" "CONTINENTS? CUT EM'!" "CATTLE? RUSTLE EM'!". OH FOR WANT OF A CHARACTER LIKE THAT TODAY . . .

   ITS LIKE, THE ONLY HUMAN INSTITUTION THAT HAS EVER DONE ANYTHING WORTH MENTIONING IS GOVERNMENT. PYRAMIDS OF GIZA, GOVERNMENT. GREAT WALL OF CHINA, GOVERNMENT. PUTTING MEN ON THE MOON, GOVERNMENT. THE INTERNET, GOVERNMENT. SPECIFICALLY THE MOST GOVERNING OF GOVERNMENTS, AUTHORITARIAN GOVERNMENTS, HAVE DONE MANY BOLD AND GREAT THINGS. WHAT THE FUCK HAS THE FREE MARKET DONE FOR US? OH THAT RIGHT, PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE, WAL-MART, THE BLACK MARKET AND OLIGARCHY. WELL THANKS A LOT FOR THE WEED AND THIS SHITY IKEA FURNITURE FREE MARKETS. THATS SOMETHING ILL BE PROUD TO SAY I WAS A PART OF. THATS REALLY THE LEGACY I WANT TO LEAVE MY CHILDREN. YOU KNOW WHAT, FUCK IT, FROM THIS POINT ON IM A LIBERAL TRANS-HUMANIST SPACE FASCIST UNTIL PROVEN OTHERWISE . S.P.Q.R. 4EVR YOU LITTLE SHITS. WE WILL SEE HOW WELL YOUR MAGIC HAND WORKS WHEN THE HELLFIRE OF OUR IMPERIAL ARTILLERY IS TEARING THROUGH THE WALLS OF YOUR COMPOUND.

KONICHIWA BITCHES~!

randoms from the filelib

AH YEAH IM ON HOLD AGAIN . . .