I'm so white and empty

[datasuspect]

white in aspect (like a ghost, a mirage) from the realization that what was prescribed for me as the "good" in life was merely a social formula that i had no hand in creating.

i had assumed that if i followed the required lifepath - school, work, death - that somehow through the accumulation of "knowledge as corporate job training", material possessions, and tremendous debt, i would find some deeper satisfaction and enjoyment.

but i am "sedentary man." i spend my time in fluctuation: in controlled temperature environments. controlled temperature environment in the soulless brand new house, controlled environment in the module i pilot through the pristine commercial wastelands, controlled environment in the workspace where my body is confined in physical space, thus giving me enough energy to complete tasks, but to never be too creative.

yes, i have my consolations: i am free to decorate my workspace with whimsical action figures based on quirky and ironic entertainment products provided to me by hollywood imagineers. i am free to consume as much advertising as i possibly can, so that my innate desires and drives become perverted and twisted and the line between the lives of the sitcoms and the lives of the models in the commercials and mine become more and more and more blurred.

i am free to consume, to buy dull sheened black electronic entertainment devices. my cell phone ringtone is my truest expression of my personality. my signature.







(NB: i am not speaking about the white race (notice the word "aspect", but i have been reading way too much marcuse and foucault lately).

[Deja Q]

1. Unless it's verizon

They disallow customers to put in custom ringtones, et al - they claim it's to preotect them from viruu and other security issues. Meanwhile, they have little problems losing customer information, allowing poorly made code to go into the phones (it's easy to get around the 'security' put into a RAZR phone and that's because the engineers didn't think things through... which is a bit shocking, previous motorola phones have better security...)

[Writer]

2. Yes. I completely understand.

Which is why I want you to punch me as hard as you can! :P

[datasuspect]

3. i have a better idea

let's eat peyote and run through the woods at midnight.

[Writer]

4. Well, hey, if you don't mind doing that with a married woman...

I'm there, man. :)

[datasuspect]

5. oops

no innuendo intended.

bring hubby along.

we can hunt the dreaded snipe.

[Writer]

7. Hey... here's my little story...

I'm a former corporate television worker transplanted (against her will) to a small city near the Rockies. I sit here, having completed my Master's now, jobless yet frightened as hell of becoming a stay at home mom. I hear the drumbeat of inevitability marching my way, and I understand well that if I stay and watch the parade I'm going to get sucked in to this empty, souless, manmade "society," conducting myself in the manner that has been preordained to me by said society as a married woman. I just need to suck it up, let Mr. Writer carry home the bacon, and I can birth babies and "be happy."

But I seek freedom, man. I wish I could rip off my clothes, fly into the fields yonder, run, gather my inner wind, run, and find who I truly am as a young woman in the United States today.

This is not a statement on Mr. Writer, but a statement on the world today and all its godless limitations.

[datasuspect]

9. this is an email i had sent to a friend one night

it's kinda where i'm at:

i took the calamity of my first series of paradigm shifts (in my mid-20s) as a wholesale accusation against myself. it never occurred to me that i was merely an infinitessimal speck in the psychosis of human history, that i was subject to laws and conditions i had no part in creating.

never was i one of god's elect, yet calvinism tainted me in all my misplaced, mislaid ethnicity, in the colorful melange, the truly RICH inheritance that coming from poverty bestows on the average person.

never knew anyone, never had "connections", not much cop for schools or correct employment: this was never a system that would cherish, nor i it.

strangely enough, i eviscerated myself with the finest, sharpest tools of dubious morality that system has to offer.

now, in my middle 30s, i sit and wonder where my job hopping, addictions, and general destruction have inexorably led me: back to the same january spot 10 years ago where i contemplated through laminated glass the sadness of a city. where i took my ghosts and misinterpreted them as the ghost of 1890s germans and slavs. i had the key all along, but the door was open, i set about trying to demonstrate to others what i had already proven to myself.

[Writer]

10. Man, you and I are both filled with mid-30's angst.

I'm 31. I pray to God I can get into a PhD program. At least I can attempt something more meaningful.

[datasuspect]

11. i'm unemployable

have sought work, been rejected too many times, but i've been out of work for quite some time.

i don't think i could handle sitting in a cube all day and dealing with the "amicably vicious" world of planetary corporate types.

i'm thinking about doing something drastic and just wandering around the united states on foot, seeking "work" instead of a "job" and commending my fate to the wind.

shit, everything i have fits in one bag anway, no wife/kids/s.o.

completely off the radar. i could disappear and the only one who would worry is my mom and my sister.

[crim son]

6. Okay, NOW I'm depressed.

Is it any wonder people don't read any more? :P

[datasuspect]

8. no! no reason to be depressed

take heart! life is interminably meaningless by definition, it comes from nothing, it leads to nothing.

the upside is, you don't have to spurn the physical body for the sacred life. you don't have to enslave yourself to permutations of pagan blood cults to waste your life earning an eternal reward that will never come.

we've all been endowed with godlike power: the power to create; to evaluate; to decide.

if you accept that you are born, you live, and then you die, AND THAT'S IT, you can take consolation in knowing that you can create meaning and reality during the time you are here--which is the only thing you CAN know while you are alive.

[crim son]

12. Again with the double post! Sorry. Self-delete.

[datasuspect]

15. oh i was just exagerrating

but christianity didn't come about in a vacuum.

there were pagan sects that heavily influenced early xtianity.

[crim son]

17. And I was kidding.

Part of what's thrown me into a tailspin is the recognition that the loving Christian god I learned about as a child, doesn't exist. The very hairs on my head are not numbered. And I must choose to live the life that will bring me the best understanding of myself and this world, or compromise, or try to do both. I'm done with compromise. Now I want to live. The thing is, maybe I'm wrong, in which case I'm totally fucked!

[crim son]

13. Which pagan blood cults, specifically,

are you referring to?

Otherwise, we're on the same page. It's just that now and then, zero gravity is really scary.

[ZombieNixon]

14. Like a blank iPod?

:shrug:

[datasuspect]

16. that truly illustrates my point

and its almost poetic.

[ZombieNixon]

18. It was the first thing to spring to mind when I read "white and empty"

before I even read the rest. :shrug:

[datasuspect]

19. the earbuds on those thing suck

but it does keep people in their little bubbles.

shoot, i don't know what i would do if i had to sit in silence or listen to the ambient environmental noise.