poddus
hi! it's me. welcome. i've spent a lot of time on the internet. i remember a time when it was just a couple of forums, travel blogs, a chat room or two. you know, walkman, ipod, sms, aol instant messenger. i miss those days. things have gotten so much more unwieldy, complicated, and abusive, manipulative, and authoritarian. so here is my rather anachronistic tribute to a better time.
cheers,
poddus
The Blogisch Part
The Rose
I was a sophomore in high school when we did a section on poetry. I was particularly fond of Edgar Allen Poe; I really enjoyed his melancholy style which I guess is not surprising for an angsty teenager... and he inspired me to write a poem that got me into a lot of trouble and ended up changing the trajectory of my life.
My englisch teacher was a rather uncomfortable woman and I had made it a sport to make her life difficult, but when we got a prompt to write a short piece on loss I caught a spark and ended up writing this piece. I landed on the ending rather quickly (leaning heavily on Poe's "Raven") and took a couple days more to finish it after asking for an extension. My teacher immediately accused me of plagiarizing it and informed the head of the english department, the principal, and my councelor. I vehemently denied all the accusations and after failing to show that any plagiarism occurred, my mom suggested sending me to post-secondary in communnity college, arguing that a college campus would be more conducive to my rather ... anti-authoritarian style. They agreed and those two years in college were by far the most productive years of high school. Anyway here's the poem
I saw it first while passing
idly by a forlorn field.
It caught my eye from through the shrub,
long unnoticed and concealed.
No bygone beauty nor ever more,
could match this flower’s air.
Yet to me alone it showed itself.
So marvelous! So fair!
Slowly I approached that bloom,
transfixed by its allure.
Its fragrance caught in a Zephyr.
Of Heaven, I assure.
Bent down, I moved to pluck it up,
but quickly pulled away.
“No!” said I on second thought,
“This flower Here must stay.”
I turned around and walked away,
believing that again one day,
I’d pass by to see it, gay,
untouched, perfect as ‘twas today.
The Rose soon after left my thoughts,
‘til later on that night.
When a burning sting my heed command:
A tiny cut upon my hand.
“It must have been the Rose’s thorn…
so many did this Rose adorn.”
But as time went on it did not mend,
as with some poison it contend.
By and by it spanned my whole,
the poison slowly taking toll
envenoming at last my dreams!
“There’s but one cure for this it seems…
I must return from whence it came.”
So to my Rose I go again.
But trepidation would not yield,
As I once more approached that field.
I could not find my Rose, so fair...
‘twas no more. Nor here, nor there.
The Bloom, defiled by human blood,
had withered into dust.
it left no trace of winsomeness...
that picked up by a gust.
I fell upon the ground, once blessed
by beauty no one could attest!
The traces of my loss I bore:
A scar, a mem’ry.
Nothing more.
Social Media
Social Media is something I've spent quite a lot of time thinking about, but I've never been able to (or spent the time to) express my distaste in any comprehensive way. Thankfully there are many much more eloquent people on the internet that have recently done exactly this.
The first one I'd like to share is from the illustrious Hank Green of Nerdfighter and vlogbrothers fame (among other divers projects). It offers a more general, historically embedded view of social media.
The second one from tantacrul goes in to (a lot) more detail on facebook specifically. However I think many of the points made apply to social media more generally.
Consider this an explanation by proxy for whatever this website even is :)
every now and then I come across a song that connects the world in such beautiful ways that it blows my mind. yesterday was such a day.
labi siffre was an openly gay black singer-songwriter in london in the 70s. he's still alive today. i got that from wikipedia. in truth i had no idea who labi siffre was before stumbling upon this song
it sounded strangely familiar and that bugged me for quite a while. I originally thought that bonobo might have sampled it, but I couldn't find the song. then it finally hit me: RJD2!
"making days longer" is a weird, microrhythmic, more or less direct cover of siffre's piece. but that's not all! a quick search on whosampled and it turns out bonobo did actually sample it as well!
well, specifically it's a remix of jon kennedy. anyway, recognize the sample? it's at 1:10 in the original song.
and if that wasn't enough, you know the band madness? "our house, in the middle of our street"? well guess what, one of their other famous songs "it must be love" is (you guess it) a cover of labi siffre!
i just love when a seemingly obscure artist or song turns out to have such a wide impact. makes me feel better about whatever the hell it is that i'm doing with my life. you never know, something seemingly insignificant that you may do today could have huge implications down the line that you could never have predicted. so let's be good to each other and make those impacts good ones. dftba
i like this video. i like to think that i'm a pretty disciplined person and there's a part in the video that really hit me
if your discipline makes it impossible for you to be what the people around you [...] need, then your discipline has become entirely self-serving
— Scott Wadsworth, "Essential Craftsman"
if you're even just marginally interested in construction, give the channel a look.
and keep up the good work :)
