NO COMPUTER- NO INTERNET- NO LIFE

I am slowly melting away in the abyss of nothingness, the stillness of no tomorrow, the drag of all drags; the absence of my beauty. No, I'm not talking about a lover, I'm talking about my right hand, my computer. I NEED IT BACK. I NEED IT TO REVIVE AND SMILE AT ME!!!

Who's afraid?

Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf???
My god, I spoke to Kathleen Turner tonight...

Horis Logia...

Resistance: A Simple Song

http://www.backingblair.co.uk/london_underground/

In Memory of Betty Friedan

I only found today. She died on her 85th birthday, last Saturday. It is a great loss.

Oldboy

Beautiful.
Just beautiful.
Instantly became one of my all-time favorites.
Love it.
Watch it.

I like corporate life, she said.

But it was only the first day. Will it be too boring? Will it be more demanding? I don't care. I sip the coffee out of the mug with the company's logo and I smile to people I supposedly work with. I check my emails and I enjoy the quite easy tasks. I have a lunchbreak. I feel good. If only it paid money. :)

Sunday Mornings Out

Okay, so the picture of Covent Garden isn't mine, and it certainly isn't the most representative, but somehow just browsing at these stalls seems to capture the entire meaning of Sundays walks in Covent Garden: consumerism tendencies and a hell of a lot of people and performs screaming. It was a good day. Kind of productive and kind of distracting. Me and E. had coffee and fun. Tomorrow I start work. I've never really worked before, apart from that DJ thing me and K. did for a couple of months. This is real. This is real. I keep telling myself it's real. Let's see how real.

Saturday Night In

I don't know how I ended staying in last night. I was working on the presentation (finally) all day and then my plans sort of fell out and then I found myself listening to music and playing minesweeper and realising there's no cash to spend on a night out, so I rejected my flatmate's proposal of a night at the pub (sorry, P.! Next time!) and fell asleep after a bottle of wine (which costs £3, which would only buy me one GLASS of wine at the pub).

Money is an issue. I am not starving or anything, and I get my occasional treat (Valerie's style), but my pocket isn't designed for London. Maybe next year I'll get a job and stop worrying. Maybe...

Ice-skating. I'll tell you, it seems easy, but god, it really isn't.

But if I was to go back to that moment, I gladly would.

Amsterdam- 21/01/2006.

Fridays

Not the chain of food and booze stores, but the actual days.
On Fridays I'm high with enthusiasm, I no longer care how the week went, until I remember with half-guilt, half-remorse, that I don't work, I study. And studying isn't set from 9-5, but you start with a 24/7 schedule, which you break down to pieces and then pinpointing your hours off. I don't think I have days off. But I pursue them. Oh, well.
On Fridays I usually go to C's. I spend the weekend there, but I'm not going this weekend. I have to stick to this chair and read Bennett's "New Media Power: the Internet and Global Activism" and then I have to read 4-5 more articles for my presentation. So, I am staying in but I'm meeting the other C tomorrow morning for a walk in town, since I haven't actually had a walk in London since last week and I haven't seen him for months.
I hope you all have epic weekends.

Legal Issues

Okay. Suppose you download music or movies from LimeWire, or Winmx or some other source of free entertaining values. Is it democratic or is it illegal? Is it desired or is it threatening? Do you download the movie, but then go to the theatre and see it anyway? Is the stress on film or music? Is the music industry -because music's easier to download- threatened by peer-2-peer? Is the peer a threat to the artist? Questions, questions.. As far as I'm concerned, the answer is quite simple. If you can't afford to buy a movie, go to the cinema or buy an album or go to the concert, the Internet is the ultimate budget playground. But the experience is never the same. Digitization in entertainment usually requires the physical presence of others, since there's no better joy for the fan -apart from meeting his/her idols- to mingle with other fans. Computer Mediated Communication in Fan Communities makes total sense to me, and it has made total sense to fans worldwide. That's why I'm writing my dissertation on it. Although it makes me feel a bit superficial and lighthearted, when I could have researched deeper into the human experience and interaction with the World Wide Web. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But I know what I like and I like researching what I like. And, maybe some day, I'll research things that matter for the greater public good. Or I won't. But you have to make it through the day. Or the year.

Excuses, Excuses

I never got around to creating a blog, mostly because I don't believe in open diaries (although a lot of my close friends will argue opposite this). But I always believed in the power of excuses, and what is the best excuse to sit down in front of your computer (if you weren't lost in it anyway) and start talking about yourself and your viewpoints and your life and your your your (all about you- or most about you, the ammount of information that you know wouldn't jeopardize your well-being be it available for the public). So, instead of preparing a quite rigorous presentation on Online Activism and Computer Mediated Communication, I am instead baptizing this blog with the worst of excuses: sloth...