Reality bites, dodge into another one.

After disappearing in internet for two hours again.

When we spend hours in created worlds or even creating worlds ourselves, is the so called real world still a place we think most and care most about...? It's not a place where you get what you want. It's not a place where people and events are predictable and following the plot. It's not the place where you are likely to succeed despite trying hard. It is not the place where unexpected wonderful things happen often enough to shadow the sorrows. It is not the place you can shape with a stroke of your pencil. It is not the place of positive events, loud laughter or happy laziness.

No wonder we like to vanish in the shiny web of blogs, forums, stories, games, roleplays, movies, music, photoshows, emails, chats, ebooks, bebos, messangers, mmorpgs, fanfiction and dreams. Parallel universes are within our reach. Live your life, in any world you choose.

Survival guide - how to live with pals oblivious to what social means.

We all know people with no social skills. You know, the type that turns up on your doorstep at 8am on Saturday cause they were insomnically bored, drags you to Tesco's after you worked for 9 hours, cause they don't really like weekly shopping, stays late playing on your xbox360 when you are itching to slaughter beasties with your new shiny silver sword. And if you are just to polite to say 'f*** off' here's a little guide on what you can do.

1. Don't open the door whenever somebody knocks - simple but how many times you opened the door and it was someone you didn't want to see or one of these scary broadband selling people? They can't leak through the keyhole so you're safe. If they can, you're in trouble.

2. Make sure you always text/call/email people before you go to see them - can't really expect anyone to follow your rules if you don't. And although some very social types keep their door open 'anytime' you still don't want to stand outside listening to their bed creaking rhytmically...

3. Don't feel guilty for throwing somebody out - if it's your flat and your day off spend it however you want getting rid of obstacles to however, being a bouncer for a bit is always a good practice in feeling guilt free in such situations.

4. Make sure you actually have conversation instead of being a passive part of lenghty monologue about new wave of Japanese art, annoying relatives you never met or shield types in LOtR - even if it means talking loudly over somebody. If you find the topic intriguing just mind next time it might be an hour long blather about something completelly different. If you have the ability to doze with your eyes open skip this point.

5. Don't let them stay overnight - next thing you know they live on your sofa, sneaking out to get more pot noodles when you're not watching, crashing your console and watching your dvds to death. Sadly, they don't hoover, wash or clean the windows.

And, sticking to some rules will not make you a sad recluse nobody wants to see, quite the opposite, before you know your home is a new social centre of your group but on your terms. And I'm speaking from experience here, just don't ask me to explain why. Good luck and may your more touchy socially unskilled friends not throw mud on you.

Multi-what?

After reading Ian Rankin's book where the issues of immigrants and multicultural modern Scotland are a background for the story.

With immigration on its highest, what is happening to people thrown together in a random way with all the cultural misunderstandings, racial issues and instinctive fear of the unknown? There's the political correctness going wild on one hand and immigrants themselves staying in their own closed groups on the other. Middle ground doesn't seem to exist at the moment, officially it is encouraged to mingle and ask and explore another culture and language and interesting customs, in real life it's live and let live and every group stays out of others way. I guess that when you go somewhere foreign it's simply comforting to stay in a familiar group of people that share your cultural heritage and language. In a uniting world we are living among strangers, and although I meet people from all over the world on a street every day I still know nothing in depth about their collective background or individual hopes and dreams. There's the optimistic vision of different cultures merging into united multicultural society. There's the grey street level truth of different immigrant groups staying away from colurful but soulless unity. Although we could use a solid middle ground between society multicultural and multicoloured, it's not just going to appear beneath our feet. And because it is another bit of hard work in a life already full of such, are we going to make it or lazily drift into whatever comes next...?

Losing a plot.

After reading another book.

Why can't the life we have to lead be a bit more like a novel? No, not more exciting, there plenty of that around especially when you're trying to have a quiet night in, not having more dialogue bits, enough random rambling one has to deal with every day, not full of adventures, good old fashioned role playing takes care of the lust of killing princesses and freeing dragons or the other way round whatever you fancy, what I mean is more, like, having a plot. You know, beginning, nice long interesting sequence of events that are connected in some logical way,ending. Novel: Things happen because something else happened first. Things happen for no reason but at least one at a time so they can be dealt with properly. Things happen suddenly but even these plot twisters usually have their ending, happy or otherwise, and can be left in the past. Life: Things happen. This is all that is certain. Things happen because they like to confuse poor buggers trying to live their lifes, for no reason, suddenly, in clusters, all at the same time, some end before we manage to notice them, some never seem to end, good, bad, undefined by morals, happy, sad, dramatic, amazing things happen constantly. Our lives are not reassuringly linear and sequenced, they're a bloody tangled barbwire mess of interlinked events. No wonder so many people loses the plot... there isn't any in the first place.

So, the choice is to fight and get scarred or hide and get scared, the choice of the path in the jungle of thickly growing things-that-happen called life is entirely up to you...

The future has already been

After a weekly shopping trip.

The human species have reversed quietly to hunters - gatherers. It had been one of the great social achievements when we clever monkeys became farmers and breeders. Stable food supply helped to develop agricultural communities that over millenias grew and spread and eventually lead to our human infested world. But looking at today, how many people you know, who actually produce? Not only food, it's quite obvious that as soon as slavery has been discovered whoever managed to avoid backbreaking jobs by getting someone else to farm for him would rest and let his mind occupy itself otherwise. Hence cultural development, although how anyone would come up with some of the ideas humans are so proud of is beyond even my cynical mind. So what happened to the clever farmer monkey? Gone are the times when boredom lead to creativity. It more often then not leads to the sofa in front of tv these days and to the supermarket to hunt for bargains and gather edibles.

Another striking similarity- our pray prowling ancestors had to travel vast distances in search of anything to hunt and so often spent their entire lives on the move. XXth and XXIst centuries have seen some unprecendented immigration rates as more and more people leave their family soil, which they don't farm anyway, and set off towards the setting sun in search of something vaguely defined as 'a better life', just like our still hairy ancestors on the humanless plains of future Europe, hunting for their plce in the world, gathering whatever they believe they need to survive.

History is not a cyclical circle, it is linear. How could we miss bouncing off some strange opportunity leading to another stage of species development and going all the way back in the wrong direction...?

Be yourself. And yourself. And your other self.

After spending a happy hour writing on my foras.

We are all schizophrenic. How? Well, be honest, how many logins are people usually using for all their foras, emails, myspaces and such? If it's always the same - cool, they only have one cyberspace personality on top of their real life one. If it's two or more and they have different avatars as well and maybe slightly different styles of writing - cool, they're like me and thousands other web users.

Here's a music forum where you will spend hours going into detailed discussion about your favourite song, here's a general discussion one where you admit, that sometimes you don't listen to any music for like days, here's an email from your science fiction obsessed pal with whom you blather for pages and pages about possible futures and there's your myspace profile in which you admit you don't really think much about what future holds for you. Here you are perceived as a geek, there as a party addict, somewhere else as a family guy.

Meh, of course you can say it's all the many sides of the same personality, but come on, let's go the whole way and call it what it is - we are all clinically insane. Thank gods for internet where we can safely indulge our need to be ourselves. And it is not only normal it's part of the net culture. So hows you today? And you? And you?

We all wear masks

After reading 'The Prestige' - a story of a rivalry between two magicians living and performing in England at the end of XIXth century - the question appeared in my head. How certain can you be about anything if you're surrounded by illusion? Every day, everywhere we go, we put on one of our masks - a fair employer, an enthusiastic employee, an interested listener, a competent storyteller, a good parent, a better partner, the best friend. It is not done for any immediate or obvious profit, it's just the human nature. There's secrets to keep, feelings to hide, roles to play. Reality is shifty like a smoke in the mirror.

So we act the best we can cause there's no other way to hide our own confusion. Oh yes, there's young kids who didn't master the art of illusion yet and there's these poor fools who try to always be 'themselves' whatever it means. But for the most of your life you are on the stage performing one of your selves to the uninterested audience of same home made performers. Life is but smoke and mirrors.

So when you look in your small bathroom mirror after another tiring day, who do you see?

Can u c me?

After watching some American chat show on my break at work and reading Clive Barker's novel about Hollywood -

We all crave recognition in one way or the other but up till recently people were working hard to get it, developing their natural talents, learning new skills, trying to achieve something that would impress other people in a positive way. Today all you need is enough cheek to make a mobile phone clip of yourself beating up a defenceless drunk on a bus stop and putting it on youtube, being insensitive enough to destroy your relationship in front of laughing crowds by claiming you don't know how to use condoms, manipulative enough to use people who wish you well as ladder steps to being someone everyone made you believe you want to be. Not only people performing these acts get what they want, however fleeting such fame is, but also there are hundreds of people whose acceptance of such performances encourages other to try the same way. Is this the sign of the world going wrongly mad or just cruel human nature surfacing in the times when many people have too much time on their hands and so they become attention seekers/passive admirers of the dark side of the soul?

Celebrities and talk shows make me laugh a twisted little laughter of superiority. Then I go back to my blathering blog. No escape from human nature after all...

 

They can't take away our freedom!

After watching 'The Other Boleyne Girl'. What a drab life they had back then. Parents in control, choosing your husband or wife when you're still a kid, based on social and economic profits for the family. Most people born, living and dying in their respective social classes with no chance to get out of them. Women expected to marry and have as many kids as they can, as fast as they can. King above them all, ordering people around on a whim. Not like now when you choose your own path, anything's possible if you really want it, no mad tyrant will kill you because you were too ambitious... freedom! Right. So you can go and choose wrong having no experience of the world, end up being with somebody random you met through your parents friends cause you're too scared to be alone any longer, get stuck in a job you don't want where a boss orders you around on a whim, in a life you never wanted to live. Hows this better? It's not even much different.

I'm not saying I'd like to live in yonder times in a dirty cottage or playing deadly pretending game at king's court, happy in a way people who have no choice and know that may be. I'd rather struggle and fail and get all confused and sometimes get my small success. My point is, freedom keeps some people alive. But its lack of structure means so many people get lost in their lives these days, or give it up without even realising, it's kind of sad.

So, you are free. What are you gonna do with your life...?

We all live in Stepford

I've just put down 'Stepford Wives' book and feeling too lazy to get up from the couch (long weekend yey!) leafed through 'Tesco magazine'. How to create a perfect bedroom. Hmm, isn't bedroom just a room with a bed where you crash after staying up net-surfing/partying for too long? Four easy steps to astonishingly clean house. Thanks, as long as mine is not astonishingly dirty I have better things to do on my days off than vacuuming curtains and polishing stainless steel with baby oil. Thirty-odd pages of easy cooking recipes... Whoa. Leafing back. Not a word about the importance of social life, no '20 tips how to combine full time job and full time studying', as to books - go for 'quick reads' what are these like, edited versions...? After a quick research on a magazine shelf the day after the conclusion is sad - women are still supposed to polish the house, take care of the kids, cook and smile and the less they think the better. Housework is hardly thought inspiring after all. Maybe a simple crossword puzzle at the end of the day or a quick read book. And hey, I realise that a real world is a bit more complicated than the picture combined from headlines on 'Good Housekeeping' cover, but the magazines are aimed at someone and someones must buy them and read them and want more of this perfect housewife stuff. Is it just the effect of the book I read or is it real and slightly worrying that we all live in Stepford...?