Is a canvas ever blank?

Think about it. If I shine an image on a canvas, is it blank? Does it become blank when we turn the projector off, or when we leave the room? Does extreme skepticism and extreme empiricism ever win out over agnostic rationalism? Highly abstract terms, I know - but I'm using them shake up your thoughts to let seeds take root in your non-belief system.

I was reading in Australian Anthill magazine, a rag for corporate cocksuckers and their aspirant media whore hangers-on (such as myself) to congratulate themselves about the concept of personal branding. Personal branding, like corporate or product branding, uses similar themes and concepts; for example - to gain recognition and sales using a discrete package of repeated symbols to produce predictable outcomes in perception. How does this relate to you, and why are you still reading? I'll tell you.

I use personal branding myself online - the "Crushtor" brand is unique, it's my own. It stands for "maverick" journalism even though you've seen little evidence on it here - yet. My "fake" business cards are shocking and reaction-provoking, and may even attract the odd visitor to this website. The brand perpetuates itself - it is both the means and the end. People also use it unconsciously online via Facebook. A few people in my friends list have begun to "brand" themselves as the ultimate party girl/boy - the "most popular girl/boy in school" motif that many people aspire to be themselves, sort of like the "Paris Hilton effect." How do they do it? It's actually quite simple.

First of all, they insert themselves into as many avatars as possible. Their image in another's avatar elevates them to the status of "everyone's best friend." The non-verbal communication runs two fold and circuitously compliments both strands:

1. The party boy/girl establishes his/her brand by having their image grace as many avatars as possible.
2. The less astute/popular boy/girl ascends to popular status due to the "party boy/girl" being in their avatar.

It could be that Western need for attention and popularity rearing its ugly head again (as most cases are) but it could be used as a powerful tool for success, networking and business opportunities. Being seen on Facebook or MySpace often enough means you expose yourself to more people than you otherwise would. Finish it off with store-bought attractiveness (verbal, not physical) and you're an instant winner.

Keeping up social engagements to be snapped on Facebook seems to be more important than the event itself, at least to some. Like most brands, there's only grains of reality that are buried beneath tons and tons of spin, flashiness and purr words. How can you tell X that Y isn't all that they're cracked up to be in the face of that? Well, it's not that easy to answer. As a journalist, its hard to win a PR war with the truth when the almighty image tells you something else.

Resist No Temptation

Some people say that we agree more than we disagree. People compete against one another in corporations, but within the conglomerate itself, more agreement must take place for any one member to succeed. Bateson calls it "schismogenesis." Big words in place for simple concepts or not, the line between "having it" and "not" is so thin, it could almost be measured in mere pixels, strokes of a pen or even the amount of coins at the bottom of your wallet at any given time. I'd like to believe that I've been jilted, trodden over or forgotten for something existentially meaningful. The reality of the situation, at least to my perception, is that I didn't provide that almost insignificant bit of extra comfort that nearly all people try to prolong until they're lowered into their grave.
I lose one person to a beat-up car, another to a well-timed compliment, another to a wayward glance. The war for affection and loyalty continues and the front line shifts almost constantly, almost inevitably. Uncertainty consumes us, and at the end of the day, it's mostly all we can take for granted. It's bullshit, but we humans tend to be full of that anyhow, right?

Five Word Music Reviews:
Motorhead - Motorizer: Lemmy's still got it
Iced Earth - Crucible of Man (Something Wicked, Part II): Ballsy and ambitious yet confusing
Amanda Palmer - Who Killed Amanda Palmer?: Self-indulgence, Dresden Dolls style

The Slow Trudge of Perseverance

Tom's week, the tl;dr edition:

1. Friday, I worked my new job. It is very white. Like, horribly so. I swear to god I'm working at JLB Credit.

2. This:


3. This conversation:

Aza (to Jade and Louise): Now you've got three choices. [I can call you] Woman, Slut or Whore.
Jade: That's so mean. No one calls girls such things.
Louise: Yeah, Tom never calls girls that, do you Tom?
Me: Well, I just have a better PR manager than Aza does.

That, and making up songs for very specific emotions. "The Ballad of that feeling you get when a fleeting aquaintance who wrote well-known Cookbooks passes away." Fucking hell, all these hippie types say I've got a "negative aura" around me. Some hippie told me this again yesterday because I asked why she and a mate of hers were talking about buttery popcorn. Launching into rants is par for the course with me, not fucking negative. Hippies talk a lot of shit about being "centred" and "loving" and other such bullshit, but they're still stuck in the same Aristotelian world of "is" and "essence" - a Hippie that denies the "is" of identity? That's fucking progressive. Almost everything else seems like they're just pretending. "Yes, you are negative." No, I seem to say negative words. Please get back to me when your junkie logic transforms into actual logic.

Yep, I'm cool.

Pain and Pleasure

Judas Priest's penchant for ostentation was not stifled last night at the Hisense Arena; the band was surrounded by huge black and red draconian sets, watched over by a canvas Nostradamus with glowing red eyes who saw Rob Halford elevated into the stadium, clad in flowing suits of leather and studs. (He even was wheeled out on a motorcycle during the encore, not forgetting his trademark moves.) They shied away from newer material (opening with Nostradamus), electing the "Maiden" method of playing crowd favorites from their golden era, less talking and more rocking. Though wearied by age, there was no denying their energy to keep their unique brand of heavy metal mania alive. If there's one thing to be said about Judas Priest, is that they've always been the sensuous metal band - while Maiden can be very rocking and inspiring, they can sometimes feel distant and over-intellectual - Halford and co. really know how to get under your skin and run a gamut of emotion.

Strangely, later on while riding the train home, a short, sandy blonde middle-aged yet well-drunk woman who had devolved into child-like inquisitiveness launched into a incessant inquiry of anything and everything, asking some rather inane questions of some bemused metalheads.

"Does your t-shirt have France on it?"
The not-too-friendly rivethead sporting a clean shaven head save for a mohawk and long, braided pony-tail laughed and shook his head in amusement.
"What?" he exclaimed. "Who cares? It's irrelevant, etc." His mates couldn't help but quietly piss themselves laughing.
She asked if one of his mates could have a look for her. He declined. She began to pout, while being scolded by her husband. "But I'm just being friendly! I just wanted to know." she protested.

A fellow witness to this ridiculous display sitting across from me rolled his eyes and shook his head. I agreed. Wearing a faded leather jacket and a mustache like steel-wool I asked whether he had been to Judas Priest as well. He said he hadn't, but just as he opened his mouth, Ms. Inquisitive started up another one of her tantrum-like rants when he said "Women are like beings from another planet." She asked us what we were talking about. I told her, in no uncertain terms. She shut up. I also had to inform her that Amsterdam was a city, not a country. My new mate reminisced about his time there; "It's a great place. I can always remember arriving there but never remembering how I got home." A further stimulation of my wanderlust.

What was he doing tonight? "Went to see a lady friend," he says reservedly, while heaving a sigh. "She's very, very highly strung. She kicked me out." What for? "She wanted me to show a pic that flashed up on my phone. I said she wouldn't like it, I relented, she saw it and the told me to piss off." He was clutching a motorcycle helmet too; "I have to go get it in the morning." Fuck that, I thought. "I know," he continued, "my mates think I'm mad. I have about a 25% hit rate with her." My face was obviously in disbelief. "Well, having that said, she is very, very, entertaining." She must be if she's only letting you in for entertainment 1 in 4 times. "I know I'm stupid. But entertainment like that only comes around once in a lifetime." I said he was crazy, but he insisted "If you knew what I knew, you'd do it too." True enough; men are dumb creatures. Luckily enough for me, I don't have to date them.

Everything's Coming up Tomo

Well, it seems that way. Today, I:

1. Scored a new job that pays well and won't suck;

2. Confirmed my interview with Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls (Bob from Roadrunner is such a great pal)

3. Judas Priest on Friday, which, is more chance rather than an action of my design.

It's kind of like this:

A Note on my GS Studies

As the two or three followers of my blog are aware, I have immersed myself in the studies of General Semantics this year. I believe I have progressed to such a point that I GS has changed my patterns and "way" I think to such an extent that my behavior has become more rational as a result.

As some of you already know, the territory (reality, etc.) is merely a space in which we project our beliefs and base our semantic reactions.

Therefore, my inference that an acquaintance of mine stopped dead in their tracks to avoid me due to fear, hatred or courtesy is as unverifiable as the inferences that they may make about me. However, to my advantage, my time-binding ability and my consciousness and the separation of first- and second-order functions makes the distinction between belief and fact, report and inference. I shall never know for a "fact" whether their behavior was from any of the reasons stated above, as they may not even know themselves or "know themselves."

From my own observations, I believe that my inferences "analyze" rather than "deceive"; that I would now rather use them deconstruct games and refrain from playing them; to find choice where others find a zero-sum defeat; to view failure as feedback; to feel that a prize and its attainment is for a rational purpose, well within the purview of second-order logic instead of first-order "infantile" stupidity.

Sure, Ellis and Korzybski and their followers teach us to "unconditionally accept" people as organisms as a whole in their environments, but allow ourselves to disagree with their actions and beliefs, if it so comes into conflict. Some people believe (or, rather, I believe they believe) that my ranting and raving is the result of a mind in disequilibrium, out of touch with "reality."

In actuality, it serves as an outlet for my thoughts and feelings, allowing my sometimes dormant creativity and critical analysis to take flight.

In recent months, I have begun to accept the way I am, and in doing so, I am able to lead a much more involving and rewarding life as result. To improve myself - from whatever conception I deem appropriate - is a set of goals I desire to attain; but it does not constitute an absolute necessity, causing grief or self-loathing if I do not achieve them to my satisfaction and within a reasonable time-frame. When one thinks about it, once the need for oxygen, food and other such requirements are met, most things "are not" needs after all.

Before the end of this year is through, I seek to submit an article to ETC., the General Semantics scholarly journal, as a tribute to the teachings of Korzybski, his contemporaries and to his legacy. I doubt any such intellectual contribution that I have ever encountered has given me so much when "it" asks so little in return.

Crushtor.net's Guide to Australian White People - Part II

Crushtor.net's Guide to Australian White People - Part II


Scared yet? Shudder before your displays of liquid crystal in our second installment of Crushtor.net's Guide to Australian White People!

Private Ownership of Common Property
Of course, most white people abhor the spectre of Communism just as much as ever these days, what with the appeal of a badge-based economy growing ever less once its made clear that iPhones would be classed as a tool of the imperialist oppressors and only the dirtiest and smelliest Arts degree toting comrades would ever be allowed to lay their eyes on one.

In simpler terms, Australian White people love staking their claim to films, books and internet memes they chanced upon as if the mass media was in a perpetual Eureka Stockade, and they think themselves as the one-armed Peter Lalor demanding that the prospectors own their plots of land, or in this case, a video of Chocolate Rain, or whatever. They publicly proclaim their "ownership" of any such social occasion when the name of the production is raised as if they wrote, directed and distributed the fucking thing themselves.

Likewise for concerts and other such events - they also believe as a ticketholder, the band/troupe/comedian performed exclusively for their benefit, although this is clearly contrary to what occurs in reality.

Language as Social Control
As Hayakawa eloquently and simply put in his Language in Thought and Action, "society makes its mightiest collective effort to impose predictability upon human behavior" and is expressed in nearly every way possible from the absurd to the profane, such as marriage or the agreement to form relationships. The ritualistic dance of humans as they are made to be slaves to the utterances they make seems really stupid, and as Hayakawa continues, "that many of our social directives and the rituals accompanying them are antiquated and somewhat insulting to adult minds." However, Australian White people believe that emotional security in objects and the perceived qualities of others are far more desirable than freedom of mind and person, and as such, will be quite content to fuck themselves up in such a fashion to attain such ideals.

Events to Commemorate Events
Australian White people also love confusing spontaneous events such as births, deaths, employment, promotion and other such bullshit with pre-determined events to commemorate the said event. They hold events to commemorate an event which may have already occured, and summarily confuse the organized event with the spontaneous one. Tony getting his promotion at the Glue Factory happened in an office with a sweaty, bespectacled gentleman named Steve, not when Tony told all his mates in a hail of saccharine adulation and Chicken Parmiagiana. Even more confusing is holding events for non-events, such as "Christmas in July" and "Ben and Marks' post-pissup pissup pissup."

Exaggeration
If there's one inescapable fact of modern life, is that Australian White people tend to exaggerate their participation in any and all activities - that if a small group of AWPs were to work towards a goal, the combined sum of all efforts would equal 230% if aggregated from individual testimony. Concert attendance would see a crowd over triple the capacity of the venue in which it was held, the production 500 times more profitable than what was fudged in the ledger. Even their golf scores are rounded to the nearest ten, their actual duration of the minor celebrity rounded up to the nearest half-hour, and the achievements of said celebrity rounded up to "Major TV Personality."

Until next time, friends!

Click here to view Part I of the Guide

On the Nature of the Psyche

Here's a quote from a comment I left on a friend's LJ. It sums up most of the discoveries i've made recently in my GS studies.

Most people who talk shit about you are only making inferences. They aren't giving any potential recipient any meaningful information about you anyway. Its as if they hand over a picture of some sort of twisted monster that bares no resemblance to you and declare that picture "is" you. It took me about five or six months to realize a word used to describe me is not me. It's quite mind-blowing when it all "clicks."

If they take offense to you as a person, then their value system is warped and inhuman. If they are taking offense to the things you do and the values you hold and the opinions you express, then that's different. That's normal. Often times the otherness is in themselves, not the person they project the feelings on to. I know people talk shit about me behind my back. Ultimately, your reaction to it will determine how much of it effects your daily functioning.

I'm going to see Opeth on Friday. First time in a long time where I have to sit around with all the regular jack-offs instead of being shouted beer and going back stage and shit. *sighs* My next interview is with Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls - should be rather intriguing, to say the least.

Also: I think I'm in love with the girl from this MGMT video.

And I might actually have a (paying) job soon! Hooray!