Old News

Great Aleister Crowley quote I just found. I would add most culture and entertainment, including the internet, to "news":

To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The natural laziness of the mind tempts one to eschew authors who demand a continuous effort of intelligence. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.

People tell me that they must read the papers so as to know what is going on. In the first place, they could hardly find a worse guide. Most of what is printed turns out to be false, sooner or later. Even when there is no deliberate deception, the account must, from the nature of the case, be presented without adequate reflection and must seem to possess an importance which time shows to be absurdly exaggerated; or vice versa. No event can be fairly judged without background and perspective.

Image Streaming

McCain should be worried about the presidential debates. In terms of image, Obama strikes me as Jimmy Carter pretending to be John F. Kennedy. McCain strikes me as Richard Nixon pretending to be...

Well, no one. He just reminds me of Richard Nixon. Period.

Anyone who paid attention in American History class will remember what happened in the first televised presidential debate of 1960: Kennedy thrashed Nixon because he was more genial and camera-friendly.

I've heard both sides say the election is already over, McCain's got it clinched, Obama's got it clinched, whatever. But until the debates happen, it's never over (except for Ralph Nader).

But fuck the debates - I'm more interested in the new season of The Office, actually. I think that's the most "mainstream" thing I'm into right now.

By the way, when the U.S. economy keels over, do I still have to repay my student loan?

Banana-skin Pirouette and Collapse

"Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth's atmosphere to a company as a monopoly. Something like this has already happened with outer space, for the same reason that we have leased our central nervous systems to various corporations. As long as we adopt the Narcissus attitude of regarding the extensions of our own bodies as really out there and really independent of us, we will meet all technological challenges with the same sort of banana-skin pirouette and collapse."

- Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (1964)

I was thinking, you know what the best part of Batman (1989) is? . . . and then I looked on youtube and was pleased to see that someone else felt the same way.