Posted by Comments Off on G9 – No need to keep the rabbits out!
Good news on the broadband front in Australia is reported on ABC news online with a fibre optic network being placed on the table by the G9 group (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200705/s1938172.htm). What’s interesting is what “Primus chief executive officer Ravi Bahatia” reportedly said, “Competition is very successful in Australia right now and what the access undertaking does, the one we lodged today with G9, is it helps to protect that competition by decimation by a monopoly carrier,” now he wouldn’t be making inference to our beloved Telstra would he? Too right we the competitors and consumers alike need protection against the flagrant profiteering of Telstra. As I understand the situation, Telstra is unwilling to lay down fibre without assurance that it will be able to charge exorbitant fees to access the network. The 50 dollar charge for fibre broadband proposed by G9 is indeed great news for Australians who are lagging well behind in the need for speed.
Telstra are hanging onto the ringside ropes at the moment, with the threat of high speed internet and VOIP by competitors, their profit margins are very much at risk. They’ve had free reign over the Telco industry for far too long and now it’s time for them to hang up their gloves for some fresh faces to deliver what Australia wants, a fair go.
Posted by Comments Off on Who controls you?
i am the voice inside your head . . . and i control you
i am the lover in your bed . . . and i control you
i am the sex that you provide . . . and i control you
i am the hate you try to hide . . . and i control you
i take you where you want to go
i give you all you need to know
i drag you down i use you up
mr. self destruct
i speak religion’s message clear . . . and i control you
i am denial guilt and fear . . . and i control you
i am the prayers of the naive . . . and i control you
i am the lie that you believe . . . and i control you
i take you where you want to go
i give you all you need to know
i drag you down i use you up
mr. self destruct
i am the needle in your vein . . . and i control you
i am the high you can’t sustain . . . and i control you
i am the pusher i’m a whore . . . and i control you
i am the need in you for more . . . and i control youi am the bullet in the gun . . . and i control you
i am the truth from which you run . . . and i control you
i am the silencing machine . . . and i control you
i am the end of all your dreams . . . and i control you
i take you where you want to go
i give you all you need to know
i drag you down i use you up
mr. self destructMr Self Destruct – The Downward Spiral (Nine Inch Nails)
Control that all elusive (illusive) mechanism by which we wish to surrender our lives to. And who is it that really controls us? Do we even have control, a control that we may subscribe to? Is the fabric of this reality within the control of our senses or does the fabric of reality control the senses we perceive with? Laughably we may proclaim that control is easily within our means and who can argue that we aren’t in control. Surely our lives are completely within our control and at any given moment we can choose the direction in which we exercise control. Is this just illusion? Who controls you?
Who can fully subscribe to the notion that they are indelibly in control, that their thoughts and actions are in keeping with control? And if we are in control what is it that we control? If at the base we are merely atoms buzzing in a form that we call human do we control this atomic substrate or is the atomic substrate controlling us? Is consciousness a separate entity to the busying of sub atomic particles swarming together as a cohesive unit or is consciousness or the thing we lay claim to consciousness a by product of the interaction of seemingly separate particles connecting or sparking with each other? Who controls you?
To make matters even more complex, we have a missing piece to the particle puzzle. What gives these particles a reality to matter? Higgs Boson may explain the question but the question of control is still unanswerable. Perhaps all we have is the illusion that control is something we have. Could we even survive if we did not possess a reality that we are in control? Would it serve our interests if what we perceived as the mind was in essence non existent, that it was in reality just atoms swirling in some ether creating an illusion of something that really is nothing. The nothingness acting in a universal drama so that the ether of nothingness could entertain itself perhaps. Is the unit of nothingness masquerading as atomic matter what people call spirit or is it consciousness that defines spirit? I’d have to subscribe to the idea that what they mean is this energy field of strong and weak forces binding nuclei and photons, protons, quarks and electrons and numerous other bits and pieces and at the lowest common denominator, higgs field and boson, creating the illusion of matter; that is spirit.
Maybe consciousness is just a modernized term for the free will that God purportedly gave us and that the higgs field is the spirit. Now who said science and religion couldn’t coexist? In a religious sense then control is definitely within the means of our free will and that there exists not some uniform higgs field but a splitting between a moral and good field and a lower and evil field that we can choose to embody thus determining whether we are enlightened into the white light or shadowed into the dark matter of eternal night.
Who controls you?
Posted by Comments Off on Filling space.
So much for trying to do the right thing, I am condemned to tend the midnight candle whether I want to or not. Last night I attempted an early night only to find the sleep I so longingly sought was not so forthcoming with its rapture and delight as I was, on getting an early night. Tonight I’m not in keeping with the sandman’s grains either so am biding my time with a few words in an attempt to coax the thistles of insomnia’s vine with a triage of nothingness and listless rambling.
I’ve updated this WordPress blog software thing to version 2.2, well at least I think I’ve updated it. It’s still working so I know I did something right even if it isn’t updated.
Nothing eventful ever happens on a Monday so I have little discourse to rant about, and not a great deal occurred since the last time I posted so I may very well be just indulging in more wasted time.
Maybe tomorrow will inspire me with some food for thought so at least I don’t waste anyone else’s time with meaningless chatter.
Posted by Comments Off on Vanished.
Again the night has vanished in a blink of an eye and I’m left wondering what I did with the time. I’d get a lot more done if I stopped fiddling and started doing. What I’m supposed to be doing is merely under cutting the value of time, when the important thing is to acknowledge how I’ve wasted the resource without as much as a second thought as to the consequences of such inaction and apathy. I seem to think an endless stream of this fluid space is available and that I can just willy nilly expend the motion of it as I please.
I had in mind of a few things I wished to explore and they seem to have vanished and evaporated into the ether, along with the fabric of time. The flow of thoughts tumble into troublesome woes of time and an urgency envelopes me to get these thoughts onto paper or in this case a palette of magnetised space, however once time is under my control I hasten to disintegrate it into meaningless information searching. In truth I gained some insights into the workings of Media Portal and Windows Vista but they distract me from the greater truths I wish to uncover.
Oh well, I will invariably become more intimate with the truth from such misdemeanour’s and am coming to understand that this journey is a lesson in patience more than anything else I delude myself with.
Posted by Comments Off on Time to waste!
The candle burns the midnight blue and I remain with my eyes wide open. Tomorrow will no doubt bear a troubled and weakened mind. Why I persist in this nocturnal realm is beyond the weary comprehension of a man with no idea. The plan is to get my eyes shut by 1:00 am, so I have about half an hour to kill before the deal with the sandman expires. A deal not so much different from the plight Cinderella faced all those imagined years ago. Perhaps I can lay blame to the evil sisters of midnight curse but in the darkened chasm of this tortured soul lies the truth behind my nocturnal hell.
I could very well fall asleep in the now but I spent half the night in a waste land trying to repair the unrepairable, the clunking of a dead fan was my undoing tonight so here I am, tired and exhausted but still kicking. Kicking but without a redeemable word to reconcile the night with. I am rambling for the sake of speaking, perhaps so I don’t lose contact with the daemon which inspires the wretched to insight and foreboding.
Probably what is closest to the truth is that I just wish to play with my new toy and I am doing so as I speak, in the comfort of my own bed. I got myself a little friend to keep me company and to keep me sane while my Dad continues to live with me. I figured if I have to resort to desperate measures and to regress into childhood survival mechanisms to cope with the undue stress of paternal patronage I may as well do it in comfort. I have this laptop now so I don’t have to be in too close proximity with the object of my woe and having such a gadget allows me the option to lock myself away if the need arises and not do without the comforts and addictive behaviours I’ve grown accustomed to indulging.
It reminds me of how I used to cope in times gone by, by escaping the situation. I see no shame in admitting that I seem to have not grown out of this old behaviour. Things could be worse and I am incredibly fortunate to be able to have the opportunity to indulge the flights and fancies of purchasing mayhem, thus ensuing a level of sanity which may not be considered in any way whatsoever normalcy.
The clock strikes one and the pumpkin calls its soupy name.
Posted by Comments Off on Will you believe?
My hope has still yet to be redeemed from this nightmare. I am trying to believe that when I awaken each and every morning that there is another version of the truth. A truth that can be scratched away to reveal the hidden meaning behind the insanity that seems to be revered as fundamental reality. However the truth that seems to be cast into our hearts is one of fear. A fear generated by the mass media of autocratic nations and Australia is not independent of the fear mongrels that rip and shred at our will to be human.
My favourite song on Year Zero is Warning, it is eerily prophetic in a very contemporary sense. We should heed the warning the world is sending us before we ruin it all together. What is even scarier is what William S Burroughs predicted in one of his Nova Convention speeches, “time is a resource and time is running out and that is why we have to go into space”…space a resource of time, more time! (perhaps back to the beginning of the end or end of the beginning?) The Burroughs heroin induced paranoia seems to have some basis in reality it would seem; are we now in the process of planning an escape? With our exploration for life on other planets it seems to resonate a desire to prepare a contingency plan just in case this global warming is true and not merely climate change. Could we be looking for a new place to live? Is the war on terror a process of ethnic cleansing so that only the true and just may serve in the heavens above?
Too late. Must be the parepin.
Posted by Comments Off on Domesticated Beat
How many times in a day can one be revisited with the notion that this isn’t what I want. Of whether there is an inherent purpose in striving to repeat the same routine day in day out. I am even more perplexed and disillusioned by this herd existence when I face the problem that it is manufactured reality that is implanted into our psyche and is not a very smart way to map out a life path. Steve Pavlina’s 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job extols the virtue of self employment and it is a hard idea to move away from once you’ve accepted the validity of the argument. Grinding away life at the millstones of some corporate machine is disheartening and almost obscene. The obscenity lies not in the way society is structured but by the eagerness in which we slaves contribute or subscribe to fate. Begrudging as it is, the idea that Steve expresses in Lifelong Domestication is fairly close to the truth in the serfdom we freely choose;
Getting a job is like enrolling in a human domestication program. You learn how to be a good pet.
Look around you. Really look. What do you see? Are these the surroundings of a free human being? Or are you living in a cage for unconscious animals? Have you fallen in love with the color beige?
How’s your obedience training coming along? Does your master reward your good behavior? Do you get disciplined if you fail to obey your master’s commands?
Is there any spark of free will left inside you? Or has your conditioning made you a pet for life?
Humans are not meant to be raised in cages. You poor thing…
The disillusionment I am unraveling in the constant ebb and flow of an imprisoned freedom is haunting. I watched the movie “The lives of Others” a few weeks ago and I came away from the movie thinking that life in this so called freedom is not that far removed from the control machine of a police state governed by the Stasi in the movie. In this multi media consumerist society we at the very least are controlled, not by direct manipulation and surveillance by a secret police but by electronic manipulators that send their feelers into the very synapses of the herd it wishes to manage. In blind faith we entrust our leaders to make our mass marketed freedom an essential commodity to ensue our happiness without even batting an eyelid as to whether this freedom is indeed what we want and need. Is this marketed freedom something we really desire? Is “lifelong domestication” of the herd what the leaders desire more so than the individuals that make the whole…society?
We seem so easily lead into apathy that I fear we a beginning to resemble drones. I fear that I am becoming a drone. Lead by the leash of capitalism and wealth, willing to sell my soul for domestication and I don’t like it. Freedom is not living the life I live and I feel trapped inside this powerless state. Powerlessness is sold as virtue in some circles and it is a sin in the twisted morality of this beholder.
The apathetic freedom of drones seems slightly ironic and is undoubtedly absurd. I am absurd. My life is absurd! What do I do about this outrage….nothing! Sweet FA! The inevitable futility is overwhelming. The moralist stance avails me nothing. There is no utopia that can be generated from imagination, only in song do such fantasies gain flight, embedding into consciousness and then dispersing as if in dream. This post is mere imagining and it serves no more use than what was gained in musical musings. Perhaps I can amuse an onlooker for a few brief moments but the “freedom trap” remains. Perhaps I can find refuge in Game Theory and the economists wet dream of selfish genes and “Fuck you buddy” and deceive myself into the fulfillment of domesticity in pursuit of slow and steady asset accumulation, forgetting any plausible escape from the dreary reality that slaps at my nostrils like a decaying fish. As a last campaign for my sanity I will hold out for the beat of revolution’s drum and marching of disillusioned feet.
Posted by Comments Off on Come on Telstra. Fair Go!
Well it looks like Telstra are having a whinge about having to be regulated by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. We’re paying far too much as it is for our broadband, the abysmal speeds we are dishing out our good dollars for and Telstra are campaigning for deregulation; you’ve got to be kidding me. What we need to do is apply pressure to Telstra to pull their fingers out and give us a decent service with fibre to the node. This archaic system of copper lines is just not good enough and we should be expecting a lot better for the dollars we pay (we’re living in the first world aren’t we?).
I’m paying $100 a month for my internet connection and 20 dollars out of that just goes to line rental (and I’m lucky to have been able to get the home line budget plan before Telstra wised up and started rejecting consumers from downgrading their plans if their adsl wasn’t on a telstra port). Telstra already have far too much of a monopoly on the Telco scene and it is unquestionably absurd that they ought to get any more say in how fast our connections can be. It was only a few months ago when they unlocked ADSL 1 to its maximum potential and then we get slapped with extra dosh for the privilege of having what should have been a free upgrade. Good one Telstra! Ya schmucks!
Posted by Comments Off on Somewhere?
Another Monday has rolled by and I’d be hard pressed to recount what has happened. Seems to me that some Monday haze has drifted in like a fog condensing directly behind my retina from the cooling of the weekend lost. The worst day of the week is all but over and I’m relieved that this transitional stage of perpetual motion is buried, never again to be resurrected, well not until the next dreadful cycle begins a week from now.
The fog is present although it is without me, I am lost from this worldly domain, or is it, that I have a desire to be lost from this worldly presence. The idea of disappearing is an ever present fantasy that encapsulates me with dreams of freedom and escape. In times of tribulation it promises relief from the burdensome mire I find myself swimming in. The mire seems to stir from the depths of a Sunday afternoon when I have a rendezvous with reality. I quiver and shudder in unison with the coming of its shallow red tides and as the tide rushes in, bringing with it, a reality I’d sooner rather not have to face, it comes nevertheless, ignorant of my wishes and empty pleas. Seemingly the choices have been made and no other options avail themselves to these eyes, crimson with tears unable to fall. In some cruel twist of fate I have been chosen to traverse this path before me and perilously I walk along its jaggered cobblestones, to nowhere, to somewhere?
Posted by Comments Off on Out, but not far enough!
I was all set and geared up for some industrialised noise screeching through my core at the Nine Inch Nails gig tonight, only to find when I arrived at the Luna Park box office, that the damn show has been postponed. A wee bit disappointing but “thats what I get”. Looks like I’ll just have to wait for tomorrow night’s show, to witness the dread and suffering of nails being driven into our souls. The big top at Luna Park is a pretty good venue, the last time I was there was for a Nick Cave gig and my ear drums near burst with the double drum kits beating the doom and gloom of Cave and the Bad Seeds. Let’s hope the NIN show will go ahead, the lady at the box office said tomorrow’s show is confirmed while the Saturday gig is still up in the air. I saw Trent and the boys last time they was ‘ere, I think it was 2005 and the night brings back memories of my foot throbbing with crystalline urates, piercing the joint of my heel with its fragments and shards and my stomach churning with Colchicine cramps. This time around there’s no sign of gout so I’ll be better able to mosh and thrash around while contemplating Year Zero and the end which has begun.
What I need is a night out. Out from these walls, walls which suffocate me in their wretchedness, away from this screen that glares at me with its inhuman pixelated face. Away from vibrations of radioactive waste pulsing to the beat of fossil fuel, carrying the energy to drive the root DNS into being. As if it were a double helix, some mutated DNA that encodes itself into the consciousness of its host, a virus invading the minds of all it comes into contact with. “The great destroyer” weaving its web into the abandonment of sociability by posing as a new age cult naming itself social networking, electronic synaptic tentacles eager to grasp its prey from evolutions snail mail order with designs to shape a neo evolution into a reversal of existence, back to “Year Zero”. It will be good to get out before its too late.