delusion

delusion is a happy trap. you can truly convince yourself of anything if you believe it hard enough. like that you had a happy childhood. and you can seriously go through life thinking this way. so much of a person's history boils down to memory, a thing so highly dependent on psyche, and others' memory. what a pot of gold. what an electrical wire. but when it comes to individual lives, most of the time delusion doesn't matter much, if you're insignificant enough -- that is, if you believe in insignificant people at all. what i mean is, individual "mis-memories" can be harmless if they don't impact many others.

when they do, or when your memories make up a collective, you're playing a different ballgame. this is why historical analysis is so important - because you can have 2 people with entirely opposite recollections of a single event, and when this occurs, both contribute but neither commands legitimacy. oral history only truly works as a retelling of factual events when there are numerous points-of-view involved (and of course, people know this - no one goes around believing every word of the Iliad was historical). don't trust the individual voice when it comes to history unless it is backed by documentation or other kind of evidence.

this is why being a historian, to me, is such a noble career. you have to really be a scholar in order to command any kind of unbiased historical expertise. love love love history. but memory fails me, which is why i suck as a history major. Joanna, what a dumb excuse.

back to my original topic. blogging can serve to alleviate time's distorting effects on memory. it can capture the author's feelings at the time they are being felt, events as they are occurring, etc. less room for error on a test when you just studied the material, right? this does not preclude the many negative effects of blogging, though, such as feeding blogger narcissism and reader hostility, and especially general inanity. wow, what am i doing here? haha

little emperors

China is too big for Communism

excitement

One of the best games I've had the pleasure to beat is being turned into a movie! Too bad the movie will never live up, but still. That the movie's plot won't be a thing like the game's is to be expected, but hopefully Disney makes it work. The prince in Sands is my favorite out of all the games (mostly because he isn't 2D and not yet ridiculously dark and brooding), despite the fact that his fighting skills leave much to be desired.

Prince Of Persia

The online versions aren't the funnest (mostly because they are 10 times as hard), but here is the original Prince of Persia game.

why is google so hip?

I am totally never using Firefox again if I can help it.

Currently: Drowning myself in Milka. Ouch, Twitter-style. My coolness factor just dropped into the negative.

EDIT: Apparently, cool 404 pages are all the rage now. I am so behind the trends.

reality at night

So I was watching Reality Bites and got to the part where Lelaina and Michael talk about stars and couldn't help thinking that was a conversation I've had many times. Too bad I'd rather have any other conversation in the movie. Anyway, Atwood put it nicely in a passage I just read: "The moon is a stone and the sky is full of deadly hardware, but oh God, how beautiful anyway." The moon's a stone and we are dust. Perspective speaks bluntly. Anyway, can't help thinking I am in some kind of twilight these days, but I think the whole world is feeling it. Except for kids, and some aspects of the media, like Up, or David Bromstad. Not really much hope going on, more like understanding that the storm's got to be weathered and that it'll die down eventually. Holding out for later, or something. Later, I will change the world. Yes, we can, but is the call as urgent? Maybe I should start reading the news again? And so, I live the little moments and enjoy them briefly and dearly. Where is the end? Where is the pattern? The Goal? I think everyone's life is a little bit just like Reality Bites, only maybe not as perfectly.