The Strange Times

[Cramulus]

I've had this one brewing for a long time. It still needs some fine tuning, and I would really like some honest feedback.

LOVE CRAMULUS







The Strange Times^TM

This morning I looked out my window and I saw a unsettling and surreal painting sprawling out to the edge of the sunrise.


Jedi and zombies, vampires and ninjas, cat suits and kings, robots and chameleons, prophets and the profane, and everybody's together, eyes match forward, getting on the train.


We call it the Strange Times. This is the state of modern living.


We live in a world weirder than any realm any explorer could ever hope to map. This is a world where your nervous system, tangled with fractals creeping like vines, extends its tendrils into the modern jungle.


Rule 34: if it exists, there is pornography involving it. There are lollypops with bugs in them. People get surgery to look exactly like Barbie Dolls. There are humans that have become lizards and tigers. The guys in suits have all become cyborgs. Children don't just play Cowboys and Indians anymore, now they play Self Aware Artificial Intelligence versus the Benevolent Plutocracy.


It's the strange times and every human being, even the boring ones, are unspeakably, unknowably weird.


Everybody used to be into the same stuff, you know? Everybody was at cocktail hour, everybody was into the Beatles, everybody was bathing together in the mainstream. But something happened as the stream got quicker, it forked out into a million little tributaries. The mainstream isn't a river anymore, it's an acqueduct and a sewer all at the same time. It's underneath us, always moving, carrying along all these images and symbols and the familliar sound of the ocean. Ideas bump into each other, and sometimes they STICK, and that's how we get things like a music gadget you can masturbate with, or Japanese game shows dubbed with slapstick comedy banter. It's not because these ideas are good ideas in of themselves, it's because the mainstream keeps juxtaposing these bits of shrapnel in new ways. It's all being churned up, and the whirlpool keeps getting faster.


Nothing has prepared us for the Strange Times.


If you think you can study history and make some educated guess at what's going to happen next, you're dead wrong. Yeah humans are still humans - those poor shit flinging monkeys, trapped inside their nervous systems. When you zoom out, they're not individual drops of water, they're the swell and pulse of a wild ocean. That hasn't changed in six thousand years. But these times are different. There is wholesome sex in bathrooms and righteous violence in the highschools. Kingdoms make war upon each other not by sacking cities, but by cutting deep sea internet cables. Super-memes collide and bounce off each other like sumo wrestlers, every single cell in their bloated bodies contains a lonely and confused human being. Our language is not evolving quick enough to keep pace. Words like "Good", "Evil", "Know", "Learn", and "To Be" are woefully inadequate to describe the modern world. These are the dangers of modern living.


We spent thousands of years living in caves, working the fire and the rock. Then we caught the City virus, and the city spirit used us to build hundreds of temples. We spent generations in the sun, tilling the fields for the Nobles. Then we fled into darkness of the factories, the air choked with the din of industry. In hindsight, it seemed to happen in a predictable way. Build, destroy. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Sunrise, sunset. Now we're in a world that doesn't sleep. If it's light here, it's dark somewhere else, like a snake biting its tail. People on the other side of the world are your neighbors, but there is an interminable distance between you and the guy next door (who you've never actually met). You see them every day, but the people on the train will remain strangers, and stranger still.


Odd juxtapositions are the sign of the Strange Times. Comedians are doing impressions of the King. The Catholic Pope looks just like Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars. We sit in the dark around a flickering campfire and listen to the news man tell us stories about the Dangers of Modern Living. The news man knows that when you juxtapose an image with the story, it creates a new meaning which is somewhere in between the ear and the eye. And if we zoom out a tiny bit, the story is juxtaposed with the house that the TV is in. And if we zoom out, that house is inside your head, next to all these other symbols and squiggles and values.


And then at some point, someone thinks its sexy to dress up like a cartoon cat.


Nobody's prepared us for the Strange Times, and there are literally billions of humans that can't cope with it. They could deal with being serfs, they could deal with being soldiers, those are simple lives with simple choices. Now its come time to make a new story for themselves by assembling all these weird symbols into a lifestyle, a personality, a set of values. And they just don't know how to do it. They look to culture to get clues for how to swim and be happy and break even in this weird world, and all they see are porn models and ninja turtles and humane terrorism and the extreme left and the extreme right and nothing is centered.


If it was as easy as just dealing with the sun and the crops, however hard it might be, people would pull through and maintain. But there are million choices and complexities and nuances and shrapnel flying at you like throwing knives and pillow fights and semen and bananna cream pies.


We think it's best to laugh.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

 

[Thurnez Isa]

that is pretty damn good there Crammy
I like it alot
if you want i could over it word for word after work (though I dont know how much help I'll be)...
but my first impressions are .... 

[AFK]

Good stuff.

Clearly humans have not only diversified from the cave man days in terms of occupations and work force, but in personality traits as well.  My personal theory is that the new media has only served to amplify that which probably has existed for awhile.  It is given light to corners that were left dark back in the early to mid 20th Century, and undoubtedly before that. 

Very thought provoking piece Cram. 

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

So I wonder if this is Really True, or only sorta true...

Were we all normal in the 1950's? Were we all mainstream, or did we just pretend?

Are we all unique now? Or do we only think we are... Have we really escaped the Ticky Tacky?

1. Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

2. And the people in the houses
All go to the university,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives,
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

3. And they all play on the golf-course,
And drink their Martini dry,
And they all have pretty children,
And the children go to school.
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university,
And they all get put in boxes
And they all come out the same.

4. And the boys go into business,
And marry, and raise a family,
And they all get put in boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.

[Triple Zero]

CRAM MOTHERFUCKING MITTENS



damn that was good. it made me a bit dizzy and shivery. and the most amazing thing is that you're 169% RIGHT.

the only feedback i can give, is that it might not need the call-to-action+oneliner at the end, but maybe something very different, or perhaps nothing at all.
how about a hyperlink? i dunno to where, but the hyperlink as a symbol for the reader to take the plunge into this strange, strange world. (maybe PD.com)

[hunter s.durden]

I would really like some honest feedback.

You should hit the gym more, you're too scrawny to play an action hero.

But only if it doesn't take away from your writing, which is fantastic.

Were we all normal in the 1950's? Were we all mainstream, or did we just pretend?

You make an interesting point. I argue with my father that the good old days were an illusion. He was a poor little kid, but born into a white "good ol' boy" type family. White, meaning the sky was the limit for him. He says the 60's were bad, it led us to this era of "immoral decadence." (Feminism gets under his craw, methinks. Get back in the kitchen, bitch)

Looking at life then, sure you had some weird, but not like now. You had Beats, nuclear crisis, all that fun stuff from those Misfits songs... but not like today. Go back 50. Then 100. Then 500. There may have been mutants in those times, but not like modern living allows.

I hope I'm alive long enough to see how far we ride this crazy thing...

[Adios]

That was a fantastic read. Very thought provoking. One thought I can't seem to get past though is how far we have come as a species and how we walk the razors edge to avoid slipping back hundreds of years. I think at best we are civilized savages and at worst pretending to be what we are not.

Moar please.

[Cramulus]

One of the major differences between now and, fuck, only fifteen years ago...

Humans are exposed to more information on a daily basis than they have in all of history. There is an overwhelming amount of information that is being fired at you, and you have to make very rapid choices about it (see also: thesis, antithesis, synthesis).

Like back in the Beatles Era (and PLEASE correct me on this if I'm off base), you either liked the Beatles or you didn't like the Beatles. Your opinion fell somewhere along that continuum. Sure there was also motown and jazz and whatever happening in the mainstream, but if the Beatles were as big today as they were then, lots of people would make it to adulthood without ever HEARING of them. That's how big the mainstream is. And that's why it's not a river anymore, it's a delta of tributaries.

This is the first decade where you can be into black metal but NOT death metal (genres which are indistinguishable to the 95% of the population). This is the first generation in which an average uneducated shlub can be interested in quantum mechanics and string theory without any formal education in physics.

I worked at this anime con a few years back and all these people were walking around with these metal headband things. I asked some chick, "what's the story with those? what anime is it from?" and she said, "oh, that's what ninjas wear." Really? That's what ninjas wear, not black catsuits and tabi boots? Really?? Why have I never heard of that?

These are the Strange Times, that's why. Symbols have new meaning on a daily basis.

and every day that goes by, MORE information is being blasted at us. There aren't enough hours in the day to keep up with it.






A serf knew that his grandfather tilled the same field that his grandkids would. The procession of new technology was moving so slowly it was invisible (unless you were at war).

But now it's the Strange Times. Go back in time and ask somebody from 1990 what the future will look like and he will not mention iPods, blogs, furries, GPS, facebook, alternate reality games, or internet piracy. Try to imagine what 2018 will look like -- you literally can't.

[Adios]

But now it's the Strange Times. Go back in time and ask somebody from 1990 what the future will look like and he will not mention iPods, blogs, furries, GPS, facebook, alternate reality games, or internet piracy. Try to imagine what 2018 will look like -- you literally can't.



I'm old enough to remember when the old Buck Rogers tv show was really happening in my life. Now they talk about how many gigs are in a car, whatever that means. Here's a paradox. When I was a kid we cropped tobacco by hand from the fields and put the leaf in a mule drawn croker sack sided sled. One night after such work we watched the moon landing. The world was a much larger place then.

[Jasper]

I like the OP.  I don't want to critique too much, because I don't put out much content myself, but if I said anything it'd be that it seems to ramble a bit towards the middle.  It gets pretty poetic at times, so the rules can't apply as strictly, but if it stuck with one idea at a time then skeptical people might digest it without rupturing something.

It bears repeating however, that this is made of win and chocolate.

[hunter s.durden]

This is the first generation in which an average uneducated shlub can be interested in quantum mechanics and string theory without any formal education in physics.

Also: We are among the first to have internet, and large libraries, free to the public, and people ignore it.
Our societies neglect of libraries borders on criminal. I guess because we can afford to ignore knowledge.

"Hunter, how do you know about all this stuff? You barely got out of high school."

"You know that big building you go to once a year to get your taxes done? They have thousands upon thousands of volumes of knowledge in there. AND IT'S FREE!"

[Jasper]

I used to go to the library more, when I couldn't just torrent texts.

Wait, I'm in a library as I type this..

[Cramulus]

Cram   Good spot on the "weak" ending, zip - the "call to action" bit at the end. The function of that is becuase ultimately I'd like this to be an intro piece for a booklet.
Cram   The topic of the booklet being: Why is Discordia more relevant in the year 2008 than ever before?


[000]   well it's not really weak, a lot of rants end like that
[000]   but for this one, i felt it detracted from the rest a littlebit
Cram   I agree. the piece needs to get focused a bit. the "laughter is the best medicine"  should be expanded in a different rant
[000]   well i liked it this way, every paragraph showed another example of strangeness
[000]   i liked them all, but you could also cut one or two, because they also kind of say the same thing, it's just a matter how much to you want to drive the point down
Cram   good call. They should get spread out into other pieces
[000]   could
[000]   also more of those weird graphics
[000]   and i keep having to think about cyberpunk
[000]   because it revolves so much around the internet
Cram   yeah, the piece really needs some graphical accompanyment, some absurd pairings
Cram   serfs and cyberwarriors et al
[000]   and i also had to think of our new Global Runners Cabal
Cram   that's a great idea BTW
[000]   this bit: "Now we're in a world that doesn't sleep. If it's light here, it's dark somewhere else, like a snake biting its tail. People on the other side of the world are your neighbors"
[000]   i had to think of that, i was running, and knowing that on the other side of the world was this guy, Lysergic, hearing the same music, stopping and walking and running at the same time with me, i sort of looked down to the ground imagining that might be the direction he is now
[000]   (which was probably wrong, because australia isn't straight down from here, afaik)

[Roo]

 

To add my two cents...

The Catholic Pope looks just like Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars.

Somehow I feel better knowing that I'm not the only person to think that.

Next: the bit with the zooming out could be matched with a bit about zooming in. I'm not sure how, exactly...that'd be up to you. But I think things can get very strange when you get down to the very small stuff. Or even just how strange individual's lives can be...the weirdness that creates the "Jedi and zombies, vampires and ninjas, cat suits and kings, robots and chameleons, prophets and the profane". Zooming out sort of unfocuses the picture, and I think zooming back in could tighten things up.

"...and nothing is centered."
Perhaps could be a whole other piece in itself. But maybe that could even be woven into the bit at the end about choosing to laugh. I don't know...not sure what I'm getting at besides the fact that that sentence resonated with me.

good stuff.