hro

really really dislike hipster runoff. feel like my "life" was "more meaningful" b4 i red it tbqh. why is "everything" in scare quotes?

that last sentences is trpping my balls off bro. hro is run by this altbro who is wrapped in so mny layers of protective irony that you will prbly never actually find him. hro has an impntrble lvl 10 irony deflector shield which makes it immune to crit.

hro style is actually harder than it looks witch makes me dislike it more re: level of effort for internet affect not worth it frankly

is hro 1 big "joke"?

if so who is the joke on?

do i only dislike it bc i c the worst of myslf in it?

is the joke on the sheeple readerz who take it srsly?

how do i bcome a person who gets the "joke"?

does worrying abt the joke make me entry level?

is hro sometimes for srs? how can ppl tell the dif?

does it signal the dcline and fall of wstrn civilization?

is hro ruining irony for every1 else?

by even asking qs about hro am i revealing my entry levelness?

i want to write more

i'm reasonably certain of this. i only seem to write essays now, and while the essay is a challenging format with its own small joys and secret victories to celebrate, it always feels impersonal. i don't have an essay voice, i don't think. i suppose having a "voice" in academia is not necessarily a good thing. a well structured, well argued essay is a wonderful thing to witness and i always endeavour to write a more perfect essay, but essays leave the more creative aspects of one's self undernourished. i suppose you could attempt some sort of anti-essay, or meta-essay that but that seems onanistic and unlikely to score you much in the way of life-giving grades.

i want a "voice" but i don't know how to do it. i've heard it suggested that the way to do it is to start by imitating your favourite authors, writers with strong voices who you admire and would respect and just keep writing until it is your own. it its a little like cooking then. you start with a recipe and then as you get more confidant you can start making substitutions, changes and modifications until one day you don't even need the cookbook in front of you because your sex-positive gingerbread people only bear a slight resemblance, both compositionally and anatomically to martha stewart's. but the debt remains and should always be acknowledged. we are, i believe, simply walking, breathing bundles of influences.

there are no artists without influences, and if any claim that they lack them, it either demonstrates their ignorance (willful or otherwise) or their irrelevance, like the guy at a party who's tangents bear no connection to anyone else's stories. they aren't contributing to the conversation. the trick is to meld those influences into something meaningful. this is post modern i suppose. there are no new ideas under the sun. we can only hope to innovate through pastiche.

i'm not sure i believe that, but i am pretty sure that originality is overrated. when people complain that hollywood only makes remakes and sequels, what they obviously want are original ideas. but a project's quality has very little to do with its premise. what matters is execution. the a-team movie is not bad and uninteresting because it is impossible to make a good movie out of 80's tv source material, it is bad and uninteresting because it was made with an absence of care, love and passion for the project. sequels can be better than the original, remakes can be better than their source material and the movie can actually be better than the book.

if this were a essay proper essay i would have started with a more durable argument and i would be summing up my thoughts right now without introducing any new information. i would create a symmetrical effect by setting up callbacks and echoes of the original paragraph. its not though so i won't.

write something positive

i stopped writing here for awhile. this was my place to moan about the hardships of higher education and my deficient work ethic and my burning desire to throw it all away and live an ascetic life on top of a mountain.

but then something happened. i got motivated again. i figured out what i liked and what i didn't like, and then started doing more of the former and less of the latter. life made sense, almost, and i regained some of the comforting linearity that had protected me through much of high school. i don't want to say i was a man possessed because my grades weren't that great and i didn't suddenly become class valedictorian. and i'm still not sure what i want to do when i graduate, but i have vague ideas that are gradually coalescing into coherent shapes and paths and things seem, i don't know, not hopeless, anymore.

things could be better but things could be worse too. i'm going to graduate within the next 12 months and then the world will be before me like an open flower, ready to be sucked dry of its precious nectar. yes. i think i am a bee in this metaphor, and the world is my flower. which makes more sense than "oyster" because oysters have hard shells and look like boogers. but i digress.

i don't know if i'll continue writing here. i usually forget it exists, and i use facebook now as an outlet for my bad jokes. but i recognize the need to write candidly on subjects divers. one day this blog will be one my few connections to my younger, handsomer self. perhaps instead i will write more, not less. perhaps instead, i will start a new blog. i haven't done that in awhile and i have always wanted a tumblr.

good advice read below

This man is on the street corner and he is holding a live pigeon. he's holding it out, arm straight, making sure people know he has a pigeon in his hand.

"If you can't hold a pigeon in your hand, [inaudible] you ain't gonna have no air conditioning, you ain't gonna have no power."

The crazy man is right of course. When the power goes off for good on us (let's talk about peak oil sometime) who's going to come out on top? the homeless man who can catch his own food with his bare hands, that's who. this your daily affirmation from now on. if you can't hold a pigeon in your hand, you ain't got no power.