This is not okay.

Oh my god…

Okay, this one is really upsetting. You know those things on the internet that you click and then after you see them you wish you could go back and make a different choice? Those you can’t UNsee.

This is one of those things:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgRW6OJtwTU

Look at this fucking thing.

I don’t like it. I don’t. There’s something seriously uncool about this robot.

It’s like…

You ever seen a baby deer get… born… borned. Birthed. Shit out by it’s mom.

wait…

it’s like…

Have you ever seen the birth of a baby deer?

They plop out all sloppy and fucked up and gross looking and then they just hop up and start walking around. It’s fucking crazy.

Now, this thing reminds me a little of that… except instead of a deer, it’s some sort of fucking monster. Like we’re watching a baby monster getting it’s footing and figuring shit out… but really fast. Faster than you’d think a baby monster would be able to.

It’s scary to watch, if only because it’s both somehow familiar and alien at the same time. Like seeing that severed head sprout spider legs and scamper off in The Thing.

There’s something seriously unsettling about watching that robot run and climb and right itself after being kicked.

Maybe it’s because I’m not an engineer or robot building guy or whatever they’re called. I know what my brain considered the limitations of robots. Generally those amount to the robotic arms that put cars together and animatronic pirates at Disneyland. Those things I can wrap my brain around. The arms in the automobile assembly lines I see as extensions of human arms. The robots in Disneyland, while somewhat creepy in their own right, are hardly mistakable as human. They buzz and click and jerk and are clearly limited to a small range of motions, all of which are predetermined. There’s no way one can seriously imagine them stepping down and walking anywhere. They’re going to stay there, waving their arms and moving their robot lips and eyes until Disney decides to reimagine them into whatever the latest success movie happens to be.

But this thing… this robot… it’s something else entirely. Watching it, it appears to be thinking. That’s the scary thing. It looks like it’s assessing a situation and determining the best course of action. It adjusts it’s movements based on it’s surrounding.

A few years back there was that Honda robot, Asimo that could walk upright and up and down stairs and kick soccer balls and such. That was slightly weird to watch, but mostly it was just funny to watch. It was like "that robot thinks it’s people!". It was like a neat toy that made you clap your hands, amused. Then you forgot about it. I’m sure it was a feat of engineering. I know it was a big deal. But honestly, I couldn’t see it as anything more than an elaborate toy. There was nothing threatening to it. Maybe it was because it DID move so much like a human that my natural response was to look at it like a puppet.

But still… this thing…

People having been saying for years in cautionary sci-fi stories and insane conspiracy theories that we’re destined to be slaves to robots and computers eventually. That these machines will develop self awareness and the ability to think beyond what we allow it to think. That some network of Skynet computers is suddenly going to turn on us and try and take over the world.

I’ve always found this notion kind of retarded. Not because I don’t think it’s possible (I don’t really) but because I don’t believe it will have to happen. Computers and robots aren’t going to suddenly turn around and bite us like an angry dog because we WANT them to take over. People have been working as fast as they possibly can to make SURE robots and computers run the world. People are more than happen to turn the functionality of the world over to machines. We do it more and more every single day.

That’s because we ARE computers. We’re machines. People say that the human body is the perfect machine. I don’t know about "perfect" but we certainly are machines. We run on electricity. Our bodies are a series of pumps and pistons and wires with a CPU and oxygenated gasoline to boot. We process energy in order to run, we dump waste like car exhaust. We have background processes. We overload when forced to take in too much information. When we become damaged, warning lights go off and our bodies shut down in the appropriate places. Our brains are separated into two distinctly different processors. One for computing information and define our physical world, and one to make decisions and "think" and define our personalities. Our personalities and emotions, which we treasure so greatly and believe defines us as more than inanimate objects, are nothing more than a combination of chemicals flowing in and our of our brains. We can easily change the volume of these chemicals and completely change a our personality and emotions.

Look at how we drive our cars.

I know know about anyone else (I have to assume it’s the same for other people) but when I drive, I rarely actually think about the fact that I’m driving. The car becomes an extension of my body. My feet become the wheels and the wheels become my feet. When I want to slow down, without thinking about it, my feet press the pedal which pushes the break pads against the wheels and slows the car. If I need to turn, my hand automatically turns on the signal. I don’t think "Now I have to reach down and flip the turn signal lever, then I have to push slightly on the break, look to see if anyone is crossing the street or going to hit my car with theirs, and then I have to turn the wheel 120 degrees, press gently on the gas peddle with my foot, straighten the wheel out, maybe listen to the transmission change gears to make sure it sounds alright because it’s been a little clunky lately, then get back up to roughly eight or nine miles above the speed limit. I don’t think about any of these things when I make a turn, but it’s a lot of shit that I must be processing on some level. I’m probably thinking about a conversation I had at work or a movie I watched recently or (more likely) I’m just thinking "Then sent me away to teach me how to be sensible! Logical! Oh responsible! Practical! And then they showed me a world where I could be dependable! Oh clinical! Intellectual! Cynical!" and singing at the top of my lungs.

We don’t think about these things because they come naturally. Our brains are comfortable with extending the reaches of our bodies (machines) to the mechanics of a car. Because really, a car is essentially a simplified (but physically more powerful) version of a human body. It too runs on wires and pistons and oxygenated gasoline and a CPU. And more than ever, we’re building cars to do the majority of our thinking, so we can simply tune out the process that much further. We have cars that can parallel park themselves. Cars that can decide which turns to make and the best way to get to Jimmy’s house or Portland, Maine or wherever we tell it we want to go.

It’s also like typing. I can sit here (and often do) and type for hours on end. I sit here in the same position, rarely moving more than my fingers (and perhaps my arm to take a drink from a grape soda) and my eyes barely focused on the screen as it seemingly magically translate my thoughts into words and sentences for the great void to store and share. My fingers automatically find the correct keys. They automatically hit the delete key when I find that I misspelled a word (this happens frequently) and retypes. They automatically put in paragraph breaks and parenthesis and punctuation. None of this is anything I actually have to consciously think about it. I sit here for however long it takes for the screen to fill up with all of the thoughts I feel like putting there. Then I move the mouse and hit "post" and go smoke or watch TV or whatever sedentary thing I do when I’m not participating in the sedentary task of writing.

My fingers know which keys have which letters on them, but if you asked me to draw a diagram of which keys have which letters from memory, I couldn’t do it. I know that for a fact.

Our brains seem to be more comfortable using machines on autopilot than they do actually consciously trying to coordinate our bodies through the steps of doing… well, anything. We love sitting for hours and allowing thing things we’ve built for ourselves to do the work we used to have to do for ourselves. We sit and we read books. We drive cars. We even communicate with each other. We have sexual relationships. We get into fights. We kill imaginary people in imaginary worlds that exist solely in machines. We watch TV and movies. We essentially live through machines. Sure, occasionally we get a bug up our butt and go outside and walk around. Some of us (not very many I suspect, myself included) even enjoy these little outings away from machines. Some people make a conscious effort to distance themselves (at least in their own minds) from machines. But not very many. Even less actually achieve anything even close to independence from machines.

And it’s happening fast. In the timeline of our human existence, we’ve become dependant on machines in a very, very short period of time. And it’s coming even faster by the minute.

So are machines going to take over the earth? Absolutely. But only because we beg them to. We desperately want them to. We want nothing more than to give all of our human experiences to machines so we can exist solely in our own minds. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. The farther we get from our physical bodies the better in my mind. It’s not out of any dislike for my body (though I could certainly treat mine better) but because it’s our bodies that restrain us. Our machines.

Ironically, I believe that the more we give ourselves to machines, the farther we go to defining ourselves as more than machines. It is through our machines that we will become gods. The more we allow machines to do the tasks that we previously needed our bodies to do, the more we expand our consciousness and participate in the universal consciousness. It is through this process, this giving of our physical bodies to machines, that our minds become independent from our bodies.

Eventually, our personalities and awareness of self will exist solely in a network of energy. We’re not far off from that right now, as I type this, communicating to you via this trance like state that I sit here typing this. It’s only a hop skip and a jump to completely dislocating from our bodies and direct convergence of our consciousness. 

And when we are able to do that, we become immortal. We’re creating the great energy force that religions call God, and it is us. That universal energy force. We’re creating it and are desperately trying to dive into it. It’s not ready yet. Not all the way. There’s still work to be done. Right now all we can do is dump our thoughts and personality into it as much as possible. Filling it with US. We write here in these "blogs" because we want to make our mark on this universal consciousness. We want to mark our territory. Establish ourselves and our space. Our flavor. Our strand in the massive tapestry of the the universal consciousness. I’ve been defining mine for the last twelve or so years of my life. Constantly writing my thoughts down. Pouring my identity into it. The real me. The me that only I know.

We’re so defined by our bodies and our physical selves. It’s through this process that we’re able to let go of those self conscious limitations. Here, in the universal consciousness, we don’t have to worry about what our bodies look like. We’ll be able to hook ourselves up to vitamin supplements and IV drips of essential nutrients. We’ll be able to decide when we want to be happy or sad or angry or horny by simply adjusting the levels of chemicals that drip into our bodies. We’ll do all of this via computers. Babies will be created in test tubes by robots and incubated. When they’re "born" we’ll make facebook pages for them and hook them into the universal consciousness so that we can love them the same way we love everyone else. When our bodies fail us, machines will keep us alive and hooked into this network. When our bodies finally give out completely we will simply step into this "virtual" world entirely. Our semen and eggs will be stored forever in freezers and accessed by robots when we want children after we’re physically dead.

This is where our soul will go. This is the next step. And we’re building it right now.

Because that’s the one thing computers don’t have… the notion of a soul. Or whatever you want to call it. Our awareness of self. The thing inside of us (or, really, it could be anywhere) that says "I am ME and I want a fucking ice-cream sandwich!". That’s what we desperately want to connect with and with this network… the universal consciousness… we finally feel like we’re no longer alone. There are all of these other souls dumping themselves into the network. When we’re in our bodies, it’s hard, if not impossible, to really feel like you share this world with anyone. Sure, our bodies bump into each other and interact and give each other presents and punch each other in the face, but there’s always that question of whether or not there actually IS anyone else out there… or all of these other machines just props in some elaborate facade. Generally, these questions are made clearer with the assistance of LSD. But it’s still there, on some level. At least for me it is.

But here we are, throwing out these beacons in the universal consciousness that says "Hi! I’m here! Come taste my soul!" because it’s a lot easier to believe that there are real human souls here. Here in this machine.

We’re able to connect with people we haven’t seen in twenty years and would never come in contact with again in the "real" world. You just dip your consciousness into the network and poke them and there they are. There’s no barrier of space or matter. It’s just a matter of saying "Hey, it’s me" and you’re connected. Your minds are connected and you can communicate from chairs on opposite ends of the earth.

And you can do the same thing with complete strangers. Here I am in Canada and I know what’s going on with my family in California. I know what’s going on with menstrual cycles of a woman I know the UK. I know who’s on drugs. Who’s in rehab. Who’s cheating on their spouse. Who’s a virgin and who’s recently attempted suicide. I know had their kids taken away and who’s getting rich and who’s getting poor. I know these things because I tune into them with my mind, via this network. If I wanted to, I could tune in further. I could immerse myself almost entirely in this network, both learning about other people and defining myself further, as I’m doing now.

I don’t because, like most people, I’m still mostly defined by the limitations of my body. My physical cravings and needs.

And the more we develop it, the easier it will become.

I look forward to that. Hopefully it will happen in my lifetime. I don’t really believe it will. I think that I’ll probably catch the very beginning of it, but not quite early enough to completely exist in energy. I think that the children being conceived and born right now… they will be the ones who will actually detatch completely from their physical bodies and are able to exist entirely as energy.

As years and decades and centuries go by, and we’re further and further in our own minds, our bodies will elongate and become thinner. Our heads will get bigger. Our hair will fall out because we no longer need it. Our limbs will be long and fragile. Our organs will shrink and our breathing will become shallow. We will become physically indistinguishable from each other. Our bodies will remain contained in a stationary position. Perhaps we will be unknowingly carted around by robots who take our bodies to be refueled or fixed. But that will be of little concern to us.

Some of us will venture out into the physical world for necessary maintenance and study. Not very many, but some. These people will hop out, aided by robots (because their physical bodies will be beyond the old task of simply walking and moving) and they will travel to learn. They will learn how to even further increase our independence from our bodies. Part of this study will include traveling back in time (which will, eventually, become a function of the universal consciousness, since our souls will not be constrained by man’s invention, time) to study ourselves as we were. This will, at times, require direct contact with the ignorant versions of ourselves. Because the old versions of human beings ARE ignorant, they will assume that we are from another world. They will call us aliens. We will do our studies (which may or may not include anal probing. Unless that’s what we’re into at that point. I know it’s what I’M into) and then return to our own time and the comfort of our energy field.

For right now, we’re just testing the waters. And they’re oh so fine.

It’s weird because I don’t really think about it when I do it. I don’t even know WHY I do it. I just do.

It’s weird too because it’s not like I’m writing because I have something to say or because I feel there’s any artistic merit to it. I could be writing stories or screenplays or drawing or playing guitar. But I do this. I do this and I don’t even know why.

It’s ALSO weird because I don’t really put much thought into what I’m saying. Well, that’s actually not true. The complete opposite is true. I put exclusively thought into what I’m writing. I just don’t put any prefabricated thought into it. There’s no intent to think. It’s just straight thinking. I think, my fingers move and my thoughts are suddenly there on the screen. It’s like I have a dictation machine hooked into my brain. An essentially unedited, unfiltered stream of thought. I rarely go back and reread what I’ve written, and if I do, it’s exclusively for grammar and prettying up the words. I tend to over use some words. I use the words “essentially” and “really” and “I think” a lot. Sometimes I go back and try and mental thesaurus up some new words in their place. Usually I don’t. Usually I just think until I’m done thinking and then I hit “publish” and forget about it. So when I say that I don’t put thought into it, what I mean is that I don’t make a conscious decision to say a specific thing for a specific purpose.

I suppose it’s partially an ego thing. I want to believe that people are interested in my thoughts. I don’t know why they would be, but I do get people commenting and sharing their own thoughts and challenging mine, which I enjoy.

It could be said that it’s a symptom of loneliness or an unwillingness to engage in traditional face to face human interactions. I don’t doubt that this figures into it. I think it has a lot more to do with convenience than anything. What I write here is a direct line into who I am on the inside. That’s something I rarely find in normal everyday interaction. Plus, in this arena, I don’t have to worry about rejection. I throw these lines of thought into the water and if someone is interested, they bite and become a “friend” and I have someone I can convey thoughts to on a regular basis and know that, chances are, they aren’t going to hold it against me. They know who I am and what I’m about and they can either keep reading or move on. It’s a shortcut to friendship, forgoing all of the usual social bullshit required to build a friendship in real life. Plus, most of these people I never actually have to meet in person. If I don’t feel like dealing with people, I just don’t go on the internet. I don’t worry if people are going to feel ignored or if I’m going to lose them as a friend if I don’t make an appearance at regular intervals.

It’s weird too because, for the most part, it translates into real life. On the few occasions when I’ve met people in person that I’ve known on the internet, I feel almost instantly like I can act completely like myself. Even though the person I’m talking to is essentially a stranger, I know that they understand who I am and what I’m about, and more often than not, I’m comfortable going right into full on Joe mode. It’s a mode that people I meet through traditional social situations rarely see. It can take years to get that point.

I don’t worry about offending someone that I’ve known who reads what I write in here, because really, anything I could say that might be taken as offensive has already made it past that test. I know they’re not going to be offended by anything I could possibly say because, well, chances are I’ve already said it, or something similar, and they’re still around.

Sometimes people say “I can’t believe some of the stuff you talk about in your blog!” and I’ve never really understood it. I guess other people view blogging differently than I do. Or maybe they’re more reserved than I am. Or maybe they’ve got reputations to protect (where as I have none) and are worried about bosses or mothers or children knowing too much.

I’ve never really worried much about that.

But then again, there’s very little in what I write that actually relates to the physical reality of my life. I talk a lot about my thoughts about pop culture and news and history and the world around me, but I rarely talk about what’s actually happening in my life. I suppose part of that is because my life in pretty fucking boring. I go to a job I don’t care about, I come home, I watch TV, I go to movies, I play video games, I take baths and read. That’s about all I do. I hang out with my wife essentially doing the same stuff except with a partner. The only thing really interesting about me is my thoughts, and that’s not even that interesting. It’s what I’ve got though. I’m not a comic book publisher or writing books or making music or creating board games or raising children or going out and partying or participating in sadomasochistic sex parties or creating hugely successful open source software. That’s some of the things people I read do. Me? I go to work and consume pop culture and fantasize about making movies. That’s about it.

So I do this. I think into this machine and hope people find it interesting.

Part of me wants to believe that I’m not looking for validation here, but I know that I am. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t have the internet and was just typing on a type writer. I’m not writing purely for the sake of getting thoughts down. The sharing part of it is definitely huge.

But I’m still finding it weird how this thing actually works. The mechanics of it. I’m curious if I had a machine that could literally take dictation from my mind and record my thoughts as they happen, how different it would be from what I write here. I don’t think it would be all that different. There would definitely be a lot more random tangents into off topic subjects. For instance, I would have probably started writing about INXS right now, because Never Tear Us Apart just came on, and that would have lead into me talking about Donnie Darko and then Southland Tales and then the fact that I wasn’t sure if it was “Tales” or “Tails” and then reminding myself that “tales” are stories and”tails” are on animals and a very few weird people. That would have brought me to Bloom County, because the first book was called Loose Tails and that would have brought me to talking about Billiam because I’ve always kind of felt like Berk Breathed (cartoonist behind Bloom County) in that I did something and it had it’s time but then it’s time was done and even though we’ve both moved onto other things, we can never quite let that high point go and we both seem to have a need to revisit it, even though it’s futile and hollow.

So I suppose it’s good that there IS a slight restrain on what I write. Otherwise this would all be unreadable and impossible to follow.

Maybe I should try starting up a new blog that is entirely stream of consciousness. I start a post in mid thought, time myself and say that I’ll write for exactly twenty minutes and when the timer goes off, I stop writing, even if I’m in mid sentence. Chances are the entire post would be one long run on sentence anyway. It might be interesting just to see if it’s even coherent.

More than likely, it would be a massive waste of time and energy.

I do KIND of do that sometimes though. Just write until I’m tired of writing and then stop. I rarely think about structure or pacing or anything like that when I write here. Even in things that traditionally should have those considerations. Like movie reviews. If I’m going to review a movie, I should probably apply some kind of writing rules to it. But usually, I just start writing whatever I happen to think about the movie I’m reviewing and I write and write until I get bored or tired and then I say “I’m done now” and I hit publish and I’m done with it. Sometimes I’ll spend a couple hours or more writing a movie review because I tend to write little sections in tiny bursts. Especially if it’s a movie I like. I tend to have wikipedia and imdb open whenever I’m writing about movies, and more often than not, I’ll spend the majority of the time reading rather than writing. Absorbing information. I like to know at least a bit about what I’m talking about beyond just the movie itself. At least, afterwards, if I’m going to write about it. I don’t like to know a whole lot before I see a movie. I like to be as clean a slate as possible. But afterwards, if I’m going to try and write at least somewhat intelligently about it, I like to read up as much as I can.

This post itself has become something of a stream of consciousness post. I didn’t mean for it. Ironically enough, I meant for this post to be a fairly thought out, prefabricated discussion with myself about the nature of what I do here. But, like most everything I write in this environment, it became a rambling record of my thoughts between 1 and 2:30 pm on a friday afternoon.

Oh well. I tried. I guess it’s just the nature of the beast.

Here’s some titties.

Currently Listening: The Doors – Take It as It Comes

Just watch it for christs sake.

via ilwitchgrrl.

It’s a business meeting where everyone talks like people commenting on message boards.

It sucks.

It’s a reminder that other people are out doing things while I’m sitting at home doing… the same shit I usually do.

That being said, here are some random pictures from my cluttered desktop:

If I gave a shit about Christianity.

I’m listening to this dude’s sermon because he’s talking in depth about Harod the Great/Bloody and I find the shit interesting. Especially since he goes on about what a horrible dude Herod was, but that he played his part in playing out god’s will… I dig that because that’s how I feel about Judas. I think Judas gets the short end of the stick as far as history goes. Judas did what he was supposed to do and I’m cool with that.

Plus, he dressed like a badass indian pimp. I wish I could pull off a sweet outfit like that.

Katharine McPhee guests on Lonelygirl15

LOS ANGELES – The Internet serial “Lonelygirl15″ will get star treatment Friday when “American Idol” runner-up Katharine McPhee plays a guest role.

McPhee was an early fan of the show, which unravels the mystery of a 16-year-old girl named Bree in short video segments posted on YouTube, Revver and an official Web site.

“I followed it from the beginning,” McPhee told The Associated Press. “I thought it would be fun to meet all those characters.”

McPhee’s management contacted the creators of the Web series about a guest spot. The writers had already been devising a female character who briefly meets Bree and had been searching for ways to cast fans as characters. They readily agreed to cast McPhee in the nonrecurring role.

“She has an album coming out and thought it would be fun to go on the show,” said “Lonelygirl15″ co-creator Miles Beckett.

A song from McPhee’s debut album, which hits stores Jan. 30, will be featured as background music on Friday’s Webisode, although McPhee will not be seen singing.

Instead, the 22-year-old will play an unnamed character who meets Bree and her friends after they briefly emerge from hiding. The episode, titled “Truth or Dare,” was filmed last week. McPhee did not get paid for her role.

McPhee said she enjoyed the experience, especially the natural way she was able to deliver her lines. The show, though scripted, is shot in the form of a journal, where characters speak off the cuff into a Web camera.

McPhee said she learned some upcoming twists and turns of the closely guarded plot, but laughed when asked to share them.

“No!” she said, adding she would love to reprise her role.

“I would definitely go back if they asked me,” she said.

“Lonelygirl15″:

http://www.lonelygirl15.com

Katharine McPhee:

http://katharinemcphee.com/

via

filthymonkey

This is one of those things where black people watch it and then shake their heads, speechless at the complete and utter uncoolness of watching white people try to rap. Still kind of funny though. Sad, but kind of funny. Via robynz

I really don’t have anything to say. I mean, anything WORTH saying. I could ramble for hours I’m sure, but really, what’s the point?

Maybe I’ll watch a movie… but it’s 11:30 and I don’t want to be up till 2.

I suppose I could post lots of pictures of naked chicks. That’s pretty much what I do when I don’t have anything worth saying. I just like seeing the content on the page change. Especially when it changes with hotness.

Maybe I’ll post lots of naked chicks, but make the thumbnails really small so that it doesn’t flood the page.

Let’s give it a try.

This chick’s name is Keeley Hazell. I know very little about her other than the fact that she was a Page 3 girl and has quite possible the most beautiful natural breasts on the planet.

She’s got the kind of breasts where if she walked up to me and said “You can play with my boobs for five second, but you have to punch this kitten in the face as hard as you can.” there wouldn’t even be a momentary pause while I thought about whether or not I should punch the kitten. She’d say it and then I would be like “PUNCH!” and that kitten would be clocked.

btw, for those who don’t know: In England (at least where I lived in England) there is a rag called The Sun, which is a popular tabloid newspaper. On page 3 of every issue, there is a topless shot of a model. These women are called “Page 3 girls.”This is a perfect example of the difference in attitude towards nudity in Europe vs the US, where such an amazing thing would never happen.

Man, I never noticed how much screaming there is in this song. I can’t even tell if it’s John or Paul screaming. I’m pretty sure it’s John, though the lyrics are the goofy shit that Paul usually writes.

So I’m on my second listen through of The White Album. So instead of watching a movie for two hours and avoiding staying up till 2, I’ve instead looked at pictures of this naked chick till 1:30. Much more productive.

So there’s this chick named Michelle Trachtenberg. Apparently she was on Buffy or something, but I’ve always known her as Nona on The Adventures of Pete and Pete.

Anyway, so she grew up into an… interesting… looking young woman. I wouldn’t go so far as to call her attractive really, though I guess she is in a weird way. Anyway, the only reason I bring her up is because she dressed up as a hot snow white for Halloween and that’s pretty dope.

I can’t wait till I’m making horror movies. Horror movie shockers are the best!

and last but not least:

Courtney Love. So she’s apparently cleaned up for really reals this time. I’ll believe it when I see it. I still hold out a little bit of hope that she’ll get her shit together and actually do something productive with her life. I do think she’s talented and it sucks ass that she’s so fucked up so much of the time.

Oh yeah, btw, don’t look at this post at work. Unless you work in a titty friendly office.

I’m going to sleep now.

current music: The Beatles-Birthday

Working on a new direction for my website.

right now is just a design and welcome message. Let me know what you think.

www.joehumphrey.com

current music: Weird Al-Dare To Be Stupid

So I got invited to go to “the bar” on Saturday by my coworkers. Some of them at least. I’m typically not a bar kind of guy, but I could use the social interaction, so I’ll probably go. Especially since the bar is right across the street from work and I can just like, walk over then and then walk home. So I can get as fit shaced as I want and not worry about how I’m gonna get home.

I seriously need to work this song into a movie. It’s fucking great. It’s one of those songs that will always be great.

I’ve been on chat more lately for some reason. I go through phases. It’s weird because there aren’t many people that I talk to, but I’m there anyway. Sometimes the odd weirdo IMs me and whatever. Mostly it’s the same people I’ve chatted with since the beginning of time.

It’s a stark contrast to the Billiam days, when I’d sit on chat for hours and hours, trying to harvest good material. Fucking with people that didn’t want to be fucked with, but probably deserved it. There was a time when I could spend like, eight hours online, either writing or chatting or keeping up with other people’s journals and shit. Now I might spend a couple hours in the evening online after Sandra goes to sleep. Usually I’m doing something else on the computer though. Fucking around in photoshop or whatever. Sometimes if I’m off work I’ll mess around for a little bit during the day. But it’s no where near what it was. I guess you just get to a certain point where the internet just doesn’t have anything new to offer. I could probably still do Billiam if I wanted to… but I don’t really want to. Not really. I miss the creative outlet, but not the work it took and the time I invested. Especially considering that it all amounted to nothing in the end. I’ve thought about reinventing it. Starting over with something fairly new and approaching it differently. But really, what would be the point? It’d mostly be just something to do when I’m sitting here with nothing to do. It’s times like this that I start thinking about it. Just because I’ve really run out of things I want to do online. I’m bored of photoshop. The screenplay I was working on has stalled out in my head and I haven’t gathered the gumption to try and kickstart it again.

Of course, the temperature of the internet has changed. Blogging has become an artform and potentially naked girls are either getting tired or bored or want to get paid. I don’t think Billiam could survive now without some major overhauling.

I’d have to put myself on a schedule as well. Before, when it was going strong, I was able to write so much material and get so much shit on the journal because I pretty much did nothing BUT Billiam for two years. I didn’t write on any of my other websites or journals (except for the ones that interacted with Billian, like Tomorrowwendy)  so I’d have to find a way to moderate myself. I’d write one “story” post a week and maybe two shorter, goofier post. I’d also write down my ideas and whatnot before posting them and try and post “digest” type entries rather than posting fifty tiny things a day.

I’d also reinvent the character a bit, if only because there’s not much farther I could go with him from where he stands right now (IE, dead) and because I’m not really interested in writing him the way he was.

When I wrote the whole (but never got around to finishing because I killed him before I got to the end) Tomorrowwendy visit, I kind of reinvented him as a different character than I’d written him in the past. I made him smarter and a little more pathetic… at least pathetic in a more realistic way. I guess I was trying to A) draw attention from myself and B) change things up, because I was getting really bored with him as he was.

If I were to start over, I’d probably carry on from that point. I’d more than likely drop the ebonix/internet speak and I’d approach him as a more believable, but still over confident and sleazy guy. I’d still have him as an oversexed drug dealer living in his moms basement. But I’d try and look at it from the perspective of if he actually existed. It wouldn’t be as tongue-in-cheek, winking at the camera as it was.

Over the course of the last year that I wrote on Billiam, I started pretty much writing my own feelings and thoughts into what I was writing. I also started trying to write “good” stories as apposed to completely off the wall crazy shit. That was part of the downfall I think, but it was inevitable. The peak I think was when I brought Billiam’s twisted Aunt Cynthia back into the picture, shattering his image of her as this sex goddess and showing Bill that she was actually just a coked up, fucked up irresponsible person. It also put Billiam in a position of having to look at the fact that she has this little kid and is totally ruining the kid’s life. That’s probably my favorite Billiam story. I think it was the first time Billiam ever really took a look at his own life and at his surroundings and actually cared about someone. It was also the point where I realized that I either had to change things up and invest a fair bit more creativity and work into the project, or just kill him all together. So I killed him because I was nervous about how people would take a more sensitive, human Billiam.

So yeah, if I ever WERE to bring him back, it would be in that context. I’d do what I wanted to do but only touched on a couple of times.

I would also try and cement a more solid story to the journal. Of course there would still be the odd weird freak story, but it would all tie into a bigger picture, driving Billiam to some sort of greater goal. I have no idea what that goal would be, but I imagine it would be some sort of maturity that he would be no where near at the “beginning” of the reinvention.

Of course, this is all hypothetical, because I’m not bringing Billiam back, or even really considering it. I just sometimes think about how I’d do it if I did. The time isn’t right, and I doubt it ever will be. Realistically, I probably won’t do it until I have a new medium in which to do it. Either as a movie or a TV show. Shit, maybe even a novel. Right now, unfortunately, the crowd that I’d be writing Billiam for already knows all the secrets, and a lot of them know me outside of the Billiam character (at least through my current journal) and I think it would come across more like “this is that thing that Joe used to do and now he’s doing it again, God knows why” and it would be more sad than exciting or interesting.

But I’d be lying if I said that I haven’t built at least a couple of new websites “just in case” in anticipation of a possible reinvention.

I don’t know.

I’m getting sick. I can feel the flu building in my core. I’m hot and sweaty even though it’s cold, and I’m getting nauseous. It’s times like this (or when I’m drunk) that I start thinking about stirring up old ghosts. I won’t though. Probably not. Maybe. Probably not.

current music: Motorhead-Ace of spades

I remember this video from when I first got on the internet. it’s an oldie but goodie!