So I was at Walmart today buying birthday presents for Sandra. Her birthday is tomorrow. Yeah, that’s how I roll. Buying presents at Walmart the day before her birthday. I’m a P.I.M.P.

I was in the electronics section and this song was playing. The Bangles cover of Hazy Shade of Winter by Simon and Garfunkel. It’s fucking great. Even though parts of it sound like Enya or something. Not that I have anything against Enya. She has a job and she does it quite well.

As a matter of fact, there are certain moments in my life when I really fucking dig Enya. I don’t care what you think. For instance, if I’m doing some serious house cleaning. Playing Enya towards the very end of the cleaning process is very refreshing. Especially when you’re done, and like, go through and light some incense and candles and shit and the house is all clean and nice and peaceful and smells like a metaphysical book store. All of the DVDs are all organized and the computer desk is all clean and shit. It’s fantastic.

But only every once in a while. Like, a few times a year.

Now that I mention it, I should probably do a decent clean on this place. Like, one of those cleans where I rip everything off the shelf and actually put it in some sort of order and throw out the shit that I don’t need or pack it away or something. My desk is a fucking disaster right now.

Part of that is because I had to pull it away from the wall earlier today. At later today. And this evening.

One of the things I bought while I was out today was an amplifier for the cable. You see, the main cable outlet is in the bedroom for some stupid ass reason. Then it’s wired through the wall and spits out in the living room, split off of the outlet in the bedroom. Then THAT outlet is split again, one side going to the computer and the other running along the wall and around a couple corners for about twenty feet to the TV. Well, to the VCR and then to the TV.

As you can imagine, my cable reception is shit.

So I bought this amplifier and put it on the source outlet in the bedroom. The picture suddenly looked fantastic. Channels that we couldn’t even watch before were coming in crystal clear. Channels that we didn’t even notice were somewhat distorted before were suddenly pristine and almost superhuman.

But, unfortunately, it totally fucked up my internet. With the amplifier on there, the internet didn’t work. It took me a while to figure out why my internet suddenly didn’t work. I had to pull my desk out from the wall to get to where the cable comes in from bedroom to the living room and splits into the internet and cable for my TV. Now, you have to understand that I bought this desk at a government surplus sale. It’s fucking HUGE and it’s solid. Like, you could put up an entire model train set on this thing. I’m dreading when we have to move. Chance are I’ll just leave the desk last, and then go at it with an ax.

Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m not dreading it all. Chopping it up with an ax might be kind of fucking cool.

So yeah, I had to pull it out from the wall to dick with the cable outlet. Then I had to push it back. Then I had to pull it out again. Then push it back. And then pull it out again. Then push it back.

Tomorrow, when I pick up another coaxial cable from the dollar store, I’ll have to pull it out again.

My point is, that when I pulled it out, I found a million dusty and cobweb covered relics from the past few years.

Like my 2004 Elvira Calendar, which I can only assume fell back there sometime soon after 2005.

There were also a few action figures, a million CDs, a fair bit of garbage, some kind of squishy, sticky rubber scorpion among other random toys and a bunch of various computer components and cables and mouses and various other bullshit. I pulled a couple of interesting things out (like said Elvira calendar) and the rest of it? I pushed it right the fuck back there.

Out of sight, out of mind. That’s my motto.

One of the many wonderful and amazing things that I saw in California was a TV show called Meekcat Manor. I imagine you’ve probably seen it or heard of it. I had never seen it before. I got to watch three or four episodes in the evenings after Disneyland. I was hooked. It’s like, the best show in the history of anything. I got so friggin invested in these little fuckers. It’s like The Real World: Kalahari. It’s what happens when Meerkats stop being polite, and start getting real.

It’s on a channel called Animal Planet. I’ve also never seen this channel before. I was instantly sold on it. You see, I love The Discovery Channel. But mostly I just love the animal shows. This is like, a whole channel dedicated to Discovery Channel animal shows. It blew my mind. Of course, I don’t get Animal Planet up here in Suckada. I mean Canada. I’m sure it’s available on like, satellite or digital cable or something, but I don’t have those, so I blame Canada, and not my own cheapness and unwillingness to play assloads of money for better TV.

But yeah… it’s fucking awesome. And it’s narrated quite competently by Sean Aston of The Goonies fame.

That’s all I have to say for now. I rented a bajillion movies today. Five I believe that are supposed to come out on Tuesday. I don’t know if I’ll get to watch more than one or two.

Currently Listening: Bangels – Hazy Shade of Winter

So I’ve been reading up on this whole lonelygirl15 thing. As per usual, I’m a bit behind everyone else on the internet. I just found out about this yesterday.

Basically, for those who don’t know, this chick, Bree, shows up on youtube with her video diary. She’s a fifteen year old homeschool girl with deeply religious parents. Their religion has yet to be disclosed, but whatever it is, it restricts her from dating or like, having friends or doing the things that most fifteen year old girls do. She has one friend, a guy named Daniel. Their relationship is platonic, though Daniel starts to try and push for something more.

As the video progress, story arcs start to become apparent. There is a “scene” where Daniel is approached by Bree’s father and they have some sort of conversation off camera. It comes out that Bree’s father has asked Daniel to come to their religious summer camp and film the play that they’re putting on. He implies that if he doesn’t do this, he won’t be allowed to come over anymore.

Further story arcs start to build. There is some sort of religious ceremony that Bree’s parents have been having her intensely prepare for. The preparations include her going on a diet (she’s already quite skinny) and memorizing lines in a dead language. It’s a ceremony so private that her parents aren’t even allowed to attend.

Clues to the religious beliefs of her family get weirder in a scene where Daniel is wandering around Bree’s room, lighting the various candles. He starts to light a series of candles in front of a framed photograph and Bree flips out and stops him. He can’t figure out what her problem is, and she won’t tell him, but she also won’t let him light those candles. The photograph behind the candles is of “occultist” Aleister Crowley.

Bree is also fascinated with astrology and quantum physics, and also with debunking “science” and proving that the things we take as facts are actually wrong.

The story thickens even further when Daniel invites Bree to his graduation party. Bree’s parents forbid it, but Bree goes anyway. In her last vlog (video blog) she tells us that that she was caught after returning from the party and she’s now under “house arrest” and she also has a mysterious bandage on her arm.  She tells us that she’s tired of being under her parents thumb and will continue to defy them.

That’s where the story leaves off.

Now, people have gone to great lengths to prove that Bree and her videos are fake. It’s assumed by many that lonelygirl15 is ramping up to be some sort of promotional campaign for a movie or TV series. All indications are that this will be a horror based event. There is plenty of very intriguing evidence online showing that Bree is actually an actress and that the videos are originating from a talent agency in California.

Once you’ve accepted that this saga is a scripted, prefabricated production, the signs become even clearer. Both Bree and Daniel look and talk a fair bit older than fifteen. Her room seems incredibly unlived in for a teenage girl’s bedroom. They never, ever address any of the controversy surrounding whether or not it’s real. In fact, they never address anything specific regarding things people are saying on the comments to her vlogs. She only ever addresses the thousands of people who comment to her in blanket, general ways and she never acknowledges that people think she’s fake.

And those are just the things that you can get from watching her videos. People have gone to great lengths to investigate where these videos are coming from. It’s all online if you’re interested and do some quick searching.

People are losing their fucking minds.

As many of you know, I perpetrated my own internet “hoax” a few years back with mild success. I wrote and maintained “Billiam” for several years. Initially I meant for Billiam to be a believable (if not over the top) real person. That lasted for a short while and it didn’t take long for people to catch onto the fact that it was a fictional character. After that point I stopped going out of my way to maintain a reality to Billiam and simply kept writing it with the understanding that it was satire, assuming that the majority of the people reading were in on the joke. Eventually the novelty of it wore off and I “killed” Billiam. After that (after Billiam “rose from the dead” as a cartoon character) it was pretty much just a fictional comedy blog that people either got or they didn’t get.

Something I learned through the process of writing Billiam is that people don’t like to be “tricked” into believing something is real when it’s not. People lost their fucking minds. They felt betrayed and offended and went on campaigns to “prove” that Billiam was a fake. In the beginning I did what I could to squash it, but I also didn’t REALLY care that much if people found out. Mostly my concern was that people would wreck the comedy aspect of it by constantly barraging Billiam’s journal with messages telling people that it’s fake, which they did.

The same thing is going on now with this Lonelygirl15 experiment. People can’t be content to let other people enjoy what is now commonly accepted as fake. They have to keep screaming “THIS IS FAKE!! WHY EVEN LOOK AT IT WHEN IT’S FAKE?!?!” because they’re resentful of the fact that they were fooled. Also, there are the people who feel like they’re somehow smart because they KNOW something that other people might not know. I had the same shit with Billiam.

Are there people who still don’t realize that it’s not real, and as long as it’s up, there always will be. Shit, there were people who thought that The Blair Witch Project was real. I don’t want to say it’s stupidity, but… well, it’s stupidity.

I was stunned when I killed Billiam the first time (I wrote an elaborate story from another fake journal that I was maintaining chronicling his murder) and people were genuinely upset, believing that a real person was dead. I lost friends over it. Well, friends of Billiam. One girl ranted on me and was viciously pissed and hurt that I had the audacity to “play with the emotions of people.”

Eventually Billiam got so convoluted and stretched thin that it essentially amounted to me writing the shit I would write here, just in a different voice, so I stopped doing Billiam entirely and went back to this journal.

The thing that pissed me off the most when I was writing Billiam is the same thing I’m seeing here, with this Lonelygirl15 thing. People on the internet are stupid. Seriously. Not all of them, but a LOT of them. People are so offended that someone is trying to “trick” them that they lose their fucking minds about it.

What they fail to realize is that EVERYTHING on the internet is fictional to some degree or another. Everything that is written, videoed or said at all online is fictional. Everything you say and I say on Livejournal or Youtube or Myspace or anywhere is fictional. It’s one person’s perspective on reality.

For instance:

Let’s say that Amanda from work told another coworker that she thinks you’re a fat cow. You hear about this and write about it on your blog or whatever. Whether or not that actually happened, anything you SAY about it has nothing at all to do with reality. It’s just your perception of it. It’s like that saying “There’s my side, your side, and the truth.” In this case, the internet is just someone’s side. Anything anyone says is filtered through their own perception of reality. Whether it’s a blogger or a journalist or a historian, it’s all just one persons perspective, and it’s all fiction. You can write “Amanda thinks I’m a fat cow” in your blog, but that doesn’t make it a fact. It makes it your perception of what might be reality. If your coworker, Jenny, tells you that Amanda thinks you’re a fat cow, and you write “Jenny told me that Amanda thinks I’m a fat cow” it’s STILL not a fact. It’s your interpretation of things that happened in the past.

“Reality” is entirely dependent on those who perceive it. And everyone perceives it differently. There for, we can’t judge anything in reality based on something someone says.

For instance, in my last post, I said “I keep working on my website even though no one ever looks at it.” That’s not reality. That’s me recreating what I believe to be reality through my own interpretation. Can we ascertain that this is a fact based on that statement? No. We can’t. I believe it to be a fact, because I was there working on it. But my simply stating that it’s a fact doesn’t make it reality. It makes it my perception of reality. It’s certainly not a fact that “no one looks at my site” because I have no way of knowing that. I can look at numbers and statistics that tell me whether or not someone has looked at my site, but those aren’t 100% reliable. Even so, that’s not the point. I could be completely insane, as could anyone of you. My perception of reality might be completely skewed through some sort of psychosis. Hell, it IS skewed simply by my own judgment,  as is everything else that’s written. Anything that is written down or taped or whatever is has at least a slight spin on it. It is presented in a certain way to convey a specific feeling. Reality has no feelings, but statements do.

For instance again: If I say “This cup on my desk is green” then you’ll probably take it as a fact that this cup is green. I can pick it up and look at it. It’s green alright. Most anyone reading this would assume that the reality is that I have a green cup on my desk. And it has delicious iced tea in it.

But there is no cup. That was a flat out lie. I don’t thing I even own a green cup. But because I said it, people assume that it’s true.

Now, if I say “the portable phone on my desk is black” you’re probably going to assume that I’m lying again. I’m looking at that phone right now, and my perception tells me that it’s sitting right there and it’s black. But again, that’s just my perception. So when I say “the portable phone on my desk is black” that statement is only really, truly a fact to me. Even then it’s still skewed through my perception. You don’t know either way whether or not the phone on my desk is black.

If I were to make a video of me saying “the phone on my desk is black” and then I pan down and show the phone on my desk, and it is black, does that make it a fact? No. No it doesn’t. Not to anyone but me. It might not be my desk. It might not actually be a phone. It could be a prop. It might not really be black, because I could have gone through and edited the video with my computer and MADE it black.

Video, like the written word, and any other means of “recreating reality” is entirely subjective. Not only is that perception of reality skewed by the person making the statement, but it’s also skewed by the person viewing that statement.

If you were to write “Jenny said that Amanda thinks I’m a fat cow” and I read it, I might be sitting here thinking to myself “Well, I also think you’re a fat cow, and so it’s probably true.” Someone else might be thinking “I think you’re perfect, but I know other people are mean, so it’s probably true.” Someone else might be thinking “I think you’re an overdramatic whiner, so it’s probably only slightly true, if not entirely false.”

Now, whether or not Amanda thinks you’re a fat cow is, at this point, irrelevant. It all comes back to that you think Amanda thinks this, and the people reading what you wrote either believe it or they don’t. That thought “Amanda thinks I’m a fat cow” is now filtered through your own perception and the perception of the people reading what you wrote.

Now, if we go and find Amanda, and ask her, we STILL can’t know for sure whether or not Amanda thinks that you’re a fat cow, because that statement that you made has impacted her. Whether she’s seen it or not, the fact that we’re there asking her spawns from the fact that the statement was made. How Amanda actually feels about you is STILL irrelevant, because in our minds, that reality has already been secured. Amanda may be able to manipulate that reality and convince you that she doesn’t think that at all, but we will never know, because HER reality is skewed by the fact that she’s been approached about it. We know that anything she says is subjective to HER reality of not only her feelings regarding you but her knowledge that someone else believes that she feels this way.

Now let’s take this even further.

Some people lie. They exaggerate to make things more interesting. I’d be inclined to say that pretty much everyone does this to some degree or another.

For example:

If I say that the other day I saw someone get his by a car and they shot twenty feet up into the air.

I might of seen someone get hit by a car. They might have been knocked high into the air, but I have no idea exactly how high they went. I certainly can’t say that it was twenty feet. In fact, it probably wasn’t twenty feet. But at the time, my brain might have said “WHOA! THAT FUCKER WENT TWENTY FEET IN THE AIR!” and the guy who got hit might think “SHIT!! I’M TWENTY FEET IN THE AIR!”

Now, someone reading where I’ve written about it will more than likely realize that I don’t actually know how high it was and that it probably wasn’t actually twenty feet. It’s a given that I’ve exaggerated.

Now, if I tell you that when I was seventeen I stepped on a bottle and twisted my foot the wrong way and broke my leg, and that the bone was jutting out of my skin. If someone asks me about when I broke my leg, I might incorporate that into the story, even though it’s not true. I don’t, but I could. Now, as I tell this story over the years, the lie is going to become part of the reality.

Here’s another example, this one is true.

When I was four my father broke my arm. I complained about it hurting for a couple of days, and eventually was taken to the hospital. On the way to the hospital, my parents told me to tell the doctor that I broke my arm falling off of the merry-go-round. So I told the doctor that, as well as anyone who asked. For years anytime the discussion of broken bones came up, I told the story of how I fell off of the merry-go-round and broke my arm. When I say years, I mean like, decades. Over time I developed memories of falling off of the merry-go-round. Hell, right now I can remember doing it.

I forgot entirely about my dad breaking my arm.  The reality became that I fell off of the merry-go-round, and the part about my dad disappeared in my mind.

I only found out recently what happened. When I found out what actually happened, it fucked my mind up, because I could remember falling off the merry-go-round and it never actually happened. The “truth” seemed more like fiction, in my mind, than the lie.

This is an extreme case, but the root of it is applicable to anything. It all comes back to your perception of reality.

So how does this apply to Lonelygirl15 and Billiam? Well, I guess the major difference is awareness of what you’re doing. In both instances the intent was to mislead people, for whatever reason. But I propose that the misleading people is what everyone does, whether they mean to or not. I personally respect an artist’s ability to manipulate that loophole in reality. If someone can create a new reality in the minds of the masses simply by presenting things in a certain way… I think that’s huge.

Because really, what is art, but that exactly? It’s using people’s inherent need to project their own reality onto a piece of art. If I look at a painting and think to myself “This is about the pain of depression” or whatever, then for me, that’s what that piece is about. It doesn’t matter what the artist intended. All he did was put an image there for me to interpret, based on my own perception of reality.

That’s what Billiam did and that’s what Lonelygirl15 is doing. The only difference between traditional art and what’s happening here is that they didn’t tell you beforehand that it was art. They simply put it up there and let people do with it what they will.

It’s like Orson Welles’ broadcast of War of the Worlds. It was, from the get go, an artistic piece. It was presented as a piece of radio drama. The difference is that the WAY he presented it led people to believe that what they were hearing was real, because some people are stupid. That stunt almost ended Orson Welles’ career. Luckily, he was able to scramble out of the mess he’d created. People fucking FREAKED OUT when they found out that they’d been misled. They stormed the radio station where Orson was broadcasting from looking for his blood. I mean, people wanted to KILL this guy because of it. Because he had misled them. Because he created a piece of art that affected them so deeply and worked so well that it actually incited a riot. People were running out of their houses and gathering in the cornfields with their rifles and pitch forks, ready to protect their families from invading aliens.

That also is an extreme case, but it’s applicable. Is it wrong? I don’t think so. I think it’s unfortunate that people aren’t smart enough to actually question reality. I also think it sucks hard that people get so worked up over being reminded that they’re stupid.

I’m not saying that people who believed that Lonelygirl15 is real are stupid. I’m saying that the people who were offended and freaked out and make a point of going out of their way to tell people that it’s not real and that they shouldn’t participate are stupid. I’m saying that people who emailed me telling me what a horrible person I am for “tricking” people with Billiam are stupid. I’m saying that people who are offended by the fact that they were sucked into someone else’s art project and can’t recognize that it IS an art project are stupid. Whether or not they like it as a piece of art is irrelevant. That’s not what I’m talking about. You can recognize Billiam or Bree as a piece of art and still not like it and that’s fine. You’re stupid when you’re offended by it because of the nature of what it is. You’re stupid when you feel the need to try and convince other people that it’s a hoax and consider yourself somehow better than those who haven’t figured it out yet. You’re stupid when you take everything you see at face value and freak out when it turns out that you were wrong.

My point in this seven page rant is that the yardstick of reality that people have been using doesn’t exist. Art is all subjective, and everything anyone writes, draws, paints, video tapes, or creates at all is art, including everything you write in your journal or post on youtube. So freaking out when someone doesn’t adhere to what you consider reality is a stupid ass thing to do, because it’s ALL fiction.

#1. Old people.
Not ALL people. Just old people that I don’t know. They smell bad, they talk about boring shit and they can’t drive. They’re just lame.

#2. Other people’s kids.
Especially other people’s babies. The ones who when you go over to their house and the kid’s there it turns into like “THE LITTLE KID SHOW!” and everyone is all “OMG HE’S SO CUTE!! HE’S DROOLING ON HIMSELF!! LOOK!!”

That lasts until they’re about seven. Old enough to go and play on their own. Up until then it’s like “Hey, look who’s here! Forget our conversation; this little darling wants to hit people with a plastic hockey stick! It’s SO FUCKING CUTE!!” Fuck that kid. He/she sucks.

#3. Other people’s cultures.
I simply just don’t care. I’m an American and that’s all I need to know. I don’t care how they do things where you’re from. Fuck where you’re from and give me a hamburger.

#4. Other people in line at the store.
If you’re in line with me you’re automatically three inches away from being my worst enemy. You’re either in the way of my getting the fuck out that store or you’re crowding me and my shit. God help you if you put one of those rubber barriers between your shit and my shit. I will fucking kill someone over that.

#5. Misslabled “reality” shows.
Everything is called “Reality TV” now. I saw a commercial for Deal or No Deal where they said “America’s favorite reality show is back!”

WHAT?!

That’s not a reality show. It’s a fucking game show! Are Wheel of Fortune and The Price is Right reality shows? Fuck no they aren’t.

For that matter, Survivor and Big Brother are games shows too. American Idol and Rock Star are talent shows, just like Star Search. American Chopper and Miami Ink and Flip This House and Little People Big World and everything else on TLC are a documentary TV series, just like Cops and the Real World.

Now that I think about it, there ARE no “reality TV” shows. It’s more of the same shit that was already on. Calling everything that’s unscripted reality TV is like calling country music “Southern White Music.” It’s like “No! It’s country music!”

Don’t repackage something old and sell it as something new.

I’m not saying that I hate these shows. I’m just saying that calling Deal or No Deal a reality series is fucking ridiculous.

You know what else is fucking ridiculous? The fact that I can’t spell ridiculous and I ALWAYS have to fix it in the spell checker.