Thursday 13 January 2011

le mythe de la mythe


this is a question that I hope to sponge out for the next issue of Nyx: a noctournal.

"Myth does not deny things, on the contrary, its function is to talk about them; simply, it purifies them, it makes them innocent, it gives them a natural and eternal justification, it gives them a clarity which is not that of an explanation but that of a statement of fact." says Roland Barthes

for barthes, myth is depoliticised speech, and as we can see here in his remarks, it amounts to a simplification of life through immediately part-prescribed messages beheld within signs. the post-ideological age is not upon us, but to what extent do we figure our ideologies to be products dependent on myth? the 60s hippie is a great example of a myth of a myth, for it is he through whom we visualise the hippie movement; it is he whom's very survival depends on the great myth of the 60s. is it not the hippie, as opposed to the anti-corporate anti-war rationale, that cartman despises so? with this in mind - to the quill!


...and other stories.

Tuesday 4 January 2011

TFT-LCD, validation is in your hands.

i'm writing on the blog now.

i'm writing on the blog because other people write on their blogs and it makes me think that i should write on my blog. they are productive, so should i be.

i'm writing on the blog so that it is ok that i got up at midday and watched two movies, each lasting more than three hours, and went to bed. for breakfast i managed three items from a chocolate selection pack. i had one sandwich an hour after. later i had another sandwich. it was exactly the same sandwich. it had the same amount of pepper on it. the second time, a slice of ham was added. during these periods, the movies remained on pause. waiting.

i made a coffee once and re-read chantal mouffe for a bit with the pencil i had lost the first time round. reading without carefully applying asterisks in the margins has become unthinkable. rationalist-universalist or contextualist? mouffe wonders, and so do i. then i realised that i have work to do. real work, almost, maybe. for nyx and reallyopenuniversity, if i'm lucky and get myself thinking for more than a short selection of minutes. to this end, i made a to do list, which included 'do's' geared up to some job-related endeavours. i won't mention them for fear that you'll get them first.

then i split the to do lists in to different lists - one's related to writing, one's related to other stuff. then i highlighted some entries in red to garnish them with importance even though i selected them for this treatment randomly. the next step, if i were to be sensible, would be to further organise the to do lists.

to do:
further organise the to do lists under the following newly established categories...
-writings
-readings
-jobs
-moneys
-houses
-others
i then continued the movie at hand.

i have documented this, and have achieved a post for my blog. now i am productive.