Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Serendipity

From XKCD by Randall Munroe. He explains: 'Once, long ago, I saw this girl go by. I didn't stop and talk to her, and I've regretted it ever since.'


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posted by Hong at 10:18 am | Permalink | 1 comments
Monday, May 29, 2006
Hello, Zoomstruggle
Article 8 of Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto, that gushing Italian ode to the rush and conflict of modern life:

We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.

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posted by Hong at 9:39 pm | Permalink | 0 comments
Thursday, May 25, 2006
In Britannia we trust
Irony is: A proper (prop'a!) working class Londoner telling conspiratorial jokes about an Irishman to a chink with a faux Northern English accent.


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posted by Hong at 12:41 pm | Permalink | 0 comments
Thursday, May 18, 2006
The ass of an essay
Dubai is Ourtopia. It is a place where multiple utopias are accommodated side-by-side for consumption by the masses weaned on a philosophy that the best things in life can always be had for a price. It expresses itself in such a fractured way as to displace time, making the city 'timeless', ever ready for the arrival of the next Big Thing. Dubai can be thrill, Dubai can even be real, Dubai can be everything except authentic. But perhaps it does not want to be. The city represents a city-sized amusement park filled with imported rides, artificial conditions and manufactured histories - this is how Dubai chooses to be understood. Lacking depth of history, the city has opted instead to be easily understood and instantly consumable by all persons, using an 'abbreviated shorthand culture for the masses'† that is understood worldwide thanks to the integrated global economy and mass media. It is the perfect global city, as far as its accessibility goes. And it is precisely this lack of pretension, this starkness and clarity within the shorthand that imbues Dubai with larger-than-life qualities. After all, as in all amusement parks, 'the value of the experience is not the ride itself but its vicariousness.'‡

† 'Disneyland at Christmas', John Carey, The Faber Book of Utopias, p 458
‡ Ibid, p 456


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posted by Hong at 3:52 am | Permalink | 0 comments