Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Cut out the "about"

A lot of my time on the internet is spent reading articles or critical essays on other works of art, literature, film, comics, TV, etc. Some of my time is spent writing about those same things. The rest, obviously, is naked ladies and pictures of cats, because that's what the internet is for. In this dangerous territory where information is the most dangerous game of all and the government threatens to turn off the lights, only Snake Plissken can escape... the internet.

What am I saying?
Right, reading and writing about stuff. After a while, that cuts you off from the stuff itself. It's all middleman. And, you know, it's cool that the world has a platform on which they can praise, discuss, and condemn the culture around them, and I enjoy reading a lot of that. The internet, however, is a hungry beast, and it eats time. I've spent a lot of hours reading about things, writing about things. I have 35 tabs open in Firefox right now. "That looks nice, I'll read that eventually," I say, popping it open into a new tab and moving onto the next headline, the newer fix. The internet chokes on its babies, like the titan Cronos. It is just about time to ralph.

I really need to stop. 2011 was going to be the year I weaned myself off the internet, starting watching and reading the real material, not the stuff written about it, started writing things, creating. It didn't happen. We're in year eight or so of my five year plan.

I've really got to cut out the about.

(By the way, Hausu is awesome.)