- Editor/Writer/Pundit:
- Tom Wilmot
- National Affairs:
- Duke Stockton
Parallel Universe Quickly Becomes Dumber Than Ours
Starting back in 2003, when it experienced a tax revolt, it became apparent that Dork Homeworld Second Life would soon become as tedious and bland as the real world all these folks were logging on to escape from.Anyone that's spent more than a minute in any community oriented web spot can attest that it's just like real life, if events in real life ran at warp speed and were dealt with the emotional control of a two year old.
Since that time, various articles regarding cyber-hookers, raging promiscuity and virtual BDSM in SL have appeared in news organs experiencing slow news days or catering to a rather slack jawed subscription base. What has simmered below the radar until last Saturday was the growing political force of Second Life.
First evidence of the deep conviction and heartfelt commitment of these digital freedom fighters surfaced last summer when pixel world real estate mogul Anshe Chung was interviewed on Cnet in avatar form (yes, it's JUST as pathetic as it sounds) and the interview was interrupted by an attack of flying pink penises. This event has been described by Second Lifers as "as iconographic as the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima".
Um, yeah.
Martin Luther King's Birthday saw the first full-fledged political protest in cyberville, as protesters gathered around the virtual headquarters of right-wing French Front National. Naturally, chanting and sign waving quickly devolved into gunfire, grenades and exploding pigs. Out in Real Life® evidence of this holocaust was felt by vanishing bandwidth, glitching servers and lagtime beyond belief. (Those damned pig bombs gobble up a lot of bytes).By the time it was all over, the building was gone and the Front Nationalers all disappeared into tiki bars and massage parlours. The overwhelming success of this political action inspired a bunch of deeply committed loonies to form Avatars Against the War - a pixilated political action group. As their official instructions explained:
"Protesters should meet at RootsCamp first, where we will have a teleporter that will send people to the right spot."
Too bad the REAL D.C. doesn't have teleporters - anyone whose ever been stuck on the 13th Street bridge at rush hour can attest to that. Of course, the REAL D.C. doesn't consist of an entire populace of ripped abdomens and women built like the proverbial brick whitehouse.
After milling around for an hour, waving animated signs and passing instant messages to hook up later, everyone dispursed, knowing that their stern protest had given Bush and the rest of his evil henchmen pause.If it wasn't for the fact that the President is still addicted to Everquest.
U.S Scientists Steal Best Ideas From Futurama!
No fooling, kiddies! The Gaurdian published the official American response to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which centers on the Kyoto Protocol for reducing emissions globally, with a challenge to develop GIANT SPACE MIRRORS to reflect the sun's rays by at least one percent.
What happened to the proposal earlier in the same episode of Futurama that ACTUALLY worked? You know, the one where they just dropped a gimormous ice cube in the ocean every year to cool things off.
I guess our best and brightest brains in the global warming committee over at the State Department were worried that such a proposal would sound stupid.
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........... As opposed to giant space mirrors.
*Cough*
Screw New Hampshire - MySpace predicts Next Prez!
According to Personal Democracy (and there's no real reason to question their findings, since no one else would really CARE about compiling these statistics) Hussein Barak Obama is kicking Hillary Clinton's ass all over MySpace.
The Chart below clearly indicates that someone has a lot of time on their hands.
Other web/grassroots-politics/who-cares statistics show that Team Clinton is pulling far ahead in the Blogosphere (one of these days NURTZ will visit her blog and mine the juicy stuff, saving you all the tedium of having to do so) and Joe Biden has actually LOST several MySpace friends.
All this just goes to show that friendships on the internet are fragile, tenuous things. I'm betting that someone got in a flame war with Senator Joe in the Forums at capitalclub.com and now there are tons of kids running around trashing Joe's rep.
Why Should Paris Get All the Glory?
With the BBC and the London Times being all abuzz last month regarding the “Paris Syndrome”, NURTZ began to wonder why there’s no “Big Apple Meltdown” or “L.A. Collapse”? Come on, when you think about it, most places on the face of the earth are a horrible disappointment compared to one’s imagination. Frankly, most of LIFE, compared to the fantasies we spin regarding it, is a huge letdown.
More to the point, if Paris can cause the Japanese to blow fuses and dissolve into a puddle of bad sushi, what is the City of Lights doing that other tourist Meccas aren’t?
When it comes to rudeness, trust me, New Yorkers can out-jerk the finest Parisian waitstaff or concierge you’ll ever encounter. As far as not even BOTHERING to emulate any aspect of a visitor’s culture, most of America does a damn fine job of that. Hell, most of the world could give a rat’s ass about making a stranger feel like they’re still at home.
The exception, of course, being ANY MacDonalds or KFC found anywhere on the planet. While the actual TASTE of a Big Mac may be slightly “off” depending where on earth you’re chowing down, the rest of the experience is the same, whether it’s in Moscow, Idaho or Moscow… uh….. Moscow.Of course, some outfits that have been dealing with vacationers forever and anon, HAVE figured out that Paris MUST have their finger on the pulse of something, otherwise, Disney World wouldn’t have Tigger giving kids a sucker punch every now and then.
Caught in the Headlights
If there's one thing folks love to do on the internet, it's post pictures. I'm sure there's some deep psychological impulse involved - but I'm too damned lazy to find out what it is.
More to the point, every now and again, while plowing through blogs and forums, groups, newsletters and photo-journals - an image leaps out - the raw, searing subtext screaming out to the world at large. At which point, I'll download it, slap a caption on it, and throw it up here for everyone else to enjoy.
Culture is NURTZ!
One of the nice things about culture is that it can be high-brow, low-brow or (heaven forfend!) no-brow. It can elevate, pontificate and reverberate - or just sort of sink into no-where without a trace.
Thank goodness for the internet!
Without it, we'd have no idea what a Mattel Secret Agent Mark Zero Spy knife-gun looks like, or why some people get off seeing other people coated with worms!
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Tiki culture from the sixties - knitted robots, even pseudo-Romantic movement CGI work might quickly become the relics of a by-gone age, as mysterious and unfathomable as where on earth the expression "sleep tight" comes from.
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Frankly, I love this stuff. People constantly debate what "elevates" man from beast (well, people that assume there is some sort of superiority between myself and a flatworm, and trust me - it ain't much); and in my humble opinion, it's that humanity keeps coming up with stuff that makes no sense in the grand scheme of things except to kill time and entertain oneself. (Which goes a long why towards explaining why there's so much porn on the intermoweb.)
NURTZ will start out as a compendium of these sorts of things. Anything that strikes our fancy will more than likely wind up here, and hopefully, anyone that stumbles across NURTZ will have been able to kill some time and (hopefully) have entertained his or herself.
Ed note: feel free to send pictures of you entertaining yourself to us - we can't spend ALL day surfing looking for and writing this crap without SOME sort of reward!
Occasionally, we may feel that true BLOG urge to write about ourselves, as though anyone here actually has anything worthwhile to write about, in which case, please do respond in the usual manner, e.g. much pointing and laughing.
So, with that, off we go!
