I don't think I was ever very good with titles...

...so I'll not bother trying now.

The Internet is a place where ephemerality is not only accepted, but expected and even celebrated. Barring a visit to your 'favourites' page, the best tweet you've ever seen will likely disappear from reachability and your memory within a month (and that's probably being generous). Trends, once ongoing for as long as years at a time, now fade into oblivion within weeks, being coldly ousted by the next viral hit. Again, this isn't something anyone finds troubling - not least me - and many people are glad at this speed of change - myself included (Harlem Shake is, was, and always will be stupid).

A frequent manifestation of the ephemeral web is the dead page. Head to LiveJournal, MySpace, Blogger, or Wordpress, and you will find many a webpage promising updates - soon! - but which have remained update free for a year or more. You check the most recent posts - nothing even suggests an end to things, let alone overtly states it. You read through the posts on the first page or two, and are in some cases titillated or informed or otherwise entertained by what you read, and feel that the shame of lack of updates would perhaps be lessened if the blog ended, rather than merely... stopping. But this is ok, because it's the Internet, and the Internet is a place where things don't really run a course, but pop up for while then... stop.

I think that things should die with dignity, including blogs. Including this one. Too long has Sam D Grover: Stuff What Done Popped Into My Head (formerly Tales of a SamfiSh) sat gathering dust in a dormant state, one that it won't break out of, to my mind. The blog is also a hindrance, to be honest - while this lies in its between-life-and-death existence, I feel that I can't do the online writing that I'd like to because, firstly, this blog is structured around and best suited to a me from two to three years ago, and so what I'm writing now doesn't quite fit. Secondly, I feel as though I can't start a new blog or what have you while this one is in the state that it is - a step beyond neglected, but not yet dead, the Internet ghost in the back of my blogging mind. I don't know what happens next, or if anything will, but, regardless: this blog has to die. Properly. Respectfully and with dignity.

I've ended this before. This one is for good, though.

Honest.

Sam D Grover dot blogspot dot co dot uk, I bid you farewell.

Thanks for reading.

Sam D Grover

Or rather, for old times' sake,

From,

a SamfiSh.

P.S. those 'posts I like' on the left are, some of them, halfway decent bits of writing from my teenaged self. The previous post, on victim blaming, is good too, I think. Check 'em out.

P.P.S. true to form, I'm posting this in the middle of the night when I should be sleeping and where no-one's gonna see it. Gotta keep being me, after all.

P.P.S. also true to form this has gone on far too long now, with an overmuch of addenda and overly-highfaluting word and style choices. Gotta keep being me, after all.

P.P.P.S. gotta keep being me.

Victim Blaming

I'd like to put forwards the notion that the damaging attitude of "victim blaming" is in fact a coping mechanism to deal with fear and pain.

 It's far less scary (and painful) to say, "this person was foolish, they really messed up here - they should have been more careful!" than to say, "this other person made a conscious decision to act in a way that is truly evil." If rape is labelled as an evil act, we have to accept that Humanity, as a species, is capable of acts of evil, and that each individual has the potential to commit these and similar acts. This is a frightening conclusion!
Much easier is to instead label rape as a mistake, because, due to the fact that we as individuals make at least one mistake a day (and that's being generous) and we as a species make at least one collective, corporate mistake every week or so (and that's being naïve), we're OK with the inherent human potential for screwing up. When I say "OK with," of course, I mean "comfortable with the concept, if not the specific instance."

 This, with what is often perceived as being a big mistake, leads to a "should-have-known-better" mentality towards rape. "I may forget to buy soap or lose thousands on the stock market, but there was no way of preventing these things, not really. But someone is a victim of rape? Well, they should have known better than to dress provocatively or to drink alcohol or to go out in that particular part of town!" The people taking this attitude feel that they and theirs do know better, and therefore have nothing to fear - they're not going to make a mistake, their daughters are smarter than the girls they hear about on the news!

 If, as we really should, we view rape as an evil act, then, oh, my goodness, even smart, sober, wholesomely dressed people would need to be afraid as well! (As a weighty aside: the fact that even good, clean folks can fall victim to rape reinforces an important point - it's never the victim's fault. Never. As I once read: "all rape victims have one thing in common: they met a rapist." The entirety of fault always falls on the attacker. End of.)
What I'm definitely not saying here is that everyone should be afraid of rape, murder, assault, or whatever, but what I am saying is that a) it's really easy to slip into fear and b) it's much easier to cast blame onto the victim than to live in a place of easily-acquired fear.

 It's also easy to say that victim-blamers hate women. Harder is to say that the blamers are afraid, because then we have to admit that, to be honest, we kind of are, too.

Sam D Grover

Disclaimer: I am of course aware that I could be using all this as a coping mechanism for the fact that human males have the potential to hate women, and that I could therefore subconsciously fear that I too am capable of hating women... but then we could go down that rabbit hole 'til the Sun goes out...

Baby Name Research.

I just had another one of those moments where the world made me sad.

I was just on a baby name website (for research, honestly...). I had scrolled down the page when I heard some annoying music and some American voices. Immediately struck with fear and suspicion, I scrolled hastily to the top of the page. What I found there horrified me - there was a banner ad to the right of the page with an automatically playing video. "Urgh," thought I, "even if I was looking for a 'more reliable pregnancy test,' an automatically playing banner ad with sound would immediately put me off! Why even would they bother?"

I then thought about where I was. I was on a baby name website. A website for folks who find it hard to name their child without help from internet. That ad probably gets so much traffic. All of the traffic.

:-(

Sam D Grover

Blogging Commitment Part Three

Christmas blog
 Christmas blog
  The terrible Christmas blog
 Oh what crap
  It is I write
    Every single year


Sam D Grover  

(To the tune of Jingle Bells)

Jebus

There is a religion whose very existence risks the well-being of many people on this planet. This religion holds sway over many of the most wealthy and powerful individuals in the world, and drives many of their most impacting decisions. This religion is racist, prejudiced, and brazenly hypocritical. This religion removes the worth of the individual, replacing it with guilt and dogma.
This religion is what I like to call "Jebusism" (/ˈdʒi:bəs.ɪz.əm/).
This religion, like many faiths, was named by an outsider: "Christians" were named thus by the Roman citizens of Antioch; Muslims were known for centuries by Europeans as "Mohammedans." Jeebusism was named by Homer Simpson, inadvertently. Jebusism bares many similarities to Christianity, though with most of Jesus' teachings ignored.
Rather unusually for a religion, it shares its holy text with another faith - this is unlike Christianity and Judaism, in that while Christians see the Jewish writ as sacred, Jews see the Christian "New Testament" as the writings of a few 1st Century heretics. With Christianity and Jebusism, however, the two share the same holy book in its entirety - Jebusism, however, mostly employs an archaic version of this book, one crudely translated into 17th Century English. Jebusismists refer to this version (which, to be fair, is a fine piece of poetic literature) as the true accurate version, with some even claiming that the highly popular (among Christians) New International Version (or "New Inaccurate Version" as some Jebusismists call it) is an evil book, or perhaps a test sent by their deity, Jebus.
Ah, Jebus. A dark God like the world has never seen. According to the priests of Jebusism, Jebus hates gays, believing that they should all be killed. Jebus hates foreigners, especially Arabs, but also looks unfavorably on Blacks, Mexicans, and Koreans. Jebus loathes Communists, particularly because of their desire to elevate the poor (whom Jebus also hates). Jebus almost certainly hates you. Jebus will one day take up all his loyal followers into the sky, and burn the hippies, public homosexuals, Catholics, and those who only went to church one week out of every four in an eternal lake of fire. He will enjoy doing this.
Jebusism started in Europe, with its first great manifestation being the Crusades. Later, the Spanish Inquisition can be seen as the point at which Jebusismists turned against Christianity. "Bloody" Mary I of England was almost certainly a Jebusismist. True modern Jebusism, however, can be found centered in the southern United States, specifically in the region known as the "Bible Belt" (see below).

The "Bible Belt", the main catchment area for Jebusism






Sam D Grover

Stuffed Orangutangs & Rearranged Joshua Trees

We got a kitten about 6 weeks ago (more or less). Shortly after we got her, I discovered that if you make a scratching noise on a worktop, sofa, table, carpet etc. she'll come running, looking for mice or sparrows or iguanas or something.
Yesterday, I found an old stuffed orangutang (not taxidermy, a toy). I started t̶e̶a̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ t̶a̶u̶n̶t̶i̶n̶g̶  playing with her using the artificial ape, in the hopes that she'd go for it. She did! Success. (By the way, she just knocked my coffee dregs onto the carpet while trying to kill the toy. Backfire.) Later on, I made a scratching noise on the sofa behind the orangutang a few times. I think, though I may be wrong, that she now associates the weeks of mysterious scratching with this orangutang that is rapidly becoming her nemesis.
I'm curious as to where this association will end up - if she hears a scratching in the future and it turns out to be a mouse, will she be disappointed by the lack of ape? ONLY TIME WILL TELL.

_________

Something's been annoying me for a while now. This irritation has been taking something I really rather love and tainting it. This annoyance is now here finally being adressed.

The running order of U2's brilliant album The Joshua Tree is absolutely appalling.
The way the band came to the order that we're familiar with was also appalling: they were stuck and gave it to a friend and just went with what the friend decided.
The method the friend used was appalling: they put the songs in order from most to least favourite.

Enough judging; onto solutions.^TM

OK so basically I was listening to Joshua Tree last night, and started with Bullet the Blue Sky for some mad reason. Hearing this song straight off the bat without my ears being first tempered by Streets, ISHFWILF, and With or Without You was amazing. As the album went on, I was astonished by how differently I was hearing the tracks having skipped the first three on the album. This reminded me of my running order annoyance, and I decided to get on the case.
My problem with the running order does mostly come from the first three tracks. These songs are all clearly single material, with a similar sound. It's never really made much sense to me at all that these three songs a) opened the album and b) were all lumped together. The current order, with these big songs all at the front, makes perfect sense for a concert set list, but I don't really like it as in an album.
OK enough blathering; here's my alternative thingummy. Forgive my arrogance.

1. Bullet the Blue Sky
2. Exit
3. Running to Stand Still
4. Red Hill Mining Town
5. With or Without You
6. Mothers of the Disappeared
7. In God's Country
8. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
9. One Tree Hill
10. Trip Through Your Wires
11. Where The Streets Have No Name

I really like the Bullet/Exit 1-2 opener. Rather than opening the album on a longing note, it opens on an angry one - I think albums should open with their crossest, biggest, silliest songs. The raw pity and sense of loss in Running is I think more effective following both these cross songs, as opposed to the already raw With or Without You followed by Bullet. That former track, however, makes a great paring with Mothers, which, with its gentle open and busy finish, serves as a stylistic bridge between With/Without and In God's Country. I put ISHF, Tree, and Wires together because of the gospel/blues flavour that they share (as an aside, I think that Tree would be very interesting as a partial instrumental - no lyrics until the final chorus and what follows it).
Streets is an interesting track, as, with the long opening synth, it can only really work as an album opener or closer - the slow intro would be a weird break mid-album. Even though I put it last out of necessity, Edge's jangly guitars do make for a great end to the album, and bookending the album with anger and optimism is quite effective, I think.

Try it! Listen to the album in that order, then thank or lambast me accordingly.

_________

Oh bugger, I arrogantly pretentious'd all over my blog again. At least the kitteh nonsense salvages it a bit. I think?


Sam D Grover

Stories & Lies

I think the key to being a good writer is to be a good liar. All stories are lies, some more convincing than others. 


The key to a good lie is balance.
    
     When telling a lie, detail is crucial - if your lie is vague and insubstantial, no-one will believe a word of it. Names, places, times - all of these must be established, else the lie falls apart. On the other hand, if you present a lie overburdened with detail - exact times, unimportant persons, and other minutiae - these irrelevances will sink the lie. Either the liar will come across as trying to hard, and so the spell shall be broken, or one of the multitude of facts will be contradicted or forgotten along the way, leaving a hole immediately filled with disbelief. Balance!
    
     People want the world to work a certain way. The best liars are the most effective at motivating this desire, but again there is a balance in this manipulation. If the lie is exactly what those being lied to want or expect to hear, They'll get suspicious at the way the liar's story is adhering so exactly to their expectation, at the fact that, even though this is what they wanted, it was not the lie they needed to hear for them to believe. A lie too far-removed from expectation, however, is also going to fail. The listener will meet a version of the world that contradicts with one inside their head - yes, reality does often contradict the world we hold in our heads, but not in overly dramatic way. When people in a lie act in a way that the listener believes that they do not, again suspicion is raised. Balance!

     Linked to the previous point, lies cannot be too like or unlike life. When a lie completely diverts from reality, the deception will be made obvious - if you say that a gorilla stole your car, then it's pretty clear that you're lying. Even if you're slightly more subtle, and  the lie merely departs completely from events as they were, without becoming ridiculous, the realism is lost and the absence of truth will be noted. However, a lie must never be completely devoid of the fantastic - a lie that is too close to the events as they happened will be seen as just slightly off by the listener, and so bee seen as an untruth. Balance and also balance, too.


Stories. Too much information, too many events, the reader is swamped. Too little, the story is hollow. Too run-of-the-mill, the reader is bored. Too trope-less, the reader is uneased and confused. Too removed from reality, the reader sees the fiction in the story. Too like-life and the suspension of disbelief is broken. Can you say, "balance?"

I swear I had a point in all of this, but it's now twenty-five past two in the morning and my brain is rebelling against consciousness.

Sorry I wrote this guff*

Sam D Grover

*Haha, jokes. I'm AMAZING, all I do is pure gold. No apologies, no prisoners, no surrender! 
GSF4LIFE