2009-09-06 – CAVEAT DVMPTRVCK

Best hyperbole ever!
"tla alahui, tla petzcahui in tlalticpac" - Nahuatl proverb
He aquí los pensamientos aleatorios de un epistemólogo andante.
"Is it getting solipsistic in here, or is it just me?"
"The immediate task of philosophy is to unmask human self-alienation in its unholy shape." - Karl Marx
"i" before "e" except after "c" - disproved by science!
"Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo." - Don Marquis
"[M]etaphysics is no different from table manners, in that there are all sorts of ways to set the table, all of which will look “wrong” from the outside, but all of which work just as well as any other for those who adopt them?"
- Justin Smith-Ruiu
"A blog is the height of ego and narcissism, rivaled only by the act of procreation, or the wearing of a man-bun." - Jamie Wahls
"Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days." - Flannery O’Connor
"Down through the centuries, the notion that life is wrapped in a dream has been a pervasive theme of philosophers and poets. So doesn't it make sense that death, too, would be wrapped in dream? That, after death, your conscious life would continue in what might be called "a dream body"? It would be the same dream body you experience in your everyday dream life. Except that in the post-mortal state, you could never again wake up, never again return to your physical body." - spoken by a character in the excellent movie Waking Life (2001).
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." - Marcus Aurelius
"If I had a dollar for every time I got distracted, I wish I had some ice cream."
Sometimes setting yourself on fire sheds light on the situation.
"Tenho o dever de me fechar em casa no meu espírito e trabalhar quanto possa e em tudo quanto possa, para o progresso da civilização e o alargamento da consciência da humanidade." - Fernando Pessoa
피할수 없는 고통이라면 차라리 즐겨라
As of June, 2013, I have assumed a new identity: I am a cancer survivor. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
This world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance: it is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the object of derision to his superiors: it is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity; and ever since his death, has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force which it received from him.
- David Hume, in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 1779
A blog, in the end, is really not so different from an inscription on a bone: I was here, it declares to no one in particular. Don't forget that.
- Justin Smith-Ruiu
재미없으면 보상해드립니다!
All things are enchained with one another, bound together by love.
- Nietzsche [really!]
Leviticus 19:33-34
Business is a good game - lots of competition and minimum of rules. You keep score with money.
- Nolan Bushnell
What if we're not conscious, we just think we are?
Donc, si Dieu existait, il n’y aurait pour lui qu’un seul moyen de servir la liberté humaine, ce serait de cesser d’exister.
- Mikhail Bakunin
Solvitur ambulando.
Only thoughts reached by walking have value.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Los Angeles is to America what America is to the world.
- someone on the internet
Art is not a projection of self, it is an utterly alternate self.
Loneliness. Did ya know that loneliness will kill you deader than a .357 Magnum? Did ya know that?
- Andrew Sims (Rapper)
"When I was a stranger you gave me razor wire and pushed me in the river." - Matthew 25:35
Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to soliloquize. Where was I?
- the villain Heinz Doofenshmirtz, in the cartoon Phineas and Ferb.
Is seer periculeus voor de onbekende, om aan te doen.
- Hendrick Hamel
Liberty and justice for all
Offer not available in some areas
Prices subject to change
- internet meme
I will buy a 32 foot ladder at home depot, and I will make America pay for it.
- a Mexican
Psalms 51:17
Do unto others 20% better than you would expect them to do unto you, to correct for subjective error.
- Linus Pauling
I dream of a world where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned.
여유있는 태도를 잃어서는 안 된다
Blogging online since 1965

My name is Jared Way. I was born in rural Far Northern California, and became an "adoptive" Minnesotan. I have lived in many other places: Mexico City, Philadelphia, Valdivia (Chile), Los Angeles. And for 11 years, I was an expatriate living in South Korea. In the summer of 2018, I made another huge change, and relocated to Southeast Alaska, which is my uncle's home.
I have a background in Linguistics and Spanish Literature. Two decades ago, I was a database programmer. Last decade, in Korea, I worked as an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher. Currently I'm a ne'er-do-well retail clerk and freelance website administrator living amid the Alaskan rainforest.
In June, 2013, while I was in Ilsan in South Korea, I was diagnosed with cancer, and underwent successful treatment. That changed my life pretty radically.
Currently, you could say I'm "between jobs," somewhat caretaking my uncle (to the extent he tolerates that) and getting adapted to life in rural Alaska after so many years as an urban dweller.
These bloggings, then, have been my random jottings on the subject of my mostly pleasant life among the Quasi-Confucian Cyber-Industrial Paleolithic Peninsulites of Lower Far Siberia, and my more recent time spent on the Free-range Insane Asylum known as Southeast Alaska.
I started this blog before I even had the idea of going to Korea (first entry: Caveat: And lo...). So this is not meant to be a blog about Korea, by any stretch of the imagination. Life in Korea, and Korean language and culture, inevitably played a central role in this blog's incarnation for many years, and life in the rural, temperate rainforest plays an important role these days.
Basically, this blog is a newsletter for the voices in my head. It keeps everyone on the same page: it has become a sort of aide-mémoire.
For a more detailed reflection on why I'm blogging, you can look at this old post: What this blog is, and isn't.
If you're curious about me, there is a great deal of me here. I believe in what I call "opaque transparency" - you can learn almost everything about me if you want, but it's not immediately easy to find.
A distillation of my personal philosophy (at least on good days):
I have made the realization that happiness is not a mental state. It is not something that is given to you, or that you find, or that you can lose, or that can be taken from you. Happiness is something that you do. And like most things that you do, it is volitional. You can choose to do happiness, or not. You have complete freedom with respect to the matter.
"Ethical joy is the correlate of speculative affirmation." - Gilles Deleuze (writing about Spinoza).

Bob Gehrenbeck on Caveat: Poem #2631 “Ellipsis”
Bob Gehrenbeck on Caveat: Poem #2633 “The circle of the seasons”
Andrew on Caveat: Tree #1711 “Behind the mushroom”
Bob Gehrenbeck on Caveat: Poem #2601 “The sky’s arena”
Bob Gehrenbeck on Caveat: Poem #2549 “The limbs of verisimilitude”

A Daily Tree (1,902)
Background Noise (723)
Banalities & Journaling (4,326)
Blogroll (13)
Buddhism & Zen (243)
Cancer (290)
Caretaking and Dementia (14)
Databases, Smartphones & Computers (145)
Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) (184)
Food & Drink (115)
Found Online (789)
Geofiction (102)
Hiking & Travel (407)
Internet & Blogging (233)
Kids (361)
Language & Linguistics (291)
Less Banal Than Usual (41)
Life in Alaska (291)
- Fishing Report (38)
- Lot 73 (8)
- My Garden (66)
- Treehouse (54)
- Working at the Gift Shop (33)
Life in Korea (599)
Life is a Dream (270)
Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) (497)
My Drawings & Paintings (207)
- Some Daily Art (89)
My Photos (2,685)
- Alaskan Gothic (13)
My Poetry & Fiction (2,863)
- A Daily Poem (2,818)
  - Book 1 (720)
  - Book 2 (644)
  - Book 3 (804)
  - Book 4 (649)
- Ballad (187)
- Blank verse (88)
- Cinquain (99)
- Couplets and Quatrains (194)
- Englyn (274)
- Ghazal (1)
- Haikuish Objects (895)
- Kiamonic Quatrains (81)
- Limerick (1)
- métrica romance (6)
- Nonnet (380)
- Quennet (13)
- Relics From My Own Ancient History (11)
- Sestina (3)
- Sonnet (10)
- Tetractys (74)
My Videos (64)
Not My Poetry (449)
Philosophy & Cultural Criticism (545)
Politics, Economics & Current Affairs (491)
Quotable (428)
Retroblogging (54)
Science & SciFi (143)
Teaching & Methodology (392)
The 108 (110)
The Wonders of Work (834)
Uncategorized (28)
Year-In-Six-Sentences (56)
아동 도서 (Children's Books) (17)
한국말을 배움 (Failing to Learn Korean) (762)
한국어 속담 (Aphorisms & Proverbs) (328)

Caveat: DRM and antifandom

So, I made a video and tried to post it, with a song that I really like. I didn't really think about copyright issues… I've seen so many homemade videos to preexisting songs on places like youtube, that I really thought the issue was resolved as a sort of "fair use." Obviously not. Youtube disabled the video I uploaded because it detected "copyrighted material" – ie the soundtrack to the video I made.

My reaction: 1) I have to find a different song. 2) I'll have to rethink adding songs to my videos, in general – but, my life has always had a soundtrack, and I was thinking how totally cool it was to be able to "share" that life-soundtrack with others, and now I can't always do that, which leads to 3) some weird, residual anger at the artist in question – why can't I use her song to show the feeling or mood I have associated with my homemade video? Do I have to go through the rigmarole of getting permission? It's not even a matter of money – I'm sure the money is insubstantial. It's the inconvenience. Do I want to remain a fan of an artist that makes my life annoying and inconvenient? Maybe not. Now, when I hear that song, instead of thinking the reflective, deep, philosophical thoughts I previously associated with it, I'll be getting grumpy thinking about DRM and why she wouldn't let me use her song on my amateur video, in what I thought was a thoughtful, respectful way, including crediting the song at the end (as I've been doing). So I doubt that song will remain on my mp3, either. Maybe that artist just lost a fan. Is that what DRM (in all its manifestations) is supposed to do?

Youtube offered me the option of replacing my audio track. But the whole point of the exercise was that I thought I'd come up with a video that matched the song in question in mood and atmosphere. What are the chances I'd find such a song in their weird random library of "licensed" tracks? Further, as youtube notes, "Note that advertisements may be displayed on videos that contain soundtracks from the AudioSwap library." Oh, goody. Not that I have anything against advertising… it's what makes most of the internet free, after all. But, I just don't feel like attaching random advertising to this video.

Outcome: the video won't be posted. Sorry.

Caveat: Tourist

2009-09-06, 01:11 2023-03-22 Banalities & Journaling / Hiking & Travel

For day, I was a pretty conventional tourist. I took a day trip out to Miyajima (also called Itsukushima) and Mt Misen. I rode the streetcar out to Miyajima-guchi and then the 10 minute ferry across to the island, and walked around the famous main shrine complex. I ascended to the top of the mountain for the fabulous view. I saw deer and monkeys and many, many humans (including women climbing steep, several-kilometers-long mountain paths in 3 inch spike heels — ah, Japan!). It was very hot. I drank a lot of water along with randomly selected beverages from the ubiquitous vending machines, and ate a shrimp-cake yakitori (or something like that, anyway) on the way down at the end.

I don't really have a lot of patience with being a conventional tourist, but I tried. It was worth seeing, I think — it was a sort of "just like the postcard" experience. I made more video… I now have so much that I will have to delete some or I won't have room to store it on my computer. I'm going to try to make one of shinkansen ride and one of my visit here to Hiroshima. Maybe I'll work on it tonight.

I actually kind of like not having internet access in my room. It keeps me from lurking in there rather than getting out and exploring. I've had that epiphany before, actually. Having internet access where one sleeps is a mixed blessing, for someone like me who has issues with self-discipline.