Let's Do the Timewarp Again

What the hell is wrong with people?

For at least a day or two there, the most watched video on YouTube was the Saddam Hussein execution video, with well over 500,000 hits yesterday when I looked.

WHO THE FUCK WANTS TO SEE ANOTHER HUMAN BEING KILLED?

What is this, the 19th century? And why is it ok to show someone being killed on tv, but not a tittie? Or maybe it's just the preparation and leadup to the actual hanging, I wouldn't know. I do know which one I find more enjoyable. Well, if said tittie was attached to someone attractive, and not a saggy (possibly fake) 40-year-old specimen. Ugh. Much like anything related to Michael Jackson and a courtroom, I have studiously ignored the proceedings. It's not going to change anything; if it has any sort of effect it will likely be in the short-term negative.

Speaking of which, if you didn't know, the US death toll in Iraq passed 3,000 (with, I believe, somewhere around 22,000 wounded) somewhere around New Year's. Happy New Year? Apparently neo-cons are just as up-in-arms about the 3,000 number - not because they're actually upset, mind you, but because the wider anti-war sentiments being generated by the number demonstrate a weakening of America's will since the Second World War and Vietnam. 3,000 KIA, after all, is dwarfed by the number of casualties in both of the aforementioned conflicts: 58,000 in Vietnam and 405,000 in the Second World War.

Back to the execution. Marshall McLuhan had a theory that television was a "cool" medium; that by its very nature, the audience (us) was required to participate in the medium in order for it to be effective. He contended that this was why "hot," complete characters were ineffective on television, while broadly stroked archtypes were the reverse: complete characters require little or no completion by their audiences, and so are viewed with suspicion in a television environment. Television is not projected to the audience; rather, it is projected through its audience. It's a fascinating thought - one of many he had - and one I hope I'm communicating properly; to be honest, I'm not too sure how much of his thought I comprehend.

I've been feeling rather unsettled of late; just another down cycle, I think. Isn't it odd how you can't really see the patterns in your life when you're in the middle of them, that you can only pick them out with hindsight? Why is that?

Someone said (at least, I think I'm stealing this from someone; if I'm not, I guess you can all just bow to my fucking genius) part of the problem might be this: we experience the present through our senses, and not with our rational mind, which is what we use to predict the future and analyze the past. Hence, it is impossible to have a rational understanding of the present, since rationality has nothing to do with how we process our present circumstances. I mean, it sounds ok, but isn't back to the old, arbitrary division of sense-perception vs rationality? And maybe that division is right, maybe those two can't ever be integrated, but that doesn't mean the assumption of that division shouldn't be questioned. McLuhan (not to parrot him, but I'm kind of neck-deep in his thought at the moment) suggests that the development of writing is directly responsible for the Western perception of this division; that literate society preconditions us to divide rationality from the senses and emotions, because the process of writing things down for posterity is necessarily an emotionless one. It is far more difficult to create an emotional reaction through writing than it is with an aroma, for example.

It's interesting, but it still doesn't provide many answers. At least, none that I can see at the moment.