Consuming Life (Zygmunt Bauman) 3/22/2012 07:50:00 AM

Not a summary or a review, but my personal note, having read Consuming Life. A couple of aspects of postmodern/post-industrial/consuming life according to Bauman, as I understand them:

We're all commodities
Preoccupation with images, because if you're not white enough (it's an Asian thing), thin enough, hip enough (the Nikes, the Jimmy Choos, etc), you're out of the game. (What game? Social relationship, I think.) You are your image.

Pointilist nature of time
Emphasize on the here and now. Past and future hardly matter. (Modern people buy precious metals and houses, postmodern people buy designer stuff and refurbish their kitchen with stainless steel countertops even when they never cook.) Boredom is a vice. (Imagine office types who'd gladly get stuck in a traffic jam in order to go to some vacation spot, rather than spending time with their family to just talk and enjoy each other's company.) You consume to alleviate your boredom.

Quoting A Wild Sheep Chase 3/16/2012 03:37:00 PM

"I was twenty-nine years old. In six months my twenties would be over... One big blank. Not one thing of value had I gotten out of it, not one meaningful thing had I done. Boredom was all there was."

- Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase -

George Orwell Said . . . 3/04/2012 01:05:00 AM

. . . this, about how to write (in his essay Politics and the English Language):

• Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active.
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.

Sound, simple rules. I think I need to follow them.

The Manics Made Me Manic 3/01/2012 03:56:00 PM

I listened to this song in heavy rotation the other day:



Come the time to sleep, I just couldn't, because the song kept repeating itself over and over and over again inside my head. God knows Judge Yr'self is hardly the perfect lullaby.

Maybe I should listen to this song instead. Problem is, as much as I like Manic Street Preachers and love James Dean Bradfield('s voice), the idea of him singing a Wham! song simply reduces me to giggles. Thus, same effect as the above.

A word to the wise. Playing a single song on a loop for hours on end isn't a very good idea, no matter how much you enjoy that particular song. Now, where is that MP3 player . . . .

Note: Before you ask, no, I don't have "4REAL" tattooed on my arm and Karl Marx posters in my room.