that's just some random J-ish placeholder text while the usual ablutions are being performed and it is now five:30 again, sunset of another day. which day is it? i really don't know anymore, having lost track of such things a while back. the calendar on this weblog says it is a Friday in December, and more specifically that it's the 29th, but it doesn't really feel like a Friday, or a 29. or even the last month of the entire millennium. It could be June 14th, 1986 and I wouldn't know the difference... perhaps it is indeed I who has been losing all those marbles, which have been showing up at Laura's weblog. hehehe... ;-) i'll be back later, after lathering, napping, and noshing, again not necessarily in that order.

around 9 p.m.

Well. It appears that I was channeling the spirit of James Joyce's jejune Jesuit when writing the above. ;-) Only readers of Ulysses will get what I'm yammering about here, but that's okay. Incidentally, you (yes you, dear weblog reader) must not allow your life to pass without having read (or at the very least attempted to read) said novel at least once. It is, for me, without question--now that the century (and millennium) is officially coming to an end--that Joyce's Ulysses is the greatest novel of the 20th century. I challenge any reader to come up with a greater one, in any language.

Anyway, I don't really want this weblog to become an arcane college-seminar type discussion of why Ulysses rules... but I was thinking of it because of Ozzie's plea in his weblog today. Ok O-Z... begging DOES work, so let me come up with something as well, but I'm afraid it won't even approach yours as far as wit, humor and pith goes. Plus, what I had in mind was too pedantic, having to do with heroes and villains in literature or politics, and I better not inflict such a list on anyone now. *snicker* Just a few thoughts and comments in response to your original cool, funny weblog entry on heroes and villains.

My first thought is this: I would love to just write weblogs now and then on heroes and villains. Why just limit it to one weblog at one time? The whole idea is rich and timeless, and in fact, one might say that all of world literature and history has been a telling and retelling of stories that have heroes and villains in them. Also, there are as many ways of defining the very words themselves... as many as there are cultures, in fact. And I'm not talking about just ethnic cultures but social sub-cultures; the sub-culture of teenagers, for example, which can even be further subdivided, geographically or nationally, etc.)

Alright, well enough of the preamble and let's get to some solid stuff. Villain: The Borg. and Hero: Lt. Cmdr. Data (Nope, sorry, not Captain Picard. ;-p) Why these two? Well, for the purposes of this medium on which you're reading these words right now, this digital world, those 2 entities are the perfect symbolic examples. In both the Borg and Data, we might find aspects of our net-selves. The Internet is, in a real way, a "hive mind" and the darkest and most sinister possibilities of such a thing are expressed in the fictional Borg collective. Who's to say that, one day, we won't be assimilated into some kind of Netmind, over which no one individual is really in control, but collectively wields a kind of force and energy that's compelling? And more intriguingly, who's to say we won't like such an assimilation?

10:30 p.m.

(to be continued tomorrow. or not. it's so friggin' boring! particularly compared with Ozzie's pithy characterizations. ;-p)

Wait. I have a better idea: let's say of the 4 images on Alejo's weblog, 2 are heroes and 2 are villains. How do you vote? And why? ;-) (Yes Alejo, you too can vote. Hehe.)

OK, now i'm off to see the scimitar moon set over Lanai, dragging Jupiter with it.

Talkback...

{ net.casting }
^