It’s that time of the year again and how time seems to have flown… It seems that only yesterday, we were having the rainiest, crappiest summer ever.
So as is my tradition (whether on the blog or not), here is a review of my year.
Engadget has been good for a smirk this morning as it brought me this tremendous study: teens still like to hang out. No shit, Sherlock! Just because we all love to fritter our lives away on the internet doesn’t mean that we’ve all turned into socially inadapted spotty geeks.
How else could they partake in parties, drinking, sex and all the other fun things to do in high school and college?
No, auto-erotism in front of Slashdot doesn’t count.
Where can I find a job where I’m paid to do that kind of survey?
Edit: I do realise there is a large dose of irony (AN: not the place where Ironians live) in the fact that I contest Riley’s article and go on to insult him. Well… I didn’t say I was better than him. Mind you, it is entirely possible that, had he done this in my physical presence, I’d have said pretty much the same thing in person.
Quoth Ronan’s adaptation of my sentiment: “Hi, I’m a former TechCrunch reader and I think your post was stupid. If I didn’t knew better I would think you are a douchebag Mr Riley.”
Edited accordingly.
In a recent Techcrunch post, Duncan Riley took upon himself to attack the acceptance speech of Doris Lessing as she received the Nobel Price of Litterature.
Out of a 4590 word-speech, he chose to retain 52 word abstract and twist it into a specious argument implying that Lessing had written an entire speech against the internet. The abstract is as follows:
We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers.
How could anyone sum up a speech about memory, difference in attitude towards culture and books could have been miconstrued as an anti-Internet speech is quite beyond me.
Upon reading Lessing’s full speech, one cannot help but be struck with the melancholy that tinges her words. She paints a vivid picture of culture in underdeveloped countries and opposes it to the apparent indifference of our “educated elite”.
In response to Riley’s post, after my first attempt where the word douche featured proeminently, I had written an argument as to why the Internet was not helping culture before realising half-way through that it was not the point of Lessing’s speech.
On line 8, on my way back home, I was confronted with not one but two occurences of psychos in the métro.
The first sort, an aging woman with her trolley was harmless enough, as she kept yammering on and on about either “asses” or “souls” (in French: “ânes” or “âmes”), I couldn’t really tell which. Nor did I really care. She was talking to everyone and no one in particular in a monotone.
Wow, doesn’t that remind me of someone currently forcibly present in my life who cannot shut up for five minutes and always mutters in a low-ish voice?
The second sort was the aggravating sort that’ll pick a fight if you stare for too long or he feels that you’re not agreeing with him. He came into the compartment smoking and t/yelling to anyone who would listen that he’d DONE TIME INSIDE and he should be feared. To be honest, all it gave me was a burning desire to beat his sorry ass into a pulp with a baseball bat for thinking that it gives him any special priviledge, such as harassing the poor woman who sat across from him.
Anyways, this was soon over as we reached the connection at Motte-Piquet and I continued onto line 6 where thankfully, no one stood out at the late hour. On the bridge, the Eiffel tower sparkled, indicating it was 11pm.
It reminded me of the previous evening, where L. and I had stood in the taxi queue at the foot of it after our trek back from Châtelet. As much as I try to reject Paris, there is an undeniable attraction. Every time I see it sparkle, it reconciliates me with the town, as if the shining sparkles could somehow erase all the ugliness that roils beneath the surface.
Many of the defining moments in my life have involved it in some way or another: high school, its parties, the evenings spent at the foot of the tower in the grass, coming home from high school, going home from parties…
This wasn’t the first time the Eiffel tower had given me a sense of peace as I watched it. It seems to watch over my life and renew my faith that everything will turn out fine, that I’ll make it through in the end.
And that alone is enough to make Paris my hometown, as much as I am loath to admit it. Like a parent with whom you have a conflicting relationship, it’ll always be there for you… like a mother. My mother.
Hopefully this means that I’ll never end up a muttering wreck on the métro.
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