Business News

Facebook stock is up 40%.  Apparently the “biness” is growing; meaning there are more users.  It is also developing, or has developed, a mobile app; meaning more people are on it, in more places, at all times.  But it is revenue that makes stocks go up, not mere usage, and Facebook revenue seems to be up as well.  Good for Facebook and its stock owners.  A company that produces fuck-all and makes money selling advertising is doing better than the broader stock market with stocks of companies that actually produce tangible goods.  Granted Facebook “produces” a communication environment; and god knows, maybe those communicating on it actually exchange productive ideas... 

    

I’m nothing if not optimistic in my pessimism.

2nd quote for the day

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
Pablo Picasso

gimme a hammer

…I miss the days when I used to come to my blog freely and just write whatever came to mind.  These days I feel more self-conscious: paranoia assumes a viewer.  God knows why, for the chances of people actually reading what I write in this miasma of information that surrounds us is very low, random, and in the end, quite meaningless (though once upon a time, it actually got read with consequences)

Assuming a viewer can sometimes be a good thing. I do think it can help one grow as an artist; but it can also act as a barrier to work.  What’s all that bullshit (though not such bullshit) Lacan said about the toddler facing himself in the mirror and “realizing” that his ego is formed by “others” (or some such thing), leading to all kinds of neurosis?  In theory: part and parcel of growing up…old(er). 

Sometimes I get blocked in the studio for the same reason I stopped blogging as often as I used to. Time to bust up the mirror.  As that despicable man and sometimes great artist (Picasso) said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up."

Another good read...

...about our sad sad country:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/360429/shutdown-simulacrum-mark-steyn