Digital ADD?

Interesting thing I noticed a while back. I can’t focus any more. But it happens only on my computer, every time I sit down to do something important I put it off, with Firefox open there’s always something else to do. Know how many tabs I have open on Firefox now? Nine. With the Permanent Tab add-on there’s always 4 tabs on every time I open it. Plus 2 temporary perma-tabs for various reasons. And with the Morning Coffee add on ( it opens tabs for you on a schedule) every time I open FF there’s at least 7 tabs opening with it. But that’s not what this is about so I’ll flit off somewhere else.

I have 4 applications open now. FF, Powerpoint, Solitaire and Winamp. Windows Messenger is running in the background. Utorrent too. Utopia Angel (hugs and kisses to my most faithful application-companion for the past oh, 4 or 5 years). And that’s only what’s visible. Extend the running apps thingy (next to the clock) there’s Folding@Home (a most worthy app indeed), Spybot’s Resident, a nifty screen Post-it applet, Avast, a cache/RAM emptying applet, the Bluetooth controller… And that’s not everything.

I do want to study. Well actually I don’t. But I do have to because I’m enrolled in an insanely hectic 1 month online course which I intend to get an A at. And to do that I must read oh, 2 or 3 chapters a week and get a bit of extra credit by posting a bit on the discussion boards. The earlier and more relevant the discussion the more credit I get. So far, going along the second week, I’m perfectly convinced I can’t get an A without posting. And I haven’t done it yet. It’s Thursday. Time is ticking by.

The funny thing is, it’s holidays and I don’t really have anything better to do.

But here I sit in front of the computer writing about digital ADD because it occurred to me and therefore had to be expressed, just because.

You see, I think I forced this ADD on myself. Or maybe not. Have you ever experienced it? Being on the computer a whim floats up from the murky depths of the mind; the hand upon the mouse moves without orders – look, there it goes – a click and the hands lift towards the keyboard. “How to bake a potato” appears in the top right search window. Enter. Google (god, google, god, google, it’s all the same) tells you to check out howtobakeapotato.com (currently – most unfortunately – defunct). Curiosity sated, time to move back to that Youtube music video. Click, click, click through random artists. Oh, this is good. Filed away for future reference, except it’s more likely than not it’ll never again be encountered no matter how awesome a wailing chicken dancing to a lovelorn ditty is. Click, click, click until the next whim hits and again Godogle quenches that thirst.

The Internet is destroying life. My life. But oh, how sweet it remains, the dear old triple-double-U.

And unless I completely neglect to, the next post will be about Makoto Shinkai’s works.

Narutaru (Shadow Star)

I’ll talk about this one too since I glimpsed a referral to it from technorati. A bit obliged to that then, since I didn’t even talk about Narutaru in here. Just Bokurano. Mohiro Kitoh did this before Bokurano.

Narutaru, also known as Shadow Star, stands for something obscenely long that I will copy paste from its Wikipedia article – “Mukuro Naru Hoshi Tama Taru Ko“. It’s about a perfectly ordinary girl who finds a star/starfish-y thingy at the bottom of the ocean somewhere. I won’t expand on the storyline because it makes the mystery diminish, and nobody wants that, right? Right?

So, impressions of Narutaru. It’s much more drawn out, being a single storyline unlike Bokurano’s many single-arc storylines linked together by a giant robot and sorta friendship. I haven’t been able to read a lot of Narutaru, only about half of it, but it packs quite the dramatic punch. There are mature themes, definitely. This isn’t a happy manga. This is a thinking manga; it impacts the soul. Be prepared.

Essentially I think it’s a growing up story where the main characters have many not-very-nice things happen. Though there are some pleasant parts which are pretty much a brief respite from the “Oh dear, that must suck” events that unfold in the story.

It remains an excellent work nevertheless. Check it out. Wikipedia tells me it’s licensed by Dark Horse which licenses a lot of very good thought-type manga (like Eden: It’s an Endless World! which I love to bits because it’s wonderfully heartbreaking). Note: the genre which I have so carelessly labeled “Thought-type” is more of Seinen meaning “young man” but I’d prefer the definition “Mature: Male” as opposed to Josei which would be “Mature: Female”. Seinen categorization is a bit bizarre though, because of the enormous clash of genres you will see if you look at the list of Seinen manga on Wikipedia.

Wow, I feel like a real blogger now, linking to bigshot web pages and reviewing things for free. Therefore I’m stopping. That’s it for now.

Update (24 August 08 ) – I just finished Narutaru. Not to be dramatic, but I think I’m permanently scarred. Not a bad thing necessarily, there’s a lot to process. Food… A feast for thought, actually.

Moving Forward

Is what I think I’m feeling. Which goes to show that reading Siddhharta ( by Herman Hesse), finishing Siddharta and promptly hearing Velveteen (by Yoko Kanno) on Pandora.com (loving it still) makes a psychedelic high (completely drug free) full of undeep deep undeep thought. Also it’s 3.28 a.m. which is not at all unusual for me these days. I’m seeing way more 4 a.m.s these days than I really should. And missing way more 11.30 a.m.s (and 12.30 p.m.s) than I really should too.

So maybe I should try to articulate what I’m thinking now.

Mainly that I’m not special. That you’re not special. That I’ve been a narcissist for so long for thinking that I am special. I still do insist that I am, in fact. I can’t lie to myself very well. I can but I know I’m doing it. You’re not special. You have probably thought the same things I have. I have thought the same things you have. What is unique? Is not a person an accumulation of events and an accumulation of methods, an accumulation of processes, of methods of processing, of processed thought?

Still, I can blithely say it here, that we are all the same essentially, but speak to any one person and I feel the difference as keenly as ever, the sneaking sense of mild superiority (oh gosh, I’m totally destroying myself here). I don’t think to myself, “Oh I’m so much better than SoandSo who I’m talking to.” Well actually I never do, unless the word retard doesn’t do him/her/it justice (let’s face it, these doods exist). Being aware that he/she/it is the same as me is a fine thought, plausible, believable but… But… But…!

And it’s 3 a.m. – 3.36 a.m. so I want to endorse Mahou Shoujo Ririkaru Nanoha.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Really. It’s the, like, best thing ever since sliced cheese. Or maybe it’s the psychedelic mind state talking. Kinda feel like there’s a nail in my head. Not unpleasantly, of course, though I can’t imagine how a nail in the head could be anything but unpleasant.

Fate Testarossa Harlaown is the best.