Green Typewriters

August 31, 2013 Leave a comment

And we’re back… Slightly longer summer break than usual this year, for various reasons, not all connected to idleness. Mostly connected to idleness though.

But who can blame us for staying away from the internet? What with twitterised death threats, cyber-bullying, extreme porn everywhere, topped off by the NSA snooping on us all, browsing the web these days feels less like strolling around a virtual utopia, and more like dodging the cops in the town’s sleaziest neighbourhood.

It’s hard to believe that only a couple of years ago everyone was saying that social media was going to save the world, and even nominating the internet for the Nobel Peace Prize. One might almost suspect that these scare stories (mostly concerning phenomena which, while obviously serious, have been around for years) were being hyped up by the authorities, and their allies in the old media, to convince us that we should steer clear of any online content that isn’t government-approved.

Anyway, I’m thinking that we should take a tip from the Russians, and start producing SLS on paper, with typewriters. We could hand out hard copies in the street, to anyone who looked vaguely interested. Our productivity and readership couldn’t be any worse than they are now…

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Constitutional scepticism

July 5, 2013 Leave a comment

In our usual slacker style we’re a day late with this, but I thought we should do our small part to publicise the Stop Watching Us petition, which calls on the US Government to respect the Constitution’s 4th Amendment prohibition of unreasonable surveillance.

I haven’t actually signed it myself, partly because I’m not convinced it will achieve anything other than providing the authorities with a handy list of self-identified subversives, but mainly because I’m a hard-core communist who views with disdain the naive liberal notion that the constitution of a bourgeois republic is anything other than a fig-leaf of legality designed to distract us from the reality of capitalist power relations. As of this morning there were 552,411 people with a more optimistic view of citizens’ rights under constitutional government though, so if, like them, you are less cynical than I, you should probably sign up.

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The blogging dead

June 28, 2013 Leave a comment

I should have known that our obsession with the undead would end up turning us into a zombie blog – devoid of fresh content, but lurching on, in a grotesque parody of life.

The funny thing is we still get a respectable amount of traffic – a steady background buzz, with occasional inexplicable spikes. If I sold out my principles and put some advertising on the site I could just sit back and watch the fractions of a cent roll in.

Anyway, I’m feeling sorry what whichever low-level NSA analyst has been assigned the thankless task of trawling through our output looking for subversion, so I’ll try to make things a bit more interesting in the weeks ahead. Unless of course the sun appears, in which case we’ll be staying out for the summer….

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Roboshrink

May 29, 2013 Leave a comment

Slightly alarming news from Los Angeles, where researchers at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies have developed a virtual therapist. The system interacts with the client through an avatar named Ellie, analysing verbal and non-verbal responses using a webcam and a gaming sensor. The current version uses a real psychologist in the next room to guide Ellie’s questioning, but future iterations promise increasing autonomy.

Ellie’s creators say that she is not meant to replace human therapists, but rather to assist them by taking care of routine information gathering and screening, leaving us old-fashioned flesh and blood shrinks with more time to do the actual healing stuff. That sounds fairly benign, but I can’t help worrying that if our managers hear about a worker who doesn’t need paid, never goes off sick, and always sticks to the treatment protocols, then it won’t be long before we’re all out on the street.

But, you may say, won’t patients resent being fobbed off with an ersatz therapist and demand to see a real live doctor? Well, according to the research, most people find computer-delivered treatment perfectly acceptable, so, yeah, basically we’re doomed…

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The Joy of Six

May 26, 2013 Leave a comment

Well, against the odds, we seem to have staggered our way through another year of blogging, though we’ve only managed 30 posts in the last twelve months, and the bulk of those were brief notes on general cultural and historical topics rather than the commentary on virtual life that is supposedly our raison d’être. There were a couple of pieces that I thought were up to our old standard, and a few more that were mildly diverting, but the general verdict is “Must try harder”.

One could argue that I should acknowledge that the well of inspiration is running dry, and wrap up this project before we descend even further into irrelevance, but I’m loathe to completely give up on my blogger identity, however tenuous my grasp on it is, so I expect we’ll trundle on for a while yet.

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Break On Through (To the Other Side)

May 21, 2013 Leave a comment

Sad news today of the death of Ray Manzarek. Regular readers will not be surprised to learn that I was a big fan of The Doors as a young teenager. Like many another adolescent boy I initially styled myself after Jim Morrison, but it wasn’t long before I realised that I wasn’t really cut out to be a Dionysian love-god, so I adopted Manzarek as a role model instead. I had the glasses, the long hair, and (in my mind at least) the cool intellectual demeanour, but not, alas, the musical talent, though that didn’t stop me contributing dodgy organ licks to various teen garage bands.

I fell out of love with The Doors in my later teens, as I grew up and realised that Morrison was actually a bit of a dick, but in later years (probably fuelled by nostalgia) I have gotten into them again. I’m not sure that the shaggier blues and psychedelia of their mid to late period really stands up today, but their early numbers still sound fresh and exciting, underpinned, as the obituaries have noted, by Manzarek’s snaky rhythms. I can clearly remember the first time I heard The Doors, on a cassette a friend gave me, taped from his old man’s vinyl, and listening to it now takes me back to the days when the right music could promise a glimpse into a seductive world of adult possibility. Of course I know now that what seems deep and profound at the age of 13 is generally less so when one reaches some sort of maturity, but it’s nice to be reminded now and again of how fun life was before the cynicism of age set in.

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Jennifer She Said

May 2, 2013 1 Comment

An interesting message arrived in the SLS inbox last week, from one Jennifer Gretson:

Hi,

My name is Jennifer, and I’m reaching out because I noticed that your blog https://secondlifeshrink.com/ isn’t updated very often. Without an active blog, it’s really difficult to get website traffic.

That’s why I wanted to reach out to you; I’m a freelance writer trying to build a name for myself online, and I’d be happy help contribute to your blog if you’d like. You don’t need to pay me or anything, either… I just want to get my name out there as a great writer.

I’ll be happy to provide some samples of my work if you’d like; just let me know!

Of course, paranoid cynic that I am, I’m assuming that this is some sort of scam, and that if I reply “Jennifer” will try to persuade me to give her my credit card details by promising vast income from Google ads, or whatever magical internet paradigm is the get-rich-quick scheme du jour. Perhaps she wants access to my WordPress account so she can use it for spamming, or link-farming, or hosting dubious content, or some other nefarious purpose that will bring the FBI to my door.

Or perhaps Ms Gretson is sincere, and she really believes that publishing work in our little blog will help her become the next E. L. James. If so, it seems cruel to puncture her charming optimism by exposing her to the disappointing reality of our obscurity.

Anyway, Jennifer has one thing right; five posts in four months is hardly what one expects of an active blog. I’ll have to try to raise my work rate a little – as usual I’ve got lots of ideas, and surely I can’t go wrong if I put it in writing…

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Ha Ha Thatcher is dead

April 8, 2013 Leave a comment

I know that dancing on the graves of the newly deceased isn’t very classy, but I’d be lying if I told you that my reaction to hearing today’s news was anything other than a broad smile.

I’m actually a little dismayed by this – not due to any respect I had for the woman, but rather because I’m sure she would have seen the fact that her demise is being celebrated by the likes of me as a badge of honour. My brain wants to rate this event as a footnote in history, to condemn her to the obscurity she deserves, but my heart is saying otherwise.

Oh well, I guess the cool rationalism will win out over the next few days, but tonight we party…

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International Women’s Day 2013

March 8, 2013 Leave a comment

When Luise Zietz and Clara Zetkin proposed the observance of an International Women’s Day back in 1910, I wonder if they imagined that over a century later their sisters would still be campaigning against gender-based violence and in defence of reproductive rights. In some ways it’s depressing that so much remains to be done, but the history of struggle over the years is never less than inspiring.

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Viva la Revolución Bolivariana!

March 6, 2013 Leave a comment

I woke to sad news today; Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, had lost his final battle against illness. It seems like only yesterday we were celebrating his reelection; now we mourn his passing.

Hugo Chavez will undoubtedly be remembered as a great figure in left politics; his legacy not just the vast improvement in living standards he brought to the people of Venezuela, but also the movement he built that will carry on his work, and the inspiration he gave to others fighting poverty and injustice in neighbouring countries and around the world.

That inspiration is captured in the documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, which covers the abortive 2002 coup against Chavez, and the popular uprising that defeated it. It’s available in full on YouTube, and well worth watching.

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