Internet Habits
You know when you get deep into your own private internet world (not porn, I don’t mean porn), where your browser becomes like a map of your curiosities, neuroses and consumer desires, where the “History” is an itinerary of a few hours journey from “What time is that movie playing?” to “How did the beginning of World War I unfold after that guy shot the other guy?” to “Maybe today is the day I will spend half the price of an international plane ticket on a machine that makes 1″ pin-on buttons.”
One of my pastimes is finding scientific studies that prove that potheads actually have greater capacities for memory retention than non-potheads. Since I don’t believe in most science to begin with (objectivity is a myth, the observer inherently changes the observed simply by observing it, too many variables in the average person/party/city/universe to accurately measure anything, better to impose your own view on the world than search for hard-won nuggets of questionable truth, etc.) I am free to pick and choose among conclusions I find most pleasing. Like the idea that smoking dope is not only not bad for your brain, but good for it.
Whether this is evidence to the contrary or not, in my speedy travels through the two-dimensional world of disinformation that connects us all, I often lose my way. I often forget the next noun about which I am seeking information. Was I about to Google galoshes or an ex-boyfriend? On my way to the Quicktime trailer site to check out some previews or finally going to download and read that 40-page .pdf interview with the famous author I’m currently emulating? Pay the cell phone bill? Check airfares to South America for an unexpected drop in price? Re-live recent events in my life through other people’s shared digital photographs? Trust the hive-mind of Wikipedia to finally set me straight Dadaism, Abstract Expressionism, Fluxus, the Factory? For the last time, Proust is an author and Faust is a character! Why can’t I keep that straight! Does it even matter, if I haven’t read the books? What was the name of that movie I saw in the Yoko Ono retrospective in Paris (was it Paris? Maybe it was San Francisco) that was just people’s naked butts filling the screen? Why, it’s called, Bottoms! How marvelous!
Sometimes I just sit here and do that until I have a mild anxiety attack. Then I Google anxiety attacks and the whole thing just goes on from there.