Apophenia: recognizing patterns in seemingly unrelated phenomenon. What's wrong with our military presence in Iraq in 2 and a half minutes.



The NYTimes writes on this year's Super Bowl ads noting an upsurge in violence for comic effect. I can't even keep track of let alone name the number of torture based horror films that seem to pop up every weekend. Here in the US we live in such a strange society: militarized with institutional violence, but comfortably divorced and insulated from it, but our culture, as a funhouse mirror, gives us instaneous permission to spectate it. Coke ran their Grand Theft Auto ad, in which the game is recreated but in a show of peace and kindness; creatives love that one and the article states it's one of the few kindly ones. People I've seen it with get the ad only if they've played the brilliant, despicable ultraviolent videogame.

Up late with grim thoughts. I just sat through Jarhead on cable (didn't like it, miscast and overtly dramatized when it should've been a scruffy, dogeared kind of thing - aiming for portentious meaning but just coming across as ham fisted and way too pretty. That's coming from someone who read and liked the book when it was released). Sometimes, I think like most of us this age, I'm overwhelmed by what is possible to know immediately and make connections with, and an inability and frustration to see any sort of exit from the labyrinth. Nothing infuriates me more than sensing I must give up on the personal sense of hope and optimism I'd like to carry. I like to think all of us have late nights where we feel the same.