All right, so due to massive inteventions, I have rid my blog of the “Not Wholesome” image. Too many people were apparently disturbed, so I have replaced it with its polar opposite the cutest ever Puerto Rican street mutt, (sato) until I find something more appropriate…

But in terms of shocking, I found out that our lovely Hooter’s ladies are now in our lovely friendly skies……. I tried to book a flight to see how much a flight cost but all I got was “system error.” Hmmm, solid airline…

You know you are addicted to coffee when……

It is nearly 2 am and you are PSYCHED to go to bed not because you are tired but because you will wake up in 8 hours and have coffee.

Pathetic.

So I have not been much of a diligent and faithfull writer these days in much any capacity.

My only excuse is that my age old friend, “Insomnia” has decided to pay me an extended visit. It is not so bad during the first week as you think, “well Insomnia will surely leave my life soon.” I just need to get done with this and then that will fall into place.

Next thing you know it is week 4 and 4 am, again, and you are not sure how you will handle yet another day of zombie-like existence. Every 4-5 days you crash into a heavenly state of deep sleep, but then you sleep so hard and so long that the cycle restarts yet again.

Under the guise of Insomnia what is a simple task is a chore; instead of connecting with those you love, you misconnect feeling the pangs of lonliness, and the world strikes you are a darker more dangerous place that it already is (and it also makes your blog writing more dramatic and petty than it already is..:-))

But anyways, I shed this story of long nights, early mornings, and torturous days onto my blog in the hopes that insomnia will pay me its respects and then get the hell out of town…….

I don’t get it. How can I go from really liking something I wrote to loathing it. Does it depend on my mood or the writing or something else entirely?

I have written this paper reformulating the hacker ethic. I like the content and ideas yet frnd the presentation lackluster. Tomorrow I am going to start a major gutting of the paper, basically trashing huge sections for a re-write. It is something I tend not to do and I think this has been one of my problematic writing pitfalls. Sometimes if it aint working, you might as well throw it in the bag and start afresh. I will let you know in a few days if it gets me anywhere.

I just used a tax service called TAX SLAYER because I thought it was a dorky name. It indeed cut my taxes down like 300 dollars but I am not sure it is a legit service thought it is linked on the IRS website. I indeed might be jailed in a couple of weeks…

I am at that point where I am sort of wired but too icky feeling to do work so now I am just blogging shamelessly but without much thought because my brain is not working in that capacity right now. Anyway, I just came across a really Not Wholesome product brand today: MUCINEX. It is Guaifenesin alone and at 600 mgs, it is a powwerful dose. It does not really ‘nex” it, well it does but only in a way that does not supress it like other OTC cold meds but thins it out so .. yes you get the point.

But the interesting thing is the name. How I would SO love to have been part of the “marketing/branding” team who came up with this brand. I mean on the one hand brilliant, like it catches your attention, on the other hand, it is too close of an index to the process. Might some people get offended. I almost started asking people at the drug store about it today but then I thought, ok, biella, this is a procrastination tactic I will not allow myself to indulge in. Yet I can’t seem to let it go… But as I was discussing this on IRC with my friends tonight, I was told by someone:

h0mee: I for one think that mucul habits are not discussed enough in public
heh

If I ever write such ludicrous statements like: “In technoculture we have ideology without hegemony (or, more precisely, within the hegemony of contingency, flow, multiplicty, mutability, indeterminacy.), please just make me retire on the spot.

Oh yes, so much more precise…

Welcome to my new Blog Design and Concept, Not Wholesome. Not Wholesome is a category of multi-purpose means and ends and I hope, despite the glaringly shocking image associatied with Not Wholesome, you will start to journey with me in the land of NW. It can take us many interesting places…

The ironies of Life guide this concept: how and in what ways are things construced, washed, perceived, tagged, convoluted to become wholesome or not? Why do some things strike us as utterly wrong and others pleasant and comforting? I am interested in that always shifting interface which is so potentially productive and destructive at the same time. For some, one thing might be wholesome for another not. And I am sure you will hear about my own personal opinions about the Not Wholesome especially when I think it has been sheathed into the Wholesome.

When you decontexualize, the meaning of purity and disgust can radically shift. This new project is ultimately about the aesthetics of taste and its intermingling with morality, and the who, how, and when with the power and wherewithal to stablize the thrust of meaning that can enliven, disgust, inspire, and degrade.

The great ironies of purity and disgust, wholesome and the not wholsome, derive from the image showcased in this entry (inspiring the pink image) which *actually* derives from what I think of as a very, innocent and wholesome endeavor-> My mom cooking her favorite dish, chicken-on-a-bottle. She coooks it every Sunday even currently with her visual impairments. And she gets really pissed if you deviate from her ritual recipe.

It is some arcane Russian recipe (so she claims) where you stick a chicken on a bottle filled with water and then put it in a pan with water and bake in the oven at 450 F for 1.25 hrs. You season with some salt and pepper after a short ablution with fresh lime juice. It is quite delicious in fact, the outer skin of the chicken baking into just the perfect crisp, the meat inside reamaining moisty thanks to the hot steam of all that water. I wholeheartedly recommend it for you meat eaters out there.

But in the mean time, I can’t offer your meat and flesh only a virtual welcome. I hope not to offend only to see how and what and why things offend or don’t