Category: ruminations

Getting familiar about the family.

~ Lkvy ~ 15 Comments

I’ve now been separated from the outside world for a month. I started quarantining a week before most stores in Victoria–including my now-former workplace–closed for the pandemic.

In that time, I’ve come to realize that for the past few years, I’ve been a dialed-back version of myself. I’ve trained myself to not do anything too far off from social norms as to not further alienate myself. My deafness already makes people uncomfortable, so I can’t afford to be weird on top of that! But, after a month without outside exposure, I feel the eccentricity creeping back into me.

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Long Long Documentary.

~ Lkvy ~ 4 Comments

I don’t think pandemic updates are the blog content anyone is interested in right now, so why don’t I instead do an upbeat write-up about a docuseries featuring a cult in 1980s Oregon?

This story is so farfetched that the filmmakers couldn’t compress it into a standard two-hour documentary. Instead, the Wild Wild Country docuseries is made up of six episodes, each lasting a little over an hour. I have now been subjected to 400 minutes of footage showing burgundy-clad guru-worshipping settlers pissing off their redneck neighbours with their casual sexing ways, and I still have many questions.

Many.

This guy’s face says it all:

A bearded black man in his mid 20s stares, mouth agape while another guy behind him looks off to the side with an intense stare.
The look of disbelief at the circus surrounding Bhagwan’s arrival in Portland.

Question number one: How come this moment in history is seemingly absent from pop culture references?

Everybody knows about the Manson Family. Old millennials like myself still think about Heaven’s Gate when they see black Nikes. The Branch Davidians’ David Koresh is the reason aviator glasses went out of style (they’re back because people forgot about David Koresh). Jonestown gave birth to the phrase “drinking the Kool Aid”. Rajneeshpuram, somehow, disappeared off the map and faded into obscurity.

Yet, the founder of the Rajneesh movement had more followers than Manson, Applewhite, Koresh, and Jones combined! Without further ado, here’s the man who was charismatic to attract more than 10,000 followers worldwide:

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Millennial stuff.

~ Lkvy ~ 8 Comments

I am five years older than Yann, which isn’t a significant difference. It’s not exactly an insignificant difference either, as proven by our discussion the other night. I was explaining to him how I had spent part of my day indulging in nostalgia by browsing the old internet. I did this by Wayback Machine-ing a few of my old favorites.

The internet used to be uglier, but it was also a lot more fun. Right now, it’s so consumer-driven. Once pop-up blockers got effective, the internet had to get creative with advertising which is now disguised as social media apps or sponsored blog posts.

Splash pages are dead. Guestbooks are no more. Chat rooms are obscure. Even webcams have disappeared, and they were a prerequisite for personal websites of the late 90s/early 00s, usually appearing in the sidebar. The chosen photo would be the webmaster/webmistress’ (two of the most short-lived terms to ever exist) pick of the day.

Sometimes, the webcam would be live, refreshing at a rate of once every five seconds or slower. I had to stop there and further explain live cams to Yann.

“Streaming camera, you mean?” he asked.

“Oh, no. Those were the days of dial-up internet.” I paused to fix my glasses and brush a wisp of grey hair out of my face, “We didn’t have streaming media.”

“So, it’s like video chat?”

“No, you just let people watch you in total anonymity,” I continued as I leaned back in the rocking chair, preparing to school my young boyfriend on the golden age of the web.

He was creeped out.

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