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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
literatehyaena's InsaneJournal:
- Fischer, Norman. “Peace and Animal Liberation Themes in Martin Rosen's Film The Plague Dogs.” Peace & Change, 1987, Vol. 12 Issue 1/2,; (AN 4841301)
- Manoj, V. R. "Spiritual Transcendence in Transhumanism." Journal of Evolution & Technology 17.1 (Jan. 2008): 1-10. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. 12 Dec. 2008
| Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 | |
| 2:01 pm | Maya just broke a really and expensive piece of pottery that was a gift from my dad. |
| Monday, March 16th, 2009 | |
| 12:01 pm | Meme the "Who Should I Play" meme The meme is pretty simple. I list my characters, you swing by and reply with characters you've never seen me play but would be interested in seeing me try. (This is not a guarantee that I'll will ever play any of the characters, of course, but you never know. I'm looking to expand, after all.) |
| Sunday, February 15th, 2009 | |
| 11:21 pm | ...wat. http://jatgab.blogspot.com/2009/02/asex "Asexuality has different meanings but for our purposes it refers to people who have no sexual attraction for anyone, male or female. Naturally they have no sex lives, or if they do, don't get any pleasure out of them. As far as I'm concerned, this isn't an orientation -- it's a disability and it does no one -- least of all the asexuals who are missing out on one of life's greatest pleasures -- any good to pretend otherwise." |
| Friday, February 6th, 2009 | |
| 9:05 pm | ... my life. What the fuck, guys. Ahem. Someone mentioned a thread of mine in the RP anon meme on LJ... ...in a very... unusual way. ... I'm gonna take that as a compliment, I think. Uhhh. I do believe this is what we call "irony." For reference, this is the experiment thread. I guess it does cater to one of gurochan's major fetishes, but... |
| Thursday, February 5th, 2009 | |
| 10:24 am | Successful tans op at sixteen. ... I should not be bitter, but I am. Pre- or mid-puberty transitions are obviously bound to be--and are--more effective, and hormone treatments at that same age result in a much more successful transition... as someone who was not only born just a couple of years too late for that and someone who only managed to get the obvious acknowledged by anyone else in the past couple of years, I cannot help but be bitter. It sucks. It really does. I know it'll be years before anything remotely relevant gets done, and even then I still have to dear with my mother and the psychiatric professional who honestly told me that if it's not disrupting my life or causing me undue distress they wouldn't even bother with it. And who insists on calling me a young lady and reminds me I'm NOT a boy every time I ask him to stop treating me like I'm female. ... yes, I know I have a vagina, thank you so much for pointing it out when I am trying to explain to you that that's what's WRONG. Perhaps if my physiology didn't put me at such an obvious disadvantage for what I want to become I'd be less bitter, but even if I go through with this successfully I know I'll just look like a slightly wonky fifteen year old male for the rest of my life instead of anything approaching what.. oh, fuck it? You know what? Fuck it. |
| Sunday, February 1st, 2009 | |
| 1:11 pm | A meme. 1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me!", or similarly interview-inducing statements. 2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions. 3. You will post the answers to the questions (and the questions themselves) on your blog or journal. 4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. These questions came from Pyrasaur on IJ. (Also LJ, I believe.) 1) Favourite quick-to-prepare meal? Frozen nikuman. I could live on that and fruit alone. I'm a terrible cook, so not much of that goes on. 2) Who was your party the first time you played FF7? Were you spoiler'd as to which characters were awesome? Red XIII, Vincent, and... Cloud. I was indeed spoiler'd, but I joined the wagon a few years late, so it's to be expected. 3) If you won the lottery, what would be the very first thing you'd use the money on? My rats. Also testosterone treatments or a mastectomy, I can't really afford those at the moment. Was that too much information? 4) If Ace Attorney had a premise other than lawyers and court trials, what would you want it to be? So, your ideal AU, I guess. Augh, that's a hard one. I'd actually be interested in seeing it focus more on crime rather than the aftermath, even though that's kind of ridiculous... but... I don't know otherwise. I think I like Ace Attorney in part because of what it is. 5) Shoelaces or Velcro? Shoelaces, please. Velcro drives my OCD fucking insane. |
| Wednesday, January 21st, 2009 | |
| 11:19 am | Machi has had his limb replaced with rotting wallcrawler limbs and has his head sawed open... ... they phantasms gave him hallucinations, which are not shown here, but he does "break up" with the piano. ( NWS? ) |
| Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 | |
| 4:42 am | When did I actually love this fandom so hard? I love the internet. |
| Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 | |
| 12:30 pm | Delcat! Megan told me I need to show this to you. Context: Machi is being experimented on and getting all his limbs cut off and replaced with monster limbs. Horror RPs, man, Everyone else: This is why I should never, NEVER be put in charge of fragileminded piano-playing shotas. Machi's first cry of despair, his first scream, came as they ripped the leg free of its moorings, as he felt the vibration, the tearing, painless though it was, reverberate through his body, saw--saw--and heard the leg--his leg--coming off, tearing away and staying, disjointed and surreal, in their hands, blood coating the end; they held it, detached, objectlike, distant, the skin, his skin, his muscle, his shredded ends of ligament, his and not hi-- NO! He didn't even know if he'd screamed the word or not after his wail or as part of it or if it was only in his head, illusionary, his throat painlessly hoarse and unfeeling, his head starting to swirl, maybe from shock, from bloodloss, from horror and fear--it didn't even feel like it was gone, his leg, like it was right there, in their hands, on his body, both at the same time--they worked at the stump, but he didn't even see them, his eyes riveted onto his limb, his limb, that was his leg--tears running down his fact, mucous and saliva choking him as he stared at it numbly, maybe screaming, maybe not--he did scream when they moved away with the leg, though, trying to reach for it, to get it back, begging, crying-- They moved on to the wallcrawler, removing its leg, which he watched, fragmentarily, through his sobbing, his bewildered confusion; he was hollowed, numb to the screeching, the atonal, horrible noise that literally rang through his head and caused pain, pain where he hadn't been feeling any before, but instead he just watched it, in pieces, like he was getting only the odd frames of a slide. Dazed with grief and horror and nausea as he was, he didn't make the connection, didn't understand anything at all about what was happening then until they had the creature's leg and were bringing it towards him, meatlike, rotten and foul and malformed and--no. No, no! "No! NO! GET IT AWAY FROM ME! GET IT AWAY, GET IT AWAY!" He started screaming again, desperately, trying to fight, to resist, his breath catching and stopping completely for several second bursts, panic literally freezing his lungs, nausea taking over, making him dry-heave, vomit up the nothing that was in his stomach in between his sobs, pulling at the straps hard enough to do far more than bruise, though he couldn't feel that either. He did the same through the other leg, screaming, begging them to get it away, to leave him alone, to stop, to take it off, to anything-- But it wasn't until they went for his arms that he truly cracked. Machi's arms were his most important part of himself, they were connected to his hands, they were part of him, far more vital, more integrate than his legs were, he was a pianist, the piano--the piano, the piano--oh gods, no, no, no, no--! "NO! No, no, no,!" He cracked, repeating the same word over and over again, brokenly, desperately, pleading, the tears pouring down his face as he sobbed helplessly. "No, no, no, no, no, no!" He wasn't screaming, just begging, choking on his own tears, his own mucous and saliva and grief and desperation and terror, leaving English, coherent language far behind in favour of the one word, the one word he could manage, the only one that meant anything--anything at all any more. He screamed at them, frantically, desperately, sobbing as they cut through his first arm, strangling with grief and the same, wretched, desperate word as they brought the new one to him, thick with rot, mutated, too large, too wrong, continuing through the second arm, collapsing into no words at all, just sobbing, harsh, ragged, terrible sobs that consumed his entire body and left him unaware of anything else around him except his own grief, his own broken psyche. |
| Sunday, January 4th, 2009 | |
| 1:09 pm | Got lost in Tegaki for like three or four hours last night. I found a happy Machi and a sad one and a Machi and a Daryan in a bathtub together and a Kristoph in a a banana suit. That pretty much sums up my night. You can have the happy one because you'll almost certainly never see one this happy from me and he's kinda charming. You can have the sad one because it's a nice contrast. He's so INNOCENT in some people's interpretations. Makes me think I'm doing it wrong.   |
| Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 | |
| 3:54 pm | Woe and a Headache. Yeah, so I've been pretty dead lately. I still haven't finished the Incomplete coursework for last semester and I'm not at all motivated to, which is bad. I'm not really motivated to help people on WoW like I need to either. Hell, I'm not motivated to call the housing office and talk to them about my housing situation and the odds of me returning in time to take any classes, or my classes in general, or... I'm not sure if it's a stress thing or a selfish thing, but all I've wanted to do at ALL for the past handful of days is either sleep and eat and simply exist or else play liar Machi, whom I'm finally breaking out at the Dollsyhouse. I'm just gonna leave this here and apologise for my e-death... Merry Christmas or some crap. Last night I dreamed we were re-enacting a scene from Death Note (a scene that doesn't really exist, I haven't even seen the anime and am mostly familiar with sporadic details from the manga) for Viau's class, except that it was in... Mrs. Bunte's classroom from back when I was in International Baccalaureate and we failed horribly. I didn't even know it was that day and no one else in the group really cared and I was apparently L (except, helpfully, his name was Kira, wat) and I basically got my prep from one run-through out in the hall and watching a tiny fragment of the ep on YouTube and he reamed us out so bad and I'm sure this has to do with my latent guilt for being such a lazy asshole regarding his class but anyway I have to go bring food to my mother. |
| Friday, December 12th, 2008 | |
| 1:01 pm | So I failed Japanese. Outright. F. |
| 5:42 am | Here, Delcat. データーはうそをつかないよ Transhumanism is broadly defined as the human movement for the use of science and technology to improve or alter the human condition. Covering intellectual, cultural, philosophical, and actual scientific grounds, the ideas behind transhumanism aren't exactly new, but in recent decades they've taken on a much greater life than previously given and developed their own momentum, taking high prominence in many circles, not the least of which is the realm of fiction. Writers have long explored the possibilities of enhancement or the breaking down of barriers or component parts, however, and these experimentations have not been limited solely to human subject matters. Richard Adams' novel The Plague Dogs (which has been adapted into film) is, topically, about two dogs who, having escaped from an animal research centre in Britain where they were subjects of two very different experiments, must attempt to survive out in the tarn as wild animals, and it deals heavily with both human experimentation on animals and the relationship between humans and the animals they live with. One of the two protagonists, a black and white fox terrier named Snitter, is the subject of surgical brain experimentation which renders him partially incoherent and prone to hallucinatory experiences, as well as disorienting him in relation to reality and possibly integrating his subconscious into his conscious, although the opinions and understandings of readers vary widely—one interpretation is that the “experiment prevents Snitter from being able to distinguish between subjective and objective.” (Fischer 1) Snitter himself calls himself mad—as in “she's more mad than I am!”--or else insists he is not feeling well to Rowf, something he does repeatedly, as the larger dog is often impatient and poorly understanding. (Adams, 313) The alteration to his psyche and the effects it has upon his relation to the world around him, however, incorporates definite transhumanist elements, especially regarding the enlightened, if abstract, understandings to which he is given. The other canine, Rowf, is a large black dog who was used in experiments related to drowning and tolerance of repeated conditions—every day he was taken from his pen and dropped into a large steel tank filled with water where he struggled to stay afloat until his strength finally gave out. As a result, he greatly mistrusts humans and has a virulent fear of water; Snitter trusts men a great deal, having once been the pet of a man who was hit by a lorry, and tells Rowf not to be misled by the actions of the scientists. Their contrasting philosophies are presented repeatedly against man and the wilderness, but it's Snitter's constant disconnection from and misinterpretation of reality that interests us most here. Often, his rambling and delusional reflects, in some way, the condition of the two runaways—bleakly, metaphorically, abstractly—highlighting things otherwise invisible through the practicalities and limited focus of Rowf... or even the Tod, for that matter, who serves as their 'guide' for part of the novel. The problem is that this is usually with the context of himself—during one spell of internal rambling regarding their plight, he asks, “But how? Which way back to Animal Research? Please, sir, could you direct me to the nearest whitecoat? Do you happen to have seen a street lying about anywhere—a shop, a house, a dustbin? You see, I'm lost. My head was cut open and I fell in when I wasn't looking and now I seem to have kicked my brains to pieces trying to get out. There are leaves floating in black milk--” (Adams 99) With Snitter's dialogue, both internal and external, Fischer claims “the film's meditation on injustice done... is generalized into a meditation on the circumstances of subjective consciousness generally.” (Fischer 1) He continues to say that some “may find anthropomorphic the attribution to Snitter not only of consciousness but also of a high enough degree of consciousness to generate what Erich Fromm has called the anxiety arising from self awareness.” (Fischer 1) In other words, that through Snitter, not only is the entire piece elevated into another realm of concentration and literary consideration, but Snitter himself may also be elevated from something that could be considered 'dog.' Fischer says simply, that The Plague Dogs “proves once again that exploration into the nonhuman can reveal the human.” (Fischer 2) Very true, and my point exactly. By exploring the relationship of Snitter's deconstruction (and, perhaps advancement) with his rapidly-changing world, what we see are some of the earliest vestiges of transhumanist exploration in an abstract (and non science fiction) context, the artificially-induced alteration of psychology and physiology. What's really interesting about this is that even with all that, Snitter is still distinctly 'dog'—he makes decisions that are not entirely doglike within context, but never deviates from action patterns or behaviours that could be seen as other than 'dog.' In fact. the abnormal behaviours he engages in are often canine to the extreme—sniffing around in circles, literally barking or getting at excited at nothing (even by canine standards)--and there's his dialogue, which, while still maintaining a heavy quality of what he genuinely is, talking about dog matters in an unfocused, disconnected way that somehow brings him back to the core of what he is. His focus on the minute and the intangible is a source of constant frustration, though, and several times Rowf comes close to leaving him—and Snitter is by far the faster on giving up, tiring more easily and lacking the motivation to survive as much as his partner... in part, it might seem, because of an erratic and capricious, possibly eccentric understanding of death. Rowf, failing to understand this—or else understanding it and having no patience—threatens abandonment at several points, and regularly forces Snitter to move or cooperate or do something useful or to stop talking. The main problem that people have with transhumanism... the main problems, I should say, are problems of ethics and identity, of the identity of man—that is, the concept and definition of humanity—and of the regular anathema of the unknown. The concept of the 'posthuman', while in many ways an ideal for transhumanist thinkers and progressives, is a terrifying prospect for others, and the alien nature of such a transcendance is exactly the nature between Rowf and Snitter--Rowf is easily frustrated with Snitter because he cannot understand him. Snitter is, in a way, dog and not-dog... in Rowf's world, Snitter is merely crazy, and perhaps a bit stupid, but in fact the alien methods and thought processes that whirl through the terrier's head are vested with a very different process, if there is a process at all—and there must be—so perhaps the process is instead interrupted, or picks up other things on the way. The theory that Snitter has either his subjective and objective confused or his subconscious and conscious fused resurfaces here, and suggests one of the more abstract possibilities attributed to the concept of posthuman development—the ability to “experience novel states of consciousness that current human brains cannot access.” (Agar) In the most coherent narrative and internal dialogue given by Snitter in the course of the book, he is shut up in a shed and perceives it as him being trapped inside his own head. The contents of his exploration are clear and detailed, in part because of Adams himself, but he sees everything clearly and in starkly realistic and specifically physical terms, while still perceiving it as the inside of his own head. He shows again his awareness of his own condition as well: “But what put the whole thing beyond doubt was the concave cleft running down the middle of the floor, from the place where he himself was lying to his own muzzle in the centre of the further wall. He had always supposed that the cleft must be narrower and deeper in appearance—it certainly felt deeper—but nevertheless he had been right all along about one thing. Pushed into the opening and covering the outlet was a rough ball of chicken-wire, in which were embedded a few old leaves, some chips of wood and scraps of sodden paper. It was clear enough, too, how the cleft had affected him and why he so often felt odd and confused, for on one side of it lay a stack of small logs, with a cleaver and block, while on the other were two rows of clean, resin-smelling splinters tied into bundles—obviously the part which had been split when the cleft was made.” (Adams 231) If Rowf and the Tod—and the few other animals they meet and speak to as well—are any indication, no dog or fox could incorporate, associate or explain things in such an abstract manner, so coherently, so precisely within reason within the bounds of this surrealistic concept. And yet here this is exactly what Snitter does, all without losing the ruminating, almost preoccupied, anxious, or busy air of his terrier personality. He gets up, talking to himself (“So it was splinters”), and sniffs the log pile, and immediately begins cleaning out his eye-windows while noting, with some irony, how queer the situation is... but approaching with a practicality hitherto unseen in Snitter and his wild fancies. He initially refuses to leave, in fact, intending to go about his business and clean everything about, but the Tod pulls the ball of chicken-wire out with his teeth, and—as Snitter, startled, yelps in shock and pain and tries to snatch it back—the door to the shed opens and the smell of whitecoats hits him. In terror, he crushes through and they narrowly make their escape. “The body is neither a very efficient nor a very durable structure. It malfunctions often and fatigues quickly; its performance is determined by its age. It is susceptible to disease and is doomed to a certain and early death. Its survival parameters are very slim—it can survive only weeks without food, days without water and minutes without oxygen.” (Manoj 5) If the body is inefficient and fragile, the brain is much, much more so; the idea of brain advancement is a subject of fascination within transhumanist circles. The idea, explored here with negative connotations, both introduces an idea and condemns it, long before the theories of transhumanism were consolidated and introduced to the world at large. The non-dog in Snitter is, to us, very human, and the differential progression between animal and other being closely mirrors the controversy of what transhumanism is all about.
Works Cited Adams, Richard. The Plague Dogs. Third printing of first edition. Toronto: Ballantine Books, 1984. Agar, Nicholas. The Hastings Center Report. Hastings-on-Hudson: May/June 2007. Vol. 37, Iss. 3; pg. 12, 7 pgs |
| Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 | |
| 11:52 am | Regarding Unit B and that Machi artist (psychoxbreaker): professional envy SUCKS. |
| Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 | |
| 2:55 pm | Our house flooded and the floor of the second and first floors fell in a bit--it took roughly 24 hours for someone to come home and discover there was a problem. I spent nine hours of my Thanksgiving in the lobby of a police station! My dying uncle threw up at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Renji was dead when I got back, my room smelled of corpse. My mother had a stroke, which I received a call about at nine this morning. I really think the universe is trying to keep me from finishing the semester. Does anyone remember that really awesome Sadaharu Inui icon I had--and know how I can reobtain the fucking thing? I seem to have misplaced it. |
| Tuesday, November 25th, 2008 | |
| 12:38 pm | Buddha died. Still working through some of those inferiority things I get. Cannot get comfy in Machi's skin. Maybe I took him from the wrong time and am juggling too much. Clear Skies needs to happen. I need to stop failing classes. |
| Monday, November 10th, 2008 | |
| 3:51 am | ! ...so I've been lurking around dear_mun a lot lately and I was interacting with this Trucy and a Phoenix, both of whom intimidated the shit out of me. ...and then the Trucy joined Dollsy. Except she didn't TELL me she joined until I was talking about all the PW characters on dear_mun one night (same day she joined) and she said she was responsible for one of the Mias (there were two) and the Trucy and I just about had a heart attack. And actually flailed and then (joking) fled the chat, renjoining after a few seconds of flailing. The Phoenix commented me before (IN DEAR_MUN) and I flailed a lot. ... and then this: FiragaWyvern (2:50:49 AM): Me feeling bad for running you off? >> LiterateHyaena (2:50:54 AM): ...pssh. LiterateHyaena (2:51:01 AM): Don't feel bad? LiterateHyaena (2:51:19 AM): It was bound to happen eventually, although damn you sprang that out of nowhere. xD FiragaWyvern (2:51:26 AM): XD Sorry LiterateHyaena (2:51:46 AM): It's fine. XD You're really that Trucy? Sorry I harassed you in dear_mun with Machi. LiterateHyaena (2:51:51 AM): :< FiragaWyvern (2:51:55 AM): I love your Machi like burning. FiragaWyvern (2:51:59 AM): He's so cute. LiterateHyaena (2:52:00 AM): ...w... what? LiterateHyaena (2:52:08 AM): ... *stares at you like you sprouted antlers* ...and I told her honestly that her Trucy was awesome, which had a lot to do with how intimidated I was, although I didn't add that part. But what the HELL? When did I start getting people liking my stuff?! |
| Thursday, November 6th, 2008 | |
| 1:14 pm | Asperger's Syndome and intentional action: http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/e ... so. |
| Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 | |
| 6:13 pm | October 30th, 2008: Sibil died. She is currently interred in my freezer, awaiting burial. That is all. |
| Saturday, October 25th, 2008 | |
| 8:54 am | I'm currently failing some classes. Don't want to talk about that. What I do want to talk about is how much more awesome the Japanese version of the first Pokémon movie is. You would not BELIEVE how incredibly cool it is. Rather than being some horribly cheesy, overwrought tacky movie with a cool Pokémon and a million repetitive concepts that they beat you over the head with (not to mention bad dialogue), it basically becomes a fucking TOUR DE FORCE. The concept is basically a lot about definitions of life, ideas about science and source of identity, concepts of sentient/human nature and uses of power, some stuff about relativity as related to the individual, and various other philosophical and political shit that I can't even begin to cover. THIS TRAILER SHOULD CONVERT YOU. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAANT. WAAAAAAAAAAAAAANT. |