The Walls Have Ears

I'm operating a level outside the place to be ... to write anything of consequence. I'm all wrapped up in Daily Dilemmas, Personal Problems, the Trivial Blah Blah's. The one good thing about Trivial Blah Blahs? It's a passable band name.

I've been sitting here trying to think of something. I keep reloading other people's journals, CNN, other people's forums, on auto-pilot. I don't even read what comes up. Wreaking havoc with other people's stats.

Here's where I get preachy.

I've been thinking about the time an artist stole my diary and used it in his art installation. Boy, was he surprised when I confronted him. And wasn't I surprised when I found this:

Article reprinted without permission just like my diary:

The same dichotomy between a failed individualism and the alienating impossibility of attempting to achieve its ideal is drawn out further in ...(Christy’s Diary), 2000, a computer monitor that presents an endlessly scrolling text taken from the website diary of a Californian college student. In this unstoppable biographic stream, Christy details the minutiae of her personal and college life, full of late night essay deadlines, coffee, script-writing courses, complaints of loneliness, musings about the value of friends and much other undergraduate navel-gazing born of the predictability of campus life. This would be an unremarkable ‘Dear Diary’ if it weren’t for the fact that Christy voices a clear attachment to Rand’s philosophy of life and identification with the characters of her fiction. Of course, translated into the restricted terms of college existence, the fearless independence of Rand’s heroes becomes a recipe for Christy’s intolerance and seclusion, whilst her desire to emulate their near superhuman physical and intellectual capacities drives her to ever greater fits of exhaustion and self-reprobation. Inasmuch as it presents without mediation the authentic voice of its author, the piece is supposed to expose ‘the difficulty to live according to a philosophy based on radical egoism and selfishness.’
From Original Article

This experience made me more cautious about what I post on the internet. The internet, like elephants, never forgets. And it never stops judging. And it writes pseudo-academic articles about my rationale based on some random artist's installation, consisting of a monitor on a table and my content scrolling. Taken out of context and without permission. The key here is "without permission." If he'd only asked I probably would have allowed him to use my work. But he didn't ask.

One more example. Using Google, I found a review submitted under my name. My full name is unique. I don't believe anyone in the world shares it. I had never heard of the product I'd been meant to endorse, but I recognized the review. I had written it for a different product. Someone took the content of my original review and re-worded what I was endorsing. I suppose that makes the forgery more authentic. It's still forgery.

In closing, watch what you say, watch what you text message, watch what you e-mail. The walls have ears. And the only one looking out for your best interest is you.

On a side note, based on the above article I haven't changed much. I'm still a selfish over-caffeinated amateur script writer with delusions of grandeur. Go figure.