Information overload

The other day I shared a video with my aunt. I watch this funny online review of the weeks three most popular/funny/interesting videos, along with the humorous comments from the host (if you know Russian, check it out: http://www.youtube.com/user/ThisIsHorosho). I had to pause and explain stuff, (unfortunately, if you have to explain it, it stops being funny), that’s when I realized: I have accumulated immense quantity of knowledge, without even knowing it and maybe this is why it is getting increasingly harder to remember new things—we are putting so much info in our head, we are overloaded. In order to understand one issue of the video review (six minutes total), I had to know, actually know, not only recognize, the following things
1. How to operate youtube channels
2. Russian
3. English
4. Star Wars
5. Pirates of the Caribbean
6. One Russian Rock Band
7. American and Russian slang words
8. Internet slang (meme and such)
9. Pedobear
10. References to earlier videos I have seen on this video channel
11. Many other random stuff
Contrary to what I thought, this info did not get into my head accidentally; I spend time acquiring it. Once, hubby and I watched a video that contained a song combining most of the internet memes. We did not know some of them. We went online to renew our knowldege and watched videos of: Nyan Cat, rainbow puke, trololo, numa numa, some girl with celery…. We already knew the following: Rebecca Black, trolls, pedobear, badgers and such. And that’s not even specific information. Those are the things we know to speak the same language that the world speaks. Can you imagine all the things younger kids know?
If we need to know so much just to get a modern joke, just think for a moment how much you’ve learned in your professional field! What if you have several professions (my hubby for example majored in business administration and finances). What about your hobbies, likes, interests? I believe I can talk for an hour, unprepared, about some topics like, amateur cooking, film history, Nobel prize winners in literature, structure of different types of formal debates, bases of creative and academic writing, foreign TV series, amateur interior design, amateur photography, maybe fashion history of 19th-20th century (received a wonderful enormous book on the subject for my birthday), why Cannabis is better than alcohol on neurological level. I can explain on a stupid level what is a queer theory, how to distinguish a bad poster from a good one and why global warming is more likely a reality than a myth—not because I actually understand anything in these subjects, but because I know very competent people in this field, who sometimes share their knowledge with me. I also know who Justin Bieber and Rebecca Black are, solely for the purpose of making fun of them. Oh, and did you know that Benedict in Sherlock wears a Belstaff coat that costs 1500 Euro? That if a giant panda gives birth to twin baby pandas, one of the babies die because it is so hard to raise even one? That a whole shipload of cat mummies exported from Egypt was melted down in the beginning of the 19th century to make soap? O.K. this probably seems like I am bragging but I just wanted to write down stuff that comes to my head without any research or preparation. The very scary thing is that I do not really know much. What I have just listed, it is nothing, it is stuff I remember, because I like it, or stuff I remember with no effort, pop culture, the internet. And when I do need to remember things, when I need to remember what I wrote in a report last week and when I can’t remember where exactly in my computer I saved that document—I can’t! Out of this massive information, there are probably only one or two topics I can actually be proud of to know, that required purposeful intelligence.
Think about it, think about all the things you know, start listing them in your head, are you scared, are you in panic? Is it overwhelming, is it too much? At the same time, aren’t most of those things essential for us to keep on going with our everyday activities, our lifestyle?
So what? Should we stop shoveling new info into our exploding heads and become old-fashioned dinosaurs, or should we attempt to learn as much as we can and burn out?
Damn it, the more I learn, the more I realize that I don’t know anything!
p.s. this here is nyan cat. now u know.

Oh, Love...

I’ve written about Georgia and not-Georgia, I’ve written about sex and absence of such, I’ve written about what’s on my mind, what’s on others’ mind, what’s in the air, what’s hidden under the rugs…but I haven’t written about what’s important.
Last week, 4 years passed since we got married. 4 years! 4!!!!!!!4!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And whenever I want to write about it, post becomes cheesy. Now, if I were heartbroken and alone, I am sure you’d hear it every week. But since I am happy, hubby doesn’t get mentioned. And that is not fair.
I hope you don’t get mad, I hope you don’t think I am bragging, let me tell you why I am happy.
Whenever he brings flowers, he makes the bouquet himself – that is he picks the flowers and tells flower girl how to arrange them. I love flowers.
Whenever he wakes up earlier during the weekend, he crawls from the bed carefully, not to awake me. He comes back in couple of hours with breakfast.
Whenever we travel, we sit down and plan our trip together and include stuff both of us want to do.
Whenever we want to do something, it almost always coincides.
Whenever it does not coincide, we try to understand what is it that attracts the other one in this particular case. He got me watch Game of Thrones. I got him watch Sex and the City. We both liked each others’ shows (he probably won’t admit it). Hell, he even made me watch Star Wars and the new Star Trek (and if any of you watch Big Bang Theory, I share the sentiment of Penny, as she answers the question, what is the difference—there is absolutely no difference!) He even knows who Benedict Cumberbatch is. And that right there tells you how confident he is: my hubby is not afraid of competition! Not even from a weird-looking British actor I will probably never see in real life.
Along the same line, whenever I post pics of my nude back in my blog, whenever I dress pretty and maybe a bit too daring, whenever he is put in a situation where those unpleasant-to-me Georgian dudes would punch someone without good reason, he doesn’t mind. Because he knows, I am with him. Always.
Also? He knows infinitely more about music, so whenever my i-pod list gets old, I just give it to him and he magically fills it up with cool stuff, stuff I’ve heard of, stuff that is old and forgotten, stuff that I had no idea existed…which reminds me, I’ve listened to the last album he put in my player for too many times now...
He helps me calm gadgets I am fighting, brings law and order to my chaotic excel spreadsheets, likes cooking with me, hates sports with me, pets our cute kitten aka kutten with me and generally either does things with me or for me. Now that I think about it, do I ever do anything for him?
I should probably write those down or after this post, he might get snobby. And stop petting kutten with me.
P.S. the flowers he threw together for our anniversary. They looked alot better week and a half ago, but they are still pretty?

TV or No Tv--is that even a question?

This week, please see my other PIK blog for complaining about geo TV.
Here is the beginning:
I get obsessed with things. Films, music, actors. If something shakes me up, I tend to cling to it. This time, it is BBC series Sherlock and the brilliant leading actor, Benedict Cumberbatch. Yes, I am that obsessed--I can actually spell and pronounce that name correctly.
The first time I heard that BBC plans to adapt Sherlock Holmes to be set in a modern-time London, I got worried; I thought they would ruin the beloved classic. But these series are so well-written, witty, classy, and the 2nd season was…oh…
In the middle of my Sherlock frenzy, I understood that I am a liar. I kept telling everyone that I don’t watch TV: my hubby and I stopped paying for Ayety, since we seldom turned it on. Like a snob, I walked around declaring that I am above TV, that I am way too smart to spend my time on something so tasteless. But all this Holmes talk made me realize that I actually watch a lot of TV. Just because I don’t watch TV series on TV—I download them on the Internet—does not mean I am not wasting my time on something so tasteless.
for the rest please check out:
http://pik.tv/en/blogs/barabadze/30543-why-i-dont-watch-georgian-tv
P.S. this is not yet another post about sherlock, I promise. It is about Tv.