Can a Search Engine Really Save the Planet?

I originally posted this as a MySpace bulletin. Rupert Murdoch (probably) doesn't own BlogSpot.com

ONCE YOU GO BLACK
by Jezy Gray

Pardoning the fact that everyone reading this is currently logged into a website owned by Rupert Murdoch, Fox News mogul whose cut-throat conservative ambition and Reaganbating economic ideology has propelled him into the ownership of more companies and subsidiaries of companies than either you or I could imagine, I'd like to think that we're all somewhat interested -- however passively -- in helping the environment.

That's why I was especially interested in Blackle.com.

Basically, it's Google, only black. Get it?

Thing is, the founders of Blackle claim [according to this report] that using the site as an alternative to Google would save 750 mega-watt hours a year. Apparently, different display colors consume different amounts of energy; so, it makes sense that a predominantly black display screen would use less energy than Google's white.

Of course, Google says this isn't true. And who wouldn't? It's not like Google can just go changing its trademark look, throwing into a panic the throngs of internet-savvy Americans on an e-quest for stills from R. Kelley's "Locked in the Closet, pt. II."

But, still, they seem to have a pretty good track record as far as progressive matters are concerned. According to The Wall Street Journal Online, sites like Blackle could actually increase the amount of energy used by computer monitors.

Then again, who is (as of this month) the proud new owner of The Wall Street Journal?

If you guessed Rupert Murdoch, give yourself five points.

However, Techlogg.com -- an independent site which chronicles technological news and breakthroughs -- seems to support these claims. They say that Blackle's figures, while not completely wrong, only apply to CRT monitors and not LCD monitors (of which 75% of the PC market is apparently composed.)

Now, I'm an English major. I can turn my computer on, and that's about it. I have no idea what CRT and LCD mean -- but if these percentages and their power testing results are correct, it seems to be something we might want to take into consideration.

Here is an article which factors in such variables as monitor type; and, while the results aren't quite as drastic as the initial figures on Blackle's website, it still reports a decrease in energy usage when switching from a white to black screen and claims that "in no case did any of the LCD monitors use more energy displaying black than white."

So, decide for yourselves.

As for me, I really don't know. It looks like too many hands are tied up with Google and it's WSJ-conducted research. Still, there seems to be some unbiased research validating their claims. Then there's some unbiased research debunking those claims.

Long story short: I wish I were better at science.

If I lose you in the streets, if I lose you in the streets, if I lose you.

"On Moving"

Make coffee on the first morning. Start the pot before you shower (and you should shower on the first morning); then you'll taste the smoky black heat as a clean, new person ready to go be alive in the world. It's coffee from home, and that's important. You'll have the rest of your new life to experiment. Make coffee from home on the first morning.

Take it with a cigarette on the porch. Familiarize yourself with this new routine, this new porch. The birds sound different, the scattering squirrels more domesticated, but don't be alarmed. These are the fixtures of your mornings now. The pony-tailed pool boy (did I mention your new mornings include a view of the pool?) fishes something from the water with a large net. Wave to him, offer a cigarette. He doesn't smoke, and why should he? There's work to be done, a big normal day ahead of him, and you're just here learning how to wake up somewhere new.

Drop the cigarette, your last of a mauled pack of Parliaments, into the Wendy's cup. Swirl it around with the other butts (cigarette bones, Dad used to call them) until you hear the death rattle hiss. Excellent. Don't rush back inside just yet. Enjoy the rest of your coffee. Don't be intimidated. This is your morning, too.

The time will come, after the morning news but before it's too hot to consider venturing out, when you'll need to go exist in your new city. Make a good mix: a few old favorites for familiarity, a few songs you've been meaning to hear properly -- something lively, exciting, forward-looking. Drive somewhere. Get turned around in the tapestry of street signs you haven't yet memorized. These songs sound good in this new context, different. They're different songs now. Pass people who know where they're going.

Your old boss, a prickled European who grew up without cartoons but has a good head on his shoulders all the same, calls to see how you're adjusting. Ignore this. Call him back later. Eventually you'll figure out how to live in both worlds, but not now.

Things are excellent, excellent, excellent.

Use this time to iron out the details of your romanticized vision of this new life. You can map out six years in twenty minutes, because you know none of this will pan out the way you imagine. Think about school, about being a name in the department. Think about the people who will hate your fiction. Think about how they are douche bags. Think of early morning bike rides to the University. What is fall like here?

Sex! Don't forget to think about the great sex you'll be having. Think about those early morning glasses of water, the exhaustion and laughter. Think about the girl you'll meet who loves Carver, then think about reading Carver in bed with her. She's never read Will You Please Be Quiet Please?, which you think is absurd and tell her so. But you've never read Furious Seasons -- so, there's that. You'll read memorable passages aloud to each other, the same passages the other has long since committed to memory. [I laid back my arm and I hollered, "Now!" I threw that son of a bitch as far as I could throw it. "I don't know," I heard him shout. "I don't do motion shots." "Again!" I screamed, and took up another rock.] You'll be reading to each other, basically.

But these things -- the school, transitional seasons, the girl -- these things are specters, phantoms. Hyper-reality, you read about that in Gravity's Rainbow and inwardly congratulated yourself for retaining it. Maybe that's what it is. But still, it's all there somewhere -- all waiting, like you, to wake up and be alive in a different place

You did the right thing when you put that skylight in.

It's 1:42 A.M., and I can't sleep. I told myself I was going to bed at a decent hour tonight, I even took two Tylenol P.M. for the occasion, but after reading a few chapters from The End of the Affair and turning out the lamp for what I had anticipated as a lengthy and dreamless slumber -- even after clearly hearing the pre-sleep voices, those snippets of conversation and backdrop noise you collect and carry with you throughout the day -- I found my brain not so willing to cooperate.

Does my dad know that I moved? and Will I like my new job? and Did I behave too pompously at the party last night? and so on, forever and ever.

So, here's the shit: I live in Denton now, and I can honestly say that it has been the most surreal experience of my adult life. I'm memorizing new street names, shortcuts and alleyways, new restaurants, new friends, new acquaintances, new awkward once-bed partners and the like. I've got a great place, alone, right next to campus. I have cable and an ivy named Simone de Beauvoir (but she'll answer to Sugar Tits.)

I wish I were half as clever as I think I am.

But I digress: it's been nice, living in Texas. I had my doubts, but -- though I can't say in honesty that they've all vanished completely -- I think that, for the most part anyway, I made a pretty good decision. I got a phone call today from Voerterman's, the college textbook outlet, and they want me to come in Monday at 3:00 for an interview and training session for my first day. I think that really sped up my adjustment process. Before a job was on the horizon, I felt miserable and pathetic and stupid. Yes, yes, that's a bit dramatic. But it's true. Now, though, I feel like I'm finally getting my shit together. I'm enrolled for the fall semester (which begins on the 27th) and, as of Monday, I will once again be a contributing member of America's workforce.

This is off topic, but I just had a conversation with someone and felt it worth mentioning. We won't get into the specifics of the person in question (our history is an exhausting and partly embarrassing one) but here's the part of the aforementioned exchange worth mentioning:

She says, "Have you been writing lately."
I say, "Nothing worth talking about, really."
Then I say, "How about you?" even though, honestly, I don't care.
Then she says, "Yeah, but -- I'm not sure what you'd call it."

Tip: don't do that. It makes you sound unbearably pretentious; and, being an unbearably pretentious person, I have no patience for it. I have to live with my own sense of self importance, spare me yours.

"So," I want to tell her, "let me get this straight." Here is where I would take my glasses off, sit them on the table without folding them and rub my eyes with my middle finger and thumb. "You're telling me that, at the ripe old age of 22, your ability as a writer transcends the confines of genre, of basic classification?" I want to tell her to save the both of us the energy it would take to conversationally kiss her ass, and just get to the meat of the thing: Aren't I interesting? My personality, my intellect, it's -- like -- well, I'm not exactly sure what you'd call it!

Jesus. Am I this grumpy all the time? I like to think not. If I had to locate the heart of my cynicism, I'd say that it has something to do with last night's showing of David Lynch's neo-noir masterpiece, Inland Empire. My friend Matt (with whom I originally saw it in the theatre. Oh, and David Lynch was fucking in the room with us!) put it on at his house, making use of a projector and a wonderful stadium-seating couch set up.

It went wonderfully. Everyone passed pipes and bottles of hooch. People shrieked and laughed and shouted "What the fuck!" at all the right moments. But when it was over and everyone convened on the back porch for discussion -- and I don't know if this was the bottle of wine and generous tokes of hash talking -- I found myself saying the type of shit that I would internally berate anyone else for uttering: "It's post-modernism, for me. Plain and simple. So self referential, aggressively aware of its medium." I listened to myself dominating the conversation, steering it and molding it to what I had been wanting to talk about throughout the entire film. "It's an exploration of the sub conscience, which -- in the context of the movie -- has a lot more to do with Jung's collective unconscious. I mean, we're literally watching a woman explore the dormant parts of her consciousness and find that its a tapestry of indistinguishable thread, each narrative so different and similar to the last, which passes through every living human."

When did I become this person? Almost overnight I seem to have become insufferably masturbatory. I name dropped Eliot, for Christ's sake!

Am I genuinely interested in the life of the mind? Absolutely. Still, though, I'm quite aware that a large part of me just wants to sound smart, to sound interesting. It's a self defense mechanism, definitely. But that still doesn't make it any less pathetic. It's not really pretense, since I don't have any real delusions regarding my intellect. I'm quite aware of my limitations, of the same arguments and ideas that I regurgitate at will in order to blow up the conversation and rebuild it in my image. Maybe that's going to be my life in Denton, constantly trying to prove myself in a city that prides itself on being of the arts, of being an academic sanctuary for those of us still interested in thought's loftier pursuits. But I'm here. I'm mostly having fun.

I'd try to describe exactly what it is, this feeling, but I'm not really sure what you'd call it.

- Jezy