The jury who convicted Stanley Williams and the actor turned Governor who denied Williams clemency are merely defending our noble country, its noble history, and its noble ideals. Ideals like, no torture (unless you're Middle Eastern), no crime must go unpunished (unless you're old, fat, nasty, white, rich, and need Viagra to screw the hooker your secretary just called), and the full on Jesus love, because we wouldn't have Christianity if we never had capital punishment.
America. Fuck yeah.
*Update:
Jasmyne A. Cannick doesn't seem to get it.
Talk too much about the same thing, you become nothing more than noise. If you talk about the same thing once in a while when you can cite a damned good and commonly accepted example of why something is either right or wrong, you have a fighting chance of proving your point. This is why people were so talky about this particular execution, dumbass.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Bear in Mind
A fun new form of entertainment: Google "Lewis Libby" and "Bears" together. It's awesome.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Living the Archetype
You know what bugs me? Well, if you've read anything other than this post, you have a pretty goddamned good idea. If not, I'll tell you right now, A-#1 top o'the list is willful ignorance. I pretty much despise liars too, but they fall under the willful ignorance umbrella because they lie to themselves first (the part you don't see) then start having to defend the bullshit (the stuff you DO see) and eventually center their lives on this bullshit. Like a Copernican cow-patty; that's willful ignorance.
Life has been made easier by technology but that shouldn't mean that human beings should stop evolving. If anything, we now have the ability to decide what stays and goes in our reality most of the time. However, people still want life handed to them in a series of unlikely answers to intangible questions given to us by people who have no clue what the fuck they're talking about. If people aren't arguing over what they can worship they're arguing over how they should worship and when. If it was up to me, no one would be allowed to worship anything in public. Trade literature all you want folks, but no more churches, ashrams, fucking meditation centers, or anything else where stupid people could congregate and blissfully bask in their own mediocrity and willingness to use a pathetic archetype as an example of how to exist. Flip the fucking pancake; breakfast was over 2,000 years ago.
Why this rant now? Because Christians are now embracing C.S. Lewis and non-Christians are freaking out about it. Both sides sound like angry spouses snarling over an only child in the middle of a bitter divorce.
I spent my early childhood in a small nook of concrete in central Ohio. My brethren were but baby steps from snake handling Appalachia and all the churches in my neighborhood were filled with holy rollin', heaven bound believers in the liberatin' power of Jesus' name. No joke. So there I was, third or fourth grade. The teacher liked to read books to us right before lunch time. So she gathered herself up and made a statement that some of the kids would be excused to the library. The rustle of sack lunches from under desks was heard, coats slung on backs, and out marched about five or six kids, full of purpose. Confused, I turned around to ask the kid behind me what was going on. "She's readin' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." "...and?" "They's talkin' animals in it. That's devil worshippin'." "It is??" "Yeah, 'cause in the Bible, talkin' animals ain't Christian." Hmm. I see. Don't believe me? Check this out. Mmm hmm. That's what I'm talkin' about.
This was sometime in the 70's and it was in a place where "holy rollers" were considered the conservatives. The word "satanic" was heard frequently, many of the evil deeds from lost dogs to colicky babies were attributed to demons. Satan, I suppose, sent lesser imps to handle the stuff in my neighborhood, making personal appearances for oh, things like natural disasters and Led Zeppelin albums (played-backwards, of course). The KKK still considered (and might still, since I've lost contact with much of my extended family, I'm not up on current Klan dogma) Catholics to be akin to Jews, and anyone who wasn't all about church was certainly doomed to burn. Concerned parents pressed the teacher to stop with the entire Narnia series because it was considered satanic. The book was even challenged in Maryland in 1990 because it depicted "graphic violence, mysticism, and gore". Hmmmm. I have searched in vain for what type of mysticism was so offensive to the Maryland crowd and thus far, I have found nothing. So I'm not exactly sure if it was non-Christians who were pissed off because of all the god metaphor or if itÂ’s Christians who were pissed off because talking animals are the devils work. This brings me to my point:
This poor, innocent book is getting it at both ends. I think it best to handle this situation with diplomacy and tact.
To Christians, I say, shut the fuck up. You've been bitching about this book for ages. Now, all of the sudden, it's a badge for all that is holy and righteous and good. Well screw you. It's a much more realistic and heart breaking description of the torture and death of Christ, I'll give you that. But kids will only make that connection later. No kid is going to be thinking, "Hey, that dead lion, all coming back to life and stuff? That's exactly like Jesus! I've been so blind...*sniffle*” Non-Christians who want this book banned from classrooms? You shut the fuck up too. Screw you guys for having to fight a bunch of assholes just so we can read Salinger and then turning around and saying that censorship is ok as long as it's batting for your team. I don't want people forcing kids to pray or to say the Pledge of Allegiance but if a teacher wants to read a book about a friendly lion and a neat portal into another world, let 'em. It's not like any kid ponders that book and says, "Hey, I know. This might just be the primer to world Christian domination. I'ma go get saved right now!"
Get a fucking grip and get it now. Both of y'all are getting on my nerves.
Addendum:
I didn't edit anything above but I am adding this last bit because I had a long discussion with a friend about what I'd written. His take was that barring anyone from public worship is the same as censorship. Good point. My take is that it's not like I think that will ever happen, but I'd like it if people took into consideration that congregating (in its best form) would be a group of people hanging out to either thank *insert deity* for their current bounty or to enjoy the company of like-minded folk. Fine. Not my cup of tea, but hey, no one is shitting on my lawn that way, right? But groups, man. Groups are scary. Someone wants to lead, someone else wants to follow, followers tend to be even more self-righteous to prove that they're serious about the thing they're following, and eventually you end up with a megalomaniacal freak (bolstered by the fervency of his/her followers) and a bunch of freaky followers freaking out over nothing.
Life has been made easier by technology but that shouldn't mean that human beings should stop evolving. If anything, we now have the ability to decide what stays and goes in our reality most of the time. However, people still want life handed to them in a series of unlikely answers to intangible questions given to us by people who have no clue what the fuck they're talking about. If people aren't arguing over what they can worship they're arguing over how they should worship and when. If it was up to me, no one would be allowed to worship anything in public. Trade literature all you want folks, but no more churches, ashrams, fucking meditation centers, or anything else where stupid people could congregate and blissfully bask in their own mediocrity and willingness to use a pathetic archetype as an example of how to exist. Flip the fucking pancake; breakfast was over 2,000 years ago.
Why this rant now? Because Christians are now embracing C.S. Lewis and non-Christians are freaking out about it. Both sides sound like angry spouses snarling over an only child in the middle of a bitter divorce.
I spent my early childhood in a small nook of concrete in central Ohio. My brethren were but baby steps from snake handling Appalachia and all the churches in my neighborhood were filled with holy rollin', heaven bound believers in the liberatin' power of Jesus' name. No joke. So there I was, third or fourth grade. The teacher liked to read books to us right before lunch time. So she gathered herself up and made a statement that some of the kids would be excused to the library. The rustle of sack lunches from under desks was heard, coats slung on backs, and out marched about five or six kids, full of purpose. Confused, I turned around to ask the kid behind me what was going on. "She's readin' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." "...and?" "They's talkin' animals in it. That's devil worshippin'." "It is??" "Yeah, 'cause in the Bible, talkin' animals ain't Christian." Hmm. I see. Don't believe me? Check this out. Mmm hmm. That's what I'm talkin' about.
This was sometime in the 70's and it was in a place where "holy rollers" were considered the conservatives. The word "satanic" was heard frequently, many of the evil deeds from lost dogs to colicky babies were attributed to demons. Satan, I suppose, sent lesser imps to handle the stuff in my neighborhood, making personal appearances for oh, things like natural disasters and Led Zeppelin albums (played-backwards, of course). The KKK still considered (and might still, since I've lost contact with much of my extended family, I'm not up on current Klan dogma) Catholics to be akin to Jews, and anyone who wasn't all about church was certainly doomed to burn. Concerned parents pressed the teacher to stop with the entire Narnia series because it was considered satanic. The book was even challenged in Maryland in 1990 because it depicted "graphic violence, mysticism, and gore". Hmmmm. I have searched in vain for what type of mysticism was so offensive to the Maryland crowd and thus far, I have found nothing. So I'm not exactly sure if it was non-Christians who were pissed off because of all the god metaphor or if itÂ’s Christians who were pissed off because talking animals are the devils work. This brings me to my point:
This poor, innocent book is getting it at both ends. I think it best to handle this situation with diplomacy and tact.
To Christians, I say, shut the fuck up. You've been bitching about this book for ages. Now, all of the sudden, it's a badge for all that is holy and righteous and good. Well screw you. It's a much more realistic and heart breaking description of the torture and death of Christ, I'll give you that. But kids will only make that connection later. No kid is going to be thinking, "Hey, that dead lion, all coming back to life and stuff? That's exactly like Jesus! I've been so blind...*sniffle*” Non-Christians who want this book banned from classrooms? You shut the fuck up too. Screw you guys for having to fight a bunch of assholes just so we can read Salinger and then turning around and saying that censorship is ok as long as it's batting for your team. I don't want people forcing kids to pray or to say the Pledge of Allegiance but if a teacher wants to read a book about a friendly lion and a neat portal into another world, let 'em. It's not like any kid ponders that book and says, "Hey, I know. This might just be the primer to world Christian domination. I'ma go get saved right now!"
Get a fucking grip and get it now. Both of y'all are getting on my nerves.
Addendum:
I didn't edit anything above but I am adding this last bit because I had a long discussion with a friend about what I'd written. His take was that barring anyone from public worship is the same as censorship. Good point. My take is that it's not like I think that will ever happen, but I'd like it if people took into consideration that congregating (in its best form) would be a group of people hanging out to either thank *insert deity* for their current bounty or to enjoy the company of like-minded folk. Fine. Not my cup of tea, but hey, no one is shitting on my lawn that way, right? But groups, man. Groups are scary. Someone wants to lead, someone else wants to follow, followers tend to be even more self-righteous to prove that they're serious about the thing they're following, and eventually you end up with a megalomaniacal freak (bolstered by the fervency of his/her followers) and a bunch of freaky followers freaking out over nothing.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Home
Oh happy day! My return to the White Trash Moulin Rouge is upon me.
Apartment seeking is a bitch. It's even more of a bitch than I am, if that is at all possible. But one day, there I was, looking at an apartment in Newport and standing outside the door chatting to my would-be landlord about the last Shellac show at the Southgate house. Turns out he's from Chicago and a huge fan. The show was such a blast. Steve Albini actually paid a guy $20.00 to leave because the guy was being such a pig fucker, heckling Brick Layer Cake and basically making a total fool of himself. If that wasn't classic enough, the guy slunk out of the building surrounded by bouncers, shaking his fists in the air and shouting, "Kurt Cobain would be ashamed of you!" I think that was the first and last time I have ever seen a roomful of people stop abruptly, not quite sure they'd heard what they thought they'd heard, and then start laughing like drunken hyenas. Good ol' cool as a pack of spearmint Lifesavers Steve-O just rolled his eyes and started hammering away at another song. Good times, man. Good times.
So there we were, reminiscing and the Chicago landlord guy asked me why I wanted to move back. As I was trying to tell him how much I loved the eclectic mix of people in Newport, a guy trotted past us wearing a Grandma home-knitted cap, bright red, with a fuzzy ball of yarn bobbing on the top. His head looked quite literally like a fishing lure and he was walking with one of those "crazy people" gaits (leaning a little bit forward, his steps extremely methodical, as though he was counting them as he walked) carrying a huge ceramic Buddha under one arm. Not one of those serene Buddhas with the eyes closed and the lotus action going on but the big ol' fat, happy as hell Buddha, truly the only kind of Buddha with the sense of humor to live in a place like Newport. We quieted as this soul sailed past us and after he was gone, I said, "Behold". The landlord guy just nodded sagely and handed me the lease.
Ahh. Home sweet Newport. The chaotic manifestation of a thousand weary metaphors that have been rolled up, deep fried, and served with a side of What the Fuck. I just love it.
Apartment seeking is a bitch. It's even more of a bitch than I am, if that is at all possible. But one day, there I was, looking at an apartment in Newport and standing outside the door chatting to my would-be landlord about the last Shellac show at the Southgate house. Turns out he's from Chicago and a huge fan. The show was such a blast. Steve Albini actually paid a guy $20.00 to leave because the guy was being such a pig fucker, heckling Brick Layer Cake and basically making a total fool of himself. If that wasn't classic enough, the guy slunk out of the building surrounded by bouncers, shaking his fists in the air and shouting, "Kurt Cobain would be ashamed of you!" I think that was the first and last time I have ever seen a roomful of people stop abruptly, not quite sure they'd heard what they thought they'd heard, and then start laughing like drunken hyenas. Good ol' cool as a pack of spearmint Lifesavers Steve-O just rolled his eyes and started hammering away at another song. Good times, man. Good times.
So there we were, reminiscing and the Chicago landlord guy asked me why I wanted to move back. As I was trying to tell him how much I loved the eclectic mix of people in Newport, a guy trotted past us wearing a Grandma home-knitted cap, bright red, with a fuzzy ball of yarn bobbing on the top. His head looked quite literally like a fishing lure and he was walking with one of those "crazy people" gaits (leaning a little bit forward, his steps extremely methodical, as though he was counting them as he walked) carrying a huge ceramic Buddha under one arm. Not one of those serene Buddhas with the eyes closed and the lotus action going on but the big ol' fat, happy as hell Buddha, truly the only kind of Buddha with the sense of humor to live in a place like Newport. We quieted as this soul sailed past us and after he was gone, I said, "Behold". The landlord guy just nodded sagely and handed me the lease.
Ahh. Home sweet Newport. The chaotic manifestation of a thousand weary metaphors that have been rolled up, deep fried, and served with a side of What the Fuck. I just love it.
Friday, September 02, 2005
Chicken Shit
"I am your shit. You should be ashamed of what you've eaten."
"rock'n'roll nigger" marilyn manson/patti smith
According to my friend Doug, the sport of professional wrestling was born of one phrase: "Let me tell ya somethin'..."
In some primordial cave, a scruffy, bearded man (well, it could have been a woman, but let's be realistic here) shoved a disgruntled finger in the face of another man, uttered those magical words, and this sport coalesced out of a people who were amused at their own silly machismo and who understood that people who take themselves too seriously are just really fucking funny.
I am laughing similarly at "us" right now. The us that is America, who didn't (or maybe couldn't) realize that feral nationalism doesn't just separate us from the rest of the world, but from one another. What is happening now in New Orleans is where we have been heading for a long time and the people who have been the most vocal in trying to prevent it have been silenced by the dread words, "Un-American".
Let me tell ya somethin': To all you people who are bitching about your gas prices and the rising fear of an economic disaster, guess what? Fucking DUH. Lots of us have seen this shit coming for years.
The plagued rat of realization scurries through my head of late, chanting songs of Malcolm's chickens and the more I jump around trying to avoid the fleas, the more exhausted I become. In other words, people are fleas and lately, they make me fucking sick.
Through the years, I've been called witch, psycho, bitch, succubus, frigid, and slut. In 1999, I grew tired of being tagged by others so I chose the name Schizophelia. Right now, the one I'm most proud of is un-American.
"rock'n'roll nigger" marilyn manson/patti smith
According to my friend Doug, the sport of professional wrestling was born of one phrase: "Let me tell ya somethin'..."
In some primordial cave, a scruffy, bearded man (well, it could have been a woman, but let's be realistic here) shoved a disgruntled finger in the face of another man, uttered those magical words, and this sport coalesced out of a people who were amused at their own silly machismo and who understood that people who take themselves too seriously are just really fucking funny.
I am laughing similarly at "us" right now. The us that is America, who didn't (or maybe couldn't) realize that feral nationalism doesn't just separate us from the rest of the world, but from one another. What is happening now in New Orleans is where we have been heading for a long time and the people who have been the most vocal in trying to prevent it have been silenced by the dread words, "Un-American".
Let me tell ya somethin': To all you people who are bitching about your gas prices and the rising fear of an economic disaster, guess what? Fucking DUH. Lots of us have seen this shit coming for years.
The plagued rat of realization scurries through my head of late, chanting songs of Malcolm's chickens and the more I jump around trying to avoid the fleas, the more exhausted I become. In other words, people are fleas and lately, they make me fucking sick.
Through the years, I've been called witch, psycho, bitch, succubus, frigid, and slut. In 1999, I grew tired of being tagged by others so I chose the name Schizophelia. Right now, the one I'm most proud of is un-American.
Monday, August 08, 2005
Damnit, Not Damnit
I became extremely ill earlier this year (hence the hiatus) after a metaphorical hit-and-run and it gave me some real insight on how easy it is to leave tire tracks on others, driving off in the family wagon, and not looking back. Some weird heart thing manifested and because of this, I lay in a bed for a couple of weeks musing about what was going to happen if I did actually bite the big one.
It seems to me that religion gets knocked around like a crack whore and philosophy is like a teenager's gum stuck on a bed post, something chewed until it becomes a gray, rubbery mass with echoes of some kind of flavor. People who decide not to rely on a god can either deify themselves (the ubermensch, a misunderstood and misused excuse to justify one's own foul behavior and lack of conscience; a good way to deny the humanity of oneself or others), or choose to rely on what people call fate. I think fate is an accidental architect, a dodgy, unpredictable cohort that somehow gets to do god duty when the concept of a creator or master worker is on vacation or better yet, non-existent. Philosophy on the other hand, relies on a mode of discourse that (to me) appears to be as much bullshit as post-modernism. A way for people to feel each other out, take stock of the verbal tenacity of another, and decide whether or not they have the stones to go ten rounds. Forget the point, because it's all either irrelevant or relative...it's just perceptive juju, as ritualistic as a circle jerk but with less depth.
I realized that rising gas prices are more important to many people than rising death tolls. This says so fucking much. Then I started laughing. This is very likely why I fought to overcome the weird heart thing that popped up after what was the most wretched moment of discovery I've thus far experienced. The entire situation and the people involved just suddenly seemed absolutely ridiculous, so utterly absurd, that I laughed until my stomach hurt.
My big realization was that I will never stop being amazed at how casually we regard the basic human rights of others, whether through our beliefs in higher causes, beings, events, or ourselves. Most spirituality is just our monkey way of making sense of this thing called fire and the only redemption on the menu comes from a sincere effort to make right the wrongs we've done, even if it seems impossible.
This is what separates me from most other people and why I'd rather have the perspective that keeps my chin out there (ready for an inevitable sucker punch) than tucked gently into my delicate little wing. Someone may actually succeed in knocking me down briefly, but thus far, they've all turned out to be little more than interlopers, desperate for a piece of my action. As soon as I saw that clearly, I got back up and watched with a mixture of pity and mirth as they slunk back into their holes like the smack talking cowards they are and out of my sight.
Now, I'm having such a great time, I can barely remember why that other shite mattered in the first place. It's a head shaker, folks, why sometimes we think we have to dwell in Oz when those slippers could have chucked us right back to Kansas all along.
Ahem, without further ado:
The Mighty List of Things I Can Recommend if One is Either Laid-Up or Bored
Portishead's "Dummy". I've just bought my third copy of this album since 1994, the other two having been worn out and/or loaned to my sweet little pal, local poet Doug "Bandit" Saretsky. Trip-hop sounded kinda silly until I heard this album. It's all blues and haze with a white chick singer and some weird scratchy d.j. thing going on. It shore am good.
Pefume Tree...the summer of '95 or '96, it's kind of hazy, but ah what a time we had. Ambient Camping at some god forsaken backwoods place in Texas, all of us on acid, cops coming to say we were making too much noise (it was ambient music for fucks sake and we were a bunch of techno-hippies! How rowdy could we have been?? Also, you simply haven't lived until you see a d.j. wearing fluffy bunny-ear headphones sagely reasoning with a park ranger) and Perfume Tree had just released Lifetime Away, one of my favorite albums. It's relaxing, it's girlie, and sounds really good even without the drugs. Which is more than I can say for most people I know.
Neal Stephenson...writer who seems like an ego maniac with a cheesy beard, but hell, he's a great writer so hats off to him. And to his beard.
Million Dollar Baby...it depressed the hell out of everyone but me. I never get bummed out when people do cool shit, even if they only get to do it once.
Vanity Fair...sweet christ I loved this movie. Made by the chick who did Monsoon Wedding, which also rocked pretty hard.
My friend Jay. Weird Korean physics guy who sleeps on a mattress made of bamboo. He says it's more comfortable. Ok, Jay. Ok.
My friend Joe. The only noble person I've ever met. One of the few people I've known with both an ounce of character and an interesting past that he didn't have to invent (yes, as creepy as it might seem, I've met people who are so afraid of being boring that they've invented half their lives instead of living them; probably still out there inventing-not-living, too). Might be as weird as Jay. Does a very interesting puppet show where there are no real words, only gestures and it entertains the hell out of me.
This one guy at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival. Oh, how I love him. Ten thousand of his babies kind of love. Plus, I have a grudging admiration for actors. They're attention whores but at least they're smart enough to get paid for lying in order to make people love them. I can respect that level of self-awareness.
Ren...from down under. Such a nice fellow and didn't mind when I got piss drunk at the Sydney Opera House and got weepy during Handel's Messiah.
People who are are not flakes. It's hard to find 'em but they're out there.
---------------------------
So...this is me dancing off into the sunset, till I come back and bitch about something and let me just tell you now, I am so angry that I can't bitch about Robert Novak anymore because haha, who doesn't know what a moron he is. Damnit I hate it when people jump off my list with no warning...one minute, a pompous blowhard, the next, a redneck cursing at James Carville. I feel so empty...*sniff*...
It seems to me that religion gets knocked around like a crack whore and philosophy is like a teenager's gum stuck on a bed post, something chewed until it becomes a gray, rubbery mass with echoes of some kind of flavor. People who decide not to rely on a god can either deify themselves (the ubermensch, a misunderstood and misused excuse to justify one's own foul behavior and lack of conscience; a good way to deny the humanity of oneself or others), or choose to rely on what people call fate. I think fate is an accidental architect, a dodgy, unpredictable cohort that somehow gets to do god duty when the concept of a creator or master worker is on vacation or better yet, non-existent. Philosophy on the other hand, relies on a mode of discourse that (to me) appears to be as much bullshit as post-modernism. A way for people to feel each other out, take stock of the verbal tenacity of another, and decide whether or not they have the stones to go ten rounds. Forget the point, because it's all either irrelevant or relative...it's just perceptive juju, as ritualistic as a circle jerk but with less depth.
I realized that rising gas prices are more important to many people than rising death tolls. This says so fucking much. Then I started laughing. This is very likely why I fought to overcome the weird heart thing that popped up after what was the most wretched moment of discovery I've thus far experienced. The entire situation and the people involved just suddenly seemed absolutely ridiculous, so utterly absurd, that I laughed until my stomach hurt.
My big realization was that I will never stop being amazed at how casually we regard the basic human rights of others, whether through our beliefs in higher causes, beings, events, or ourselves. Most spirituality is just our monkey way of making sense of this thing called fire and the only redemption on the menu comes from a sincere effort to make right the wrongs we've done, even if it seems impossible.
This is what separates me from most other people and why I'd rather have the perspective that keeps my chin out there (ready for an inevitable sucker punch) than tucked gently into my delicate little wing. Someone may actually succeed in knocking me down briefly, but thus far, they've all turned out to be little more than interlopers, desperate for a piece of my action. As soon as I saw that clearly, I got back up and watched with a mixture of pity and mirth as they slunk back into their holes like the smack talking cowards they are and out of my sight.
Now, I'm having such a great time, I can barely remember why that other shite mattered in the first place. It's a head shaker, folks, why sometimes we think we have to dwell in Oz when those slippers could have chucked us right back to Kansas all along.
Ahem, without further ado:
The Mighty List of Things I Can Recommend if One is Either Laid-Up or Bored
Portishead's "Dummy". I've just bought my third copy of this album since 1994, the other two having been worn out and/or loaned to my sweet little pal, local poet Doug "Bandit" Saretsky. Trip-hop sounded kinda silly until I heard this album. It's all blues and haze with a white chick singer and some weird scratchy d.j. thing going on. It shore am good.
Pefume Tree...the summer of '95 or '96, it's kind of hazy, but ah what a time we had. Ambient Camping at some god forsaken backwoods place in Texas, all of us on acid, cops coming to say we were making too much noise (it was ambient music for fucks sake and we were a bunch of techno-hippies! How rowdy could we have been?? Also, you simply haven't lived until you see a d.j. wearing fluffy bunny-ear headphones sagely reasoning with a park ranger) and Perfume Tree had just released Lifetime Away, one of my favorite albums. It's relaxing, it's girlie, and sounds really good even without the drugs. Which is more than I can say for most people I know.
Neal Stephenson...writer who seems like an ego maniac with a cheesy beard, but hell, he's a great writer so hats off to him. And to his beard.
Million Dollar Baby...it depressed the hell out of everyone but me. I never get bummed out when people do cool shit, even if they only get to do it once.
Vanity Fair...sweet christ I loved this movie. Made by the chick who did Monsoon Wedding, which also rocked pretty hard.
My friend Jay. Weird Korean physics guy who sleeps on a mattress made of bamboo. He says it's more comfortable. Ok, Jay. Ok.
My friend Joe. The only noble person I've ever met. One of the few people I've known with both an ounce of character and an interesting past that he didn't have to invent (yes, as creepy as it might seem, I've met people who are so afraid of being boring that they've invented half their lives instead of living them; probably still out there inventing-not-living, too). Might be as weird as Jay. Does a very interesting puppet show where there are no real words, only gestures and it entertains the hell out of me.
This one guy at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival. Oh, how I love him. Ten thousand of his babies kind of love. Plus, I have a grudging admiration for actors. They're attention whores but at least they're smart enough to get paid for lying in order to make people love them. I can respect that level of self-awareness.
Ren...from down under. Such a nice fellow and didn't mind when I got piss drunk at the Sydney Opera House and got weepy during Handel's Messiah.
People who are are not flakes. It's hard to find 'em but they're out there.
---------------------------
So...this is me dancing off into the sunset, till I come back and bitch about something and let me just tell you now, I am so angry that I can't bitch about Robert Novak anymore because haha, who doesn't know what a moron he is. Damnit I hate it when people jump off my list with no warning...one minute, a pompous blowhard, the next, a redneck cursing at James Carville. I feel so empty...*sniff*...
Friday, July 29, 2005
Valhalla Your Pleasure, Valhalla Your Fun
Maurice: Stevens! What the hell do you think you're doing?
Chris: Whaddya mean?
Maurice: You know exactly what I mean! Das Rhinegold's one thing but if you think I'm going to subject myself to the whole Ring of Nibelung, you're sadly mistaken!
From "Northern Exposure"
Richard Wagner has long been vilified and quite unfairly from my perspective, mostly because the moral kaleidoscope is so often thrust upon us from birth, a distant cousin of the appreciation of art, which comes from a deeper, more primal space within us. The difference is that one of them is chosen for us by other people, the other is a point in the evolutionary timeline of our DNA. Certain preferences, lines, colors, shapes, and sounds are pleasurable to the eyes and ears because a few million years ago, learning to recognize and enjoy them helped our monkey forbearers to survive. Since we are no longer monkeys and have some sense of self, those preferences have dimension and of course, since that dimension is based upon a completely unique set of factors, it's all intensely personal. Moral plates are ever changing, colliding, and reforming around new centers of gravity if we are to believe Nietzsche but when it comes to art, one likes what one likes. Sure our tastes evolve, become more refined. For me, it's always been about color and the mysterious eyes that know how to slap it together so poetically. The red tapestry in so many of Vermeer's paintings, those blue, stiff figures and hilarious perfection in Matisse's impressionism, and my beloved Van Gogh who could somehow exorcise the vibrancy from his paint so that it leaps inside me each time I look at one of his paintings. It's too bad you can't touch them because they seem really multi-sensory.
What was I saying? Oh yeah, the truth of this matter is that the only time art and morality meet is when someone sets them up on a blind date and the result is usually a bastard child conceived after too much cheap beer and sex in the torn back seat of a Chrysler.
At any rate, I'm glad to see that this opera (ok, technically a bunch of them) is getting some well deserved attention. If you're a horn lover (he sure was, and if you have any lingering doubt about his sexuality, you're not alone), this is surely your cup of music.
The art or the artist. Which voice is louder? Probably the one the moves us the farthest in the direction we were headed in the first place.
*edited...because I can.
Chris: Whaddya mean?
Maurice: You know exactly what I mean! Das Rhinegold's one thing but if you think I'm going to subject myself to the whole Ring of Nibelung, you're sadly mistaken!
From "Northern Exposure"
Richard Wagner has long been vilified and quite unfairly from my perspective, mostly because the moral kaleidoscope is so often thrust upon us from birth, a distant cousin of the appreciation of art, which comes from a deeper, more primal space within us. The difference is that one of them is chosen for us by other people, the other is a point in the evolutionary timeline of our DNA. Certain preferences, lines, colors, shapes, and sounds are pleasurable to the eyes and ears because a few million years ago, learning to recognize and enjoy them helped our monkey forbearers to survive. Since we are no longer monkeys and have some sense of self, those preferences have dimension and of course, since that dimension is based upon a completely unique set of factors, it's all intensely personal. Moral plates are ever changing, colliding, and reforming around new centers of gravity if we are to believe Nietzsche but when it comes to art, one likes what one likes. Sure our tastes evolve, become more refined. For me, it's always been about color and the mysterious eyes that know how to slap it together so poetically. The red tapestry in so many of Vermeer's paintings, those blue, stiff figures and hilarious perfection in Matisse's impressionism, and my beloved Van Gogh who could somehow exorcise the vibrancy from his paint so that it leaps inside me each time I look at one of his paintings. It's too bad you can't touch them because they seem really multi-sensory.
What was I saying? Oh yeah, the truth of this matter is that the only time art and morality meet is when someone sets them up on a blind date and the result is usually a bastard child conceived after too much cheap beer and sex in the torn back seat of a Chrysler.
At any rate, I'm glad to see that this opera (ok, technically a bunch of them) is getting some well deserved attention. If you're a horn lover (he sure was, and if you have any lingering doubt about his sexuality, you're not alone), this is surely your cup of music.
The art or the artist. Which voice is louder? Probably the one the moves us the farthest in the direction we were headed in the first place.
*edited...because I can.
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Ah, Jeunet
Finally, Un Long Dimanche de Fiancailles is available for comfy home viewing. I cannot recommend this film enough. Though at this point, I am quite the cynic when it comes to romance, I wept through half of this film and by the end, I found myself clutching my tissue like a rosary and praying for the conclusion to turn out as I'd hoped it would.
It reminded me a lot of Longfellow's Evangeline except that when you read Evangeline, you kind of get the feeling that you're swallowing something really syrupy with bits of sand in it...unlike this film where you get all the sweetness going down but nothing catches in your throat.
Also, for the Jeunet fans out there, there's an homage to Delicatessen at the beginning.
Vive le squeaky bedsprings and you know, amour and whatnot.
It reminded me a lot of Longfellow's Evangeline except that when you read Evangeline, you kind of get the feeling that you're swallowing something really syrupy with bits of sand in it...unlike this film where you get all the sweetness going down but nothing catches in your throat.
Also, for the Jeunet fans out there, there's an homage to Delicatessen at the beginning.
Vive le squeaky bedsprings and you know, amour and whatnot.
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Vegging Out
It all started a couple of months ago when this guy I knew gave me some green tea . I stopped drinking as much coffee (a feat accomplished only once before after reading a Hubert Selby Jr. novel) and it created an avalanche of clearing out all chemicals.
That made it easier to stop eating meat. I was a vegetarian for about three years back in the day. But for some reason (I still can't remember why but it must have had something to do with living in Texas), I got back on the meat train. I'm not one of your militant meat-is-murder type gals. In fact, if chalk outlines of chickens was all I had to worry about when I feasted on the flesh of non-sapiens, I'd be skipping down gravy lane. But sadly, it's much worse than simple animal carnage these days. It's even worse than Upton Sinclair's horribly, terribly depressing "The Jungle". The exploitation of Polish immigrants is the least of our worries in the ever increasing, animal-shit entropy producing U. S. of hyper industrialized A. My darling girlfriend Terry interviewed Michael Pollan and it wasn't very appetizing. I was rather shocked by what I heard.
I knew that the meat industry was responsible for a fair amount of pollution. I didn't know that the reason for much of the methane gas that cows produce is because cows have a highly specialized (and very interesting from an evolutionary perspective)digestive system that requires them to eat grass only. When they're fed corn (among other things), they bloat, creating infection (hence so many antibiotics in meat), among other, even more yummy side effects. They must often be purged, spewing caustic cow squeezins that then lay in shimmering pools of chemical, nitrogen laden doom around the farm lands, seeping into ground water supplies. Suddenly, tragically, my five minutes of happily devouring another creature doesn't seem to be worth the weeks of torment that a cow has to endure or even the moment of pain that a sweet, tiny, fluffy baby chicken must suffer (I didn't know that they burned the tips of chick's beaks off, which is fucking horrifying), thank you Baraka for that nightmarish, from the bowels of hell image.
So, while I can't logically say that meat is murder, it does carry a higher moral price tag than a trip to Wal-Mart for me and you would sooner catch Pat Robertson nailing Ozzy Osbourne in three different orifices than catch me in Wal-Mart. And now, of course, eating a piece of ex-bloated cow meat.
That made it easier to stop eating meat. I was a vegetarian for about three years back in the day. But for some reason (I still can't remember why but it must have had something to do with living in Texas), I got back on the meat train. I'm not one of your militant meat-is-murder type gals. In fact, if chalk outlines of chickens was all I had to worry about when I feasted on the flesh of non-sapiens, I'd be skipping down gravy lane. But sadly, it's much worse than simple animal carnage these days. It's even worse than Upton Sinclair's horribly, terribly depressing "The Jungle". The exploitation of Polish immigrants is the least of our worries in the ever increasing, animal-shit entropy producing U. S. of hyper industrialized A. My darling girlfriend Terry interviewed Michael Pollan and it wasn't very appetizing. I was rather shocked by what I heard.
I knew that the meat industry was responsible for a fair amount of pollution. I didn't know that the reason for much of the methane gas that cows produce is because cows have a highly specialized (and very interesting from an evolutionary perspective)digestive system that requires them to eat grass only. When they're fed corn (among other things), they bloat, creating infection (hence so many antibiotics in meat), among other, even more yummy side effects. They must often be purged, spewing caustic cow squeezins that then lay in shimmering pools of chemical, nitrogen laden doom around the farm lands, seeping into ground water supplies. Suddenly, tragically, my five minutes of happily devouring another creature doesn't seem to be worth the weeks of torment that a cow has to endure or even the moment of pain that a sweet, tiny, fluffy baby chicken must suffer (I didn't know that they burned the tips of chick's beaks off, which is fucking horrifying), thank you Baraka for that nightmarish, from the bowels of hell image.
So, while I can't logically say that meat is murder, it does carry a higher moral price tag than a trip to Wal-Mart for me and you would sooner catch Pat Robertson nailing Ozzy Osbourne in three different orifices than catch me in Wal-Mart. And now, of course, eating a piece of ex-bloated cow meat.
Friday, April 15, 2005
FeS2
When I asked one of my friends why cats must always plop down on even the tiniest piece of paper instead of sitting on the bare floor, he glanced over at my overfed and deplorably spoiled feline companion and said, “Because they don’t have pants.”
This, in the weirdest way, sums up the week I’ve had.
This, in the weirdest way, sums up the week I’ve had.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Going to Hell Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry
A few years ago, one of my dear friends committed suicide. She had hooked up with a mean mistreater and he’d pretty much fucked her in the ass and left her bleeding. For her, the solution was to down a bottle of pills and wait to die. The next morning, people came to check on her when she was late for an appointment. They found her nigh lifeless body (which has somehow managed to keep plugging away) and rushed her to the hospital. After some doctor magic, they thought she had a shot. Alas, no. She had destroyed her kidneys. She was awake when they told her she was going to die. So she asked a priest if she was going to go to hell since she’d been the cause of her own demise.
My first thought (after the initial shock, this gal was an amazing woman and I couldn’t imagine her doing such a thing) was that if she knew (in her Catholic mind) that she was certain to burn forever just to dull the temporary pain of rejection from a soulless, gutless twerp, why then would she not wish to take him down with her? I mean, what more does one have to lose when they're convinced that one act of desperation means that they're doomed to dwell in the fiery pits of damnation? And especially when they've decided that it's best to just give up and jump ship since someone else keeps trying to push them overboard.
Asking around, I found a surprising amount of hostility in the answers from women. Psycho has become as feared a word as whore these days. The ladies I questioned said that women who spoke up after being treated badly were psychotic bitches. They should just walk away. In other words, if they didn’t just lay back and take it in silence, their reputations were torn to shreds and their rights to be treated with a modicum of dignity were ignored. Sometimes, sadly, by other women who were no doubt fearing that denying these standards would mean that they too were psychos.
In the end, I figured out that a lot of women are afraid to speak up when they are mistreated because they’re afraid of being branded a psycho. The same method of denying women their voices is just as effective now as it was when Greco-Roman writers invented it. By calling women hysterical, they’re basically saying that any intense emotion that we feel is simply a side effect of being female.
This is where my friend found herself. She knew that speaking up would only cause her more pain. So, she threw her life in the toilet, and all because of one man, who probably breathed a sigh of relief that his life would not change because the woman with whom he’d been messing around on the side had shuffled off this mortal coil.
I say fuck that. I say it’s worth it to speak up, if only to hear your own voice in a cacophony of squealing pigs. There are plenty of people out there who are more than happy to deny all of us our voices. If you allow them to do that, even with the threat of being branded a psycho (or better yet, a psycho whore) it means that you agree that you have no right to exist, because what are we if we meekly allow people to trod upon our existence with no repercussions?
Of course, there is something to be said for diplomacy. But there are times when that just isn’t realistic. Sometimes, and those times are rare as I do think that people deserve to be treated fairly, a person proves him or herself to be a predator and must be thwarted before (and sometimes after) taking a bite. I also think that in cases like my friend, not speaking up about a two-timing rat fuck means that you're accepting at least part of the blame for the pain caused later when his significant other figures out his ruse. What other people call a psycho, I call a woman who isn’t going to submit to the rules laid out for us a few thousand years ago by a bunch of stupid men and perpetuated today by pretty much everyone.
So back then, I vowed never to deny myself a voice, no matter what might happen because of it. And a lot has happened because of it. But, in the blanket of reality, I can find my loud ass, psycho self pretty easily. That’s really all any of us truly has.
My first thought (after the initial shock, this gal was an amazing woman and I couldn’t imagine her doing such a thing) was that if she knew (in her Catholic mind) that she was certain to burn forever just to dull the temporary pain of rejection from a soulless, gutless twerp, why then would she not wish to take him down with her? I mean, what more does one have to lose when they're convinced that one act of desperation means that they're doomed to dwell in the fiery pits of damnation? And especially when they've decided that it's best to just give up and jump ship since someone else keeps trying to push them overboard.
Asking around, I found a surprising amount of hostility in the answers from women. Psycho has become as feared a word as whore these days. The ladies I questioned said that women who spoke up after being treated badly were psychotic bitches. They should just walk away. In other words, if they didn’t just lay back and take it in silence, their reputations were torn to shreds and their rights to be treated with a modicum of dignity were ignored. Sometimes, sadly, by other women who were no doubt fearing that denying these standards would mean that they too were psychos.
In the end, I figured out that a lot of women are afraid to speak up when they are mistreated because they’re afraid of being branded a psycho. The same method of denying women their voices is just as effective now as it was when Greco-Roman writers invented it. By calling women hysterical, they’re basically saying that any intense emotion that we feel is simply a side effect of being female.
This is where my friend found herself. She knew that speaking up would only cause her more pain. So, she threw her life in the toilet, and all because of one man, who probably breathed a sigh of relief that his life would not change because the woman with whom he’d been messing around on the side had shuffled off this mortal coil.
I say fuck that. I say it’s worth it to speak up, if only to hear your own voice in a cacophony of squealing pigs. There are plenty of people out there who are more than happy to deny all of us our voices. If you allow them to do that, even with the threat of being branded a psycho (or better yet, a psycho whore) it means that you agree that you have no right to exist, because what are we if we meekly allow people to trod upon our existence with no repercussions?
Of course, there is something to be said for diplomacy. But there are times when that just isn’t realistic. Sometimes, and those times are rare as I do think that people deserve to be treated fairly, a person proves him or herself to be a predator and must be thwarted before (and sometimes after) taking a bite. I also think that in cases like my friend, not speaking up about a two-timing rat fuck means that you're accepting at least part of the blame for the pain caused later when his significant other figures out his ruse. What other people call a psycho, I call a woman who isn’t going to submit to the rules laid out for us a few thousand years ago by a bunch of stupid men and perpetuated today by pretty much everyone.
So back then, I vowed never to deny myself a voice, no matter what might happen because of it. And a lot has happened because of it. But, in the blanket of reality, I can find my loud ass, psycho self pretty easily. That’s really all any of us truly has.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Apophenia Jones
I am editing the poo out of a previous post because I either presented a joke too sloppily or vastly underestimated the sophistication of my readership.
I got an email from a friend (which sort of got me on this subject) telling me I had to see a film called "What the Bleep do We Know?" He said, "Wow this film really opened my eyes." Ok, all systems go. I'll roll the dice. There is no fucking way I'd ever link the film and after reading this post, you'll understand why.
So it’s a tale of a photographer who is at an impasse in her life because her husband has left her for another woman. She’s really pissed off and bitter and I think she’s trying to figure out how she could have seen it coming (at least this is how I have stitched the story together within the context of the subject matter that surrounds this woman's journey). So, interspersed with the events in her life are different “scientists” discussing quantum physics and reality and how us monkeys can’t perceive "true" reality, la la la.
So there I am, watching this movie, descending slowly into uncomfortable silence. You know the kind: You're a little afraid that the person next to you is actually enjoying what you're experiencing as a preachy, Jesus-less but still frighteningly dogmatic onslaught. The first hint that it was going seriously off into the whimsical forest of "What the fuck...." was when one of the "experts" in the film claimed that the natives of the Americas couldn't see Columbus' ships approaching because “…it was so unlike anything they’d ever seen before. They couldn’t see it.” No, I’m not kidding. I am not kidding. This, among other gems, like the claim that the sub-atomic world is a fantasy concocted by mad physicists and um, the assertion that a camera "sees a lot more than what is here". Wait, if it's not there...what??
That’s when I began the old lady "quiet-but-agitated muttering". And the highjinks just keep getting higher. By the end, I was shouting at the television. I was also looking forward to seeing the credentials of the people who had done some of the commentary. I mean, if these folks were real scientists, what the fuck had I been studying for three years? As the list went on, I noticed one thing in particular. There was a name: J.Z. Knight. And another. Ramtha. And between the two names? “Channeled by”. Cock of the head, blink blink of the eyes, slow nodding. Ohhhhhhh....
I hightailed it to the computer and uncovered the tragic truth. J.Z. Knight has made lots of money by claiming that she can channel an Atlantean (yes, I said Atlantean) warrior name of Ramtha. Together, she and Ramtha made a movie called “What the Bleep do we Know?” with the help of some of their pals and a dupe from Columbia whose testimony was apparently “creatively edited” to back up their claims.
The pals? Well, where to begin. A rundown can be found here.
What's bothersome about all of this spiritual junk is that there are people seeking truth who turn to people like Knight (among others) because they talk a good game about viewing things from a different perspective. The truth about she and other con people/gurus is that they're like methadone clinics without the methadone.
So, this leads us back to the original post about bullshit.
Harry Frankfurt's book/essay is especially relevant at the moment given the inordinate amount of liars I've come across of late and the creepy acceptance of lying by the masses. Or acceptance of things they'd previously shunned. For example, one of my biggest pet peeves is that some of the former catholics that I have known, who've complained heartily about the Pope (among other "holy men") call the Dalai Lama "His Holiness" without question. If that's not the biggest crock! Remember the good ol' days when you had to stage an inquisition or at least take over the world for that kind of reverence? Now all you have to do is be super-nice and get exiled from your mystical place of origin to score a sweet title like that.
Ahem.
If a person can create a passive audience, he or she becomes their own celebrity. And in a culture where celebrity has become more relevant and valued than integrity, it makes perfect sense that scripted conversation would outweigh objective reality. Junk food for the psyche. Or, people are just so damned apathetic they can't even manage a conversation anymore. Pedestrian answers I suppose. I think the truth rests somewhere in the fact that many of my own peers have either raised themselves or were alternately abused and then given idle "grudge affection" here and there. A lasting bitterness with a desperate desire for validity has produced a generation of selfish beings who are somewhat lost and lack the understanding of how rewarding emotional maturity can really be.
The point of all of this is: Everyone one is trying to make sense of a reality that not only thrives on bullshit, but exists because of it. We're the products of the vast amounts of fertilizer that we create. Making sense of fabrication is difficult at best and some of the roads that one travels in order to sort things out are fucking endless. Now that deities have to tug the rope against shrink wrapped, pop-culture icons, the gettin's good at the id/superego buffet. Simply put, there are more people and lots more bullshit to choose from. Like "What the Bleep" and the Dalai Lama (tm).
I'm also irked that William Orbit let them use one of my favorite songs on the soundtrack of that crap movie.
*edit: This is a fun link...
I got an email from a friend (which sort of got me on this subject) telling me I had to see a film called "What the Bleep do We Know?" He said, "Wow this film really opened my eyes." Ok, all systems go. I'll roll the dice. There is no fucking way I'd ever link the film and after reading this post, you'll understand why.
So it’s a tale of a photographer who is at an impasse in her life because her husband has left her for another woman. She’s really pissed off and bitter and I think she’s trying to figure out how she could have seen it coming (at least this is how I have stitched the story together within the context of the subject matter that surrounds this woman's journey). So, interspersed with the events in her life are different “scientists” discussing quantum physics and reality and how us monkeys can’t perceive "true" reality, la la la.
So there I am, watching this movie, descending slowly into uncomfortable silence. You know the kind: You're a little afraid that the person next to you is actually enjoying what you're experiencing as a preachy, Jesus-less but still frighteningly dogmatic onslaught. The first hint that it was going seriously off into the whimsical forest of "What the fuck...." was when one of the "experts" in the film claimed that the natives of the Americas couldn't see Columbus' ships approaching because “…it was so unlike anything they’d ever seen before. They couldn’t see it.” No, I’m not kidding. I am not kidding. This, among other gems, like the claim that the sub-atomic world is a fantasy concocted by mad physicists and um, the assertion that a camera "sees a lot more than what is here". Wait, if it's not there...what??
That’s when I began the old lady "quiet-but-agitated muttering". And the highjinks just keep getting higher. By the end, I was shouting at the television. I was also looking forward to seeing the credentials of the people who had done some of the commentary. I mean, if these folks were real scientists, what the fuck had I been studying for three years? As the list went on, I noticed one thing in particular. There was a name: J.Z. Knight. And another. Ramtha. And between the two names? “Channeled by”. Cock of the head, blink blink of the eyes, slow nodding. Ohhhhhhh....
I hightailed it to the computer and uncovered the tragic truth. J.Z. Knight has made lots of money by claiming that she can channel an Atlantean (yes, I said Atlantean) warrior name of Ramtha. Together, she and Ramtha made a movie called “What the Bleep do we Know?” with the help of some of their pals and a dupe from Columbia whose testimony was apparently “creatively edited” to back up their claims.
The pals? Well, where to begin. A rundown can be found here.
What's bothersome about all of this spiritual junk is that there are people seeking truth who turn to people like Knight (among others) because they talk a good game about viewing things from a different perspective. The truth about she and other con people/gurus is that they're like methadone clinics without the methadone.
So, this leads us back to the original post about bullshit.
Harry Frankfurt's book/essay is especially relevant at the moment given the inordinate amount of liars I've come across of late and the creepy acceptance of lying by the masses. Or acceptance of things they'd previously shunned. For example, one of my biggest pet peeves is that some of the former catholics that I have known, who've complained heartily about the Pope (among other "holy men") call the Dalai Lama "His Holiness" without question. If that's not the biggest crock! Remember the good ol' days when you had to stage an inquisition or at least take over the world for that kind of reverence? Now all you have to do is be super-nice and get exiled from your mystical place of origin to score a sweet title like that.
Ahem.
If a person can create a passive audience, he or she becomes their own celebrity. And in a culture where celebrity has become more relevant and valued than integrity, it makes perfect sense that scripted conversation would outweigh objective reality. Junk food for the psyche. Or, people are just so damned apathetic they can't even manage a conversation anymore. Pedestrian answers I suppose. I think the truth rests somewhere in the fact that many of my own peers have either raised themselves or were alternately abused and then given idle "grudge affection" here and there. A lasting bitterness with a desperate desire for validity has produced a generation of selfish beings who are somewhat lost and lack the understanding of how rewarding emotional maturity can really be.
The point of all of this is: Everyone one is trying to make sense of a reality that not only thrives on bullshit, but exists because of it. We're the products of the vast amounts of fertilizer that we create. Making sense of fabrication is difficult at best and some of the roads that one travels in order to sort things out are fucking endless. Now that deities have to tug the rope against shrink wrapped, pop-culture icons, the gettin's good at the id/superego buffet. Simply put, there are more people and lots more bullshit to choose from. Like "What the Bleep" and the Dalai Lama (tm).
I'm also irked that William Orbit let them use one of my favorite songs on the soundtrack of that crap movie.
*edit: This is a fun link...
Someone Needs a Whuppin'
It began with the murders of Joan Lefkow's mother and husband. It seems to be catching on. The word "kin" is popping up more and more often. So this leaves me with only one question:
When the fuck did we get to Dogpatch??
When the fuck did we get to Dogpatch??
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Burning the Double Standard at Both Ends
Jamie Lee Curtis “came out” and exposed the kinds of trickery that the entertainment industry uses to make women look more beautiful in film and print. Why? Because at age 40+, she was through being poked, prodded, and starved to maintain a media friendly image. Kirstie Alley is stepping up to the plate to speak out against the same kinds of standards. What do these women have in common? They only chose to complain about these images and standards after they no longer met them. How can we blithely applaud them for their efforts against unrealistic expectations of beauty when they and other highly visible women achieved (and continue to achieve) wealth and success perpetuating them?
The same can be said for every over-forty actress heard voicing her disgust at the lack of juicy roles in Hollywood for women their age. How much effort was made by these women to thwart sexist ageism in Hollywood when people were lining up to take their picture? How many of them turned down roles because they had to play a much younger wife to a sixty year-old, Viagra chugging geezer? Does it occur to either Curtis or Alley that their efforts today would not be necessary if they and other women had not sanctified those potentially dangerous stereotypes to begin with? Those women are not standing up and saying "no" to someone else's stupid expectations. They're trying to sell empowerment because they can no longer sell their young, beautiful asses. Now, they're on our side? Give me a break. I'll let them play in my sandbox when I think it means something, not because it's their only other option.
When we bask in the reflected glory of false bravado, we can easily forget that unrealistic beauty standards are not only reinforced but celebrated because other women agree to meet them. As long as not-so-visible women and former media darlings are the only ones in the vanguard against an entirely unhealthy image of beauty, we're screwed. The world is saturated with images of young women who are so thin that they have to buy breasts. And it's only getting worse.
Fostering the illusion of eternal youth and beauty is worth it for famous actresses because at the end of the day, they know it is bullshit and they're getting paid a lot of money to pretend that it's not. I will stop doubting the sincerity and intentions of these babes when there are fewer shows like “Fat Actress” and more shows like “Thin Gorgeous Actress Eats a Ham Sandwich and Refuses to Pretend She’d Actually Sleep with an Old Skanky Bastard”.
The same can be said for every over-forty actress heard voicing her disgust at the lack of juicy roles in Hollywood for women their age. How much effort was made by these women to thwart sexist ageism in Hollywood when people were lining up to take their picture? How many of them turned down roles because they had to play a much younger wife to a sixty year-old, Viagra chugging geezer? Does it occur to either Curtis or Alley that their efforts today would not be necessary if they and other women had not sanctified those potentially dangerous stereotypes to begin with? Those women are not standing up and saying "no" to someone else's stupid expectations. They're trying to sell empowerment because they can no longer sell their young, beautiful asses. Now, they're on our side? Give me a break. I'll let them play in my sandbox when I think it means something, not because it's their only other option.
When we bask in the reflected glory of false bravado, we can easily forget that unrealistic beauty standards are not only reinforced but celebrated because other women agree to meet them. As long as not-so-visible women and former media darlings are the only ones in the vanguard against an entirely unhealthy image of beauty, we're screwed. The world is saturated with images of young women who are so thin that they have to buy breasts. And it's only getting worse.
Fostering the illusion of eternal youth and beauty is worth it for famous actresses because at the end of the day, they know it is bullshit and they're getting paid a lot of money to pretend that it's not. I will stop doubting the sincerity and intentions of these babes when there are fewer shows like “Fat Actress” and more shows like “Thin Gorgeous Actress Eats a Ham Sandwich and Refuses to Pretend She’d Actually Sleep with an Old Skanky Bastard”.
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Almost Dead
My “I can’t believe it” moments of late have been due to really terrible news and the mood resulting from them has certainly been obvious from my last few posts.
On a gray, snowy day in Ohio, good news spanked me into a wonderful afternoon.
There are many reasons to be happy today and they all have names and birthdays. Aside from the obvious, the good news is that we, the country that thinks that it can dictate how the rest of the world behaves, has eliminated at least a tiny bit of hypocritical barbarism from our (cringe) system. I hope (so much) that rehabilitation becomes a reality instead of just a nice way of saying, "Cheap Labor".
On a gray, snowy day in Ohio, good news spanked me into a wonderful afternoon.
There are many reasons to be happy today and they all have names and birthdays. Aside from the obvious, the good news is that we, the country that thinks that it can dictate how the rest of the world behaves, has eliminated at least a tiny bit of hypocritical barbarism from our (cringe) system. I hope (so much) that rehabilitation becomes a reality instead of just a nice way of saying, "Cheap Labor".
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
Blood Stoned Days
When looking for an online version of “Fear and Loathing” to use for the previous post (that’d have been a lot of typing and I was sleepy and sad), I found many articles, but the one that really stuck out was “The Rolling Stone Interview”. It was that bullshit "The Rolling Stone Interview" tacked beside Thompson's name. As though reading it required someone to unroll red carpets from those sacred pages straight to my visual cortices. As though “Rolling Stone” meant something more than just an echo of a subversive element in America that no longer exists.
Do you think that anyone there actually believes that anyone else over the age of say, 21 takes that magazine seriously? I hate Cosmo but they’re not only aware of what they are, they celebrate it. I can respect that. But whenever I see Rolling Stone, I think “Hello, we’ll be selling you your youth culture today (which is pretty much a recycled version of your parent’s youth culture), you’ll be empowered more by the imagery, symbolism and superficial envelope pushing than you are by the music, which will later be sold to you on 6 CD compilation sets with clever names like “Doze Wer da Dayz”. You’ll play it a couple of Saturday nights a year and remember your glory days, tell all your friends how you were there first (nothing existed before you found it, and as long as we keep dangling that virgin cherry, those of you who are a little more resistant to our marketing will keep buying what we’re selling), and put it away on Sunday morning, get to your job Monday, which will require you to wear a tie (and you’ll be too broken by that point to argue), and at worst will be at a convenience store, you’ll probably have a couple of kids (but you’re fulfilled!) and your cholesterol levels will be higher than twice your IQ. Thank you, that’ll be $4.95, please.”
The only entities left that have the audacity to take themselves that seriously are writers and advertisers.
*Blood Stoned Days from "Hey Jack Kerouac" by 10,000 Maniacs.
Do you think that anyone there actually believes that anyone else over the age of say, 21 takes that magazine seriously? I hate Cosmo but they’re not only aware of what they are, they celebrate it. I can respect that. But whenever I see Rolling Stone, I think “Hello, we’ll be selling you your youth culture today (which is pretty much a recycled version of your parent’s youth culture), you’ll be empowered more by the imagery, symbolism and superficial envelope pushing than you are by the music, which will later be sold to you on 6 CD compilation sets with clever names like “Doze Wer da Dayz”. You’ll play it a couple of Saturday nights a year and remember your glory days, tell all your friends how you were there first (nothing existed before you found it, and as long as we keep dangling that virgin cherry, those of you who are a little more resistant to our marketing will keep buying what we’re selling), and put it away on Sunday morning, get to your job Monday, which will require you to wear a tie (and you’ll be too broken by that point to argue), and at worst will be at a convenience store, you’ll probably have a couple of kids (but you’re fulfilled!) and your cholesterol levels will be higher than twice your IQ. Thank you, that’ll be $4.95, please.”
The only entities left that have the audacity to take themselves that seriously are writers and advertisers.
*Blood Stoned Days from "Hey Jack Kerouac" by 10,000 Maniacs.
Monday, February 21, 2005
Meat Hook Reality
*update
The post below was written (a lot of it pasted) at around 2:00 AM on the day of Hunter Thompson’s suicide. I had been awake doing some research and stumbled upon the AP site that bled the news to the rest of us. I thought for sure it was an accident. Then I realized that it wasn't. The suddenness of death makes one feel awkward and stilted and even tears seem trite. And suicide is the only cliché that still takes a bite.
Now, having had a couple of days to ruminate, I can understand why a man like Thompson wanted to end his life on his own terms. Of course, I cannot say for sure whether there was a deeper meaning in his actions. I can say for sure that it was just as I wrote him off as being a hedonistic jerk-off (the first time I read anything by him, which was Generation of Swine), he'd pop out with this incredible, eloquent insight, skewering humanity with an ice pick; the kind that makes other writers well up at the sheer magnitude of the beauty in his perspective. He was one of the few human beings who not only existed within the full range of human emotion, he exploded within it.
SJ
______________________________
The following is an excerpt from "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and one of my favorite things that Hunter Thompson (or anyone for that matter) wrote.
Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Has it been five years? Six? It seems like a lifetime -- the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.
There was madness in any direction, at any hour... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the sixties.Uppers are going out of style.This was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary’s trip. He crashed around America selling “consciousness expansion” without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously. After West Point and the priesthood, LSD must have seemed entirely logical to him...but there is not much satisfaction in knowing that he blew it very badly for himself, because he took too many others down with him. Not that they didn’t deserve it: No doubt They all Got What Was Coming To Them. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create ...a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody—or at least some force —is tending That Light at the end of the tunnel.
Hunter S. Thompson 1937-2005
The post below was written (a lot of it pasted) at around 2:00 AM on the day of Hunter Thompson’s suicide. I had been awake doing some research and stumbled upon the AP site that bled the news to the rest of us. I thought for sure it was an accident. Then I realized that it wasn't. The suddenness of death makes one feel awkward and stilted and even tears seem trite. And suicide is the only cliché that still takes a bite.
Now, having had a couple of days to ruminate, I can understand why a man like Thompson wanted to end his life on his own terms. Of course, I cannot say for sure whether there was a deeper meaning in his actions. I can say for sure that it was just as I wrote him off as being a hedonistic jerk-off (the first time I read anything by him, which was Generation of Swine), he'd pop out with this incredible, eloquent insight, skewering humanity with an ice pick; the kind that makes other writers well up at the sheer magnitude of the beauty in his perspective. He was one of the few human beings who not only existed within the full range of human emotion, he exploded within it.
SJ
______________________________
The following is an excerpt from "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and one of my favorite things that Hunter Thompson (or anyone for that matter) wrote.
Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Has it been five years? Six? It seems like a lifetime -- the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.
There was madness in any direction, at any hour... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the sixties.Uppers are going out of style.This was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary’s trip. He crashed around America selling “consciousness expansion” without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously. After West Point and the priesthood, LSD must have seemed entirely logical to him...but there is not much satisfaction in knowing that he blew it very badly for himself, because he took too many others down with him. Not that they didn’t deserve it: No doubt They all Got What Was Coming To Them. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create ...a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody—or at least some force —is tending That Light at the end of the tunnel.
Hunter S. Thompson 1937-2005
Monday, February 14, 2005
Gay W. Hookers
I got really irritated after the election. First, I am really disgusted with people who have "No Blood for Oil" stickers on their fucking mini-vans. And they don't see the irony. Secondly, it wasn't so much that W got re-elected. It was (and still is) because some people actually believe what he says. Why not just admit to being capitalistic pigs who want to keep breeding, driving their fat asses around in their enormous cars and wearing $100.00 sneakers made by an 8-year-old whose only other option was to become a prostitute and die of AIDS by age 11? Ok, ok that would never do. Once people (or a people in this case) fully admit to being greedy, selfish bastards, they're kind of obligated to do something about it. Come to think of it, people generally don't admit that they are flawed until they are doing something about it. The point is, people don't tend constructively self-analyze until they've lost the things that distracted them from the fact that they were total shits to begin with.
Something made me perk up today. Something so completely, absurdly funny that I spat hummus on my poor cat before I could contain myself.
That special something was a story that is now all over the internet about a little fellow named Jeff Gannon. You might remember Gannon from a while back when it was discovered that he was a reporter hired by the W's to ask the Big Man insipid, non-fuckuppable questions (ten bucks says that Karl Rove's fingers were crossed the whole time). The shenanigans were revealed...and so was Gannon. Like, in the biblical sense.
So fitting, don't you think?
I try to be very careful about which bandwagon I ride. I figure, if this turns out to be a joke, hoax, or even a lie, it made me laugh about something that usually makes me extremely sad. That's worth getting my pigtails yanked.
Something made me perk up today. Something so completely, absurdly funny that I spat hummus on my poor cat before I could contain myself.
That special something was a story that is now all over the internet about a little fellow named Jeff Gannon. You might remember Gannon from a while back when it was discovered that he was a reporter hired by the W's to ask the Big Man insipid, non-fuckuppable questions (ten bucks says that Karl Rove's fingers were crossed the whole time). The shenanigans were revealed...and so was Gannon. Like, in the biblical sense.
So fitting, don't you think?
I try to be very careful about which bandwagon I ride. I figure, if this turns out to be a joke, hoax, or even a lie, it made me laugh about something that usually makes me extremely sad. That's worth getting my pigtails yanked.
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