Friday, December 30, 2005

Who has time to blog?

So I watched Zombie and the Ghost Train with my aunt Edna, age 91. And she didn't like it because it had no plot and it was very depressing. It's a Finnish movie by Aki's brother Maki about an alcoholic bass player in the dead of Finnish winter. I told Edna that I like depressing movies. I prefer depressing movies, usually. And she said, well, then you've never experienced real pain in your life.

Thursday, December 29, 2005

Things you learn when you ask

My real last name is Tarkka.

The Ellis Island people changed it to Jackson. Jacob Tarkka came to America and they said, no no, Jacob, son of Jac, Jackson. It probably happened in less than a second. No no, no Tarkka. Jacobson, Jackson, yer Jackson. Next.

So I'm Dan Tarkka. I probably could get something published easier with that name.

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Sincere question to whoever reads this

I just heard a lady on a radio-commercial say that this was the best product she ever used. I missed the first half of the commercial so I don't know what this is.

My question is, what is the best product you've ever used?

Saturday, December 24, 2005

When crime isn't crime

It's that time of the year, I guess.

Friday, December 23, 2005

Things going the way of the dodo

Us.

via bob harris

One thing that has gone the way of the Dodo...

is the Dodo.



Foolish, foolish birds.

In Other Sports News

Lazio striker Paolo Di Canio is a "fascist" not a "rascist." Hmph. If only more Republicans had Di Canio's Chutzpah.

The straw that broke the...

Embrace chaos.


World War III... begins...

Thursday, December 22, 2005

The sincerest form of posthumous flattery.

Having your bones stolen.

Monday, December 19, 2005

Ricky Gervais and that Damn Cambodian Government

The story about 42 Cambodian midget fighters getting mutilated by a lion turns out to be wholly untrue.

Nonetheless, you should still listen to the commentary on Guardian Unlimited.

podcast

http://podcast.chrysalis.com/BestOfClive.aspx

should plug this in your podcaster to hear this, for a great conversation between Clive Bull and a bloke from an Indian call center.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

It's almost 7 am

And I can really relate to this guy. I like your style, S.B.

It's true

Karma sucks. But never forget:

as well as:

Lest we forget

Wow!

This guy really doesn't like his wife!

I am one big ass.

Mental note to myself: I am insane

James Joyce

of the 21st century?

Those in the know


Those in the know know that other people's lives/blogs are much more interesting than mine. And kinda not.

I'm still sick. I've gone from Shostokovich to Joy Division. If I go back to my futon I'll have to just lay there and be miserable and read about the miserable character in Handmaid's Tale. Funny, I always thought I liked depressing books. My favorite book in High School was 1984, one of the more depressing books I've read.

I will get through this night alive. Because it will soon be morning. And then I can get up and be sick during the day instead of during the night. Somehow that's comforting.

a hack in a trance

Been listening to a lot of Shostokovich lately. Mainly catching up with I used to listen to in the Before Time (Before Music School circa 1994). It is interesting coming back to all this music that assiduously avoided all these years. I came back to classical music very casually, very slowly, via minimalism, mainly John Adams. Back in the Before Time I loved Shostokovich, mainly symphony no. 5. But also the bombast of 11 and 15. I'm not so in love with his stuff now--but there are certain moments in his pieces which are very beautiful, and definitely prefigure Spiritual Minimalism. It's good to listen to when you're sick as a dog and you can't sleep and you're reading a very depressing book (Atwood's Handmaid's Tale.)

Things could be worse. Things have been worse. It's hard to put things in perspective.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Monday, December 12, 2005

Butt's Bach Scoop

John Butt scoops who but Bach's butt.

(That sentence just didn't sound right with only six syllables.)

Links

I've added LINKS to the right, there, below the archives; just cause I'm an html genius. Envy of all the other bloggers. If you have a link you think I should put up; or you are friend (or not) of mine and you don't see your website, please let me know either via email or the comments. Thank you very much.

...few broken links. I'm not a good debugger.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Go straight to cover-ups

For the straight shit.

My search for truth

in google has led me thus far.

Hey, not every day you get handy sencerity chart.

No sleep for true blog


I found. I'm proud. Good for the time that is now in my mind.

Friday, December 09, 2005

The Hat I've been searching for all my life

And it only costs $200 bucks! I might have to threaten to shut down this blog unless I get this hat for Chanukah!!!!!!

I've never wanted a hat before. I know I sound like a spoiled child. But I want this hat more than anything else in the world. I could conquer the world with this hat. Man, I want this hat.

This hat:

Doesn't it just make you want to cry??
I didn't even know I was searching for a hat. All this time I thought I was looking for love, for an ipod, or fame. When really, the secret to all my happiness lies in a hat.

I gotta get me that hat!

Funny in any language


Czech out deez jokes!

Thursday, December 08, 2005

hell fuckin' yeah

Just give me Zurich. I won't complain.

Reminds me of cookies, har-har-har

Proust observation by Tom Tomorrow.


No offense, Tom, but who doesn't like being reminded by cookies? I like cookies. They like me. No cookie ever stood me up.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

The war on Chanukah

Somebody has been circulating this around the internet. It's supposed to be cute. But I think it goes too far. Judge for yourself:

There are many misconceptions about the differences between Christmas and Chanukah. This should clear them up!


1. Christmas is one day, same day, every year: December 25th. Jews also love December 25th. It's another paid day off work. We go to the movies and eat babies.

2. Chanukah is eight days. It starts the evening of the 24th of Kislev, whenever that is. No one is ever sure. Jews never know until a non-Jew asks when Chanukah starts, forcing us to consult a calendar so we don't look like idiots. We all have the same calendar, provided free with a donation from the Elders of Zion, the kosher butcher, or the local Jewish funeral home.

3. Christmas is a major holiday. Chanukah is a minor holiday with the same theme as most Jewish holidays. They tried to kill us. We survived. Let's eat their children and sharpen our horns

4. Christians get wonderful presents such as jewelry, perfume, stereos. Jews sell them.

5. There is only one way to spell Christmas. It includes the word Christ, who was some Jewish guy, and the word mas, which is not a word. Well...I guess it could stand for MASS. (For the Jews out there, these aren't religious terms. They're holiday terms. (And the fact that holiday includes the word holi has nothing to do with holy. Stop making connections that aren't there, asshole!)) No one can decide how to spell Chanukah, Chanukkah, Chanukka, Channukah, Hanukah, Hannukah, etc.

6. Christmas is at time of great pressure for husbands and boyfriends. Their partners expect special gifts. Jewish men are relieved of that burden. No one expects a diamond ring on Chanukah. Especially from a Jew.

7. Christmas brings enormous electric bills. Candles are used for Chanukah. Not only are we spared enormous electric bills, but we get to feel good about not contributing to the energy crisis. It harder to see how ugly we are to one another. We take off our skin at night. Freud was such a pervert because all Jews are sexual deviants. Plus why the hell do you think we have such a powerful Israeli lobbying force in Washington? For religious freedom? Fuck no, Jerk! Oil for our Chanukah candles!

8. Christmas carols are beautiful? Silent Night, Come All Ye Faithful. Chanukah songs are stupid. They are demeaning. They are about stupid dreidels made from stupid clay or having a stupid party and dancing the stupid horah or whatever the fuck it’s called... Of course, we are secretly pleased that many of the beautiful carols were composed and written by Jews. And don't Barbara Streisand and Neil Diamond sing them beautifully? No. Your religion is more evil than ours.

9. A home preparing for Christmas smells wonderful. The sweet smell of cookies and cakes baking. Happy people gather around in festive moods. A home preparing for Chanukah smells of oil, potatoes, and onions. The home, as always, is full of loud people all talking at once. That's because we are selfish, rude, filthy and paranoid.

10. Women have fun baking Christmas cookies. Jewish women burn their eyes and cut their hands grating potatoes and onions for latkes. Sadomasochistic sex was invented by Jewish women to take their minds off the holidays.

11. Parents deliver to their children on Christmas. Jewish parents have no qualms about withholding a gift on any of the eight nights because Jews are stingy. Filth.

12. The players in the Christmas story have easy to pronounce names such as Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. The players in the Chanukah story are Antiochus, Judah Maccabee, and Matta whatever. No one can spell it or pronounce it. On the plus side, we can tell our gentile friends anything and they believe we are wonderfully versed in our history. When in truth we perpetuate nothing but paranoia.

13. Many Christians believe in the virgin birth. Jews think "Joseph, Bubela, snap out of it. Your woman is pregnant, you didn't sleep with her, and now you want to blame God. Here, eat a Palestinian baby."

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Finally. We can find out who killed Bambi.

Ladies and Gentleman. I bring you Earth. Googlized.

Monday, December 05, 2005

Zombie Metaphors

I'm looking forward to this. Very much so. Who knew. Maybe Zombie movies are the most important works of art of our time. Romero's original Dawn of the Dead the Don Giovanni of our times.

Could be. You can't deny the possibility.

Frank Zappa can kiss my ass. (Now THAT would be a scary movie. Return of the Living Dead Prog-Rockers. Yipes. I'm gonna have nightmares tonight.)

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Screenwriting tips for aspirant screenwriters

DO NOT WRITE THESE LINES FOR A MOVIE CALLED THE COOLER:

young harvard grad talks to the aging, tough, vaguely Brooklynesque casino owner:

NOSTALGIA IS GREAT. BUT NOSTALGIA BELONGS IN A MUSEUM. I THINK IT COMES TIME TO DECIDE WHETHER YOU ARE RUNNING A MUSEUM OR (pauses just so for a portentous effect) YOU'RE RUNNING A CASINO.

nice use of repetition, guys. the writers are Frank Hannah & Wayne Kramer.

DO WRITE THESE LINES FOR A MOVIE CALLED ANNIE HALL STARRING WOODY ALLEN AND DIANE KEATON:

woody allen character to diane keaton character after sex:

AS BALZAC SAID, THERE GOES ANOTHER NOVEL.

Friday, December 02, 2005

MUSICLINKYTHING-0

Hey, I added a link to the right to my mspace music page. Let me know what you think. You should click on my friend's pages too. Rad Unicorn and John Carpenter got some cool stuff up on there.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

How I simultaneously cover my ass and don't

I believe that the only true meaning to be found is within paradox.

That's my intro statement for a post-script on all the sci-fi fascism b.s. I've been spewing. First off, if I am a writer, I am also a writer of sci-fi. I don't read much sf anymore because I just can't. But my first novel, which I will put up in blog form in the near future, is unabashedly sci-fi. The current novel I'm working on is not sci-fi, but it has fantastical elements. My next book I want to write will probably be SF.

Ergo, sum, ipso facto, Dan Jackson is a fascist. QED.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

But it's so pretty!

Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty!

All frum cursor.org (Curses!)

I should go outside and die now. I mean play!

Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty!

Catch it on your tongue! !

Depeche Fascism

I'm quick to call everybody fascists maybe because there is no word in the world for what's going on. I'd call them crazy, but that would be an insult to the truly insane.

Fighting the Sci-Fi Fascist from within

This man might be our only hope. Don't know anything about him. But he's on the side of good. Not on the side of bad.

I might have to take a look again at SF. Even though most of its readers and writers are fascists. As I have elucidated to my readers in depth and with many concrete examples and with laser-specificity in the past.

Calling Peter Jackson: Werner Herzog's Worst Nightmare

Transcription, director's commentary, Signs of Life:

Norman Hill: Why this interest in chickens? They are in several of your films...

Werner Herzog: They are very frightening for me because their stupidity is so flat. When you look into the eyes of a chicken you lose yourself in a completely flat, frightening stupidity. They are a great metaphor...for me..for I don't what it is. They reappear in several of my films. Even Dwarves Started Small. Cannibalistic chicken. One-legged chicken. A rooster being hypnotized and on and on and on.

NH: (Laughs.) And the famous dancing chicken in Stroszek.

WH: (Laughs.) Right. That is some of the best I've ever filmed. So I don't know. I kind of love chicken but they frighten me more than any other animal I know.





(Poster ripped from eightyford.com.)

A portrait of happy times


Congrats again, cuties!


And it was great to meet the other Andrew Jackson too! (Hope you guys don't mind me posting your likenessess. The FBI probably reads my site. Please contact me if you want them taken down.)

Look at them commie cuties!

Monday, November 28, 2005

Wedding Blings

The only commentary that is possibly relevant to this, (via an atrios link) can be provided by lyrics from an early nineties band of genius:

hey
been trying to meet you
hey
must be a devil between us
or whores in my head
whores at my door
whores in my bed
but hey
where
have you
been if you go i will surely die
we're chained

uh said the man to the lady
uh said the lady to the man she adored
and the whores like a choir
go uh all night
and mary ain't you tired of this
uh
is
the
sound
that the mother makes when the baby breaks
we're chained

Goodnight, Moon

Bad astronomy makes for good TV-News.

But WHAT is science? Really? What is REALLY HARD science? Or SHOULD I say WTF is science anyways?

Isn't it just another method--another self-justification--for the power elite to maintain its status quo throttle on the neck of the proletariate?

I think the moon landing was faked because there is no moon. It's a waxin' wanin' blindspot in everyone's brain drilled in by the orbital mind control laser(?)

More notes...
Try and go see Werner Herzog's Signs of Life. It is his first feature and I've watched it about four times in the last week and I get more out of it in every viewing. If it means going around in circles, so be it.

I read Whatever by Houllebecq and it was very good; though if Houllebecq has feminist theory in his soul he did not apply an ounce of it. But the character pretty much hates everybody, mostly his own self. So, it's all good.

Congrats to my brother and his lovely new wife. I wish the very best for them. And when I say the best, I mean the best. PJ O'Clarke's best. None of that McDonalds' shit.

Friday, November 25, 2005

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Progeny Post

My brother waxes philosophic about his breeding experiment...

Fascism counterbalanced by public domain Rock N' Roll Lyrics

Amelia found this for me:
[Turns out I'm not the only one who thinks everyone is a fascist (though I'm beginning to think that I'm a fascist about calling people fascist and I'm trying to do something about it.)]

"The strategic adversary is fascism... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us." - Michel Foucault

Also:

Here are some lyrics Amelia's fiance wrote. I don't have time to write a song, so they are public domain rock lyrics:

Rock Rock Rock 'N' Roll
All day
All night
I'm gonna rock with you
We're gonna rock
Hell yeah!
We're gonna Rock
I'm gonna come over tonight
And baby we're gonna
Rock tonight!
Rock tonight!
Rocking Baby,
let's Rock!


Drew Jackson

Monday, November 21, 2005

Ahhhh...the internet

Fah-fah-fah-fah-fah...http://www.stupid.com/stat/POOC.html

Out of respect for my readers I won't directly link to it.

Fah-Fah-Fah


McCan you say fah-fah-fah-fah-fah-fah-fah-fah-fah-fah-fah-fah-psychokiller.

Fah-fah-fah fah-fah-fa-fah-fah-fah-fah riveting! Fah fah-fahfahfah fah fah!

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Friday, November 18, 2005

John McCain: Kinder, Gentler Fascist

For all you Utopian delusionals...


MENDOZA!!!!



Goin' to Denver for my Brother's Wedding.

I'll have dial-up. So the wit won't fly so fast. But just as furious. Or angry. And sloppy. Patented. Phreaky.

UPDATE!

That was a little too incoherent:

1st point: McCain: Yeah yeah okay...let's kill kill kill brown people...sure...but TORTURE?? Come on man-huh-...that shit hurts like a motherfucker. LET'S BE REASONABLE HERE! I'M A REASONABLE MAN! KILL! DON'T MAIM. HAVE I SAID THIS YET? THAT TORTURE SHIT HURTS! LIKE A FUCKING MOTHERFUCKER!

The Link I tried to Link to before...does it exist? It does. Here it is:

his is an especially useful resource if you wanted to, let’s say, contact the Arizona Daily Star and tell them that John McCain is a fraud whose “toughness” only comes out when it’s politically safe to do so or The Greenville News to tell the people of South Carolina that their Senator wants to destroy some of our most basic rights as Americans.


Ha ho ho hee hee, that's the same link. But I was underscoring what I was attempting to underscore with this second attempt.

2nd Bonus MEAT GRINDER. MMM! Patrioty!

I don't know about This Modern World "losing its edge." I think Tom Tomorrow is the most intelligent of the political cartoonists. His schtick is not the most original. His most endearing character is a penguin from the future (Garfield anyone? I mean, Bloom County or whatever.) But he has a knack for summing up the shitty state of affairs.

But I want to start making a campaign in the vein of Billionaires for Bush. Fascists for McCain. The man is a maniac. It's a shame that Rove "smeared" him the way he did. But that's what he gets for being a motherfucking Republican.

Star Wars...

Had some conversations about Good Taste this week. Big Argument with Seaslug. Can't go into it right now. I think good taste has a connection with Fascism. Just like Science Fiction. I can't go into it right now. But let's talk about George Lucas versus Kurt Cobain. Cobain had the good taste to kill himself before he made a terrible album. Mr. Lucas on the other hand, why couldn't he have killed himself after ROTJ? It's a damn shame. He'd be enshrined forever for his genius.

I hate all the movies coming out now and I don't want to hear about them. But I love my iPod. I'm looking forward to sitting down to watching Signs of Life.

There are many things to be excited about. But if John McCain becomes president we're fucked. He wants to send more troops to fucking Iraq. Good morning Vietnam! Klaus Kinski should have played Robin Williams part in that movie. Jesus Christ I'm angry. But content.

That's enough for now. This is seeming pointless.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Okay...

If somebody doesn't explain this to me I'm going to have to join the Israeli army.



Update: Ohh...duh. Sorry Israel. It's going to take more than that for me to become a born again Jew.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

His whole life has been merely the preparation for this moment

Our whole lives. At the sound of the tone the time is, the time for Rick.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Oi!

Get yer arse back into the pub, ye ain't drunk yet!

(That's my best British accent, sounds like a pirate, I know.)

Also, secret police in Jordan. Or something. Somebody explain this to me.

Also, Seaslug, is this your man?


He wasn't sayin' what you were saying to me. Science and all.

This is why I'm scared of non-scientists talking about science.

(Even though scientists can be just as scary.)

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Ultracore is mushy to the core

Well, we gave it our best.

Doors opened at 2pm at Astorian House of Herzog. I watched Naked Lunch. I started watching Naked Lunch around 3pm. Guests started arriving around 6pm; we watched Buster Keaton: Our Hospitality. Sherlock Jr. They were both quite good. More guests arrived. Tony was kind enough to bring a projector. We watched Space is the Place, blown up big on the wall. We had a Looney Tunes break around Midnight and then the make or breaker La Dolce Vita. Midway through most everyone except Su, Er, and Seaslug left. We pushed on. We had omelets made by Er. After that we watched Take the Money and Run. And then A Better Tomorrow. It gets blurry from beyond here. I think Su and 'Ro left because they couldn't afford to throw all of their weekend away in the name of cinema. We still had the projector. Seaslug and myself watched Svankmejer shorts and then started Mishima. It was around 10 in the morning around this time. We were into it but because of circumstances beyond his control Seaslug had to go home. I gave Seaslug a citation for depth of reverance and that was it. I couldn't watch movies by myself. I did a little cleaning and then I passed out in my room. I got up around noon when Tony stopped by to pick up his projector. And Dave stopped by, but I couldn't stay up. Jason stopped by later, he had wanted to watch Killing of A Chinese Bookie but they left me sleeping. I got up around 8pm this evening. I got some Chinese-Mexican food and watched The God of Gamblers. My ballroom dancing roommate and his partner/girlfriend were very excited because they won a college-level ballroom dancing competition in Boston even though they aren't in college. Though they were in Boston. They're not in Boston right now. As of now. Also, as of now, I'm writing on my blog now.

It was a pretty intense experience. It sort of messes with your mind. For me, La Dolce Vita was the perfect midnight movie. It definitely wasn't everyone's cup of tea. But tea wasn't the point of the Ultracore. I became tired after it and I just wanted to please everybody. So I put on movies that I thought would keep people there. That was a mistake (I was going against my instincts; I was losing what I thought what was my "self." In that way the experience was interesting. But the influence of the disposable entertainment on our brains was more taxing--I believe--in the long run. La Dolce Vita gave me strength because I think it is--however flawed--a monumental work of art--as opposed to A Better Tomorrow and Take the Money and Run. The latter two felt like propaganda or something.) I should have put on early Kurosawa instead of early Woody Allen. If I do it again we will watch all very serious movies except for the Looney Tunes and Buster Keaton. And maybe some Charlie Chaplin. But Buster Keaton really kicks the ass out of ol' Chaplin. BK pretty much kicks the ass out of everything else.

I feel altered. Totally drained.

I could probably start a cult this way. I would have to power nap between the movies so that my strength would outlast everyone else. Then I'd have people read scripts and roleplay in their total sleep-deprived states. Among the ones that would last would be the strong ones. Among the strong ones I'd sort those would remain subservient to me; and I'd eliminate those that always been potentially dangerous to my purposes. The Ultracore would loosen all the harbored resentments and I sieve out my true enemies amongst my true friends. Slowly I'd create a network of servants, sworn by blood to protect me. The core of my revolution.

The only problem is that I have lost my faith in the idea of a violent overthrow of the power elite.

It is strange because the movies started blurring all together. The rules of one movie seemed to bleed into the rules of the other. After watching all sorts of weapons pulled out by Looney Tunes characters and blasting each other in faces and such I expected similar situations to arise in La Dolce Vita. And then of course, weapons started ablazing in A Better Tomorrow. We all noted certain themes, some of them disturbing, such as the level of domestic and criminal violence commited against stereotypically "helpless" women. It got to be quite unsettling. But it was illuminative of how desensitives we are, and also how often the abuse the portrayal of abuse against women in used in a variety of situations in film in a way to illustrate a variety of points. Sometimes incisive, sometimes exploitative; a little of both in other cases.

The God of Gamblers has some nice balance to the issue of violence, though not necessarily with regard to violence against women. But it does seem to try to make a point that violence is not necessarily the best conflict resolution tool in every case. But then there are extended scenes of senseless gun violence that kind of detract from this line of argument that they develope.

Saturday, November 12, 2005

Struwwel Peter, we meet again

Here's the original, online.

(Obvious. Yah(!))

But I bet you didn't know there was a Mark Twain version. (I've been meaning to read more Twain, particularly the dark, later stuff. Anyone have any suggestions, eh?)

Friday, November 11, 2005

Sleeplessness


I'm so excited about ULTRACORE 2005 that I can't sleep. Ut-oh...

There's no sleeping at ultracore, at least for the Designated Stewards!

No sleep.

But I must sleep.

No sleep.

But I must. I must!

Merry Chris(fascis)tmas!

I'd like to say.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

The beautiful raga

It's a beautiful raga but it's a beautiful raga you can only hear once.

Why can you hear it only once?

I don't know.

It's going to be a long winter

I've got a surplus of soda water.

If you can decipher the following I will hand deliver you eight truckloads of gravitons and a vat of soda water, pending availability:

Summit. Tree. Swastika. Morning after the roses rules.
Dali is not a Salivdor Lama--
These things I know NOT to be NOT correct:
Cheerleader pants and sunglass dreams underneath a jackolantern hung
aloft
verify.

Best interpretation gets the water, man-o.

(That'll stick Stan, that'll stick.)

If Everyone Lived Like You We Would Need Five and Half Planets

From West Coast Jacksonian Head - Office


Check this out:


and for a conversion table reference:


My freaking footprint is 7.9 hectares = 19.52 acres. Time to stop
driving, riding in jet planes, and eating animals with eyeballs.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

The great thing about being me

Is that I know I don't have the answer but I can always show you how you're wrong.

Sunday, November 06, 2005

The Power Elite

Big surprise, the French are a bunch of fucks too.

My story

They seemed to fix all the mistakes. Thanks to Ralph and Litchaos.

Saturday, November 05, 2005

ULTRACORE

November 12th I'm holding an ULTRACORE movie marathon event at my house. If you are interested and haven't recieved an email, well, email me at solardriftwood@gmail.com--

That's my new email, btw.

I am ordering internet service for the home, but in the meantime, I'm not getting any signals so posts will be infreakwent.

There's nothing more hardcore than an ultramore. I mean ultracore.

Forget the room and the windows--what about the door? I'm sore.

Friday, November 04, 2005

Boredom

Seaslug man says it would be very Murakami of me to say that the only reason I write is because I'm just plain bored. The only other option is pinching my tits. To be honest, I do both. Sometimes one more than the other (not left versus right, but tits versus writing). That's just how I am.

Tonight I'm going to see the Passenger at the Sunshine on Houston, 7:30, be there or be rare.

It's gonna be a cold winter

I've got a surplus of whale blubber.

If you can decipher the following I will hand deliver you eight spoonfuls of sugar and a crate of whale blubber, pending availability:

Summit. Tree. Swastika. Morning after the roses rules.
Dali is not a Salivdor Lama--
These things I know NOT to be correct:
Cheerleader pants and sunglass dreams underneath a jackolantern hung
aloft
verily.

Best interpretation gets the blubber, man.

(That'll do pig, that'll do.)

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Cosmic

Everything is connected. There IS a God.


Just kidding. My name is SARCASMUS after all (he said sarcastically.)


Tibetan Buddhist Wisdom:

"There is much in the window, and nothing in the room."
--Tenzin Gyatso the 14th Dalai Lama

Via the sea slug man, Miles Jackson

(Not me!)

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Surgery of the I

A story of mine is on an online journal. Litchaos.com.

The formatting of it is all wrong though. These guys need help with their webpage. (J-bo? I don't know if they can offer you any money. Maybe we could renegotiate a re-launch of their journal, but it'd be a joint venture--and we'd be editors too.) Anyhow, I'm trying to get them to properly format it, but I don't know if that will happen.

If the story intrigues you I can send you a properly formatted version upon request.

Monday, October 31, 2005

To the police:

I know we've had our differences in the past. It was a snare drum, not a pistole. But no matter. I found all this stuff on the street. Armoire, yes. Picture frames with pictures of New Yorkian imagery. Chrysler building, Brooklyn Bridge, can't go wrong there. The velour purse filled with papers--I haven't looked at the papers yet--I'll use as a gag joke. Pictures of cats and babies--like there were beggging me to take it. (Ask my friends how much I love cats and babies.) I feel dirty for all of this. But it was all dumped in front of my house. Some of the items I was amazed, embarrassed about. Some of the items I wouldn't touch, left in the pile outside. You'll just have to come and see yourself. I'm not a materialist, though I am lusting for a nanopod. But beyond that, I'm not really greedy. There's no motive. And apparently, this is a victimless crime. It's just shit that I found.

That's the record. I can't get the armoire up the stairs. Tomorrow, I'll give it another whack.

Friday, October 28, 2005

Speaking of Autophagy

I saw George Romero's Dawn of the Dead. Grrreat!




....UPDATE: Technically it's not autophagy. Once they're Zombies, they're not human any more. It's not cannibalism if it's not gorging on its own. There's a lot of investigation that needs to be done about Zombie zoology. On my part, if not the world.

The Final Frontier

Good for him.

Some links.

For the literate-minded I bring you eggcorns. For all intensive purposes, it's all suped up, and handfisted. (I like eggcorns. Most great new words come from prisms, for instances, or eggs-cons.)

Here is Steve Katz' great autobiography (not autophagy) in one paragraph. He's a krazee guy. He wrote me letters of recommendation to get into MFA school. I think my thesis advisor Peter Cameron would say that he is detached from reality too.

Lego madness. I mean there are nerds, and then there are nerds. (And then I supposed there are nerds.) As Milhaus said, "I'm not a nerd! Nerds are smart."

I just wrote an email and I liked what I came up with. I said, this Fitzgerald is no Starr-fucker.

You know, like that Nine Inch Nails song? Starr-fucker? STARR-FUCKER!

I read in an interview with Trent Reznor that they got that STARR-FUCKER sound by shouting starfucker through a vocoder fed through crowd noise. How's that for nerd, nerds!! STARFUCKERS!!!

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Portable Music

Doing research, but I'm not getting anywhere. Well, sort of. If I paid as much time looking for a portable music player as I do for a job, well I might have a job. But I have neither a job (though I do have a MuVO that is kinda shitty and getting shittier--if I had kept all my the cash I've spent on AAA batteries on this stupid machine I'd have enough money for a down payment on a decent iPod.) (And I have a temp job.) But, jesus, these things aren't cheap. They're so cool. I want something that is small and durable and sweet. So I'm thinking Nano, because I don't have a need for 20 gigs of music. Something small. But now that I'm into classical, I wonder if it is possible to go to lossless. And can I play mp3's versus AAC on an iPod? But that means big space. But the nano seems a little fragile. But they are so cool. I don't know what the hell to do. Doesn't matter, I don't have a job. But I'll keep on buying batteries for the stupid MuVo and it is working less and less efficiently. I can get a Creative Labs device, one of the Zen thingos. I have a creative/E-mu sampler that is pretty fantastic. But that's a whole different thing.

Any ideas from audio-philic technical people out there, eh?

Urlirne something everyday

Amniotic fluid is mostly the unborn baby's urine...which it swallows and practices breathing.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

200th post

For my 200th post, I will bring you this.

The saga lives on. I'll do my best to absolutely CORRUPT the little thingo.

The New World Order

More Sci-fi Fascism

Meet the immobile Ipods.


In the movie starring Dana Wynter and Kevin McCarthy, a network of aliens are slowly and secretly taking over the bodies of the citizens of a small town by use of mysterious cadaver-like "pods" that are left in their backyards and basements.


I have not come to any conclusion about whether or not SF is consciously or unconsciously mythological fascist fantasy ala Heinlein/Hitler/Rand (sorry AP!) But my gut tells me, with rants like these, my gut becomes ever solidified with conviction. The "Truthiness" of my conviction is as hard as Iraq. I mean a rock.

The world needs to turn towards fascism, we have to cut this democracy bullshit.

In order to prepare our society for our Alien Overlords. (Apparently!)




...Update: Check out this post.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Ho he ho

smetena papa dopee



gngngngngngng

La de da

see more.

My Favorite Poem of All Time

THE SECOND POEM THE NIGHT-WALKER WROTE

Over all the hilltops
Silence,
Among all the treetops
You feel hardly
A breath moving.
The birds fall silent in the woods.
Simply wait! Soon
You too will be silent.



GOETHE/1780
trans. Robert Bly

Two Things

I wish I had cable so I could watch The Colbert Report.

I wish I had an iPod. Really really bad.

I wish I had an iPod more than I wish I had cable.

I really want an iPod. I can't escape it anymore. Now that I'm working temp jobs, and I'll be doing all this commuting and pointless work.

God I want an iPod. Goddamn these material things. They shouldn't matter. I have all the books and CDs anyone could ever want. But no.

I should do something constructive instead of wishing I had an iPod.

Hey! Tuesday is Poetry Day...

Monday, October 24, 2005

The World of Children

Interesting article about Al-Qaeda via cursor.org.

Al-Qaeda is a network of punks and spoiled brats.

Not unlike our own government here.

See, I've talked about the depiction of children on film--my sort of obsession with kids who are acting on film but not acting because kids don't have the idea of acting in their heads completely grasped because it is such an abstract concept. Except a lot of kids "know" what acting is even if they couldn't philosophize about it. And there's definitely a lot of kids who COULD EVEN philosophize about the idea of acting. So there. But take moments from Cassavettes "Woman Under the Influence;" the kids act the scenes but the line between acting and reacting is blurred. I'm confusing myself. I would usually keep this stuff to myself. But the internet connection is going strong. Kids. Damn those kids. We hate them. They're little people without so many ideas and they just go wild and yell. And sometimes they're pensive. What could their little minds be thinking about? It's like looking at a dog and it's looking at you and you're wondering what the hell is the dog thinking? Is it just pure instinct? Is it wondering if I want to eat it or kick it? Is it trying to figure out I'm a female dog so it can fuck me? Is it just panting until it finally gets to take a shit? It's got to be more than when I look at a goldfish. A goldfish has never looked at me. But dogs look at me. Children are like dogs but much much weirder. They are just like people. Kids are just like human beings. They talk but they're stupid. Not like stupid people, but stupid in a kid way. They're cool too. Dogs are cool. They bark and run around and they let you scratch their ears. Kids find stupid things funny. They know almost as much as adults, except they don't care to hide their emotions--though they CAN hide their emotions.

The Erik Satie album is mostly good. Some of it is definitely prototypical post-minimal spiritualism for salons.

Now I'm listening to Olivier Messiaen, Vingt Regards Sur L'Enfant-Jesus--it's a 2-disc piano work. It's great so far. Definitely prototypical post-minimal spiritualism for living rooms.

Erik Satie

Hey THOD, how do you pronounce his name? Could you spell it out FO_NEE_YET_ICK_ILL_EEE.

Thanks.

So. This movie ABOUT SCHMIDT had beautiful music in it. But vaguely familiar. I said, to myself, this piano music is genius. I guess Hollywood doesn't need the likes of me. This guy kicks the shit out of anything I could ever compose. Then I realize that the music in ABOUT SCHMIDT is OLD STUFF by Erik Satie.

I realized this today because I bought a couple of classical CDs at the Juilliard School even though I don't have a fulltime gig (though I did work today) and I have been LUSTING for wellplayed classical music. (Very strange. After music school the sound of anything remotely classical made me physically sick a la Clockwork Orange.) But I have gotten over it in a hugely disgusting way. Which is bad news because it is even easier to spend TONS of money finding the perfect classical CD than it is to when you're on a punk/unga ground dance music/velvet underground/krautrock/Coltrane kick.

But the good news is that I can get classical CDs from the public library. There's no New York Dolls at the Lincoln Plaza. Though there is Sufjan Stevens. (Who is a fan of YES...what is it with these kids these days????!!!) Soon, I will post Katman's post on Stevie Wonder.. . . ... ..

Sunday, October 23, 2005

The Revolution Lives on Through MaCHErialism!

Chez Che brings you lavishly red, green MerCHEdise!

Conservative PBS


Just when I thought that PBS was getting tame. It's a must see.


Update on angry and sloppy GWB 43: The comatose version. Utterly beautiful. If you happen to have Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20, second movement (the last track on the Amadeus soundtrack) put it on and watch. Better than most any installation I've seen at the MOMA. Mozart knew our future!!!! You can hear it in each tragicomic ivory tickle.

And a note to PineBluffVariant: You can tell it's not a dead body. A dead body wouldn't react like this GWB. It's just unconscious. That's where the term "dead weight" comes from. There's no tension in a dead body--as far as I understand it. Unless it has rigor mortis.

Speaking of which. Mr. Death by (Herzog protege) Errol Morris is genius movie.

My internet connection has been totally erratic since I got fired. So I post when I can. So let me just ramble a little bit more.

About documentaries I've seen recently. I saw American Movie, Capturing the Friedmans, and then Mr. Death. Mr. Death is the superior of the three, though Capturing the Friedmans was very good. Mr. Death was pitch-perfect--Morris took the exact right tone and had the exact right attitude towards his subject. And yet, you could "feel" his directorial touch. He is a master documentarian. Capturing the Friedmans was very well done. In this case the documentarians were extremely sensitive and skillful about an incredibly wrenching story. But as far as American Movie is concerned I was very much put-off by its tone. If you don't know the movie, it is about a guy in Wisconsin who is trying to make horror movies. He is portrayed as an Ed Wood fuck-up type.

This pissed me off. The dude, his name is Mark Borchardt, is a weird dude trying to make original movies. He lives to make movies. He is a total wacko. Yet the makers of the movie would have us believe that this man is a fool. Well, yes he's a fool.

But who the fuck are you guys? As Werner Herzog said there is nothing dignified about making a movie. Don't judge the process of making a movie. Judge only the result. The whole point American Movie is that Mark Borchardt works his ass off to make lame-ass movies. At least, that's what the filmmakers would have us believe.

Werner Herzog is the biggest fool of them all. Nobody believed in him when he made Stroszek--but there are some among us, not only myself, who would claim it as a great modern film.

I mean, Fitzcarraldo was probably one of the most foolish movies ever made.

I enjoyed American Movie because the filmmakers portrayed a man pursuing a vision. And I learned about his friends and families. And his best friend Mike Schank, who is an endearing character. But we hear the snickering of the filmmakers behind the documentarian's camera. Look at these fools, they said. I laughed too at the ridiculousness of Mike Schank, but I felt bad for laughing. And I think the filmmakers felt little to no guilt.

So, on the one hand, I was glad that the filmmakers made the film so I could learn about Mark Borchardt and his struggles as an artist. (Not that he ever claimed to be an "artist.") So I salute the filmmakers for this. And I recognize that the creation of a documentary is struggle in itself. But with their attitude they will never create a great work of art. They may create a movie like Wag the Dog, or Saving Private Ryan, but they will never create a profound work of lasting value unless they grow up and learn to respect humanity.

Whether or not I have grown up is not up for debate. I have not grown up. But I am trying. And I am learning to see what is productive for society and what is not.

I mean, it might have been a producer who told them to make fun of Mark Borchardt. The tone could have originated in the editing room.

Where's Depeche Mode when we need them? (Oh, they just came out with a new album. Good reviews.)

Why the name of my blog is the best blog name for these times.

I'm not proud of it. But it's because we have an angry and sloppy president.

Dear Mr. Bush: I understand now. I'd fuck up too.

Christ on a Crutch

KILL ME NOW.

Via my mom.

Zenocide

Everybody dies. Get over it.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Now it all makes sense.

Put the pieces together. It just fits.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Downfall

As promised, my bitching about Downfall.

I posted as "Dan S." As in Dan Sarcasmus, I guess.

I am Big Brother

I know the person in Madrid who looked at my page. But Galicia?


To be sure, I'm a little uneasy with this power to see wherefrom people are looking at my site. But I guess this is the future. Our notion of privacy shall slowly morph into something totally different than previous definitions. Same with freedom. They are all relative anyway. I mean, I think for most people freedom IS access to the internet--it doesn't matter if everyone can trace each other. On the other hand, I know these words have real meanings; that they didn't just originate out of thin air. Or maybe they did. Not only is there no God, there is no meaning, and no freedom and no privacy. Only relative degrees. But that means there IS freedom and privacy--but only in the vaguest, indefinite way. So there is God, in the sense that God exists as an idea, in the sense that freedom and privacy exist. But my gut tells me that the idea of freedom and privacy are relative in ways that the idea of God isn't. God is an absolute idea. Either there is an all-powerful all-knowing entity that controls everything or there is not. Freedom and privacy are not all or nothing ideas. In fact, they are precisely not all or nothing.




Shoe, glad I got through that one.

For All of You Would-be Manifesto Writers

Be careful what you print on.

Via C&L

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Tuesday is Poetry Day

For free, two Biblically-themed poems by Jason Irwin. (Who can be seen this week in various Niagara-centered bookshops and classrooms reading from his Slipstream chapbook these coming days!)




TWO BY TWO


The second time, the dove did not return.
Noah, clutching an olive branch
looked out across Ararat, as the evening’s sun
scraped the horizon.
Outside the ark,
God’s multitudinous zoology lay in heaps,
like the future enemies of David,
Solomon and Joshua.

Then, on the twenty-seventh day
of the second month,
in the six hundred and first year of his life,
Noah dipped his toes into the mud
and surveyed the wreckage:
Jackals and foxes entwined like brothers
with hyenas, wolves, rats,
jerboa and porcupines,
some on the backs, bloated;
paws outstretched toward heaven
as if struck down in the act of prayer.
Mules, one humped camels, pigs
and horses lay like rugs
alongside gasping fish, chickens, dogs,
men, women and children:
bodies twisted and broken,
turned to stone; faces painted
in a mask of horror, and in their eyes
one could still see the reflection of a wave.
While above in the sky, not an eagle,
falcon, or vulture circled, no
cormorant or crane, nothing in fact
could be found, not even a single ambassador
of the Raptorial order.
No pines, sycamores or locust trees,
no poplars, oaks, or shrubs.
No flowers of jasmine,
honeysuckle, tulips, or poppies.
No flax or frankincense.

Seeing all this, Noah,
along with his wife, his three sons
and his sons’ wives and those creatures
God chose to save, walked two by two
toward a grassy patch.
Noah built an altar
and choosing
from every clean animal and every clean bird,
lit a holocaust.
After this Noah planted a vineyard.
At harvest time he made wine.
Lying in his tent, his three sons found him
naked and drunk, boasting
of his endurance, his affinity with God
and the beauty of rainbows.




JACOB’S DREAM

I was lying in the lap of a Canaanite woman,
caressing her breasts,
as she fed me figs and caviar.
I was bringing food to my blind father,
who turned into a bleating lamb.

My father was a bleating lamb, tied
to a wood pyre and my brother and I
stood on a plain of tall grass, watching.
I held his heel in my hand
and it burned like Heaven.

I was on my way to my uncle’s
to choose among his daughters
a wife. I was lying in the sand,
a stone for a pillow beneath my head.

I was lying in my father’s arms
as he told me about the time
when he was a boy and his father
took him into the desert.
My mother appeared, dressed
in designer jeans and gold bracelets.
She poured milk from a jar
and the milk turned to blood.
This is the blood of our people,
she said. This is your blood.

I was lying in my mother’s arms
and felt a burning inside me,
pushing upward from my loins.
I stood watching the place in the sand
where the blood spilled.

With a stone for a pillow, beneath my head,
I was lying in my boxers in the desert,
when I saw a man being swallowed
by the earth. Father, father, he called.
The child in your womb is our nation.

Everything was black like my soul.
I lay there, caressing my father’s head


as he told me how God saved him
from the fire. My mouth was full
of blood and sand. All I could feel
was the child within me, pushing.

Lying naked in the sand, I looked up
and saw a stairway. Its top,
lost in the pitch and clouds.
A light, like a million Egyptian suns
lit up the sky. Gargoyles slid up and down
the railing like mischievous children.

All around me a whirlwind raced
and I became a thorn tree.
My father was there, calling my brother
who, in his blindness, he thought
was me. My mother sat on the ground
in her designer jeans, weeping
over the jar of spilt milk.

I was a thorn tree with the child of God
in my womb, when I heard a voice
like the rush of water, come from the light.
I the Lord, spoke the voice. I felt it pound
in my chest like a parade drum, felt it grip like desire
or gas. I the Lord,
and I fell to my knees and shat.

Getting Medieval on your Brain

Good Ole' ECT.

Actually, the Medieval's didn't have electricity. So I guess it would be getting Thomas Edison on your ass/brain. The idiom becomes very confusing at this point.

Banana

Okay, so this is strange. Admittedly, mentally, I've been in a strange state of mind lately; not sleeping regularly, watching lots of movies one after another in a trance, having weird dreams. But this morning I was quite surprised to find a mottled banana underneath my pillow. I don't rememember last night quite that well. Sure, you say, I must have been drinking. No! I haven't had a drop since the weekend--Saturday night when I had two and half beers. I did take a seven hour nap in the afternoon and got up around 9. Then I went to the coffee shop because my home internet wasn't working. There I got a coffee and checked my email. (BTW, I'm looking for a new roommate for my Astoria pad.) The coffee owner guy, a nice guy named Meesh or something, was talking to somebody about this Cassavettes movie where Gena Rowland was going crazy--but he couldn't remember the name of it. I interrupted him and said that every Cassavettes movie basically about Gena Rowland's character going crazy. But I knew which one he meant--but my half-dazed mind couldn't conjure the name of the movie in question. It was A Woman Under the Influence. But I couldn't remember it. I felt stupid because I own all of the Cassavettes movies where Gena Rowlands goes crazy. So I paid and took my coffee home and watched David Letterman (who is getting old and crotchety and therefore better--though the top ten was a racist litany of reasons to suspect that your barber is a member of Al Qaida--maybe I took especial offense because my Astorian barber is a guy named Ali) and ate some of my Chili. Then I drank some orange juice and somewhere along the way I must have brought the banana with me to my room. I tried getting on the internet again and it didn't work and then I played with my audio programs (that's not a euphemism) and then I decided to do some reading. I've been reading the bible the last four years, but I've only just got to the part where Abraham is asked by God to sacrifice Isaac. I didn't get far, and even with all that caffeine in me I was sleepy. (I had just taken my meds too.) And so I turned out the lights, listened to some music and then fell asleep. And in the morning I woke up at 9--that's when my alarm sounded. I have it set to NPR now rather than Air America. And I hit the snooze button probably 10 times. As I got up for whatever reason my hand found its way underneath my pillow and I found a banana. It is still in good shape. It's mottled, not even black. So now I'm going to eat it.

That reminds me, I should get some of Jason's poetry up here on this here ole' blog. He has a great poem about when Noah got drunk. I didn't realize until reading it last night that Noah really did get drunk. I'm eating the banana now. But now I need to go find a job.

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Bollocks!

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Bark Psychosis

Is a revelation. I've been looking for revelations. Three revelations of late. One, I've been enjoying silent films. First Murnau's The Last Laugh, Dreyer's Joan of Arc, and just recently Murnau's Faust. Something about these filmmakers; something primal. It helps that Herzog says that Murnau is one of his touchstones (if not influences) and Cassavettes said that Dreyer is one of his influences.

Second revelation has come in the form of Italo Svevo's Zeno's Conscience. That book was so good that I can't quite come to terms with the possibility of reading any other fiction for awhile.

Third revelation is finally hearing the album Hex by Bark Psychosis. This 1993 album sounds like it was recorded this week. Apparently in his review of "Hex" Simon Reynolds had to invent the term postrock to describe it. As far as 90's bands that I didn't listen to in the 90's, they are right up there with Slint. And maybe much more significant than Slint. (They sound a little like Low, with some Cure: Radiohead, Sigor Ros, Tortoise, The Notwist except 10 years before the fact. It's uncanny.)

The irony is that the group broke up and formed a Drum N Bass outfit known as Boymerang. I just recently signed up with a site called britblogs and listed my blog as a drum-n-bass themed blog. Of course I hardly ever talk about drum-n-bass--and I'm not very interested in drum-n-bass right now, relatively speaking. Though I like to keep up to date with the beats. Anyhow, Boymerang had some pretty slamming tunes---but it is nothing like Bark Psychosis! Why oh why did they break up? The music is as pretty as anything on Explosions in the Sky except a billion times better.

Modes of Resistance

Palestinian Hip Hop.


It's pretty sweet.

Saturday, October 15, 2005

This is what I'm talking about.

That would be this.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Ward Churchill and Modes of Resistance

The key to the revolution might be found in the Hip Hop culture. Fascinating interview with the CU professor who made the comment about the "little Eichmanns." Turns out the whole thing was about race/ethnicity and the little white supremacist lurking in the hearts of white post-neo-Marxists like myself.

The only thing is I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it. I mean, besides waiting for the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the non-white proletariat.

Seriously! I don't know what to do!

Lucia Berlin

About a year ago one of the most important people in my life died, and I didn't even know it. Lucia Berlin was my professor at University of Colorado. I lost contact with her after I got into Sarah Lawrence College for two reasons 1.) one she moved to San Francisco and stopped using her email and 2.) she was slightly miffed with me because in the midst of her busy move I made her put together 20 letters of recommendations for my bombardment campaign of MFA programs.

I always meant to try to get a hold of her. She disappeared almost completely from the net. There was one mention of her reading at San Francisco State University, and I thought maybe I should have got ahold of the students there and try and find her. And this weekend I decided to google her to see if there was any news. And I found the news.

It is not surprising. I took two creative writing classes with her in 96 and 97, and even back then she was very ill. One of her lungs was collapsed, she was on oxygen, and she just didn't seem well. She was in constant pain, I know.

But she was just an amazing, beautiful person. She was the perfect workshop teacher, especially for undergraduates. She always discovered something to love in anybody's writing. And she would celebrate it. She was hilarious and sharp and witty. And she loved all fiction, new and old. She was one of the people who really opened my eyes to the beauty of fiction. How valid this pursuit of ours is. Some of the things she said have stayed with me, and given me strength in the harder moments. Luckily I had kept in touch with her for a couple years out of school. She recommended things for me to read, and she kept encouraging me to write.

Indeed, she was a fan of my work. She had nothing but good things to say about my stories. I still have her notes of praise, and if I am in an especially depressed situation I can go to those notes and remember what she had said about me and my possibilities.

As I said, it was not surprising to see that she's gone. It is somewhat of a relief, because she was in a great deal of physical pain. But she was a truly magnificent person; and if I ever end up achieving anything, it will be partly her encouragement. I told her that I would dedicate a book to her. She didn't say that was important, only that I keep writing.

Lucia only wrote short stories, and they are very good. Almost every story she wrote was based on her personal experiences. The prose is crystal sharp, etching pictures of loneliness and drifting darknesses of the lives of New Mexicans and New Yorkers and other people just surviving. Definitely in the Carver/Chekhov vein. Her most famous story is In the Laundromat.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Donnie Darko

Is better the second time/director's cut. But I don't know about a movie that needs all this explanation.

Too, through time second the movie better much a is Memento.

Much too.

The Things They Carried

What's Our American Hero got in his backpack?

A vision of our dark future:

Beck meets Abu Ghraib.

Friday, October 07, 2005

The Last Laugh

Everyone is looking out for the last laugh. Constantly searching for an edge, for a chance for it. That's what the whole game is about. The last laugh. The laugh at other people, unfortunately.

That's how I interpreted FW Murnau's The Last Laugh. But maybe everything is about getting the last laugh. For everybody. That's where the Republican Smirk comes from, the knowingfulness, the anticipation of the Last Laugh. GW's looking for the Last Laugh. Karl Rove is looking for the last laugh. That laugh. I hear the laugh. That's what is beautiful about Murnau's Last Laugh--is that it is a silent movie. The laughter is ringing in our ears the whole time. The real joke is that there is no last laugh only a last gasp.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Add Distortion and Reverb to Your Life Today!

I went to the Chinatown Tea Shop today. I went there with the intention to write. Write, I did. But it isn't a great place to write. It's far too interesting. Starbucks is a better place to write because it won't be interesting, and there won't be anybody interesting there, except pretty girls who buy iced lattes. But why would I be interested in anybody who gets Starbucks, particularly Iced Lattes? But who the hell am I to judge? I'd be in there too. But I don't do Starbucks generally. Even though I wrote most of my first attempted novel in Starbucks. But that was in Seattle. You can't escape it in Seattle. Starbucks is a patch on the Seattle-cultural quilt. Like the Spoonman and the Space Needle. (The former should be lauded, the latter explauded.)

Anyhow, I shouldn't go to the Chinatown teashop to write. I should go there to think. I should go there with people. So if anyone's interested in meeting me at the chinatown tea shop, let me know. La Vie de Boheme, c'est vrai.

I could sublet my room and live in coffee shops. I don't know wherefrom my income would originate. But I'd have no address so nobody could bill me. Matti Pellonpaa lived that way. Of course, Matti Pellonpaa died that way. I don't think I'm strong enough for that kind of life.

Monday, September 26, 2005

Fear, hope, with a squirt of of cynical hyperbole

Rampant corporatism running amuck is the AIDS of society.

Some good stuff.

I have come to the conclusion that the only people who have ever known how to do anything are Picasso, Beethoven and Stevie Wonder; all anybody else has ever figured out all--if anything--is how to cover their own ass.


...cursor is even greater than normal. Things are abuzz. I hope it's a sign of turning point towards a brighter future... not a big fall into the big black pit...

(I will get to Downfall...I promise. I have formulate my critique--I had a complex reaction to it. My criticism is akin to Bo B's, the first reader review, scroll down. But with a nuance to it I can't quite pinpoint at the moment.)

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Post Employment Fever!

Author's note: To be read with snappy-rhythmed samba in the background, like the music to the end credits of "Brazil."

When I got fired Friday I was in a sort of surreal euphoria. I had meant to go to the tea shop in chinatown. But I ended up at the Time Square stop. And there was some music—the guy was playing "Brazil" on a cheesy keyboard and it was really danceable, and he had the little dancing figures moving their butts. And I aped the moving figures. It was a good moment. I was just left reeling, and I could dance in the 42nd street subway station. And then I danced over to the scientology table. I started talking to them as I grooved. One guy asked me if I was stressed yeah. Heck, I just got fired. He wanted to know if I knew the book he got. Dianetics. Of course, I said. You know what's it's about? Yeah, like emotional tone scales and such. Well, he said, that's part of Scientology. But this is Dianetics, he said. But it's all part of a continuum of the philosophy or whatever, I said, right?. He wanted to know how I knew about emotional tone scales. I said I dabble in esoterica. I'm interested in ideas. Then some other people came up and sat down to use the magnetized emotion readings. And so I danced along to the infectious beat over to another Sci-Fi table. And I sat down and I picked up the pair of cylindrical emotion meters. I said how do these work? And she told me to sit down and hold the electronic emotion readers. She asked me if I had any stress. I said, heck yeah, I just got fired today. I was futzing with the cylinders and she told me not to move around. I said it was hard not to move because the music was so fun—really makes you want to dance, and she smiled and said , yeah. But I have to be still she said. And we looked at the metered over the right part of the scope—that's the stress area. And she told me to think of something stressful; I said, laugning, that that was easy! I just got fired! And so the stress meter went to the far end. I watched it dutifuly. It was wavering a bit, but it mostly commited itself to the upper range. Okay, she said,
think about something else stressful. Okay I said. And tried to think of something else stressful. And I said you'll have to excuse me, I'm having trouble thinking of something else. That's okay. Take your time. Okay, I said, I'm thinking about something else. I was thinking about the lack of female companionship in these vast tracts of my short life, and I pinpointed it down in my mind. But I was still reeling in the wake of being fired just an hour previous. I told her I was thinking about this other problem, but I can't get the idea that I was just fired out of my head. It was just really making me so angry. She said that was okay. She asked if I knew this book. Dianetics. And I said of course. I said Of course, L Ron Hubbard. He was a science fiction book writer. I used to read some of his stuff. Most of it isn't any good. But I read this one called The Lietenant and it was pretty darn good post-apocalyptic story about how everything is in chaos and this army lietenant leads his army, trying to get in touch with the rest of the armed forces, trying to bring law to a lawless land—I think he gets shot at the end. She nodded her head with those cult-glazed eyes, because she didn't seem to care, muttered something about how she knew he was a writer—I said I don't think The Lietenant in print any more, but you should check it out-- she handed me the book and made me read the back cover. And it said something about our „reactive mind“ and I said, what's the „reactive“ mind? And she said that it's a place where all your bad thoughts and feelings go. Why is it called reactive, I said, I mean not every one of our mental processes that are „reactive“ are bad. For instance, if I'm too close to the subway when it's coming out of the tunnel on past the platform my mind reacts automatically by making me step away from the dangerous zooming machine! You're missing the point, she said. The reactive mind is where all our bad thoughts come from. Well, why is it called „reactive?“ Isn't that a sloppy term? You should call it a „negative reactive mind“ or something. And she said that I was missing the point. So I left her off the hook on that one and I read more of the back cover. And it said that if you get rid of the reactive mind then you get rid of your stress. That's very problematic idea for me, but I didn't go into detail because I was distracted by the quotes on the bottom of the page. There was one from John Travolta, and another by Chick Corea. I said, Oh Chick Corea! He's great. Well, I mean his old stuff was great. Oh yes! She said. Yeah. He was in this group in the early seventies called Circle, and it was with Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton—Toni Braxton's dad by the way! I said—and Sam Rivers, brilliant musician, and I think it was Stanley Clarke (or was it Dave Holland—Stanley Clark and Chick hooked up later, maybe) and Chick Corea with Barry Altschul—an amazing drummer, I said. He's really great. It was great band. (And, yes K-man, and other Jazzheads, I think I got the Circle -line-up wrong) and they called their band Circle because they were going to circle through all the world's different belief systems. And they tried buddhism and Islam and whatever and when they got to Scientology Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke decided to stick with it and the band broke up and Chick Corea and Stanley Clarke started Return to Forever which I liked when I was kid but in retropect they were terrible. And then my cellphone rang so I was off the hook, I said I had to take this call and I stood up and took the call and didn't return to the scientologist table.

Downfall

Some day I'll do a post about why Downfall is a stupid movie.

This scares me.

What do we got here?

Friday, September 23, 2005

These are "found" transmissions from the Stockhausen--Mississippi Blues Continuum Galactic Transmitter: (Email exchange between the Errorist and Sarcasmus)(K-man world traveller--any additional thoughts? How does Stevie Wonder fit in?)


No shit, Anthony is Toni's dad?

Wow...

I want to hear the father/daughter album!!


The alan licht album's good, huh? I listened to it before burning, because it'd
been a couple
years, and i assumed i would've outgrown it or something. that it'd sound
late-90s dated. but it
actually sounds better now. the swells and fades are natural and powerful and
the energy is not
forced. i like the trumpet playing and the way the electronics and guitars are
indistinguishable.

i'm a big loren mazzacane connors fan, he's a white art dude (painter by first
choice apparently,
the guitar is a hobby) who plays 'blues'; ...

---------extended digression alert!

...i'm a mega blues fan, and your thoughts about that make me want to make you a
super blues mix
cd immediately. you saw ghost world right? it's all summed up in that... early
blues, and late
blues too (though in very very different ways, approximately the difference
between elvis and
public enemy) did things that no other music has ever done. spiritual ghost
music, earthy fucking
music, often unified into one. types of beauty available nowhere else.

but white boys play with cheap distortion pedals in bands called things like
Blues Hammer, and
think it's the same thing.

"I've been PLOOWWWWWWWWWINNNNN!!! (uh)"

digression-within-digression: yesterday i passed a half-empty bar that was
blasting "When the
Levee Breaks". Bummer. It may be one of Zep's high (or low) points, but it's
surely one of the
worst parodies of the blues ever.

the song they rave about in Ghost World, skip james' "devil got my woman" really
is as good as
they say. There is nothing else like that song anywhere. and there's many other
songs like that
(in a nothing else like that kind of way) - robert johnson is just one of many
who will chill the
spine until it's frozen. the whole universe of music is in the blues, one way or
another. i could
listen to nothing else but 'blues' my whole life and never get bored.

---------end digression!

anyway, loren m.c. somehow avoids the white blues curse, by making something
OTHER entirely, using
some blues tropes and tossing out all the 'authenticity' traps. long floating
bent notes in
ambient soundspaces. lots of missed notes and string noise. sort of a noise
approach to blues,
without any pretentious 'fusion' bullshit, it's just a thing among other things.
it's good. his
wife also is a great singer, in an over-the-top sobby kind of way, and when she
sings a song with
him occasionally, it's totally transcendent. remind me to make a copy.

hm, this was gonna be a short reply, but as usual it got out of control;
more later.

--- meltmaster@aol.com wrote:

> what is fado?
> The OMH box set is pretty great. It takes a long time to realize how
> great. But I love electronics. You know.
> The ambient jazz is the alan licht thing you burnt me. Very sweet. I'll
> have to burn you some Roscoe Miller. And the Dave Holland quartet. With
> Sam Rivers and Anthony Braxton. (Toni Braxton's dad, maybe you knew
> that.)
>
> That whole thing about all music sounding the same...yeah. Some of it
> ACTUALLY does sound the same. But usually it sounds the same because it
> is a genre or style that you are unaccustomed to. You haven't learned
> the rules of it. I have a pet theory that the things that you find
> annoying and repetitive in music you don't like or unaccustomed to are
> EXACTLY the things that you come to love in it if you open yourself to
> it. I don't know if that would work with Clint Black. I mean, I HATED
> Salt N Peppa when I was a kid. But know I LOVE them. I think they're
> great. Yeah, but Techno is hopeless in America. For years it was
> laughed at. Then it became popular, but all the popular stuff is
> absolute total shite. Irony being that Techno was invented in America
> by wacky black dudes in Detroit. And house by weirdos in Chicago. And
> all that shit is the absolute best techno ever made. The early rave
> culture stuff in London was good. Though, that produced so much shit
> that it probably will not be appreciated, probably ever. Chemical
> Brothers took what was uninteresting about it and sold it as the new
> rock. I love Drum N Bass, but in the same way that I love the Mexican
> Pizza at the Chinese Mexican place. It is not good for me at all, but I
> can't get enough of it. DrumNBass is sort of the electronic equivalent
> of Metallica; except that it doesn't take much talent to put together a
> decent beat. It takes skill and work though--like pacing a horror flick
> effectively. Not everyone can do it. And you have to have a lot of
> angst to get into it, I think.
>
> Blues is a hard one for me. I don't really get much into it. I like
> Robert Johnson. Especially if I'm feeling sick and insomniacal. I know
> this because leslie had his collected recordings and I got to know it
> lonely nights in Burgos. I realized how much shit (see Rolling Stones
> et al.) was stolen from him. Also I've heard some Muddy Waters and I
> think he's a genius. Hell, he invented hard rock. But people like Eric
> Clapton and anything of that blues that has a chorus pedal is total
> total shite. It's kill me now music. Yuppie's with nothing to live for
> music. The worst. So I know there's good blues.
>
> I always wanted to write about Satie. He died totally poor, in a
> cellar, or something. In Squalor. Just like Vincent Price's dad, the
> inventor of Baking Soda. I can't remember. His music is beautiful. Not
> Vincent Price. Satie. I need to hear more of it. He kind of presaged
> ambient. Or maybe I read that in the David Toop Oceans of Sound. I
> can't remember. He presaged post minimalism(!)
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ero
> To: meltmaster@aol.com
> Sent: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 12:33:12 -0700 (PDT)
> Subject: Re: hymnen part 2
>
> http://justworldnews.org/archives/001455.html
>
>
> i think thursday is good. this thursday. next thurs, not so good, for
> obvious
> reasons. i did a
> quick test the other day at home, and it seems like it'll work. i need
> to buy
> some long speaker
> cord. and su's laptop power cord cuts out spontaneously at times, so
> there's
> some potential
> battery life issues. (might should borrow jake's, except then we'd be
> out of
> winampland. know
> anyone with a good pc laptop?)
>
> i know nothing about modern composition. except that i've listened to a
> fair
> amount of it here &
> there. but usually, knowing nothing of the theoretical underpinning,
> i'm left to
> whether it sounds
> good or not. and the results are usually mixed. consequently, i know i
> like the
> minimalists, and i
> have some serial composer i randomly copied from a library cd, who i
> like
> listening to, because
> the sound of the random piano notes is soothing in a windchime-like
> way.
> otherwise i am innocent
> as a babe.
>
> i like satie, but that's not fair. and i don't claim to understand what
> he did
> either, it just
> works as music for airports.
>
> it's like pornography/art. i know it when i see it.
>
> which, come to think of it, is about how i respond to 'classical' music
> also.
> mozart usually
> irritates because the intervals seem trite (to me, he's the eric
> clapton of
> classical, undoubtedly
> brilliant but overly integrated through no fault of his own into what
> now sounds
> like blandness);
> mahler and shostakovich usually seem overbearingly bombastic.
> otherwise, i don't
> know my head from
> my ass.
>
> i'm listening to the rough guide to fado now, it's reassuringly
> familiar and
> unfamiliar at the
> same time.
>
> such a wierd process, learning the language of music as you listen. a
> friend of
> ours once
> complained about all techno sounding the same. i explained to her that
> all blues
> sounds the same
> to a lot of people.
>
> of course, a lot of techno DOES all sound the same.
>
> of course, so does a lot of blues.
>
> in both cases, only the shitty stuff.
>
> for what it's worth, EVERYONE sends personal email at work. (at least i
> hope
> so!) the trick is to
> look like you're working hard, when people are stressed, and then you
> build up
> slack credit...
>
>
>
> fuck bad conversation. but sometimes it happens.
>
>
> sometimes even good conversation seems bad though. dunno. i can barely
> finish a
> coherent sentence
> these days.
>
> --- meltmaster@aol.com wrote:
>
> > I haven't heard that. I have heard comparatively little Stockhausen.
> > Whenever I hear him, though, it blows me away. I have one CD,
> Kontakt,
> > I think it is called. It is percussion plus electronics. And it is
> > amazing. I just don't know how the hell he did it using the
> technology
> > that he had. Of all the avant garde guys who are pre/anti-minimalist,
> > he's the one who seems to make the most human music. It's not
> everyday
> > listening. I'll make a copy of Kontakt if yr interested. I have made
> > you and Su a huge pile of CDs. Considering that I have recieved over
> > the time I've known you accumulatively a huge stack of cds from you,
> it
> > was the least I could do.
> > Back in music school I heard some orchestral stuff he did. His
> invented
> > a system of orchestration called Klangerfarbenmelodie. I don't
> remember
> > exactly what that means, but it is basically a kaleidoscope of
> timbres.
> > I don't know how much you know about serial music--and how much you
> > need to know. But the basic idea was to decenter our sense of pitch,
> > timbre and rhythm. Weber is the God of the serialists. Schoenberg
> being
> > merely a Wagnerite, despite the fact that he invented serialism. Or
> > dodecaphonics.
> > I don't know what my job is anymore. So I posted on the blog, and
> > responding to you. Guess I'll see how long I get away with this
> before
> > I get fired.
> >
> > Did we want to do a sound test/check thing on Thursday? I was
> thinking
> > of getting a drink with one of my new Brooklyn friends then, anyways.
> > And on Friday everyone is going to the Beergarden. I went to the beer
> > garden three days in a row last week. That was fun. The one night
> > Patrick was there, great conversation. The other nights the
> > conversation was some of the worst I've ever been in. I feel guilty
> > because my coworker Nelly is busy with work. But I don't know what
> the
> > fuck I'm supposed to be doing. But back to the conversation. You know
> > how you listen to other people and you wonder why the fuck they are
> > wasting their times saying such stupid things? Well I was involved in
> > some of those conversations. It's not like they're bad people, or
> even
> > stupid. It's just the conversations were BAD. So cheers. Or in the
> > words of Stockhausen blllllllllleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep p p
> p
> > p mugggaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazoooomomomooo
> >
> errrrroooooooopstupidamericansdieintheirstupidlookingbuildingsisbeautiful
>
> > --letthemfallontheirownimperialistphallussword
>

Part II (by The Errorist)

well, supposedly it starts over a century ago with black fife-and-drum bands.
and of course work
songs, and spirituals. the blues heyday lasted from the 20s to the 60s, a 40
year span after which it mostly became kind of a parody of itself (just like rock- only lasted from the 40s to the 80s). what we know of it is totally wrapped up in the changes in recording technology. the earliest stuff is an oral history form almost, in which everyone shared lyrics and wrapped their styles and topics around regional variations of a sort of universal currency of music. as records started arriving, people started imitating stars and originating schools of music, also changing their sounds and song structures to record better- playing hot 2 minute songs instead of strong 4 hour songs, if you follow me. and by the time jimi hendrix came along, 'the blues' was already in sci-fi land and had crossbred so many times that only white folks talked about 'the blues' anymore. sort of like going to a hip hop club and asking the dj for some al green. The whole notion of blues is retroactively imposed, like taking all of black pop from the last couple decades and calling it 'urban'; which will probably happen, actually. but there's disco, and funk, and sixties soul, and the philly sound, and prince, and old-school hip hop, and gangsta, and new jack swing, and... 'the blues' contains at least as much differentiation. so the blues really does contain multitudes. though usually when people talk
about it, regrettably, they start with eric clapton and get as far as bb king and muddy
waters. they think
it all goes,
da DA DA DUM
da DA DA DUM
and has someone named "Blind HotDog Freddy" singing about how he was maimed by a
tornado.

But that's a pretty small part of it.and in that time it encompassed a ton of sophistication and also raw scrapy madness. sometimes at the same time. muddy waters was a great figure, but his rival howlin' wolf was more popular in their chicago heyday. a 6'5" 300-lb dude who howled and growled and climbed the curtains during shows. and the quote about his voice, appropriately, from sam phillips, the sun records guy: "here was where the soul of man never dies".. beefheart and then tom waits owe much of their vocal schtick to him, but it wasn't far from his speaking voice. crazy. his bands rock
harder than just about anything before or since.

i also love his predecessor, charlie patton, the first big mississippi blues
star, (and sort of a demented musical father figure to robert johnson), a half-cherokee one-quarter black one-quarter white guy who looks vaguely foppish & menacing in the only photo, but whose voice, like the wolf's, sounds like a steamroller. totally amazing. and the one-chord drones on guitar are full of polyrhythms, accent stutters, strange moments where his voice and guitar trade parts. but in his own way he was playing pop songs, and had the first hit records. like a lot of these guys he had a long career and was semi-nomadic, and everywhere he played, people imitated him.
but he was most successful because he had records, which startled the hell out of all the
musicians around him.

there's also the 'female' blues (bessie smith, ma rainey, et al), which came out
of vaudeville, sold way more records than the boys, predates most of them, and often sounds
totally different-more roots-of-jazz, with hot clarinet wanking and dense hard piano. some of that
stuff is amazing.

or piano-based blues sort of has its own world, with the boogiewoogie and
barrelhouse heavies.

and whole galaxies of ragtime and roots gospel and other styles that have folded
into blues in retrospect; jug bands prospered in memphis, and some of that is great fun funky music, sort of like the hidden grandfather of the meters.

anyway, i'll stop. i can talk for hours about this shit.

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Mad shit

Fucking, mad, mad shit.

I'm telling you man

Wilson Jones is the way to fucking go when you're going binders.

Good

Arianna via Atrios.

Wednesday is Sloppy Link Day


Fucking beautiful Binder. It's a Wilson Jones Clear Front Hanging Ring Binder.
The Three Christs of Toledo.

Kangaroo pouch ulcers.

It is Wednesday, is it?

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Arguments about art


When I was in Spain, I cut this out of the International Herald-Tribune a week before the Papa passed away. It is probably my favorite clipping of all time. I sent a photocopy of it to a famous writer with whom I am in occasional correspondance. I told him, I've enclosed a photograph of the pope a week before his death--it's kind of like a Francis Bacon painting. His response?

It's a lot better than any Francis Bacon he's ever seen. He said it summed up his opinion about Bacon: "You've seen one screaming Pope, you've seen them all."

When I get internet set-up at home again I'll post the exact wording of his letter. It's priceless.

(I think if you click on the photo it'll enlarge!)

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Stockhausen

I read somewhere, I'll have to find the link to it, but Stockhausen, who might possibly be the greatest living composer of western music of the post-war era, said something extremely controversial but brain-lobe provoking: Something to the effect that the act of 9-11, specifically the crash of the planes into the WTC was the greatest work of art in the history of humankind. I don't know how to respond to this. Stockhausen must know more about art than me, because he's a genius, but obviously anything involving the willful death of innocent lives involved in a "work of art" has some problematic aspects. I mean Christo and his big umbrella falling over and killing a passerby is one thing. Where does the Holocaust fit into this scheme of things. I mean, sure, Hitler wasn't the first guy to try to kill a bunch of Jews, or commit Genocide (see Turkey via Armenians, or US via sloppily imported Africans, or US via native cultures etc etc)--but what efficiency! Hitler had the master's stroke. I suppose the argument is that within the symbolism and the originality act of violence lies the art. Still problematic. Something to think about, I guess. Anyhow, if 9-11 is not the greatest work of art in history of humankind (Other contenders that caused much bloodshed, like THe Pyriamids should be considered!) then the following gets my vote:

This. Thanks to Monsieur Duffy. (I don't think he reads my blog, but thanks anyway.)

Genius. I have a CD of south Indian drumming playing in the background, and it goes PERFECT.