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.