Diary of a Turd Polisher |
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Musings by thubert/norelpref/uncle conscious, both plain and wa-wa pedal; unabashed ranting, "explicit" use of language (words like "exacerbate" and "egregious" may be used)..... 
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Monday, July 30, 2001
what up, dogma? I guess to become a "blog of note" I'll have to redesign the interface so it looks real hep and cool, maybe even attach a boss style sheet, and then empty the contents of my empty head write out onto the code. But do we want this? Are we desirous of becoming noteworthy in this milieu of mediocrity? Methinx not.
Song titles from the first Stung album: The Cult of Me Money money money money Exquisite Corpse Ecce Homo Why do I know a few more things? Damn I'm good You could never love me as much as I love myself I am great and I am all I think about Shameless Self-Promotion Booking-agent Man Save the Rainforest Crunch Wesley Willis is God If I ever lose my Faith in Me If the Russians Exploit their Children Too...... Sunday, July 29, 2001
But I digress, gentlemen. Let me get back on track. The stench is nothing, after a spell. In fact, the putrescence becomes even somewhat integrated into the membranes, to the olfactories, or rather the fetid air becomes the standard, a standard which no longer crinkles the nose or screws up the eyes, or causes clenched teeth and powerful frowning. One can even smile after a fashion, and engage in sedulous hand pumping which verges on a genuine, sanguinity at times during the day. Bear the teeth, unless you have, like myself, utterly convoluted dentifrice, in which case you grin like an idiot, stretch the face widely like a jazz drummer in the thick of oblvious swing, or a moron who has just crapped his/her pants..... But I am getting off the track again.
Is there nothing left on the web which is untouched by the whore of commerce? This EEK-commerce (or should we say eke-commerce) modality is I hope not ineluctable, but merely a transient phase in the development of our species. We are such slow learners, aren't we? Gestating forever it seems, wallowing in our own filth and dung until we have eclipsed a taste for anything else in our lives. Bathing in the Ganges of pop culture, Springerized amusements (the triumvirate of jerry, jerry, jerry) triune, trinity in the name of the fodder, the soon, and the holy coast. Who rocks the most? Who makes the toast? The MotherNature Fucker Home Clear-Cutting Kit. For clearing away those troublesome oaks and eucalypti who have so inconveniently lived and grown for a hundred years or so. You can even hire some poor boys who who really feel the lash of society's bias against them, in particular the brunt of evil, misdirected FEMINISM, which seeks to emasculate and emotionally castrate. Saturday, July 28, 2001
How does one ever get accustomed to the stench, you ask, gentlemen? (and, with respect to our politically erect cultsore, "gentlewomen"). The truth be known, one NEVER gets used to the odor. Every day is a new experience, every stroke a bite out of the proverbial excrement sandwich. One makes a "craft" out of his/her turd polishing. This is the smell of survival, of rut, of fear of sitting in front of the Burger King drive-thru with a crudely scrawled sign requesting food (will work for, or not).
My name is Hegemoney Cricket, chirping away, rubbing my rusty, cilia ridden legs together to give you that magic squeaking sound, that high pitched squeal similar to that of a manager scratching out obscure visions upon a whiteboard (how appropriately named!) with those putrescent feet-smellin' dry-erase markers. Oh I'm no fool, no sirree, I'm gonna live to be 53, I've got a type-A personality, but I'm no fool. I've got an M.B.A. Can you say that, boys and girls? EM-BEE-AYYY--yeah, sounds like a degree that might have been bestowed on the Fonz, right? You don't know who the Fonz was? Arthur Fonzarelli, aka Henry Winkler, aka greasy 50s fictional construct?
Oh my God! There are no pulsating, gyrating, obnoxious banner ads on our website! We've got to correct this situation immediately. And please make our logo rotate, like every other fucking stereotypical cliche unimaginative corporate hacky sack banner ad out there in webland, okay? Friday, July 27, 2001
Monday, July 02, 2001
After hearing much hype about HBO's "The Sopranos," I decided to rent the first few episodes on VHS and see the program for myself. What I found was an embarrassing series of recycled mob cliches, too many references to other gangster movies (apparently an effort to lend greater credibility to the show, or to act as a kind of "homage"), and of course the word "fuck" used gratuitiously in every sentence. And hey, gangstas got feelins', too, and they got senses o' humor, and can even crack wise with all kinds of self-referential statements and even a kind of pseudo-intellectual quasi philosophical jabber made originally tired by Saint Quentin of Tarentino in "Reservoir Dogs". Add to this the usual tits and ass apparently required for cable viewing after ten o'clock, and you have nothing special at all. T and A, a few chuckles, a few bullets in the head, couple references to The Godfather, with of course the usual pop culture and psychiatric references and this soup bubbles along in the cauldron of mediocrity along with every other fucking television commodity. Monday, June 18, 2001
perFUNKtory reunion! Stung has agreed to compress the many tentacles of his narcissism into one complete whole and perform as perFUNKtory again. The terms of the contract have not yet been disclosed, but rumor has it Stung will get a whopping handjob to his ego. He'll be doing a few covers, but mostly original perFUNKtory tunes. Who can forget the ever unforgettable, "You can never love me as much as I love myself...."
...DOOMED TO REPEAT IT......DOOMED TO REPEAT IT.....DOOMED TO REPEAT IT.....DOOMED TO REPEAT IT.....DOOMED TO REPEAT IT.....DOOMED TO REPEAT IT.....DOOMED TO REPEAT IT.....DOOMED TO REPEAT IT.....DOOMED TO REPEAT IT.....DOOMED TO REPEAT IT.....DOOMED TO REPEAT IT.....DOOMED TO REPEAT IT.....DOOMED TO REPEAT IT.....DOOMED TO REPEAT IT.. Tuesday, June 12, 2001
The artist formerly known as "Perfunctory" but now unknown as "Stung" has announced that he is applying for patents on the E, D and A major chords and possibly B minor. Other patents initiated include preventing end users from "tweaking" different settings, such as treble or bass or EQ to their own liking. Stung's legal team had this to say: "Stung was listening to 'rocking in the usa' the other day, by sheer accident (as he was subjected to a muzak in Albertsons) and it occurred to him that no one had legally secured those three chords, and that one could indeed profit from such action. Soon, before anyone wishes to use those chords, they'll have to pay royalties to Stung." When asked about precluding listeners from tweaking their own stereo, Stung counselors said "The artist and engineer record and mix their tunes to sound a specific way. If the listener just goes in their and say, adds more bass or reduces the treble, then the music isn't being played the way it was intended. Stung thinks that should be regarded as a criminal violation, punishable by law." When asked "why those particular chords?" Stung's lawyer replied, "those are the most used chords in popular music, regardless of genre. We stand to make literally billions of dollars a year in royalties--extracting fees from garage bands to the most hyped and famous stars on the circuit. Excuse me, I don't know what the "circuit" is, but I liked the sound of it and always wanted to use it in a press release. Excuse me, but I must be going....I've always wanted to say that, too..." Friday, June 08, 2001
Is there a connection between the general homophobia among males in our society and the obsession they have with sports? More specifically, the obsession males have of being spectatorsin an arena where they watch themselves compete with one another? I mention this because if you take a look at the "major" sports in our culture, it doesn't take a Freudian leap to see a great deal of homoerotic overtones. Take football. You have twenty two GUYS on the field, wearing tight fitting battle-wear, bending over, facing each other. The quarterback places his hands beneath the center's ballsack and shouts numbers. Or baseball--The pitcher stands on a mound and throws the ball to catcher, who is crouched down, ready to receive it; the hitter uses a "bat" which could be seen as a phallic symbol ("wood"), in an effort to hit the ball. The point of all this is with all the time these men spend together--a small minority as players, and the majority as spectators, why should there be such homophobia in our society? And why is someone who takes it up the ass considered a "pansy", when most "hetero" guys wince at the very idea of getting probed briefly during a routine physical? Interesting... Friday, May 25, 2001
"de omnibus dubitandum." Indeed. Though nowadays most people obey authority rather than question it. Conformists wear cooler duds today, but they are drones nonetheless. What were John Lennon's words? "You're all fucking peasants as far as I can see." Strong criticism from someone who, were it not for the frenzied cult of personality (i.e., icon = fanaticism=pop culture= obscene amounts of money) would have probably lived out his life in Liverpool as a "working class hero." More evidence that the tag "independent film" does not mean "good work": This so-called "independent" movie company, "First Rites" consistently produces the most sophomoric, embarrasing, amateurish and ridiculous films ever. Their name ought to be "Last Rites," judging from the limp quality of their movies. They obviously spend most of their time on marketing and packaging--because the DVDs and Video tapes come in very attractive, "hep" packages, with very cool graphics and the standard hype synopsis. But I have been burned for the last time by them with "Rudy Blue," a release so utterly awkward and dumb it compares on the losing end with a high school pep assembly. Friday, May 18, 2001
From Noam Chomsky: Personally, I have no confidence in my own views about the "right way," and am unimpressed with the confident pronouncements of others, including good friends. I feel that far too little is understood to be able to say very much with any confidence. We can try to formulate our long-term visions, our goals, our ideals; and we can (and should) dedicate ourselves to working on issues of human significance. But the gap between the two is often considerable, and I rarely see any way to bridge it except at a very vague and general level.
From 1997: Sex, Thugs, and Tuck-and-RollWhile Freud might have enjoyed the spurious connection between sex and vehicular collision recently exploited by the dark-comedy team of Ballard and Cronenberg, the closest any of us actually gets to such perverse ecstacy is a fervid flipping of the bird during the daily commute. (This and the muttering of obscenities when IE 4.0 crashes our systems.) But if the messy results of road rage can induce orgasms in jaded yuppies, perhaps their exists a corollary madness in the various branches of the military, which appear plagued by a steady stream of sexual harrassment claims, infidelity and jet crashes. Maybe David Cronenberg should be the Chief of Staff. Crash with it's lurid pathologies and fetish orgasmic vehicular collisions the superfluity of the military post cold war suppose they gave a war and no one came after all war isn't healthy for children small animas and other living things persons in uniform are definitely under contract, under stress, In the military often a joke goes that "why would anyone want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane?" Whether the airplanes have gone bad or pilots are practicing their ejection skills, these frequent crashes are costing us taxpayers billions of dollars. In the mess hall during basic training when some clumsy private on KP breaks a dish, everyone in the room shouts "airborne." Perhaps generating sex offenders, homophobia and future militia members isn't enough, the military needs more than that just to justify it's existence. Since they know they are largely welfare recipients in pickle suits, they have to act out in all kinds of weird ways. "Stand up hook up, shuffle to the door, jump right out on a count of four. Tell my mom I done my best, bury me in the lean and rest." Think of it. Push ups through eternity. What may really be crashing is the old world and many of it's ideals. That just isnt' very sexy. Nyetwork Computer Otherwise known as a "thin client," the stripped down computer known as the network computer is just the device (the user killer) corporate America has been looking for. This damned PC revolution fucked everything up; gave the end user too much power, and far too much liberty to pursue things at the workplace which, let us say did not directly serve corporate interests. Productivity has been hindered, let us say. The euphemizing or the rubric pro network PC is: More centralized control; simplified user and network configurations; the user will be more productive now than ever; more effective; Operating system wars and platform incompatibilites will be a thing of the past. Beyond the rhapsodising lies Big Brother for real. What they want to bring back is a different version of the mainframe, with a myriad of dumb terminals attached; the server will be the corporate engine, and the terminals (call them "NCs") the octopussy whipped teats you as the "end user" or "employee" will suck on. You shall plant thy lips upon the nipple and drink only corporate thoughts. No more football pools; say goodbye to your beloved pumpkin cheesecake eaters newsgroup; Ironically, corporate america in the guise of the information sciences industry wants you to be creative. By all means, be creative. But like the former Soviet Empire, they want you to be creative along CERTAIN LINES; cross those lines and you may be somewhat unemployable. Computers are evolving technically, but serving dumber and dumber interests. The goal is to make them "transparent," and easily functional, like a toaster or simple appliance. Then they will be truly mainstream, they'll take their place in the world: they'll be marginalized. They'll just hum along in the background. Entertainment and education will be one. Creativity shall be reduced to plug-ins. "The comfort you've come to expect is now mandatory..." Jello Biafra. Drones, serve the empire. We continue to dress the empire up in new garb, but the underlying problems remain untouched--and infact they worsen daily. Glaring dichotomies like the disparity between rich and poor don't go away because CEO's have a Newton to play with. Last time I had to do maintenance on one of our HP Vectra's, I couldn't help but notice that every component except the CPU was made in another country: mexico, malaysia, taiwan....So much for pride in American made goods. Yeah, the name is anglo and apple pie and all--but look under the hood, gentlemen. Just like looking under the hood of the American engine as a whole: all kinds of discrimination, graft, corruption, the stink just keeps mounting. Spray all kinds of air fresheners, it won't go away, throw as many microprocessors at it you will! Enough special effects and you can forget for a while that you live in squalor.
A person no longer works where I work, he no longer works at all. In fact he doesn't even breathe anymore--he's dead. But that doesn't stop this magazine from continuuing to send him magazines. Get used to this type of non eventual compassion. You're name in a database. Nothing more. Your body can be deleted by ineluctable senescence, but until you're deleted
from the database, you still exist as a number in a long chain, a sequence of abstract souls Gogol's Chichikov would have tried to profit off of. Usenet is full of would be Chichikovs, only they have none of the wit or soul of Gogol's humble hero. Chichikov was a scoundrel, but he had heart, and some degree of intelligence. Present day spammers have neither heart nor
soul, but only the drive to "get rich quick". It might be of more benefit, and certainly less a waste of bandwidth, to just accept their moral bankruptcy and begin work on themselves first. Because lets face it, most "get rich" schemes are based on capitalizing upon human stupidity or folly. Chain letters, pyramid schemes, psychics, all these are bullshit plans contingent upon taking advantage of others. Not helping them. That's just the rubrick, don't you see? There is a definite pattern here isn't there?
Again, more from 1996: The Awards Channel
Aldous Huxley, in The Doors of Perception, talks about the limitations of linear knowledge, and a linear or static approach to perceiving the world in general. In one section, he somewhat echoes Ecclesiastes, implying that even Beethoven's Ninth Symphony ultimately amounts to a "striving after wind." To the point/counter point: Once the wad has been shot, what then? What follows a "peak" experience--one that we feel may never be topped? The Stereotypical Male post-orgasmic response entails a quick descent into slumber. Roll over and commence snoring. But unless comatose, consciousness awaits us, and with it, the motivation to "do something with our lives." We in the west seem accustomed to "big ideas" and tremendous hype surrounding every event.
It had to happen. Mutual admiration societies and other schmooze-fest infested entities and hype machines cum mass media have now launched the greatest network since the Surgery Channel (a real cut up--wanna resect that bowel?). Even the most jaded channel surfer must confess to seeing at least a glimpse of some kind of awards show every time he/she engages in remote control isometrics. From the people who bring you " Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" (or people like them) comes: The Awards Channel--a 24 hour station dedicated to a never ending marathon of accolades abounding glory. You'll see sedulous hand pumping, maudlin acceptance speeches (including the never tiring thank you lists), celebrities rubbing those dreamy elbows together. This is the network which will have you asking "What's _________ going to wear?" hour after hour. Or who will show up drunk? Watch bloated, undeserving quasi-historical films take award after award! The Awards Network (TAN) will christen their highly original channel with of all things, an awards show for the best awards show! One-trick pony Quentin Tarentino has agreed to host, along with, of course, Whoopi Goldberg. Robin Williams will probably show up to deliver that unique caffeinetted, gratuituous hysteria which has made him a household word (or is that two words?). Says creator and CEO of TAN, F. Ron Terry, "Much of the programming centers around promos and ads about the awards shows. They're chock full of the hype people have come to expect from advertising. The ads kind of build people up, kind of like teasing them till they almost cum--oh don't print that...." Critic Chom Namsky finds the network "a shameless parading of the pathologically tawdry for the even more pathologically brain dead." Ah, tawdry shmawdry! Voters at exit polls from a local city council run-off say Take a chill pill, Chom! We know what we like, and we like what we know! Or course, the awards channel isn't ALL about celebrities congratulating each other, no it ain't no "total institution" type thing! "Real" people will be getting and giving awards, too. TAN plans to broadcast a variety of different awards shows before and after prime time. After midnight, awards shows for the best infomercials go until dawn! Tony Robbins never gets tired! So check out The Awards Channel, and get in on the schmooze, the gossip, the endless masking and banality...Premieres when temperatures in hell drop just a bit.
Also from 1996:
Media: Let's all Take a Powder
One illusion produced by cocaine assures users they've eaten, when in fact food may not have been ingested for hours or even days. Self-aggrandizement and paranoia also accompany this curious state; George Carlin said that after a healthy snort, he felt like a new man--and the first thing that new man wanted was another snort. (Coke heads may of course prefer to mainline or smoke their narcotic, but the result is the same--I only add this so people with a need for identification can recognize that method of distribution is irrelevant, lest I receive flames from people who, missing the entire point of this essay, wish to dwell on whether mainlining or snorting their poison is the better way to go). The media, chiefly in the form of entertainment (is their any other type of media expression?) act on the collective consciousness just like cocaine. The media offers up the finest blow possible, much more reliable (and legal) than the illicit snow responsible for bumper stickers that amusingly lament "MY OTHER CAR IS UP MY NOSE."
The media perpetrate no track marks, dessicated nasal cavities or other visible signs of injury ; A certain glazed expression, eyes red and droopy may result, but like a neutron bomb, it's manifestions are eminently internal, like that old Life magazine classic photo of a beautiful debutante who had leapt from a skyscraper to her death--her corpse exquisitely untouched, pristinely embedded into the roof of the car.
Hauntingly similar to unrealized promises parents make to gullible children (most children seem gullible by nature, having not seen much real chicanery yet), the media too make great promises. They not only procure great expectations, they claim to deliver, and then assure you that you've really eaten and been fullfilled. It sets up grandiose prophecies and then convinces the user/victim that it has served them. Add to this the mechanics of sheer repetition, and before you know it, you're sitting in a not-so well lit place (perhaps by cathode ray light), sipping gin while crying during an episode of Melrose Place.
In George Orwell's 1984, love of the presiding institution is mandatory; if such fealty does not arise naturally, other er, methods are used, that of torture, terrorism and such. O'brien must get Winston Smith to not only mouth that he "loves Big Brother," but to really mean it. In religious terms, the state wants your soul. For the most part, our world doesn't have to resort to terrorism, or a "two minute hate" session; a subscription to cable will do.
Some vintage thubert, from way back machine, 1996: Picture this. A house furnished with the largest domestic big screen TV imaginable, complete with Dolby Pro-Logic surround-sound powerful enough to wake the neighbors in the next city; now picture your basic couch potatoes and what they're watching on this technically advanced, state of the art system: a re-run of Gilligan's Island. Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure the soundtrack of G's Island could be digitally re-mastered to sound pretty good, and hey, Ginger and Mary Ann offer sufficient T and A. But please. One wonders if it'd be better to sit quietly reading a "low-tech" little tome of Huxley's Island, than flatlining it with Gilligan in all Dolby prologic glory. One can imagine the stereo wars, my prologic system against yours; neighborhood's thundering with all the extra tweeters and woofers, battle of the banal in living stereo...For all the talk talk talk about content content content in new media circles (and how everyone wants to be a "content provider," whatever that means), no real effort to provide substantive content seems on the horizon. People want to see the internet become the television of the future: dumbed down and subject to re-runs, full of advertising, moronic programming...Where you can watch Mrs. Doubtfire a zillion times if you want. (and don't forget the never tiring algorithm of previews, previews and more previews!) Previews of movies you were already jaded enough to rent at Blockbuster six months ago! Sometime ago I remember a car commercial which used the music of Jimi Hendrix to promote it's product. (All I have is one burning desire--let me stand next to your fire). Curious was the slogan: "From the country that created rock 'n roll." If rock'n roll was "created" by the United States, 'twas a most painful birth. In actuality, this country resisted rock'n roll with a passion! It was considered "jungle music," or music of the devil. But I thought of the commercial and tried to pin down just what demographic they were trying to reach. Post-boomers? Present day grunge-meisters who romanticize Hendrix and other talented yet ill-fated souls like Morrison and Joplin? I can remember when Hendrix was considered "acid rock." Now you can hear him all the time on "classic rock" FM radio. But this kind of target marketing which is nothing but cheap historical revisionism seems curiously legitimated by the last ten years or so of political correctness hysteria, where one cannot even utter something in any context without being too careful. A few years ago, MTV promoted a show with Neil Young, dubbing him "the godfather of grunge." What a title! Who dreamed this one up? Do they think that the current young body of listeners gives a shit? That the same kids who listen (see worship) Pearl Jam are going to tune in just because some yuppie/wannabelovedbyyouth MTV executive says Neil Young is the godfather of grunge? The title isn't even one of distincition, considering grunge is largely about whanking banality with fuzztones. A line from the movie "JFK" (Hmmm, another movie title made into acronym) came to mind when viewing this movie: "This was a military style operation, from start to finish." Like most Hollywooden cinematic offerings, ID4 was assembled with martial precision to do one thing: provide mindless entertainment. Thoroughly disgusted with the pre-release hype (see hysteria), I had vowed to never see the flick, ever. However, after a particularly grueling Photoshop class, I craved no-brainer vegetainment, and ID4 came first to mind. After all, I thought, at least the transitions and effects might be worth seeing even if the movie be somewhat moronic. Once in the thick of it, however, my brain wouldn't go. I kept thinking in my mind the lines from the movie Scarface, where Tony Montana is in the station wagon in New York City, following some diplomat he's supposed to help blow up, and, seeing "two kids and a woman," in the car, starts to feel a sense of malaise about the whole thing. Like him, I thought, "this is so fucking bad...this is so bad..." At some point, someone directly behind me release a silent but deadly ( a stench so putrescent it led me to surmise that the responsible party belonged in a hospital, not a movie theater). That gaseous remnant of god knows what spoke volumes about "Independence Day," the worst piece of recycled, jingoistic, quasi-sci-fi soap opera I've seen in a long time. Though we finally "kicked alien butt" at the end, I suspect the aliens actually secretly triumphed; yeah, while they were diverting our attention with the big turds in the sky, they took over our minds sucked them out and replaced them with the satisfaction, see illusion, that we'd actually been fed. And a big part of their strategy was committing the movie title to an acronmym. I'll look out for that next time. Maybe I'll do something that may involve THINKING, like checking out the actual independence day document. Weird Al Yankovich (a Dr. Demento mainstay) hosted a few hours on MTV a couple months ago, goofing on alternative rock and other pop music gods. Prior to commercial breaks, Al did polka renditions of all current "alternative" hits, by such nil admirari folks like the Foo Fighters, Bush, Soundgarden, The Presidents of the United States, Green Day, and of course the never tiresome Alanis Morissette. And yeah, the polka versions were definitely yuk-yuk worthy; but I found them to have a greater significance, probably lost on people who don't know the difference between a major or a minor chord. I have to admit that I found the polka goofin renditions more interesting and entertaining than the originals. The polka versions were completely lipsynched with each band's very serious video. What Al here unwittingly exposed was the real dearth of imagination in the mainstream music industry, as well as the utter simplicity of modern music structures. Everyone's heard Al's full on medley of current popular hits and how they freakishly run into each other so smoothly. The reason is all the tunes are essentially the same, both in structure and chord choices. Johnny "rotten"and PIL years ago belabored the "anybody can do it" idea of rock music. Truth is anyone, possibly any age (and the younger the better probably) can pick up the guitar and learn the necessary three chords to achieve music the likes of Hootie and the Blowfish (you might want to learn a relative minor for advanced stuff). Now it doesn't bother me that a fourteen year old can learn a Green Day tune in a week and play it better than Green Day--what I find irksome is the "star" status of these low talent goons. And how serious, very serious they all take themselves. In particular, Al's "Amish Paradise" is particularly therapeutic, making fun of two types of folks who rarely laugh at themselves: the Amish, and Gangstas.
Thursday, May 10, 2001
Subsequent to the customary (perchance mandatory) slap on the ass, one must now have a disclaimer read to him/her. Never mind that the newly myelineating newborn brain is incapable of comprehending the legalese. That's no excuse, as the law can certainly prove. (And will go to great lengths to prove, beyond any reasonable doubt). Consciousness begins at zygotic congress, at the adventitious meeting of sperm and ovum. One begins to lose rights at that very moment. We will soon begin barcoding fetuses, via ultrasounding-off technology. Rights leakage begins so very early. Take a number. Hurry up and wait. Visualize masked medical health professional, cradling bloody, placental ridden infant, holding the "entity" before our friendly lawyer, who reads the disclaimer. To wit: "We are not responsible for fucking you up, or feeding your brain with the most insipid, inane, outmoded, superstitious ideas, or with providing a squalid psychosocial universe and horribly corrupted and nepotistic political process, nor can we be held liable for lacking the imagination to provide for you a compelling, enlightening education, or for making inevitable a life of occupational misery and absurdity. There are many things to be consumed, for a price. Though we have supercomputers calculating Pi, and all kinds of brilliant and semi-brilliant tenured mathematicians at various universities, we can't guarantee the math that might insure you get to eat, or even get to survive. Welcome to the planet. Sign here, please." HMOfficial then uses umbilical cord as pen, and signs on the dotted line with blood. Indoctor-ination begineth here.... Tuesday, May 01, 2001
Idea: Instead of forcing those self-esteem drainers called "Performance Appraisals" on employees, why not require them instead to do a Performance Art piece in front of the entire company. This would certainly suck the esteem out of even the most committed superlifer, and make for some real entertainment. For my bit, I would perform the interior mental workings of a meek employee, ala the old bank teller in that Twilight Zone episode (the one where Dick York [he of Bewitched] is able to read everyone's minds). I would perform a narrative of postal proportions. They'd give me a raise out of sheer fear that I was sincere. Today, you can't be too sure, or too cautious. Andy Grove was right--the question isn't whether you're paranoid, but whether you're paranoid enough. This is an actual statement by a modern "business man." Yay, rah rah rah sis boom bah, capitalism, capitalism, rah rah raw....
Just when you thought it was safe to websurf, they return. Those pestiferous and persistent console windows are back. They want you to buy buy buy or answer some insipid survey, or enter an even more absurd contest. Apparently companies online don't care one whit about what kind of attention they provoke, as long as they get your attention. Never mind if that means cursing and resentment from the end user. The web is content to become as irrelevant as television, and as absurd. Hell, it already is. I don't think in my life I've ever seen a commercialized, strained ubiquity as stupid as the "dot-com" frenzy. Like a lame late night infomercial, they promise all kinds of things, and project this vacant sincerity that can be seriously frightening, if you don't change the channel immediately, or in a coup of sensibility, turn the fucking idiot box OFF, give the cathode ray producer an eternal dirt nap.... Monday, April 23, 2001
coyote dead lay sprawled in the middle of gaviota pass. creature never knew what hit him. and the creature that hit him, well, perhaps he/she made it to work on time. Monday, April 02, 2001
The bowel movements are off. Sleep patterns completely in disarray. Thank you, daylight savings, thank you SpringForward.com, and FallBack.com for fucking with me and everyone else. Welcome to "Daylight Savings and Loan...." I worked on the first piece for the "theme" album "Secret life of Implants." This is somewhat derived from a short piece from "Tao Jones Unindustrial" I did eight or nine years ago about our Calvin Klein, Cosmopolitan fucked up society that arbitrarily dictates "fashion" in the form of wispy waifs, or better still, dark, sunken eyed twiggy's that resemble heroin addicts. While for the insular artyfarty world of fashion, this may be both profitable and making for a smirkfest of irony (oh, ain't it decadent, a statement that actually IS the statement--that condemns the consumer even as it entices the consumer to buy buy buy), for young girls, who have yet to comprehend either decadence or irony (but who become the unwitting automated representatives) this amounts to utter exploitation, and irresponsibility. "Fashion" designers ought to be placed in a gymnasium, all together, to be gassed. Wouldn't that be a "gas gas gas"? Let's purge the world of these parasites, these ersatz arbiters of hipness. Alas, the real solution lies within ourselves, with throwing off the yoke of trendiness, of ephemeral fads and other contrived bullshit. I try to listen to the spoken word channel on LIve365, but how many fucking times to we have to hear "Howl"? I know the grating, whiny monotone is for effect, but man.....Seems on this channel we either get a 1. Henry Rollins marathon; 2. Noam Chomsky marathon or 3. Jello Biafra marathon. Then of course you got yer Timothy Leary and Paul Krassner. But there's not much variety. Friday, March 30, 2001
Press Release: The artist formerly known as Perfunctory will now be known as "Stung." Before beginning music production, Stung wishes to copyright all music which has that "Stung" feeling. This is similar to that "Barton Fink" feeling, but not. Before any muzak companies come clamouring before Stung, he wants to be sure the final mixes are insouciant and unremarkable enough to be ignored, yet saccharin enough to annoy the musically conscious. His first album is tentatively titled "The Secret Life of Implants," about the macabre, little understood liquid world of saline implants. Stung says he will keep his public abreast of the album's progress....Also, the former Perfunctory is undecided about the actual pronunciation of "Stung," whether it should be "St-uh-ng" or "St-oo-ng". More time in the isolation tank should get results here. That and a round of dominoes with a lama, in addition to some all-night tantric yoga and soy burgers. Wednesday, March 28, 2001
Since it has been remarked that I resemble the pop star, Sting, he formerly of the rock constabulary establishment--I've decided, or rather, mused--that I could pose as an evil (or just funny) alter ego, called "Stung." This carries the air of the past tense, of resentment, of truth beyond the cult of personality. My dream would be to have my music appear in elevators and supermarkets. To be "ubiquitous." Tuesday, March 27, 2001
Cubert entered cubie this morn, said hello to Thelonious, Bird, brother Noam, and of course Mr. Kissinger, sitting in the middle of my monitor, finger thrust, seemingly cemented, up his nose. May he see the same fate as Pinochet. But then, if we pick on Henry, what will become of other political sinners of the world? Therefore Henry will remain sacred bovine, with foot and mouth disease to the end, without any kind of Ivan Illyitchian conversion or even the hint of an epiphany. Henry be Mr. Diplomatic Roboto. His job: Protecting his ass. Good work, if you can "get it". He's in bad company, however, and plenty of other pimps and whores of the state will see that nothing bad ever happens to him (or them). "Why should they care? Nothing bad ever happens to them...." Oingo boingoed, brains sloshed with the elixir of power--the first and last refuge of the unimaginative. Monday, March 26, 2001
Our pre-invisible protagonist has gotten himself into a world of trouble, what with taking Mr. Norton down for the incestual, yet strangely celestial Trueblood narrative, and the chaos of the "Golden Day." Now he has to face old Bledsoe--the Uncle Tom of Uncle Toms. Our hero's eyes begin now to open. Our little Booker T. is on his way to invisibility, or the awareness of it. Grandfather's last words continue to haunt him. Tuesday, March 20, 2001
Went to ye olde alma mater last night for a little cream of the crop ceremony--you know, for the special kids. Not the mongoloids or ADHDer's but those wonderful overachieving entities of the future (who are able somehow, against all odds, to get in an episode of "Dawson's Creek" and still cram in all that studyin' and book learnin' and ass kissing and busy bodying and so on and so on). Unfortunately the world does not belong to good test takers, and never has. Categorical, linear intelligence only carries one so far. And today's teen busy body is tomorrow's workaholic, or cult member, or god forbid--Republicrat....We don't need any more souls with "gumption" and willingness to keep digging the same old holes deeper and deeper, and sustaining the same old illusions. Hold your applause to the end, please. Many attempts at levity were tried, by numerous speakers, but nothing worked; the atmosphere in the room felt like death. This is the real world, people. Don't think small. What he should have said is, "Don't think at all." Siss-boom-bah for four years at some hack university--is this truly the key to enlightenment? No, but if you want to rule the world or at least be close to the people who will, then get a grip, be prepared to sacrifice yourself utterly to such a proliferation of propaganda and wimpy ideals that your head will spin after just one year. Who you think you are now will shortly be thoroughly co-opted--in fact, such mind control begins earlier and earlier in this entertainment/advertisement state. Last night reminds one of the relative uselessness of public education, a massive baby-sitting operation that hasn't changed since I was a prisoner there, twenty years ago. Same methods, same illusions and delusions, class structures, sentimentality and lack of any fresh ideas. How many cliches can you spout in one evening? If you can guess correctly we've got a letterperson jacket in a large size (don't think small) that retails for over 150.00 bucks we're told (in case you need to pawn it later to score some crack, or whatever cheap narcotic boats your float). We might say after last night's farce that our youngins' are essentially "up Dawson's Creek without a paddle...." And the "keynote" speaker, that old sentimental cogger (and admitted former "slacker" [my words]) kept admonishing or exhorting for students to "not think small." Yet by advocating the standard fare of college college college and you're scum if you don't make it to a four year university, I submit that he was advising nothing else but "thinking small." Now the revaluation of all values--now that's thinking big! Ain't no tenured hack gonna be undertaking THAT anytime soon. Tuesday, February 27, 2001
Woke up early in the morning with brain ache, no doubt caused by multiple stressors in me life currently. Took an aspirin and put on a disc of spoken word stuff. I listened to a program with Christopher Hitchens and William F. Buckley "debating" a somewhat trivial, subjective issue: "The Sixties." The moderator clearly sided with he of the autonomously moving forehead, Bill. The audio was atrocious; the moderator and Mr. Buckley you could hear, but Hitchen's speech was barely audible. Design? Or sheer chance? Whatever the case, the program appeared as rigged as any electoral campaign. For all the celebration over Mr. Buckley's "erudition," and often polysyllabic "pith", I find him to be one of the most disingenous and actually STUPID speakers I've ever heard. He is like a religious fundamentalist with his arguments--which means that a true debate, a lively, open-ended exchange with him is impossible. Like most conservatives, he comes to the table with foregone conclusions, with a set of stereotyped premises, from which the rhetoric never departs. But he expects that you will simply accept his premises--and herein lies his "victory." Both he and the moderator in this program held forth with the following points of logic, which do not hold up under actual (and merely cursory!) research: 1. A "golden age" once existed in America, primarily between 1900 and 1960, where instances of abortion and divorce were much lower than they are today. 2. The rampant "hedonism" and blind pursuit of pleasure of the sixties is responsible for the increase in abortion, divorce, and general societal mayhem and the kicker 3. Ronald Reagan was a political genius, whose lofty deeds are unassailable, and whose economic policies have yet to be equaled by any other administration. How does one entertain an open and serious dialogue from here? One might as well be a pundit on the McLaughlin hour. Hitchens did the best he could (and I did the best I could, straining to hear him), but at the end of the little farce, no one could be said to be any wiser. I find myself somewhat disgusted at the insistence of conservatives to use putative, ready-made syllogisms in place of intelligent discourse. You find this everywhere, from the Sam Donaldsons of the world to the most execrable populists, like Rush Limbaugh (I almost hate writing the name---by the way, the most salient and gross and hilarious bit on him I've ever heard was done by the late Bill Hicks--check it out if can sometime; you can get it on Napster...but it's definitely not for the squeamish!) Wednesday, February 14, 2001
The gods must have a great sense of humor in that Def comedy jam up in the sky. For the last couple of months, I'd been bringing my dv camera along the commute, just in case some incredible filming opportunity might present itself. Well I sent my camera in to have the firewire port replaced, and the last week or so, every day the environment on the way to work has been full of spectacular vistas. Last week, the suns rays penetrated through the clouds in this resplendent array of light, which spread like bicycle spokes over the dark green terrain, illuminating patches that seemed almost fluorescent by comparison to the unlit earth around it. In the channels of bright green you could see cows graizing....Then this morning, some miles past Gaviota, I see the mountains covered with snow, in wonderful contrast to the expansive sheet of blue ocean on my right. AND ME WITHOUT A CAMERA! I know this is a cosmic joke thing. Yeah, life is beautiful but fleeting and you have to accept these ephemeral epiphanies and move on....But it was disappointing not to be able capture some of the splendor.... Tuesday, February 06, 2001
Thubert is no longer a single man. Now he is a happily married person, with different tax status and all that good stuff that goes with being married. I couldn't have yoked with a more perfect woman; I consider myself incredibly lucky--nay, blessed by this union. Monday, January 29, 2001
I'm happy to say that I'm happy today. All domestic disturbances and neo-Freudian madnesses have ceased, and the nuptials are ON. This is quite a relief. But oh what a struggle to push this emotional boulder over the hill....Thubert as of Friday will no longer be Monad, but rather full Dyad, with Thai Food marking the occasion. Tuesday, January 23, 2001
The emotional universe is topsy turvy, I'm telling you. All other burners are okay, but the feelings be out of whack--because of alleged whack attack(s). We are at a stage of critical mass, to be sure. Dyad or monad? Stay tuned. Monday, January 22, 2001
Ventured to smog country USA over the weekend; in the black heart of the city of angels you could feel the police presence, in a kind of eerie sensurround; Bush the sequel is going to be a whole lot of fun, much more fun than the Gore circus would have been, I am thinking. Better redneck than dead, eh? Thursday, January 18, 2001
Interesting how Asscroft is being hammered (in the usual public spectacle fashion) for being an alleged racist--when his bigotry is in reality just a REQUIREMENT for holding high public office in this country! I'm only half kidding here. It's clear to me that the next four years are going to be wasted with democrats returning to republicans the grilling and embarrassment they dished out to Clinton (to the tune of millions upon millions of tax payer dollars). The law of karma is exacting, and political karma seems more precise and implacable than any other. Oh well. Commenting upon such human entropy is futile. On to more fertile pursuits.... Monday, January 15, 2001
While my words may convey stark misanthropy, I actually don't think our species is all that bad. Sure, we're toxic and in FZ's words "dumb all over and a little ugly on the side," but we've got potential. For sanity, one must view everything in terms of sitcom, or a less than divine comedy. At times, things are just farcical. Listened to Joyce's "A Painful Case" this morning on the commute. My, how poignant. And what a great piece of descriptive writing, so concrete, so evocative.
Tuesday, January 09, 2001
Congradualations, blogger upon becoming a hype object. Does everybody have to strive for notoriety? BFD. So people can post their inane comments on the web, easily, without having to use "code." This has been done for many moons within a large electronic wasteland called USENET. Everyone is a publisher now, wow, ain't that great? Ivan Turgenev once said that the best thing about the Russian people was their low opinion of themselves; well, if ever a mass of people needed a low opinion of themselves, it's Americans. Instead, however, they're proud of their ignorance, their historical illiteracy, their lack of any cultural awareness, their xenophobia and ethnocentricity. Go figure. Hey, I'm just ranting here until the drugs kick in....Then I'll behave.... News: Bush appoints hypocrite (with ironic last name of "Chavez") to administration--what a shocker. What ought to be perceived as even more alarming is her participation in that stink tank known as the "Cato Institute." Whatever. Perhaps next Bush will appoint Oprah to some position or other on the cabinet... Thursday, January 04, 2001
They sprayed to annihilate the gnats, but the gnats remain, albeit in a more sluggish and seemingly diminutive state. They are easier to quash with a clap, a byte of applause with little effort. The gnats are much less evasive today. Their origins remain a mystery. No doubt a spontaneous generation from a bit of neglected food particle within the drawer of some drone here, within some cubie or office space or unattended receptacle. I don't pay much attention to mass media, and in fact pretty much eschew listening to it at all, but the bits I hear between Phil Hendrie's amusing put-ons are as amusing as Phil's stuff in many ways. Whenever I hear George Duh-beyou Bush speak, I don't feel a sense of pride or confidence in our head of state; rather I feel sorry for him. He sounds somewhat like Chauncey Gardiner, from Being There. The man comes off as so clueless. He may indeed be the most unintelligent and inarticulate boor we've ever had in the oval orifice. Perhaps this may signal the most rapid decline of the plutocratic state; though he may be nepotistic puppet, he may stumble in ways the masters pulling the strings hadn't quite imagined....Sheer incompetence can really ruin plans for world domination. :-) Tuesday, December 26, 2000
Tiny representative of drosophila floats before me; my clap merely sends it elsewhere, still alive. The holiday madness has nearly passed, once again. The perennial collective psychopathology recedes slowly into the habitual rythm, the diurnal routine. Now we can get back to work :-) to meaningful activity. Ha. I am of late addicted to Acid. That is, Sonic Foundry's sampling/editing program Acid. Editing digital music is so much fun with this program. Using this alternately in conjunction with Sound Forge and N-Track makes a formidable triumvirate of media creation tools. I am witness to a much more productive thubert. Tuesday, November 21, 2000
While the perennial holiday funk has less ampage than usual, I feel it's presence. The national stalemate of two rich southern morons at the head of our electoral farce just adds to the malaise. However, I remain positive, and determined to transform myself into more of a creator than consumer. Producer and director of me own life, you know. Monday, November 20, 2000
I know the commute can make one more misanthropic than usual, but today's really tweaked my dim view on humanity. I don't understand the hurry, the chances people take on the "freeway." I am inclined, in order to make the glass half-full, to appreciate that our loopy species has at least not yet obliterated itself. Then you have to be more amazed that we haven't , rather than focus on our seeming embrace of entropy and absurdity. So you can say, "I am just blown away by how rapacious, greedy and violent sapiens is," or you can say, "I am blown away that we've come as far as we have without utter self-annihilation." Henry Miller's response was to feel "utter pity" for the species. I guess that's one way. Desmond Morris characterized us as "hairless apes." Well, there you go. The punk/rock/reggae band Fishbone named one of their albums, "Give a monkey a brain, and he'll think he's the center of the universe..." Monday, November 13, 2000
Eye actually went to Of course, since our sonic youth are forced to read these books, they rebel, and a reverse psychology goes on that practically negates the actual value of Orwell and Melville and other sharp writers. The works are seen as "boring" and "irrelevant." In Literature 1 classes, the teachers study the same Shakespeare play every year: Julius Caesar. What would be truly interesting is to compare Shakespeare's version (which is largely taken from ancient, aristrocratic historians) with other historical information that has been unearthed over the last fifty years or so regarding the "ambitious despot." This would reveal much that parallels our own fetid political world today.... Thursday, November 09, 2000
"..let all the poisons that lurk in the mud--hatch out..." --I-Claudius This seems an apt quote, judging the wretched state of the current political situation. What kind of in-bred, good old boy network have we got here? What sort of name for a governor is "Jeb"? Why not "Jethro"? I know American society and politics reached irreversible entropy long ago, but I can't help but be slightly incensed by just how absurd it's all become. However, like Holden Caulfield, we can't hear ourselves ever hitting bottom. The fact that demogogues Bush and Gore virtually split the vote (Mandate my ass - G. Scott Heron) merely shows me how utterly indifferent and sedated and compliant and intellectually feeble be the vox populi. To vote any more seems an expression of our powerlessness before a moronic and entrenched process--the opposite of what a plebiscite ought to represent. But then I've been listening to Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" and talks by Michael Parenti about ancient plutocracies and can see that little has changed in over a millenium. I suppose it's just disappointing that the "2001: A Space Odyssey" I watched when I was nine years old--and the idea that we evolve and transcend petty watering hole dynamics and adhere to the true scientific method--are just fantasy. The actual psycho-social sewer we live in offers little to sustain the imagination of an idealist.....I think it's best to adopt the George Carlin attitude: treat everything, the whole farce just as it's largely presented: as entertainment.... Wednesday, November 08, 2000
The adulterous generation puts up a sign. Or two, or three. Hell, Captain Placard may just put up a multitude. Form whore ears. Impotence, entropy, intellectual squalor. Welcome fascists. They are at the moment somewhat stalemated (stale, and ideologically mated) until Fluorida is recounted. I can give my response right now: So what. Friday, November 03, 2000
I AM JACK'S GENTLE REGRET....A couple of mornings ago while removing the stubborn steel wool from my face I zigged where I should have zagged (my mind on other things besides Track II ledgerdemain) and cut myself above me lip, in a jagged horizontal fashion that now makes me look as though I were on the losing end of a brawl. Me boss asked me what had happened, and because the ativan hadn't kicked in (or more likely because I just didn't thin' of it) I told the truth, that I had gotten into an accident with a Track II, to wit, I had "cut myself while shaving." A common occurrence, for which boss expressed some sympathy. He could relate. Only later on did it course through my sodden noggin a better reply, which could have gone something like this: "Well, I'm in this, er, organization, the first rule of which is I'm not supposed to talk about it." Ah, the sin of ommision, or of brain fart city.... Wednesday, November 01, 2000
And me without a camera.... Midway through commute saw cows arrayed on the hill in a most curious manner. This is the second time I've viddied this spectacle. What do they know, that we don't? Or is it some kind of recondite gravitational occurrence (oh currents) causing them to stand on that hill, almost in a state of attention, uniformly facing northwest? Oh well. Next time I'll have the JVC digcam ready.... Back to hump day frenzy, webcast of WFMU.... Tuesday, October 31, 2000
Truly this morn' I have experienced a taste of hell: standing in the checkout line at Albertsons, force fed smooth jazz and tabloid impulse-buy insanity, plus employees dressed in all hallow's e'en garb....Too strange. I took my water and smoothies and jammed, post haste. We really are a bizarre species....Think I'll just sit here in the cube, sip my "super sixteen" and prepare for the grind ahead. Mmmmmm.....vitaminy.... Monday, October 30, 2000
The ego has landed. From a state of abject despair in July, I have returned to myself, to the illusion of thubert once again. The two psychotropes I'm taking have restored me to me, to a sense of fundamentally sound mental health. Now full of illusions once more, I can again take everything for granted again ;-).............. Friday, October 20, 2000
Watched "Magnolia" again for the third time. The DVD is very sweet. On first viewing, I found the movie to be another shining example of style over substance (the current rage in American cinema). However, on repeated viewing, the film has grown on me. There are many nuances and nods to other directors (particularly Kubrick) and cinematographic styles within the production to keep me happy. I still find the dramatis personae to be more or less charicaturish, but I enjoy the performances and ensemble work. I think weakest link is Tom Cruise, but then that to me would seem to be a foregone conclusion. Although he plays a character which is insuperably narcissistic and who is eventually revealed to be a neurotic liar (like almost everyone in the movie) I simply don't find him believable or compelling as an actor. He's in the same league with Patrick Swayze--immense egos who seem to shout "I am an ACTOR, look at me..." Real artists transcend ego and become immersed in their roles--to wit, their egos become transparent, invisible. Naked character remains. A movie is marred by egoistic actors who need to prove their acting skill, and moreover, that they are "serious." In the movie "Marathon Man," Dustin Hoffman employed all kinds of "method acting" to really get into his character. Lawrence Olivier found this amusing, saying in effect, "wouldn't it be simpler, just to act?" Now I dig Dustin, but I see Larry's point as well (although Larry could be quite wooden himself, I found). Rest in peace. Wednesday, October 18, 2000
First video begins with bathroom, with tags on towels, zoom into their ingredients, always check the ingredients, man to see how you're really living (this is your life, and it's ending, one minute at a time)....International Threads, the shirt from Malaysia, the pants (worldwide?) from Mexico, the underwear from Bangladesh, the shoes from China, so cosmopolitan and worldly are we all, without realizing it. Then seque way to commute, and Pork Palace, then Bush, then Cheney, then Apples....You get the potential multi-ironic mise en scene here, I think. How to capture, however, (how? Ever?) the absurdity of fossil fueling, vehicular mans laughter when we know how to communicate and interface via electrons? A user problem, not a technical one. Monday, October 16, 2000
Got an idea during the semi-dreary morning half of the grind peregrination. Meditating on the "pet rock" and the "hedge against inflation" and F. Zappa's idea that "cuteness and stupidity" rule the world (I'd say "commercial world" but that would be really redundant, moreso than this little parenthetic bit), and viewing the swiftly moving left vehicular mayhem with slightly sedated alarm--I came upon a marketing idea of such pith, such potential double ironies and so forth that I was stunned, and in fact rousted from my freeway flatlining for a few brief moments. The idea is this: "Get a Head." Everyone wants to "get ahead," right? Progress in the good life, immersed in the theater of wealth, yuppie-ism, and so on. Well, how about a kind of anti-Elmo, apostate Beanie Baby, decidely uncute teddy bare doll called "head." Of course we'd have to manufacture a variety of them, ala Pokemon. They'd be called "Heads." The selling line is "Get a Head!" Variations could be: "Tired of Scratching and clawing your way through the rat race marathon? Sick of having promotions and raises denied to you? Well take out your frustrations and get a head! These dolls are nothing but heads, begging you to abuse them, shout obscenities at them, crush them....They are ugly but pliable cabezas of a kind of free-range rubber that weeble and wobble, but never fall down...." You get the gist. Please have respect for this patently unpatented concept and don't steal it and IPO it anytime soon. However, if you do, at least cut me in for some percentage or other.... Monday, October 09, 2000
Spent the night in a motel recently. Did the usual flipping through cable, just out of curiosity. Nothing has changed. Programming is as insipid and absurd as it ever was. Same as it ever was. In fact, the programming is of such a lurid quality that one can barely create parodies out of it; parody appears to be built into the content. Is this by design, or just intellectual entropy? Lowest common denominator dynamics, or some kind of bizarre cabal? Nuff said about the commode ray tube, the electronic latrine..... American cinema continues the same descent into absurdity. Such predictability, hubris, embarrassing performances....Better to choose foreign cinema (chiefly Asian) for anything decent. "Map of the World," with Sigourney Weaver and Jullianne Moore seemed like "Alien"--only the location was earth, and the monsters were xenophobic local yokels. Ripley fared quite well once again. This along with perhaps the most gratuitous nude scenes ever filmed. A truly atrocious film--more shameful due to it's obvious (oh so obvious) good intentions.... Thursday, September 28, 2000
Just received the Roland/BOSS GT-5; am in the manual reading stage at the moment, but am anxious to plug the little techno behemoth in and take her for a ride. From just a brief skim through the manual, it's clear we are in for quite a number of sonic treats, ambient excursions galore. Coupled with the GR-30 this will be just too much fun for a guitar gear head to have. The unit sports a "sound on sound" feature, similar I suppose to Frippertronics, where you can loop riff over riffs. The player records your first motif and then plays it back; from there you may weave all kinds of patterns and textures. Looking forward to this.....Just had my morning bodhi bar and am thus wired, here listening to P.Floyd's "Meddle" on "Chock full of MP3s," number Four; Got Number three out in the Expanium..... Friday, September 22, 2000
Feeling somewhat renewed today, like a library book checked out for the second time. Took my soma like a good alpha (and part time beta) and am preparing for the day's combination of true work and true slack, working for that resplendent blend of the two. For musican divertissement and grind accompaniment, we will be enjoying Chock full of MP3s, volume 8. I've got volume 1 out in the car, with the Expanium, radioshackerreceiver and cigarette lighter power.... Thursday, September 21, 2000
Like Mr. Martini in Cookoo's Nest I am so very tired. Me lids struggle to remain open. I am multitasked beyond my capacity and in need of slack. Yes, I am being deprived of slack. However in the midst of all this deprivity I did manage to score from radioshack a neat device that broadcasts my Expanium portable MP3 player on an FM signal in my car. Very cool. When I get past Refugio, I have to change frequency, but other than that the thing actually works very very effectively. I am no longer limited by the inane FM broadcasts in Southern Cal. No more chronocide with Marks and Brians and H.Sterns. I shall remain listening to Phil Hendrie on the way home, however. The guy cracks me up, even though all the characters are similarly clueless and utterly in denial, totally convicted in their intractable manias. Phil's like a one-man Jerry Springer show, but with a great deal more wit, and even humanity (sans the "final thought"). So what if Margaret Gray and Bobbie Dooley sound exactly the same? Thursday, September 14, 2000
Long time, no smithy. Sitting here listening to volume 6 of my homeburned "chock full of mp3s," a wondrous melange of electronic surprises, everything from blues and jazz to trance and ambient, spoken word etcetera. For the record (so to speak) I finally acquired all 21 files of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." I am now grokking the zen tongued in cheeked of Mr. Pirsig with delight. Also listening to Jello, Noam, Malcolm X, Negativland, Richard Feynman, The Last Poets, Alan Watts and of course the subgenii with their gracious hours of slack. This helps greatly in lifting me out of the depression caused by any awareness of the current fetidity of the political situation, the ever festering parade of our little two-party farce. I'm grateful to be free of cabal tv, now free for over three years now. The withdrawal pains were oh so brief, an hour of regret over not being able to record the Simpsons, but then I recovered and have never considered going back. (I hear the Simpsons writers have run out of ideas, anyway). Monday, September 04, 2000
Indulging in a little obvious irony today. Laboring on labor day. This is of course not of my own choosing, but because I've eaten up all my vacation time as well as "short term" sick leave. In fact I'm slightly in the hole, though by next pay period I may at least break even and hey, maybe a decimal point in the black. I need a nap, not a napster. slight headache jars the senses, but other than that, feeling OK. I spent all day Saturday formatting 30GB hardrive, partitioning, then installing Windows 2000. The install went fairly smooth, with only a few minor problems. I just couldn't take the instability of Win98 anymore. I mean, my computer at work runs on NT and never crashes, so why shouldn't I have the same kind of solidity at home? Well now I do. Diablo II runs fine on it, and USB and DVD are easily supported. Friday, September 01, 2000
Have I arrived at "yuppiedom"? Here I am this morning, munching on a "bodhi bar" and looking forward to my veggie burger at lunch, maybe a smoothie and an herbal drink or two....I must say that as I grow more towards senescence (or wisdumb) I lose my taste for dead cow and other standard meats. The standard american diet (SAD) seems so heavy laden, so dense. I need something lighter. Ginger and ginseng in my turdlike bar will do for the morn....and just for today I will not engage in my Napster addiction; I shall not tax the world's bandwidth to suck down all those juicy tunes, the esoteric, eclectic as well as the cornball....Although I must confess, I've already downloaded one song. On the way to work, the band "L7" entered my head for some reason; I think the all-grrrl band had one or two hits a few years back, but I couldn't for the rife of my think of their flash in the pan hit. Once engaged with my puter, and the Napster, all was solved. "Pretend that we're dead," was the song. I sucked it down quickly and then closed Nap down. I am now looking to acquire parts 11-21 of "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance." The appearance of this audio tome is sporadic, and even then I can usually only download one at a time. One day a fine user from a T3 was givin' em all up, at a very respectable download rate, but I thought, "well, I'll get the rest of them tomorrow...." Doh! I haven't seen T3 zen-buddy since. Now the only provider of Zen and the art... is a user with DSL who's only on once in a while and gives them up one at a time, if at all. Generally, you get the "remotely queued" message, which means to say that others are sucking him dry, or he/she's playing god. It is tempting to just "deny" people files by simply pressing the delete key. There's a bit of stupid power there. Anyway, I'd better commute here into grindspace, lest employer give me unrequested exodus.... Tuesday, August 29, 2000
Oh my bloggers, better living through chemistry continues. Tried to decrease one half of the soma duo, but alas one milligram seems to do the trick. Benzo is not so easy to kick, even small amounts, or what they call a "therapeutic dose." Contrary, of course, to most of the clinical literature and palliative anecdotes uttered by mental health professionals. But then of course every body is a unique ecosystem, with it's own foibles, specific requirements, metabolic rates and so on. Thursday, August 24, 2000
When you are crawling out from the rubble, humility is quite easy. Then you begin feeling "better"--which means your consciousness can go back to being on autopilot, suffused with random resentments, rantings, routine....Until the next crisis....Taking reality for granted--that is the dream, and the reality until it bursts. But the noble truths of the buddha remain, of course. And then that nagging eight-fold path to liberation.... Tuesday, August 22, 2000
As the mind clears, and panic fades into mere memory, I can finally breathe easier. Now the re-evaluation of all my values may again commence :-) I may now reconvene with my brain and reassess priorities, engage vision, act upon one thing at a time. The concepts of "right livelihood" and "following your bliss" circulate through me presently. The buddhist idea of "right." Getting off the wheel of samsara, approaching zero karma growth.... Wednesday, August 16, 2000
Monday, August 14, 2000
Three weeks of mental health sabbatical and your humble narrator hath returned to grindspace. I am currently doing the A-Z of soma: Ativan to Zoloft. Lorazepam to Setraline doesn't sound as elegant...I have to take things a bit slowly, gingerly. The Z is working pretty well, but it hasn't yet "peaked." So there's yet twinges of heebie-jeebieness here and there. However, I feel "fit to do battle" provided the battle isn't very stressful, ha-ha. Friday, July 21, 2000
TGIF. Anagrammed? Gift. Oh boy. But we're trying to accentuate the positive right now. Exodus could occur at just about any moment. I just wanted to be a "smooth jazz" musician...Know enough cute scales to get by, you know? Just enough funk to be innocuous enough to assuage you on the way home in your car....Is it true that you "only hurt the ones you love, the ones you shouldn't hurt at all"? God I really feel confused. I feel the people I care about most slipping away from my grasp, at my own doing..... Wednesday, July 19, 2000
Flatline day, for the most part. A little excitatory synaptic mayhem here and there, but nothing lpam can't assuage. Later in the day holds my exodus. Took the mellower commute today, though it had it's share of mellodrama. The less "theatrical" commute route doesn't wind so much as the other; the road runs reminiscent of a small stretch of Iowa, or perhaps Nebraska. I greyhounded through those pastoral if linear horizontal states, making the trek back from Minnesota to Californeye-a. That was in the early eighties when we were all under the spell of Reagan, MTV and ungodly avarice. I took the poison with yet more poison, spawned of barley and hops primarily, though I was partial to a bit of port and the always chemically experimental "T-bird" now and then. T-bird was like some kind of cosmic koolaid, funky on the first taste, but transported you where you wanted to go--oblivion. I'm sure they still make the stuff, too. Actually, ice cold, accompanied in a glass with ice cubes, it weren't all that bad. Still, it was the destination, not the esophogeal journey that concerned ya. Tuesday, July 18, 2000
Telecommuting is not an exact science; in fact, I can see in my case that it's clearly very crude. Over the next few months I hope to refine the process. The key thing is synching up resources and materials at home with those at the workspace--and sometimes more importantly--means of communication. This really needs work. I hope to build an intranet infrastructure that can support telecommuting as well as other functions easily. I don't think we've really come to terms with being "virtual." We still are attached to the old world fleshy avatars who have to show up at the office every day. Why not make the office "virtual" but every bit as functional (actually moreso) than the "building"? I am of the mind that the virtual office will eventually replace the dreary "building" oriented one over the next ten years. Monday, July 17, 2000
People seemed exceptionally aggressive on the commute today. I wonder where we all think we're going? And why we have to get there before the cars immediately ahead of us? I'm sure everyone in their own Indy500 microcosm has rationalized their quasi-road rage, and probably questions it not. The "freeway" is no place for big questions, for questions at all. The freeway is for impulses. Of course the rushing metal is laughable when electrons are so much faster, and more efficient, and infinitely more cost-effective. Yes, though we may "speed" at 70 to 80 MPH, we are yet lumbering dinosaurs. Fossil fueled, addicted to the moneystress mushroom. We scarcely look at the ocean, which lies majestically to our right. The sea which could swallow us up, all our hubris, within seconds. Friday, July 14, 2000
I recognize and affirm that I should accentuate the positive aspects of life. I really am trying to do this. The "true warrior" takes his sufferings as material for molding character. There's gotta be a pony in here somewhere.... Thursday, July 13, 2000
Oh me bloggers, the line between sanity and insanity is not a thin red line, but rather a line which lives on the benzodiazapine receptors and which can be placated temporarily by the infusion of ativan. I'm thinking of taking the Roxy Music song "Avalon" and replacing the main word with "Ativan." Of course this is highly provisional; can't be on this addictive stuff forever.... Wednesday, July 12, 2000
Well when I take the soma as directed by physician, things seem to work out all right. But I unfortunately still feel the need to control, you know, get my own schedule going. Which doesn't work. I am feeling more hopeful, and motivated. Monday, July 10, 2000
Back to the soma that works, however provisionally. Return also to grindspace. Breathing in OM and whatever else will "work." The title of this log might be called "I ativance, blogged." Wednesday, July 05, 2000
Oh my bloggers, I writ too soon. Pseudo-soma did indeed cause some heebie-jeebieness. I shall refrain from taking more. I am now ready to try acupuncture, chiropractic, general head shrinkage, whatever will assist me.... Tuesday, July 04, 2000
I am now certainly traveling in the psychotropics. Thus far I have not experienced any major heebie-jeebie-ness, but the decade is still young. Hopefully this will not be an "Heart of Darkness" type thing; I don't need no Kurtz in my life; the jungle of the mind is sufficient, I am thinking. Monday, July 03, 2000
Whenever I go to have a day of unremitting vegetation, I can rarely go to my own video collection for support. Nearly every vid I have is HEAVY, or has important things to say, or provokes thought---the very thing you want to avoid when looking for full veg, the kind you get short of a lobotomy. Since we killed cable two years ago the only material can be found at your local chain video merchant, who of course stocks the shelves with mindless dross. God bless them, when you need to stop the world and get off for a few hours....
"A little bit of knowledge..." is indeed not always a good thing. I've been reading far too much about all these different psychotropic meds (excuse me, girlfriend is shaking the dust off of my gecko) and of course the more you read about them it's easy to see all the horror stories and neglect all the efficacy stories. Nonetheless it is clear that my unaided brain will not take me to tranquil waters, and most hitherto semi-successful coping mechanisms are now fairly useless. So immovable object will need some kind of compound.....(s)....Now to arrive at the right one,with the help of clumsy allopathic medicine... Friday, June 30, 2000
Macromedia hath shown their love; I petitioned to have my Drumbeat 2000 upgraded to DreamWeaver UltraDev, and they hath blessed me today with said product. I'm opening the box now. I sent them a most pleading (but justified) letter stating that they ought to give me the upgrade free, and lo they have honored my request. My faith in Macromedia increaseth on this day ten fold.
Saw "The Talented Mr. Ripley." Perhaps they should have made "The Talented Ms. Ripley," starring Sigourney Weaver instead. This is one confused flick, full of more ambivalence than a synapse in Bill Clinton's brain. Motivations are never clarified, people are too smart and stupid at the same time. All in all, so very uneven. The idea that Mr. Ripley has no personality of his own, but at least has the "talent" to ape others with uncanny brilliance isn't a bad idea; in fact it could have made for a compelling film with a different treatment. At least our anti-hero scumbag sociopath is seen with his self-esteem in the dumper most of the time. Yet he did appear to have talents of his own, that were uniquely his. Why then get caught up in the idle moronic existence of wealthy ne'er do wells? That's boring right from the start. What do people find so interesting about the theatre of wealth? The answer to that question may be why Marxism is doomed to failure in such a decidedly "capitalist" culture.
the immovable object needeth more soma....and reduced alpha resentment.... But then I suppose it's not resentment at all--that would imply some sense of envy. More like H. Miller, I guess I have pity, rather than resentment. But the world understands resentment, nay, feeds off of it, where pity.....well....that's such an embarrassing emotion....MSG is the enemy of the immovable object--of this I am certain.
Just splurged for new home theater amp, with center speakers and subwoofer. Can't blow the lid off of me apartment(due to a "good neighbor policy" somewhere within my being) , but this should provide some enhancement to the DVD/video viewing experience; the viewing of metarealities, some well crafted, others not so well done.
Ambient blue. That's what I'm now pursuing, musically, and in terms of lifestyle. Just cool, mellow. No big deals. While everyone else stresses and bruises one another to squeeze in their little bit of maya, their frenetic mellodramas, I'm going to be the immovable object, sustained in my tranquility. What, me worry? I shall take A. E. Neuman's question/credo to heart. Relaxation is the key. I am the uncarved block. (Not the "monkey ready to be shot into space...:" --fight club). I believe I have now seen the worst movie ever made. Yesterday, for the purposes of total cerebral vegetation, the family and I slapped in "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigalow" into the VCR. Ah, if only the machine would have had the sense to spit it right out! Maybe oneday machines will be smart enough to know if a movie sucks and refuse to view it unless the user gives an override code or something...But anyway. This movie was a challenge: to sit through without reaching for the stop button. The video belongs more in the microwave on HIGH than in any VCR! I have seen many "clunkers" in my time, but Deuce takes the prize (beating out long time baddies "Blood Sucking Freaks," "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer," and "Jack." ) Rob Schneider ought to be assassinated, or at least prevented from making any more movies. For that matter, perhaps all SNL members ought to be euthanized after their stints on the show, or if they get it into their feeble brains to make any more movies.... Thursday, June 29, 2000
Me serotonin won't resume a regulatory flow, thus I have to increase the soma just a tad. Serotonin's a wonderful thing in the right amounts...Enjoyed belly laughing last night at a George Carlin video. Really needed the hilarity. Wednesday, June 28, 2000
Oh me bloggers I feel the weight of water beneath me as I tread water. Me arms are gliding through the mass in order to stay afloat....Nodded in and out of "Girl: Interrupted," so I can't make any fully informed judgement on it. However, any movie which contains Whoopie Golberg is immediately suspect in my mind. Here she merely grinned, gave wan, wistful looks and sported a 70's era natural. Minor damage. Over the topper was Angelina Jolie, looking and acting more eerily like her father everyday. I thought her performance in "Interrupted" kind of like her father's in "Runaway Train..." Wynona was her usual pixie self, bordering on at least a modicum of angst, but of course not believeable (will she ever do better than playing an android in Alien: Resurrection?). We can say about the film that it had a good, "Big Chillesque" soundtrack, and the trailer crams every pop-archetypical "60-70's" anthemic song you can think of into that compressed few minutes. Sign, sign, everwhere a sign.....Spirit in the sky--now there's a song that gets probably more gratuitous usage in movie trailers ever! Producers just throw that song in a trailer for the hell of it, regardless of context. When in doubt: "Uhm, we need some bumper music for that one part of the trailer....something hippy, dippy, trippy, but accessible." "Oh, just use Spirit in the Sky...." That or "Magic Carpet Ride...." Tuesday, June 27, 2000
The efficacy of central nervous system depressants continues to sustain the organism thubert, oh my bloggers. More properly, I ought to say that soma continues to hold the organ thubert's brain intact. I think I've decided what I want to be when I grow up: A blues guitarist. After those early years of pompously eschewing pentatonic minor scales, I now want to bathe in them, luxuriate in long bending of strings, searing leads, blistering licks, soothing cadenzas..... I shall surely not be the greatest of the genre, but I'll have a lot of fun, and I hope the ears of others may enjoy as well. Of course I'll wander off into realms of jazz, rock, experimental, latin and so on, but as a performer I think the key is with Blues based trip-hop ambient funk. Yes, yes.... Monday, June 26, 2000
Pardon previous day's melodramatic, stammering entry. The soma hadn't yet kicked in, and the old serotonin flood deluged the circuits with sheets of doom. Soma took it's tool, however, and your humble narrator was even able to get the car washed (five dollar tipper, even sans the promised "new car smell.") and Jiffy Lubed. I am now all oiled up, lubed up till the next 3000 miles... Meandered like a ghost through the festival of flowers, then trekked on to Chicken Run--an Aardman Production, with the gleeful touch of Nick Park, but for the most part an extremely tiresome waste of clay. The film did influence me somewhat--for the weekly soup I used Tofu instead of pollo (actually I had planned upon using the Tofu prior to viddying Chicken Run, but whatever). I am thinking about using more and more soy and using less and less meat. Watched Lain:Navi, a kind of spacy anime for adults, directed as if it were by David Lynch. Mixed results here.... Watched The Candidate, with Bob Redford in great form. While growing up, Robert Redford was definitely my hero. He was just too cool. Watching the film after twenty years or more, it still holds up as a pertinent and biting political satire.....Finally, watched Kurosawa's Sanjuro--a delightful romp to be sure, with Toshiro Mifune in excellent shape; previously we had seen him in the Samurai Series, which is in color, and while definitely less subtle than Kurosawa, this series is not without merit. The beautiful Japanese scenery is alone worth the viewing.... I am amazed at the line between the mundane and the insane. One neuron doesn't fire properly, and wow, there you are, a basket case. Sunday, June 25, 2000
Saturday, June 24, 2000
Recline of the west. See turmoil. See melodrama. See life with and without medicine. View Koyanisqattsi. Banality at it's most feverish bale. Friday, June 23, 2000
Today I ought to say "I ativance, blogged." This here little pill(s) is the only thing holding my mental countenance together. Of course this is provisional. The white coats want to begin experimenting with my brain with anti-anxiety meds--which could ironically produce the very thing I want to avoid: vertigo and anxiety. Is this iatrogenesis, once again? The root of my parents' (mainly dada's) distrust of the medical profession? The fact is that they are experimenting, but they can't admit that they are for the most part CLUELESS--even after so many years of med school, paying off student loans and driving conspicuously consumptive Lexi. What they have told me, and what they've prescribed I could have easily done myself with an hour's research on the internet! Of course, I can't really prescribe anything, except futile and sometimes purposeful rebellion. Allopathic medicine falls so short it's truly appalling. But the Lakers are world champions....Take heart, young, or not so young man...Pardon my superciliousness, but once the Dr. Laura Zapam kicks in, boy it can make ya a tad cheeky. Monday, June 19, 2000
Brushing off the detritus, and seemingly the afterbirth from my yet another dark night of the soul, trying to limit melodramatic content clearly I cannot simply resume previous patterns to which I had become habituated. Friday, June 16, 2000
Wednesday, June 14, 2000
Oh my bloggers, what neuronal mischief have I of late released. Imbibed I of oblivion factor two and found it miserably ineffective; Lessons learned? Can't use that oblvion factor successfully, any longer. Return to crisis management, stablization, courtesy Lorazepam.... Tuesday, June 13, 2000
I am continually amazed at the petty instances of road rage I see on the morning commute. People just have to get ahead, even if it's by only a car-length. What a spinning watering hole, ultimately a sewer of NO IMAGINATION. On these same bumpers you can see predictable stickers: "My Child Achieved Honors at _________ School." Monday, June 12, 2000
I am the immovable object with a lack of sleep. Hence a bit shaky today....I "broke down" and went to see "Dinosaur" (shouldn't that be called "Dino-sell"?) on Saturday. What a pile of unmitigated cheese! Full of rugged texture mapping and some great scenery, but really now. Question: Why bother with the CGI if you're just going to recycle every f'n disney cliche and insist upon absolutely no originality regarding the script? Hell, kids will buy stick figure dolls if you tell them to, right? Why all that work, all those rendering hours, all that potential? Disney has to be the biggest exploiter of children on the planet--after all, that's their market, right? And what do they think a four year old will make of a line like this "...you need some help from the 'love monkey...'" I nearly fell asleep half way through this abomination. This is a bloated sheep in sheeps clothing, an 100 million dollar farce--that will of course reap the 100 mil and beyond in box office, video, merchandising, etcetera....This definitely gets the Sine Qua Non award for this week...The only point this insipid farce can possibly make is that the dinosaurs DESERVED their extinction, what with all that nauseatingly cute, derivative dialogue and contrived facial expressions.
Everyone must be blogging right now. Performance is sluggish. Anywho. I've recently become taken with garlic; I put tons of it in my weekly homemade chicken soup and down all kinds of tablets of the stuff. Why? To ward off the vampiricism so rampant in our society. That and keep the common cold at bay (which may indeed be another aspect of pharmaceutical vampiricism). Life does suck a bit less with the mass ingestion of garlic, though the breath be suspect. Thursday, June 08, 2000
I've made up a little arty farty graphic worthy of adbusters, I think. You can view it by clicking HERE. I might have added Brittany Spears impaled upon an actual spear, but then she's already quite overexposed as it is. I trust a translation of the latin will not be necessary.
I didn't think the Abyss DVD package could be surpassed in terms of quantity of features, but I just received the Fight Club DVD yesterday and it's definitely a contender. FC comes on two discs, one with the movie and commentaries (four sets!) and the other a supplemental with production notes, art, storyboards and a bunch of other stuff. The physical packaging is quite elaborate as well. I am impressed. This was 23 bucks well spent... Tuesday, June 06, 2000
Listened to the new Orbital on the way to grindspace this morning; great driving music indeed. Pretty much 4/4 peppy techno fodder with some tasty synth layering--much easier in the car than the more complex, and heady Crimson of yesterday.... Mate and I have for two nights been trying to finish viewing Tim Robbin's "Cradle will Rock," without consummation. Girlfriend falls asleep and I've got to get my sanity sleep for the next day's trudge-o-rama. Gfriend finds the movie boring; she's unable to care about any of the characters. I would somewhat agree here. The film assumes that the viewer already has at least some acquaintance with historical figures and events circa late thirties to really grok all that's going on. An awareness of this country's ongoing struggle with socialism and capitalism helps as well. However, even though I have an interest in the key characters (Orson Welles, John Houseman, Diego Rivera, etc.) the film isn't very compelling. Granted, there are some good scenes, but overall the presentation is rather flat. The characters seem charicatures, rather than fully developed, fleshy beings. The only people with any ability to generate interest I find are the two main women--one the head of the National Theatre Company and the other who is a right-wing activist (Joan Cusack). Both are very strong and clearly represent the movie's "points" it wants to make. In the age of Microshaft, wouldn't it be refreshing to have hysteria about communism revived in this country, at least on a deeper level than the G. Gordon Liddy show (which is not of more gravity than Bozo the Clown)? Monday, June 05, 2000
Much less spin today, at least thus far. Yet there is much reprehensible spin-doctoring going on in the world, hyperbole, obfuscation, disinformation....It's no wonder people leave the media to regurgitate and mediate all information for them. Rely on Rush to make up your mind. Life's too short and stressful for critical, independent thinking. The insistence of mass media on polarities insures that you will "take a side." Friday, June 02, 2000
I downloaded the "last american interview" of Jim Morrison from Throttlebox. Jim sounds very relaxed (no doubt operating at a BAL of at least .20). He doesn't sound morbid or anything, like you might expect of a man who will soon drink himself into the grave. He sounds hopeful, optimistic; he's making plans. I think that's the whole point: keep on keeping on, make plans, live from day to day. Both drummers Buddy Rich and Tony Williams had considerable tours ahead of them before they checked out for that final gig. Thursday, June 01, 2000
I wasn't very impressed with John Waters' film "Pecker," so to speak. Come to think of it, I can't think of any John Waters production that has impressed me. This is one director, like Tim Burton--who is shockingly overrated. While "Pecker" had some good tongue-in-cheek digs at the always pretentious art community, it doesn't contain much real bite. I am considering acupuncture to punch up an otherwise pointless life :) Tuesday, May 30, 2000
Watched an extraordinary DVD over the weekend; I viewed it on my computer and listened to the audio with headphones. The movie is Baraka, one of those films like Koyanisqattsi which uses only music and ambient noise as soundtrack. Originally shot in 70mm, I found the imagery mesmerizing, and Michael Stearn's music well suited to the journey. What's great also about the movie besides it's ethereal, emotional qualities is that with the DVD you can watch any chapter and come away changed. I need a film like this every now and then to cut through my all too thick cynicism. The film reminds that for all our arrogance and verbosity, there is a world around us, all the time--which transcends our feeble and febrile brains--and which transcends all our hubris. The magic seems so obvious when one is enraptured by it, but of course the routine of diurnal existence wears that right away. Perhaps the challenge is to maintain touch with the "real" world while attempting to survive in this "surreal" one we've made, this 8 to 5 penal colony....
The old vestibular maladaptivity continues it's march. At least this is presumed to be the chief difficulty with our humble narrator's nervous system. Of course it's no doubt a combination omelet, full of parts genotypical and phenotypical, parts known and unknown. Historical, ahistorical, apriori, aposteriori, nature, nurture, you know the drill. Yet even in this fog, life is fascinating, and somewhere within a siren of love reverberates meaning that transcends my grasp. Friday, May 26, 2000
Lord, have I been in a whirlwind of vertiginosity. It's really got me floating, but not in anything close to ecstacy. As the world turns means something entirely different to me than for soap opera addicts...The spin seems less today, thankfully. But the day is still young... Watched Apocalypse Now on DVD last night. Perhaps entering the heart of darkness hasn't helped my disposition much. What a pretty film, though, full of madness and mayhem, but gorgeous, full of wonderful luxurious crossfades I rarely see in movies anymore. After watching the film, I want to read Conrad again...In a way, I suppose I relate to Kurtz' dream of the snail gliding upon a double edge blade and surviving.... Thursday, May 25, 2000
The commute. My, what a procession of the dead if there ever was one. With current electronic technology, telecommuting is not only possible, but should be the rule rather than the exception. Making the daily journey to the "office" or "workplace" ought to really be a thing of the past; actually, it IS of the past, which is why the peregrination seems so morbid; it's populated by ghosts racing along in metal cannisters. And I too am one of the clueless, stuck beneath my own wheel. Nietzsche once said that we rarely have the courage to do what we know. Invariably we settle for predictability, even when that means the perpetuation of a somewhat miserable situation. Perhaps our need to have a sense of control, however illusory, makes us settle for lesser realities, circumscribes risk. "Give me convenience or give me death..." (Dead Kennedies) Wednesday, May 24, 2000
Sell, sell, sell. Cell, cell, cell. At the nucleus of our being is certainly an enterprising homunculi with infinite plastic and desire, ready to spend spend spend. Buy buy. The consumer model of humanity is probably doomed to failure eventually. Homo economicus is just a shallow party that one day will crash; many will burn, others not so materialistic may be but singed. The problem isn't so much with consumerism, but that consumerism itself becomes the primary measure of our species, and the desire for money subsumes all others. Then money is merely the fuel that sustains our ether of maya, keeps the wheel of samsara turning and turning. Before you know it, we're the hungry ghosts, with large swollen bellies, but tiny mouths which can never get enough to fill the gut. Money may be a means to an end, but in our society it is the end itself--a phenomenon addressed by Max Weber in his ironically (or oxymoronically) titled book "The Spirit of Capitalism." An old reformed drunk I once knew (who somehow staggered through getting a phD in philosophy) used to posit that "money has no conscience." Hence, it's "purity," to his way of thinking. (Maybe similar to android Ash's admiration for the Alien). Perhaps this is why "old money" and "new money" work so well together. Whereas in the old world, the justification for wealth was that it conferred greater glory to God and thus secured for the wealthy ever increasing treasures in heaven, presently this rationale is no more than nominal if at all existent. This is akin to Michael Corleone "renouncing Satan" while his henchman murder the heads of the five families.
Never met a Neil Jordan film I've Liked
Merely to kill time (good old chronocide) and veg out, we watched "The End of the Affair" last night. Talk about an execrable lump of crap! Other applicable adjectives: dreary, predictable, at times under and overwritten at the same time....I snatched the video off the shelf without reading too much of the details; if I had seen that Neil Jordan directed, I would have left it right there in the store. Oh well. Girlfriend and I had some fun goofing on it, at one point hoping snipers would pick off Ralph Fiennes and Julliane Moore while they sucked face under a pier....And another annoying Jordan trademark--the music was entirely overbearing and in most cases inappropriate to the mise en scene. I just couldn't get my hands wringing for this one--even with it's sophomoric metaphysical aims toward the end. Stephen Rea had this "please kill me," look throughout; I wish someone would have obliged him, and wacked the director as well before ever beginning this plodding waste of celluloid. Tuesday, May 23, 2000
Sip your morning miso
Think Geek has the coolest gadget on their site. They're called "I-Glasses"--essentially a head mounted display which lets you surround yourself with input from your VCR, TV, DVD, PlayStation, etcetera. While this is definitely on my wish list, the price (at nearly 500 clams) is somewhat prohibitive. I guess I'll just have to sell a few thousand CDs of my music to afford this toy.
Watched "American History X" last night on DVD. The movie is a bit weak in parts, but Edward Norton is quite powerful as Derek. Edward Furlong is okay as the younger brother who adulates and emulates him, but his voice at times sounds like Herby the Dentist from Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer. I'm sure I'm probably the only person who perceives this. I recently knew a co-worker whose voice was very similar in pitch and character; it made it difficult to take him ultimately seriously. Similarly, when I listen to Joseph Campbell he sounds like the old Captain Peachfuzz from Rocky and Bullwinkle. So when he's talking about Kundalini Yogo, the chakras and how the chakras might correspond with the various psychological schools, some credibility can be lost. I'm kidding here, of course. Monday, May 22, 2000
Due to sheer laziness, I have failed to update my web page on a consistent basis. I am now employing the Blog technology to post info in realtime as well as give others the chance to post their thoughts. Perhaps one of my split personalities or alter-egos (they can't decide what they are) will wish to post here.
This is the general blogger page. From here I'll create topics relating to various projects or brainstorming endeavors. The blog for American Mime is found here. |