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Saturday, November 21st, 2009
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My party is tonite. I have nothing to wear. If I survive the night, it'll be a goddamn miracle.
I think I'll make a mix. Daedelus + World Inferno Friendship Society + Pizzicato Five + CRASS + Cale Parks + Velvet Underground. Alternating 20th century remix and punk. I think that'll fly with this crowd. If it doesn't, then they can throw their own goddamn party.
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You know, Patti Smith is really really overrated. Just sort of boring with no real hooks. Yeah, shes intense. Yeah, shes influential. But even PJ Harvey's most mediocre stuff is ten times better. Heresy, I know, but man. She is fookin' boring. Like Tom Petty said, "I ain't hearing a single."
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Life is funny sometimes. I go months without much action and suddenly I have strange girls showing up at my doorstep at midnight. Madness! And of course, the "sure things" turn up nothing.
In a related story: Boys are dumb!
In a related, related story: Still can't be with the one I love, so I'll bide my time with the ones I'm with.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
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I've been so bored today that I've been actually doing Facebook stuff. Damn everyone who has me browsing there. I'll still do my blogging here. FB really sucks for blogging. I mean, like sucks hard. Which makes sense because Livejournal sucks hard for networking.
Speaking of which: networking. Yikes. I have my parents friends adding me on Facebook as well as actual relatives like uncles and cousins and such. What the hell? If there was ever a disincentive to actually posting anything of substance, there you have it. If I was honest on there, I'd probably get written out of my grandparent's will. Hell, they might have already for all I know.
Personally, I prefer the strange pseudo-anonymity of LJ. I prefer to play the character of Chardarkminion rather than the drab reality of my real self. "Illusion is the first of all pleasures," says Oscar Wilde. I'm inclined to follow this advice. After all, fantasism is fantasism. I think I prefer that everyone think I'm an androgynous millionaire artist/time traveler from the future. Who owns Godzilla.
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Comments: Read 7 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
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Oh me, oh my. I woke up early today and even tried to get back to sleep to no avail. Its just as well I suppose... my dream life has been almost too intense for me the past few days. I've been having body transformation dreams that are, to be honest, quite lovely. The bad part is the jolt of waking up into who I really am, drowning in flesh and hair.
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People who are perpetually invisible on their chat programs are vexing. Consider me vexed.
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New policy: If you have a crush on someone, you let them know.
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TOUCH MY HEART
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, November 16th, 2009
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Today is my real birthday. Facebook is filthy with lies.
I spent all weekend in Columbus with friends. I like spending time with young people, they don't have the hideous disaffection of all these jaded old farts and breeders I surround myself with. I kid, of course. I'm one of those jaded old farts myself.
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I exposed a lot of people to 'The Thirty-Six Chambers of Shaolin' and 'Punk Attitude'. I don't think either went off to great effect because, well, I didn't get laid. Kids these days! haha
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Realization: long term motivation is impossible when one does not expect the world to exist for much longer.
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Comments: Read 9 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
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Monday, November 2nd, 2009
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I've been watching and listening to Klaus Nomi for the past three hours. I used to hate him, but I didn't really understand. I was sort of bored by him. I was missing something. Having just seen a documentary on the man, I found out that he was an operatic singer. I was judging him by the standards of punk rock because he came up in the late 70's in the New York scene. I want to have ten thousand of his space babies. Space opera! No really!
So in the docu there was a really neat, very Television-esque song that went unnamed. I couldn't find it on Youtube so I guess I just need to get all his (2) albums.
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I had a fun Halloween. I went as "Douchebag from 1992". I had a Big Johnson Surf Shop teeshirt, a Ross Perot in '92 button, and I carried around a cassette of Guns n Roses 'Use Your Illusion 1'. I had so much fun make old people laugh and making young people confused and achy.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
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| Time: | 2:17 am. |
| Music: | u-ziq, Midwinter Log. |
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I wonder sometimes, how I'll ever find my way into human society. Life is valued so very lightly, what is one speck in a world that is drowning in flesh? These are definitely Livejournal thoughts.
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Sometimes I'll hear a melody that seems completely unprecedented. It has no antecedent. It sounds as if it pulled from the ether, from nature, with no intervening human will. It makes me think of places where the limits of human knowledge are tested; in biology labs, in undifferentiated neutron material, in unbroken wilderness. It seems, somehow, to channel those truths that the human mind is incapable of breaking down or rationalizing. The melodies and chord changes cannot be easily predicted. However, it is not chaos at all, but rather, a pattern more complex than can immediately be deciphered.
Music like this transmutes my skin to goose pimples. It at once alienates and reaffirms. There are times when I am defenseless against this kind of music and it inevitably forces me to find pleasure in something inherently melancholy. It sounds, on the surface, to be a product of madness or randomness. Most people would find music such as this hostile. It is neither affirming nor negating, which makes it quite alien. Because its pattern is not easily discernible, it might seem to be a work of folly. However, this is in fact the sort song that plays across the part of one's brain that has nothing to do with language.
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An alarming amount of my friends are suddenly becoming homeless. Who will be the next one swallowed by this hideous and avoidable Depression our country has fallen into?
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I'm looking at Dare Wright photos on Google images and listening to Wendy Carlos's version of "Eleanor Rigby". Oh, 20th century! Why won't you let me be! *swoon*
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Sunday, October 25th, 2009
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Suddenly Fiction
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Parachuting Thoughts
The last thing my superior officer told me before I took off was "Whatever you do, don't get shot down over the Isle of Colossi." It was a dick move. He probably regretted saying it afterwards, but there was no way to take it back. So of course, seven hours later, I was forced to bail out of my X-4-S Starseeker somewhere several dozen miles over the Isle of Colossi. It was the damnedest thing...
So I'm in the air, nervous as hell about the cloud-cover. I had reason to be; two Marty's Thrones (hitherto referred as Death-Traps or DTs). They noticed me about the time I noticed them which of course meant that they got the drop on me. They had sleek aluminum frames and big, bulky gas-tanks that begged to be hit. My Union-made Starseeker traded all that bullshit for armor. Nothing shocking there. DTs were stone cold suicide jockeys. I value my life, thank you very much. All the same, Imperial culture has no word for 'grandfather'.
I should know, of course, because I am a translator. My family read the old religious tomes in the language of the mother-land, so I got what I thought was a cushy translator gig when I had to join the army. Turns out, after everything shakes out, if you get promoted you end up having to fly planes and actually be a soldier. I never thought I could have survived scenarios like this, floating over the Pillars of the Isle of Colossi.
I can't hit my chute yet, though. I have no idea of my altitude relative to the ground, so there is no way I'm going to hit my chute yet. If I did, I'd drift to god-only-knows-where and I really don't have time for that. I need to find a way to get these plans to Intelligence so they could expose Imperial spies, hell-bent on disrupting our rocket tests. So obviously the Imperials had a vested interest in sending me into the infinite free-fall.
When they did engage me, neither enemy pilot was skilled enough to take advantage with the DT's superior maneuverability. I remembered some of the old black magic of my childhood and shouted a curse against the two DT pilots. It must have worked, because when I banked downward into a cloud, they lost me completely. I found them, though, and raked six barrel's of wing-mounted fire into those sweet, over-sized gas-tanks.
But, just like in the morality tales of old, the black magic availed me not. My luck had run out just as sure as my SO did a bad thing when he instructed me not to get shot down in this exact spot. In my rear was a 101F Finale, one of the so called "Flying Castles". The Kingdom of Desolation fielded these black-iron pieces of shit. Its hard to see how they can stay airborne at all, because the things are literally chunks of riveted armor with an engine in it. Needless to say, he shot me the fuck down and I bailed.
Why were these guys operating here? The Kingdom of Desolation was just as fully at war with the Imperials as we were. Why were the skies over the Isle of the Colossi so fucking crowded? Did the Master Race of the Kingdom have some stake in this god-forsaken place? It doesn't matter anyways... I'm probably not gonna make it back to report in.
So right now, I'm feeling two things; the sensation of passing through the sky itself and the sting of diesel soaked into my flight jacket. I've got a flashlight, a knife, and a parcel containing the names of a dozen traitors. And, with a little luck, I've got a one way ticket to the Isle of Colossi. I promise if I ever get out of this, no more black magic for me.
I hit my chute.
Sky and diesel.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
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A memory, upsetting upon recollection. At a suburban burrito place owned by a right wing thug, wall-mounted TVs blared FOX Cable News at the immigrant employees all day every day. Sometimes its hard to live in the South.
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Comments: Read 9 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, October 8th, 2009
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Reading about Frank Zappa, Lily St. Cyr, and Exile on Mainstreet on Wikipedia. Exciting. I've been listening to a lot punk and lounge music lately. Strange juxtaposition, I know.
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Just moments earlier, I got to sneak a listen a listen to the Karen O and the Kids soundtrack to "Where the Wild Things Are". Its cute, but it sounds like Múm from five years ago. Crap, they have a new album don't they? MADNESS.
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I've had a piercing headache now for two days straight. I know why its happening. I don't have a means of getting medical care for it.
I don't deserve this. Its as the song goes, "Do they owe us a living? Of course they fucking do."
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, October 5th, 2009
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| Time: | 5:16 am. |
| Music: | Francois de Roubaix, Sauvetage. |
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I'm starting to think I didn't make it back from the 20th century. I feel like I left part of myself there, like skin on barbed wire. I watched that last century fall away and die in the company of boys and girls who were only a year or two younger than myself. I doubt any of them felt like I do about that wicked, transformative time. Oddly, though, I do. Does a mere two years account for that or am I uniquely nostalgic for things I have no right to feel nostalgia over?
I want an electric typewriter. I want kitchen appliances that look like silver art deco trains. I want a rotary dial phone.
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In a related story...
"I would like to take you, if I may, on a strange journey."
I'm watching Rocky Horror Picture Show... for what? The 350th time possibly? Why this particular work of cinema? Why not "Phantom of the Paradise"? It came out the same year, by the same studio, riffing on the same themes. Why not some other campy rock musical? Lord knows that there are plenty of them. I suppose it has something to do with the high level of sincerity behind all the cynicism and camp. It has pretenses of being like the old 50's shlock horror; moralizing, predictable, and cheap. But it has a genuine positive message (Don't dream it, be it) behind the cynicism. Yet, even in its preachy-ness, its still really goddamn subversive. Juvenile, but subversive. Just how punks like it, right?
Songs are catchy, too. Old fashioned rock licks. My cracker heritage offers no resistance. I'm a Muswell Hillbilly boy. I prefer my rock music as interpreted by subjects of the British Empire (like in the premise of the Kink's 1971 album "Muswell Hillbillies"; Muswell Hill is a neighborhood in London). Richard O'Brien, although mostly unsung, is one of the great luminaries in this genre. David Bowie briefly prayed at his altar, engaging in his time-honored indulgence of attaching his image to that of up and coming artists (witness Bauhaus, NIN, Iggy Pop, and TV on the Radio). Lord High Muswell Hillbilly Mick Jagger (predictably) lobbied O'brien for the role of Dr. Frankenfurter. I can't imagine Keith Moon didn't see the movie, if not the show during its theater run.
Also, this version has the best mix of the music I've heard, including the "remastered and remixed" CD that came out in the late 90's. Better than the theater, even. My speakers rule.
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, September 28th, 2009
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| Time: | 3:21 am. |
| Music: | Colorpulse, A Glorious Dawn. |
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"We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan
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Strange connections.
A fellow rationalist friend of mine (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) terribleangel) posted a incredibly moving and beautiful song on his journal that samples Carl Sagan called "A Glorious Dawn". I always get a little weepy when I hear songs about the scope of the universe.
Unrelated to the strange connections anecdote, but noteworthy nonetheless: I remember being 12 and taking a field trip to the bigger of the two Fernbank museums when it first opened. There was a exhibit called "A Walk Through Time in Georgia" that began with a short film about the dawn of the universe and the genesis of our planet. I broke down crying in the face of the absolute beauty of it all. Luckily, no one saw me. How could the could all those children who had been brought up on tales of arks and holy fathers possibly have understood what I felt? This song made me feel similarly, although not with the same intensity.
Back to the strangeness. So later, I found a vintage book blog called Vintage Vids' Books My Kid Loves. Ostensibly the blog focuses less on the books themselves, and rather, on her son(s) reaction to them. I don't have much use for that, but I love the artwork of old children's books. Something about those cheap pen-and-watercolor illustrations pleases me. A humble aesthetic. I'll probably be plagiarizing some of the images for this journal at some point. So I'm browsing through the back posts and I find one on a book called "Death is Natural". She references the Sagan quote I have at the beginning of this post, taken from the beginning of the "Cosmos" series.
I actually wish I had a copy of that book. I've been having a crazy sleep disturbance problem for the past few years that makes me start awake, instilled with a primal fear of non-existence. Its brought on by apnea and I just stop breathing. As the oxygen levels of my blood drop, anxiety increases. Finally, in a climax of fear I have never experienced in my waking life, I start awake. I'm filled with mortal terror of no longer existing. The primal, unreasoning fear meets the waking, knowing anxiety of death. It, quite literally, keeps me awake at night.
Someday my lungs will stop forever. I've seen what a person looks like when that process is taking place. Still, for all the awfulness of it, ultimately it matters little. We are merely cells in the engine that arose and allowed the universe to regard itself. Living or dead, the universe is within us and without us. Nothing much would (will?) change when humanity submits to nothingness. The totality of everything is bigger than us.
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Comments: Read 15 or Add Your Own.
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Friday, September 18th, 2009
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| Time: | 2:07 pm. |
| Music: | Belle and Sebastien, Sleep the Clock Around. |
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Anyone know where the jobs in Atlanta are?
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More strangeness from decades past.
Buzz Box
Lee Press-On Limbs
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I need to be doing something, but I'm totally without energy.... what gives? Maybe I should put this cup of coffee down and go back to sleep. Ugh.
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Monday, September 14th, 2009
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| Time: | 12:16 pm. |
| Music: | The Residents, Moisture. |
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So, in order that I alienate even more people on my friends list, I present to you The Residents. I'm probably the last person in the world to discover these guys, but I recently saw these videos on bootleg VHS. You see, I've just made friends with the gentlemen who used to own Blast Off Video in Little Five Points. If the name of the place doesn't ring a bell its because the place shut down around 1998. Still, my buddy has all the insane VHS videos from 80's. All sorts of magnetic media madness... Apocalypse Pooh (a mash-up of Winny the Pooh and Apocalypse Now), lots of Church of the Subgenius Propaganda, and every kind of freak-culture video you could imagine. I've also recently acquired a DVD of DEVO videos which I hadn't seen before.
This has ushered in a new obsession for me; video paleontology. The Residents have so far been the best thing I've discovered in this vein, although Youtube has a real performance art gems. There are a bunch of clips from the old Alive From Off Center: 1, 2, 3, 4. If you were born before 1988, you owe yourself a watching of this. Its not the greatest art, but it captures the spirit of the era perfectly; synthetic, meandering, morally neutral, experimental, and barely digital.
To this end, I seek more 80's (late 70's?) weirdness. I want to understand this culture of pre-digital madness. I assume that there is more out there that I simply haven't found yet.
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Comments: Read 10 or Add Your Own.
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Friday, September 11th, 2009
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| Time: | 2:40 am. |
| Music: | Stiff Little Fingers, Suspect Device. |
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This is my hater post and I'm calling out names. I'm talking about the idiots of this world. If you are an idiot, stop reading because you are in here. Who am I kidding? Most of the idiots already defriended me. Of course, who knows? There might some idiots lurking. This one's for you guys.
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Racists are idiots.
Now, it would seem that this goes without saying. Racists are, after all, some of the biggest idiots on the planet. However, something about having a President with a high melanin count has brought these people into the mainstream. The New Racists are shouting "Get Niggers Out of Our School". They are far more savvy than that. They use code phrase. "He need to be more humble" they cry, as if George Bush's proclamations of "evildoers" had not happened a few short years ago. "He is not an American" they cry, loudly and often. One must wonder if they would do the same if he were a shade lighter. Actually, there is no need to wonder at all. Of course they wouldn't. It is interesting I think, from a sociological perspective, that the level of vitriol displayed by the right wing is so much higher under this administration. What could possibly be the difference between this and previous Democratic administrations? Hmmmm... I wonder...
Religious followers are idiots.
Why are most people incapable of seeing that their beliefs about the nature of the cosmos are the same paradoxical mythologies they laughed at in gradeschool? Marduk was born from a virgin. Osiris was resurrected. Dionysus transformed water to wine. When you say these things out of the context of modern religious practice, it sounds absurd. Why then do a majority of human beings (to say nothing of Americans) fall into these traps? To put it plainly, they are idiots. Most lack sufficient wisdom to break with a million years of human tradition, but that is unsurprising given that most people live in religious environments. They don't seek answers because they are, frankly, too stupid to do so. Others who are not so stupid put up numerous artificial barriers to prevent their faith from being questioned. They possess the wisdom to break free but lack the will to do so, for fear of death, for fear of ostracism, for fear of things actually mattering. After all, if everyone is rewarded in the afterlife for the pain they suffer in life, then there is no incentive to improve quality of life.
Free market worshipers are idiots.
A belief that the profit motive is somehow virtuous is magical thinking that rivals any religious superstition. I'm so tired of hearing that capitalism is the mystical force that will save us all. The reality is that it is a system that relies on holding something valuable hostage. It works because it withholds. You can see how this way of doing things can get really fucked up when things like, say freedom from misery or human life itself, gets held for the ransom. Inevitably, human life is ground up beneath the wheels of this terrible industry. It doesn't give a fuck whether you live or thrive. It wants to devour. If you can't make a sacrifice at its altar, it would rather see you dead. Free market supporters come in two flavors; the ones for whom the system supports (for these, the guillotine is most appropriate) and the sad suckers who parrot the party lines of their economic superiors. This second category is a tragedy given human form. They imitate those more powerful than themselves as if some of that capitalist magic will rub off on them. Their right to uphold the virtues of unfettered power doesn't slow the pace of the terrible machine. Their children will suffer just as much as the victim whose eyes are open.
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, September 10th, 2009
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I think I might have come close to death the past few days. You see, I had a cold of epic proportions (a product of Dragon-Con festivities, no doubt) which probably mingled with the swine flu hanging over my house. Yes, someone in my household had a diagnosed case of swine flu. So, I suspect I may have gotten both of these viruses at the same time. Swine flu battled rhino-virus to see who could do me in first. I think in a stand up fight the rhino would generally win, but that's not the issue here.
The issue is that for two days breathing became... difficult. Although I'm sure I didn't have pneumonia, the symptoms were roughly identical. I was drowning in my own intracellular fluid and mucus. Getting air into my lungs was a little like treading water. The act of doing it was exhausting. My diaphragm muscle tired out fairly quickly and got sore from the rigorous feats of athleticism I was requiring from it. To top it off, my bronchial tubes decided they wanted to get in on the act and restricted slightly to make it that much harder. Half lung capacity with labored breathing is no way to go through life.
I couldn't sleep; the act of laying in bed made me sweaty, restless, and more than a little crazy. My dreams swelled with images from Metalocalypse, Forest of Doors, and 4-chan. Fucking insanity, is what it was. Now, on Thursday morning, I'm feeling slightly better. I say slightly because although my lungs are back to (relative) normality, I'm still afflicted with hellish nausea and those maddening fever dreams.
Looking back on it, if I had it to do over again, I would have gone to see a doctor (something I haven't done in... how long has it been? 5 years? 6?). I would have requested some of that sweet, sweet Tamiflu action and maybe some Albuterol awesomeness. I couldn't pay for those things, though, so I probably wouldn't have gotten anything out of it other than a feeling that I was being taken care of. In retrospect, that may not be worth the price of admission.
Its interesting, too, that I got to watch the President's speech on health care under these conditions. I couldn't help but think "Socialism, people. Its the only thing that can rescue this country."
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Comments: Read 11 or Add Your Own.
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Sunday, September 6th, 2009
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| Time: | 1:11 am. |
| Music: | Drumkan, Alec Eiffle. |
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Temporarily back from Dragon-Con.
We are running our Forest of Doors event tomorrow at the Hilton. Please come and see us on the second floor of the Hilton (by the elevators) and we'll sign you up.
Nothing more to say. I just reached the limits of human endurance two seconds ago.
Bosch.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
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| Time: | 3:41 pm. |
| Music: | Guided by Voices, Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory. |
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I'm going to be at Dragon-Con this weekend. If you are there, you must must must come and see us at the Forest of Doors booth. I don't even know what hotel we will be in yet, but rest assured it will be the one where the dorky roleplaying is happening.
Given that, I won't be posting this weekend. Or eating. Or, in all likelihood, sleeping. Frivolities! Cyber-hoboism at its finest.
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Comments: Read 3 or Add Your Own.
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Sunday, August 30th, 2009
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| Time: | 4:55 pm. |
| Music: | Röyksopp, Beautiful Day Without You. |
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I remember in the old days when I first started posting images... I would get a million friend requests a day. Not as much anymore. Then again, I don't really care about these things anymore. Mutually friending people just clutters up my friend's list with garbage. Nothing offends me more than the boring, and lets face it, most of your journals are boring. Not all. Most. Go ahead and assume I'm not talking about you. I might be. I might not be. Russians who don't post images are the worst because even if their journals were a Hunter S. Thompson madhouse, I'd still be illegible to me.
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New Múm album soon. Life has meaning again.
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Yet another writing project, but much easier than previous. I get to, you know, actually explore something I came up with instead of filling in the blanks for other people. I must never forget this one truism: Artists need limitations or else they will be devoured by their own indulgences.
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Ted Kennedy was a fucking warrior. That's all I have to say on the subject.
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I'm not in love, but I wouldn't fight it if it happened. If.
It could happen, though. Could.
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There is nothing funny on the Internet anymore. Except, maybe, Courage Wolf and his cavalcade of impostors. Even that is mostly done. Does that mean I'm old or does it mean the Internet's ceaseless randomness has lost its charm? Is the gimmick done with? Is it simply the lowest common denominator? I don't have answers.
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Comments: Read 7 or Add Your Own.
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Saturday, August 29th, 2009
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| Time: | 3:42 am. |
| Music: | Rasputina, Sweet Water Kill. |
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I want plants, but alas, I live in a sunless realm of eternal night. It is a rocky place upon which no seed can find purchase. My maternal nature shall go unfulfilled.
Wait... maybe I should grow decorative lichens instead.
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I've given up. I'm the only person on the face of the earth that likes 'Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job'.
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Shes sad shes not my girlfriend. It is sentiments like that which threaten my nihilism. If this keeps up, I might actually have a reason to give a fuck. Honestly though, is anything really forgiven after all? I distrust what I want. Because of its rarity I'm naturally suspicious of anything that might, you know, actually give me a sense of purpose. I wrote off that silly thing called 'bliss' a long time ago. Was it a mistake?
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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