so this entire weekend i was a piece of shit. i don't know how this happened. with the twin motivations of having my means of funding continued survival ending in a month and a half and my at least partially genuine excitement about what i might be doing next, it seemed like i was going to spend all weekend emailing contacts, searching job ads, editing some audio tracks, and maybe fitting in a trip to kamiak butte or two.
but instead i pretty much slept for three entire days. when i wasn't sleeping, i was laying on the couch reading (half-awake) or eating shitty food since i was too worthless to cook for myself.
as you can see, there's a bit of self-loathing involved in my reflections currently. a lot of times, especially over the last two years or so, when things have been really, constantly difficult professionally and emotionally, i haven't had a problem with having a few days off here and there, with just saying "fuck it" and sitting around until i get my head back on straight. but that wasn't what was going on this time. it wasn't constructive. it was just me feeling sorry for myself and being outright lazy. and i guess that's why i'm frustrated. i feel like i lost three days for no reason at a time that i really don't have luxury of wasting that much time. i'm in pretty real danger of no longer having any money or anywhere to live by july or august, and sitting around moping isn't doing anything to straighten that shit out. my default behavior is not necessarily antisocial or internal; i can be external pretty easily also...but my default behavior IS reflective. i'm a planner. i like to observe things and take time planning my response. but there isn't really time for that. i think i ran out of time for the tactful approach about nine months ago. so i'm learning to adjust, and i think that necessitates a certain amount of self-ass-kicking. so there it is.
well tomorrow morning, it's back to work. and the way my sleep schedule's been lately, i'll be extremely surprised if i sleep at all before then. fortunately, i found an old copy of "Face/Off", so i think i'll probably just watch that like 3 times and drink diet coke until my eyes do that thing where they get really dry and itchy and maybe (just maybe) i start seeing snakes on the ceiling. and then the sun will come up and i'll shuffle off to buffalo.
uh-oh.
Mar 31, 2008
Mar 29, 2008
i'd like to say this entry is about sex swings, but...
...it's not.
instead, it's partly a follow-up to some comments i made back in this post, and partly an entry that will bump zooey down a bit on my mainpage so i'm not suddenly losing 15 minutes staring at her every time i load up my blog.
so, based on conversations i've had with a few people in the real universe and in the online-universe (formerly the AOL universe and previouslier still the punch-card universe), it turns out my comments on drinking (which i took oh-so-much care making in such a way that they wouldn't be misconstrued) were misconstrued. this is an important point, and so i'm going to belabor it to make sure it comes across as intended. it seems like a lot of the time you can't express disinterest in an activity without other people feeling like you're judging them for their own interest in said activity, and that's unfortunate because that's not the case here.
as i'm pretty sure i've mentioned before, i was a pretty messed up kid, especially in my late teens. i had a lot of issues and i was convinced that my ability to contribute meaning to the world and/or receive meaning from it was/were eternally corrupted by the fact that i just absolutely sucked at everything. i was luckily pulled out of this hole eventually partially by my own pragmatism and stubborness and partially because of this girl that i met who was brilliant enough to point out that maybe i could be flawed in some ways and still be able to contribute something that mattered to life overall. so i believed her, picked myself up, and did my best for a few years. well, as they often do, things between me and this girl eventually went south. that in itself wasn't a problem. the problem was that my justification for not being a total waste of life was entirely wrapped up in my relationship with her, and when that ended, i didn't have anything that was entirely my own to stand on. so i pretty much bottomed out again, to where i had been back in the good old days. and this time, instead of running into a girl, i ran into jim beam. so for about a year or so, i drank enough and had enough fun while drinking that i was able to believe that life was fun and meaningful and people cared about me and that i cared about people. of course most of those things were true, but i was only able to believe them when i was drinking.
eventually i disentangled myself from that whole thing and moved on, and got better. but the point of this story isn't to get approval for my own made-for-TV-movie or to get you and the indian from national geographic to shed a tear for my horrible, horrible life. at this point, i don't fucking care. it happened, and i learned a lot, and it's over now.
the point of the story is to say:
a) i might be a bit biased on the use of alcohol in social situations
b) i might be a bit strongly opinionated when it comes to the use of alcohol in social situations
but that's the way it is, and that's the reason it is that way. i don't mind the occasional drink. i don't mind occasionally getting smash-ass drunk and falling off a roof or losing my clothes or losing my clothes while falling off a roof and then running 3 miles back to my apartment (some of those things have happened, some haven't but should eventually). i'm not like an AA convert that never wants to touch a drink again and doesn't think anyone else should either. despite the impression i may or may not give off, i could give less of a fuck whether other people are complete drunks or evangelical puritans.
here's my thing: if i drink, i like it to just be rarely, because i'm afraid that if it's not, i'll start getting attached to the feeling of being drunk all the time again and lose track of other, less crazy reasons for enjoying life.
corollary: not drinking makes it hard to hang out with people who drink a lot, because let's face it, being drunk is like a social context. nobody likes to be the DD because it's boring, and you can't really relate well to the people who are smash-ass drunk and bouncing off the walls. so your choice is either to a) join the social context by drinking or b) skip out and feel like an outsider or show up and not drink and still feel like an outsider.
corollary 2: if you're the kind of person who would do/say a lot of things when you're drunk that you wouldn't do/say otherwise, odds are we're not going to get along well. i can appreciate the idea of alcohol as a "social lubricator", but if you need alcohol before you can "be yourself" then you're probably not my girl/guy. if that approach works for you, fine. i'm just saying it doesn't work for me.
conclusion from corollary #2: if you aren't the type of person that i've described above, then what's the point in drinking more than once a month or so? it costs more than drinking water/soda/whatever, it involves being in places where it's really hard to talk/interact meaningfully because of noise levels/smoke levels/etc. and it pretty much necessitates drinking at least a decent amount before it's any fun. so why not just do something else?
i guess i see it the same way i see other recreational drug use (i won't specify here because i don't want to get myself in trouble, but let's just say my list is at least a few items long). it's fun to do occasionally, but i think it's more fun to just sit around and watch a movie or go for a hike or a road trip or just randomly dick around (meant not-sexually, of course...umm...usually, anyway). i guess if that makes me old or no fun or whatever, that's fine. that's some else's judgment to make. but i hate being put in situations where i feel like the only options i have for socializing are: a) drink more often and more frequently than i'm comfortable with or b) come off as a pompous ass and stay at home by myself. it seems to me that if people were more interested in hanging out than they were in drinking, we could at least occasionally deign to do something not-alcohol related. i don't really think that's an asshole thing for me to expect. any thoughts?
instead, it's partly a follow-up to some comments i made back in this post, and partly an entry that will bump zooey down a bit on my mainpage so i'm not suddenly losing 15 minutes staring at her every time i load up my blog.
so, based on conversations i've had with a few people in the real universe and in the online-universe (formerly the AOL universe and previouslier still the punch-card universe), it turns out my comments on drinking (which i took oh-so-much care making in such a way that they wouldn't be misconstrued) were misconstrued. this is an important point, and so i'm going to belabor it to make sure it comes across as intended. it seems like a lot of the time you can't express disinterest in an activity without other people feeling like you're judging them for their own interest in said activity, and that's unfortunate because that's not the case here.
as i'm pretty sure i've mentioned before, i was a pretty messed up kid, especially in my late teens. i had a lot of issues and i was convinced that my ability to contribute meaning to the world and/or receive meaning from it was/were eternally corrupted by the fact that i just absolutely sucked at everything. i was luckily pulled out of this hole eventually partially by my own pragmatism and stubborness and partially because of this girl that i met who was brilliant enough to point out that maybe i could be flawed in some ways and still be able to contribute something that mattered to life overall. so i believed her, picked myself up, and did my best for a few years. well, as they often do, things between me and this girl eventually went south. that in itself wasn't a problem. the problem was that my justification for not being a total waste of life was entirely wrapped up in my relationship with her, and when that ended, i didn't have anything that was entirely my own to stand on. so i pretty much bottomed out again, to where i had been back in the good old days. and this time, instead of running into a girl, i ran into jim beam. so for about a year or so, i drank enough and had enough fun while drinking that i was able to believe that life was fun and meaningful and people cared about me and that i cared about people. of course most of those things were true, but i was only able to believe them when i was drinking.
eventually i disentangled myself from that whole thing and moved on, and got better. but the point of this story isn't to get approval for my own made-for-TV-movie or to get you and the indian from national geographic to shed a tear for my horrible, horrible life. at this point, i don't fucking care. it happened, and i learned a lot, and it's over now.
the point of the story is to say:
a) i might be a bit biased on the use of alcohol in social situations
b) i might be a bit strongly opinionated when it comes to the use of alcohol in social situations
but that's the way it is, and that's the reason it is that way. i don't mind the occasional drink. i don't mind occasionally getting smash-ass drunk and falling off a roof or losing my clothes or losing my clothes while falling off a roof and then running 3 miles back to my apartment (some of those things have happened, some haven't but should eventually). i'm not like an AA convert that never wants to touch a drink again and doesn't think anyone else should either. despite the impression i may or may not give off, i could give less of a fuck whether other people are complete drunks or evangelical puritans.
here's my thing: if i drink, i like it to just be rarely, because i'm afraid that if it's not, i'll start getting attached to the feeling of being drunk all the time again and lose track of other, less crazy reasons for enjoying life.
corollary: not drinking makes it hard to hang out with people who drink a lot, because let's face it, being drunk is like a social context. nobody likes to be the DD because it's boring, and you can't really relate well to the people who are smash-ass drunk and bouncing off the walls. so your choice is either to a) join the social context by drinking or b) skip out and feel like an outsider or show up and not drink and still feel like an outsider.
corollary 2: if you're the kind of person who would do/say a lot of things when you're drunk that you wouldn't do/say otherwise, odds are we're not going to get along well. i can appreciate the idea of alcohol as a "social lubricator", but if you need alcohol before you can "be yourself" then you're probably not my girl/guy. if that approach works for you, fine. i'm just saying it doesn't work for me.
conclusion from corollary #2: if you aren't the type of person that i've described above, then what's the point in drinking more than once a month or so? it costs more than drinking water/soda/whatever, it involves being in places where it's really hard to talk/interact meaningfully because of noise levels/smoke levels/etc. and it pretty much necessitates drinking at least a decent amount before it's any fun. so why not just do something else?
i guess i see it the same way i see other recreational drug use (i won't specify here because i don't want to get myself in trouble, but let's just say my list is at least a few items long). it's fun to do occasionally, but i think it's more fun to just sit around and watch a movie or go for a hike or a road trip or just randomly dick around (meant not-sexually, of course...umm...usually, anyway). i guess if that makes me old or no fun or whatever, that's fine. that's some else's judgment to make. but i hate being put in situations where i feel like the only options i have for socializing are: a) drink more often and more frequently than i'm comfortable with or b) come off as a pompous ass and stay at home by myself. it seems to me that if people were more interested in hanging out than they were in drinking, we could at least occasionally deign to do something not-alcohol related. i don't really think that's an asshole thing for me to expect. any thoughts?
Mar 28, 2008
REVIEW - volume one
to keep with my avalanche of media reviews lately, i thought i'd comment on another new release. i'm trying not to limit these reviews to new releases only, because honestly i don't track down or keep up with many artists' new releases, and i'm finding albums constantly that have come out 5, 10, 20 years ago that are just as new and influential and important to me personally as things that are just now being released. that said, i might be reviewing a few older albums pretty soon. but there's a lot of new stuff that i've heard that i like (the new black keys, sun kil moon's "april", etc.) that i probably should cover first.
with that in mind, i shall turn my wand of impotent judgment towards the new record by m.ward and zooey deschanel, simply titled "volume one".
i like when actors/celebrities put out original music. an actor making a move towards personal creative expression outside of their "accepted" bounds seems to have a stigma about it, and it's a stigma that perhaps is somewhat deserved based on the number of these types of projects that result in (for lack of a better word) crappy albums. but i like the idea of people that i see (and enjoy seeing) as characters in films expressing some form of art as their "real" selves. i mean, sure, i'm a huge jack bauer fan, but jack bauer isn't real. so it was really fun to see the recent music documentary featuring kiefer sutherland and to be able to disconnect the actor from the character. i feel like i'm not explaining this idea very well, but i can't figure out how else to say it. regardless of my possible articulative failure, suffice to say that i was really excited to see what zooey deschanel (one of my favorite actresses) was going to commit to CD, especially teaming up with m.ward (who is quickly becoming one of my favorite artists), and most especially factoring in her face-melting vocals.
so i'll try to cut down a bit on my usual wordiness and just say that i liked this album a lot. it's short, and is more ear-candy than ear-steak (whatever that means), but it's really well put together, and i think the types of soundscapes that ward is so fond of crafting fit zooey's old-timey vocals (and lyrics) perfectly. if there's one complaint i have, it's that the material here doesn't let zooey's voice explode like it does in the above youtube clip. there's some power behind some of these songs, but it sounds almost forcibly subdued. oh, and "swing low, sweet chariot" should be longer, cuz it's the awesome.
i especially enjoy the more upbeat songs of the set, because they're a good mix of cheery, maybe early-60s pop sounds with zooey's sad-relationship-type lyrics, which, while good, never delve deeply enough into self pity or depression that you feel they need a "sylvia plath"-ish piano treatment. you hear what she's saying, but the point of the songs aren't too glamorize lamentation, but rather to sing to get over the desire to lament in the first place; an attitude that was prevalent in a lot of the music from the era zooey and ward seem to be riffing off of, but that has been - sadly - largely replaced in today's popular music. make sense? no? moving on.
i really really like the range of zooey's voice on this record, and for me, that's it's primary selling point. i won't lie and say that when ward's voice jumps in on harmony on a few tracks, i don't get a big smile on my face, but i think it's a good thing that he doesn't overwhelm too much of the proceedings with his own distinctive singing. now when i say "range" i don't mean it in the typical music-singing sense; i don't know enough about music theory to throw terms around like that without making an ass of myself. what i mean is that she's very good at nuance. she hovers on the edge of a twang throughout, and she's got a little 50s pop inflection going on at the same time, but she bounces around from singing to talking to teasing and pouting and laughing in one song sometimes that it's just fun to listen to. she's also got a lot of overdubs of herself doing harmonies and backup vocals, etc., but there's enough variation that sometimes it's easy to mistake her overdubs for actual backup singers that are different people.
all in all, i'm way more pleased with this record than i even expected to be. it might be a slight bit too poppy at points, and it might be a little short, but those aren't even really complaints; they're more just whining because i wanted even more than i got. i DO hope if they do another album that it's a bit different in tone than this one, or at least a little more exploratory. of course with ward involved i'm sure that won't be a problem...
overall score: the most fun you'll have at the movies this year!
she and him - "why do you let me stay here?" from "volume one"
Mar 27, 2008
interpret this!
so i'm reading this excellent book by janet brennan croft right now, "war and the works of j.r.r. tolkien", which happily combines 2 of my favorite things: tolkien and WW1/WW2.
there are a lot of really interesting connections made in this book (and a heavy reliance on the theory/interpretive awesomeness of paul fussell, which is a-okay), and there are a number of things i've read already, being about 1/4th of the way through, that i've wanted to spout off about. so you probably haven't heard the last of me on this. but. there was one thing i specifically wanted to tackle today, and it's this whole bullshit idea that somehow fiction and specifically fantasy fiction aren't worthy of serious study. i'd imagine anybody who wants to write a "serious" work about tolkien has to start with a chapter on why that's okay to do, but i don't get why. the vast majority of material considered okay for serious scholarly study/debate is fiction, and a lot of it is fantasy fiction (arthurian legends, vonnegut, borges, blah blah blah). so why the moratorium against post-1900 and specifically post-1950s fantasy fiction? i think this summation of orson scott card by way of croft sums it up well:
"[Card]...points out the paradox implicit in the postmodern concept of writing and reading 'serious' literature as a process of encoding and decoding meanings. Rather than creating a deep and resonant work, this process creates a text that is actually simple enough to be decoded by the clever-enough reader and have its one right meaning captured and pinned down. However, escapist storytelling, story told for the sake of story, requires the reader to interact with the story rather than standing aloof, and can allow a multitude of interpretations even by the same reader, rather than one 'correct' reading dictated by the author. 'Escapist' literature is 'so complex and deep it cannot be mediated, but must be experienced'. '[T]he story is not the text. Rather the text is the tool that the readers use to create the story in the only place it ever truly exists - their individual memories'".
i think card's idea that postmodern theorists attack a work with the idea of coming up with one "right" reading is a little reductionist, but the basic idea behind his complete is solid. people in my line of work are taught to look for answers in texts, and then they try to find a way to justify those answers. that's what we do. we essentially write math proofs in the form of rhetoric. and so the idea of story-for-the-sake-of-story is lost. nobody cares because just looking at a story as a good story doesn't afford you the opportunity to dig into the subtext and see what's "really" going on. i think this idea began reasonably enough, impelled by the idea that there's more to a written work than the plot: there are social, biographical, etc. concerns at work as well. but at some point investigating these outside effects became the be-all-and-end-all of critical investigation, and i think as a result stories that focused on their story became stigmatized. see, because once people start reading stories looking for "deeper" meaning, authors start writing stories meant to communicate deeper meaning. and that, folks, is generally how we decide nowadays what goes on the "literature" shelf and what goes on the "fiction" shelf. at least that's my impression.
it's hard to come across a good, solid story that isn't pretty directly trying to communicate some sort of artful subtextual trickery - of course at the expense of said good, solid story.
hmm...i was going to pontificate on this further, but i'm realizing that a) probably nobody cares but me and b) dinner's ready.
vamos!
there are a lot of really interesting connections made in this book (and a heavy reliance on the theory/interpretive awesomeness of paul fussell, which is a-okay), and there are a number of things i've read already, being about 1/4th of the way through, that i've wanted to spout off about. so you probably haven't heard the last of me on this. but. there was one thing i specifically wanted to tackle today, and it's this whole bullshit idea that somehow fiction and specifically fantasy fiction aren't worthy of serious study. i'd imagine anybody who wants to write a "serious" work about tolkien has to start with a chapter on why that's okay to do, but i don't get why. the vast majority of material considered okay for serious scholarly study/debate is fiction, and a lot of it is fantasy fiction (arthurian legends, vonnegut, borges, blah blah blah). so why the moratorium against post-1900 and specifically post-1950s fantasy fiction? i think this summation of orson scott card by way of croft sums it up well:
"[Card]...points out the paradox implicit in the postmodern concept of writing and reading 'serious' literature as a process of encoding and decoding meanings. Rather than creating a deep and resonant work, this process creates a text that is actually simple enough to be decoded by the clever-enough reader and have its one right meaning captured and pinned down. However, escapist storytelling, story told for the sake of story, requires the reader to interact with the story rather than standing aloof, and can allow a multitude of interpretations even by the same reader, rather than one 'correct' reading dictated by the author. 'Escapist' literature is 'so complex and deep it cannot be mediated, but must be experienced'. '[T]he story is not the text. Rather the text is the tool that the readers use to create the story in the only place it ever truly exists - their individual memories'".
i think card's idea that postmodern theorists attack a work with the idea of coming up with one "right" reading is a little reductionist, but the basic idea behind his complete is solid. people in my line of work are taught to look for answers in texts, and then they try to find a way to justify those answers. that's what we do. we essentially write math proofs in the form of rhetoric. and so the idea of story-for-the-sake-of-story is lost. nobody cares because just looking at a story as a good story doesn't afford you the opportunity to dig into the subtext and see what's "really" going on. i think this idea began reasonably enough, impelled by the idea that there's more to a written work than the plot: there are social, biographical, etc. concerns at work as well. but at some point investigating these outside effects became the be-all-and-end-all of critical investigation, and i think as a result stories that focused on their story became stigmatized. see, because once people start reading stories looking for "deeper" meaning, authors start writing stories meant to communicate deeper meaning. and that, folks, is generally how we decide nowadays what goes on the "literature" shelf and what goes on the "fiction" shelf. at least that's my impression.
it's hard to come across a good, solid story that isn't pretty directly trying to communicate some sort of artful subtextual trickery - of course at the expense of said good, solid story.
hmm...i was going to pontificate on this further, but i'm realizing that a) probably nobody cares but me and b) dinner's ready.
vamos!
REVIEW - saturday nights, sunday mornings
i've always been somewhat of an off/on fan of the counting crows. i admire their extremely slickly produced sound, their catchy melodies, and of course adam duritz's crazy-emotive voice. but at the same time, you always pretty much know what you get with them. the mid-90s pop-rock equivalent of slash guitar, duritz moaning about how much he sucks and/or wants to die and/or get laid while referencing monkeys, michaelangelo, the moon, cowboys, kings and queens, the rain, girls, black and white, etc. and occasionally some awesome banjo (see disc 1 of "across a wire", easily the band's best record).
this can be a good thing, especially if you're a fan of the crows' sound and have been since "mr. jones"; however, for me the selling point of a great artist is the ability of said artist to continue to reinvent themselves everytime they sit down and write, sing, or play something, and that's just not duritz's game. i don't think that makes him a "bad" artist, it just makes me not care that much about his records unless i'm having a day where i just really suddenly want to hear the crows' particular brand of pop-rock.
"this desert life" was frustrating for me in the sense that it was a departure for the band in some ways, and seemed like a move beyond the material on their first two albums. but, it was generally critically panned and thus the next release, "hard candy" was like a greatest-hits of the first two albums polished with an extra poppy veneer. now comes "saturday nights, sunday mornings", not only hawking what sounds like a lot of b-sides from all the crows' previous albums, but doing so in a gimmicky half and half album format (the first half is the "saturday nights" and the second half the "sunday mornings"...sweet!). i actually probably shouldn't make fun since i'm currently doing the same thing with my LP3 project...
it's a good thing that it's been four years since the last crows' record, because otherwise it would probably be more obvious and more annoying that this album sounds so much like all the others. as it is, it's great to hear some new material, even if "new" is a relative term, and i think that anybody who already likes this band is going to love this album. hell, i love this album. but i'm going to get bored with it soon. i've listened to it five or six times already and i can feel the apathy setting in. it starts with "1492", a catchy opening song that's actually one of my favorite tracks on the album. the familiar images mentioned above are all here, along with the requisite complaining about how much girls suck...though i have to wonder at the effectiveness of duritz (who if i'm not mistaken is in his mid-40s) insisting on the use of the word "girl"...maybe that would explain some of his relationship issues. but anyway, that's neither here nor there, it just sort of rankles me in a weird way. but i guess that's my problem.
in "1492", the parts where duritz seems to be repeating himself are saved by the band, who absolutely shreds all throughout the first half of this album. occasionally he comes up to their level of energy ("cowboys"?), but there are lots of points on this album that i just wanted to hear the band jam, which i've never really felt on a crows album. so that's a plus.
you'll get about 25 seconds into the second track (after durtiz's faux "mistake" recording cough) before you feel like you've heard it before. and you have. that's all. "los angeles" would be a great track were it not for the fact that ryan adams guests on it and the opening verse progression sounds exactly like the adams great "rescue blues". being a ryan-geek i just can't get past that for some reason. the next few songs are also pretty familiar-sounding, and the "saturday" closer "cowboys" is arguably the best rock track on the album. i wonder at the efficacy of including all the "rock" tracks in a row. these are the tracks that really all sound alike, and i think something even as simple as dispersing them throughout the album would have helped offset that A LOT. but alas.
the first few acoustic tracks are interesting once or twice for their novelty, but they don't grab me by much other than a coatsleeve until "le ballet d'or" and the track after that. if you like the idea of someone strumming an acoustic guitar and adam singing over it, you'll like this part. but i liked it a lot better the first time i heard it and it was, yeah, disc 1 of "across a wire". the two tracks i just mentioned actually do a lot of different things for once melodically, lyrically, etc. then there's the closer "come around", which just sounds like it's trying too hard to be a coda song.
i like this album for the band's shredding on the first half, and for the fact that it's the counting crows, because they'll always have a little, alt-rocking-angsty-teenage-bunting-shaped place in my heart. but it's disappointing that the flashes of innovation that you hear in the albums' best songs didn't get fleshed out any further in the four years since "hard candy". i liked this album for a few spins, but after that it pretty much retreated into the crows' catalog with nary a protest.
overall: if you like the crows and order the same thing everytime you go to your favorite restaurant you'll like this album. if you occasionally record yourself screaming into a pillow and then slow down the recording for fun just to see what it sounds like, then you'll probably be a bit disappointed.
counting crows: "cowboys" from "saturday nights, sunday mornings"
alright, we get it. you can stop now.
it's snowing like hell again tonight. as i was walking home, wet just-below-freezing flakes caking the outside of my hoodie and forming an icy crust around the hood protecting my fragile ears, i realized something. if it manages to keep snowing, or at least stays below freezing for 2 more weeks, winter will have officially lasted 6 months in pullman this year. our first snow last year (in 2007) was a little before halloween, and it's been, with the exception of a few sunny and 52-degree days, winter ever since. i wonder if there'll even be a spring this year or if one day we'll wake up and it'll just be summer.
REVIEW - children of hurin
i've had a copy of tolkien's "children of hurin" on my bookshelf since august, and just hadn't gotten around to reading it. actually, i had forgotten i had it until i went to pick up "the silmarillion" a few weeks ago and realized it was sitting next to it.
well, as you may or may not know, "children of hurin" is actually an expanded narrative of one of the stories told in "the silmarillion". so it made sense to read it first before going back to the original. the first real tolkien "novel" released since "lord of the rings", "children of hurin" absolutely didn't disappoint. it's a bit darker than "lotr" (if that's possible), and has more elements of an almost shakespearean tragedy in it, but it's also a lot shorter (which might be good news to some), and a lot more personal. it focuses largely on the exploits of turin, one of the children of hurin, and does so in a way that's direct enough that we get insight into his character in a way that we really never do with even, say, gandalf or frodo in "lotr". at the same time, going on around turin, always acknowledged but not often brought to the front of the story, is the battle middle-earth is constantly fighting against melkor/morgoth, a war much more massive in size and more destructive than anything "lotr" has to offer. it's an interesting exercise on the part of tolkien, obviously having all this backstory and drama to play with, but choosing to leave it as background for the story of turin's personal struggles. it's a choice i don't think many novelists (or directors for that matter) make today...if there's a backstory that involves lots of things blowing up and the fate of the world hanging in the balance, it becomes the fore-story, and characterization and detail come second to scale.
if there are parts of this novel that christopher tolkien directly wrote/edited/filled in after his father's death, i couldn't obviously pick them out, and i'm a pretty experienced tolkien reader. so that was something i had worried about at the time of printing that apparently ended up being a non-issue.
it's really, really great to have at least one complete, novelized story of characters from the pre-Third Age middle-earth, and while i would have preferred to have a novelization of the fall of gondolin or the story of beren and luthien (which for my money could still be put up against any of the real arthurian legends any day), it's not like we can really be picky about new material from tolkien nowadays.
"children" probably won't attract any new readers on its own: it is fairly short page-wise, but i have to wonder if entering into it unprepared and not knowing much about "the silmarillion" or tolkien's legendarium as a whole might make it nigh undigestible. of course, if you haven't read "the silmarillion" you should do that immediately if you're at all interested in myths, legends, lord of the rings, or just plain old good storytelling. there's never a moment or character wasted in tolkien, and the same goes as usual in "children of hurin"; everything has some sort of significance, and if it's not clear right away what that significance is, it becomes clear 100 pages later when you least expect it. of course tolkien is working with a lot of really basic western mythological tropes, but he never does it in a tired or repetitive way, and when i read writers like stephen r. donaldson or guy gavriel kay or george r.r. martin it puts me in mind of tolkien's ability to weave this type of story where everything eventually means something and the story-world is ultimately cohesive. not necessarily in an every-second-is-dramatically-important way, but just a way that acknowledges that in real life characters and plot lines don't just come and go when it seems most convenient.
anyway, obviously i can't recommend this book enough. i've read so much good fiction since i first picked up "lotr" that it was good to read "children of hurin" and be reminded of what it is that makes tolkien head-and-shoulders a better writer than even the best that's out there.
well, as you may or may not know, "children of hurin" is actually an expanded narrative of one of the stories told in "the silmarillion". so it made sense to read it first before going back to the original. the first real tolkien "novel" released since "lord of the rings", "children of hurin" absolutely didn't disappoint. it's a bit darker than "lotr" (if that's possible), and has more elements of an almost shakespearean tragedy in it, but it's also a lot shorter (which might be good news to some), and a lot more personal. it focuses largely on the exploits of turin, one of the children of hurin, and does so in a way that's direct enough that we get insight into his character in a way that we really never do with even, say, gandalf or frodo in "lotr". at the same time, going on around turin, always acknowledged but not often brought to the front of the story, is the battle middle-earth is constantly fighting against melkor/morgoth, a war much more massive in size and more destructive than anything "lotr" has to offer. it's an interesting exercise on the part of tolkien, obviously having all this backstory and drama to play with, but choosing to leave it as background for the story of turin's personal struggles. it's a choice i don't think many novelists (or directors for that matter) make today...if there's a backstory that involves lots of things blowing up and the fate of the world hanging in the balance, it becomes the fore-story, and characterization and detail come second to scale.
if there are parts of this novel that christopher tolkien directly wrote/edited/filled in after his father's death, i couldn't obviously pick them out, and i'm a pretty experienced tolkien reader. so that was something i had worried about at the time of printing that apparently ended up being a non-issue.
it's really, really great to have at least one complete, novelized story of characters from the pre-Third Age middle-earth, and while i would have preferred to have a novelization of the fall of gondolin or the story of beren and luthien (which for my money could still be put up against any of the real arthurian legends any day), it's not like we can really be picky about new material from tolkien nowadays.
"children" probably won't attract any new readers on its own: it is fairly short page-wise, but i have to wonder if entering into it unprepared and not knowing much about "the silmarillion" or tolkien's legendarium as a whole might make it nigh undigestible. of course, if you haven't read "the silmarillion" you should do that immediately if you're at all interested in myths, legends, lord of the rings, or just plain old good storytelling. there's never a moment or character wasted in tolkien, and the same goes as usual in "children of hurin"; everything has some sort of significance, and if it's not clear right away what that significance is, it becomes clear 100 pages later when you least expect it. of course tolkien is working with a lot of really basic western mythological tropes, but he never does it in a tired or repetitive way, and when i read writers like stephen r. donaldson or guy gavriel kay or george r.r. martin it puts me in mind of tolkien's ability to weave this type of story where everything eventually means something and the story-world is ultimately cohesive. not necessarily in an every-second-is-dramatically-important way, but just a way that acknowledges that in real life characters and plot lines don't just come and go when it seems most convenient.
anyway, obviously i can't recommend this book enough. i've read so much good fiction since i first picked up "lotr" that it was good to read "children of hurin" and be reminded of what it is that makes tolkien head-and-shoulders a better writer than even the best that's out there.
Mar 26, 2008
REVIEW - some (more) movies i saw, and how i feel about them
so i went on another movie rampage the other night, and i figured it was only fitting to follow this up with another mega-post about my impressions of them.
prepare to be inundated by meaningless words!
1) rocky - i have never seen any of the rocky movies, so this past week i decided it was my duty as a human being to watch them. so i started with the first one. i've got to admit, i wasn't terribly impressed. even taking into account that the movie is over 30 years old at this point, i'm not sure i understand the appeal. unless the underdog-sports story and the training montage trope were so underdone at the time that "rocky" came out that it really was a revolutionary movie, i don't really understand why it could have possibly been as popular as it apparently was. i mean, the story itself is pretty inspiring, and the last 10 minutes or so of the movie are fantastic, but otherwise:
- apollo creed is a completely one-dimensional character
- rocky seems like he might have some degenerative mental disease (and this is taking into account that he is obviously playing up the "italian hobo" angle)
- adrian DEFINITELY has some sort of degenerative mental disease
- it's not clear to me at all what rocky sees in adrian, other than she's the only woman in the movie who isn't a hooker
- it's not clear to me at all what adrian sees in rocky, especially because he's a huge meathead and refuses to get freaky with her once he starts his training
- the amount of progress rocky makes in his five-week training period is absolutely unrealistic
- the method by which he is chosen to fight creed seems extremely arbitrary and would NEVER HAPPEN in reality
i could go on. and you could of course argue that it's a movie from 1976 and it was going for the one-trick-pony, everyman, cheaply-produced movie approach. but still. i was really bored for the entire movie, and the only thing that kept me watching despite the fact that i literally threw my hands up and yelled at the TV in sheer frustration at least 20 times was that i wanted to see the fight. and it was good, but not good enough to make me want to watch rocky 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6.
overall: the movie equivalent of rocky's brain by the time his fight with apollo is over.
2) shoot 'em up - i had already watched 2 movies on the night that i started this one, and was actually not very attached to the idea of seeing it. i queued it up and was actually about to hit "stop" after the first minute or so, but then clive owen's eye-roll after watching the crazy gunman chase a screaming pregnant woman down a dark alley was so absolutely perfect that i decide to dedicate the next few hours of my life to watching the rest of the movie.
first of all, clive owen is such a pleasure to watch in just about everything that he's in that seeing him play the protagonist in this over-the-top shooter film so fun by itself, there probably didn't even need to be a plot. i mean, in a way there really wasn't. at one point it was explained why the guys who wanted to kill the baby wanted to kill it, and what all the tissue samples were for and everything else, but i really didn't get it, and clive explained it like he didn't really get it either, and the guy who later gave the "we caught you so we'll explain our evil plan speech" also seemed like he didn't know what the fuck he was talking about.
but anyway, the point of the story isn't the story, it's the shooting. and in this, the movie is hilariously excellent. i was on board for the first 2/3rds of the movie, despite the absurdity of watching things like clive owen cutting an umbilical cord with a precise bullet shot, because it the sheer madness of all of it was engaging. you definitely have to leave your brain at the door when this movie starts, but all the brash attitude and insane gunplay (at one point owen kills something like 50 guys singlehandedly in a gun battle, then falls three stories with a baby under his arm and both he and the baby live...everyone else, of course, does not.
the point where the movie lost me was towards the end. it almost seems unfair to take a movie that i mostly enjoyed for wearing its absurdity on its sleeve and slam it for the same thing, but the skydiving shootout was ridiculous, too over-the-top, and the effects shots during it were pretty freaking atrocious. i understand the up-the-ante mentality that went into this, but when the very premise is unrealistic, the least you can do is film it in a realistic-looking way.
overall: if you like serious sam or clive owen, good for a few laughs, but don't think (or look) too hard.
3) lord of war - i don't like schizophrenic movies. what i mean is, i don't like movies that can't decide what sort of movie they are. one moment it's funny and everyone's one big happy family, and the next they go all dramatic and then ten minutes after watching the protagonist light his farts on fire you're supposed to buy the idea that he's really just repressing the sadness he feels by being abandoned by his parents at age 4 and that he's never learned to trust again even though he really wants to. if you're trying to sell me 4 different types of movie in 120 minutes, odds are i'm not biting. but if you're trying to sell me a movie that expresses itself in 4 different ways over 120 minutes because it has an overall point to prove about the abundance and variance of the human experience over time...well that's something else entirely.
if you haven't figured it out yet, "lord of war" falls into the second category. coming out around the same time as "matchstick men" and "the weather man", two other generally unmentioned nicholas cage movies, "lord of war" was a film (along with the other two films) that i thought looked extremely interesting despite the mixed reactions but never quite got to see before it left theatres.
it turns out to be a really brilliant and multi-faceted look into the international gun trade of the last 30 years or so. i realize that nic cage is a very polarizing sort of actor; you hate him or you love him. i love him because he's very good at doing a lot of different things in one movie. he's not a one-trick pony, and while he might never be The Best dramatic actor or The Best dry humorist, he effortlessly transitions between about three types of character in this story and does it in a way that convinces you that he's actually playing the part of (gasp!) a human being.
he's an asshole and a hero by turns and portrays the complications really well. one other note, though: if you're already not a fan of cage, the fact that 1/4th or so of this movie is him giving snarky voiceovers to the action onscreen probably won't convert you.
i really liked this movie for its informational portrayal of the complicated issue that is the international illegal arms trade and for cage's brilliant performance as the man trying to personally deal with those complications.
overall: even cooler than the gold-plated kalashnikov toted my baptiste's son in the film.
prepare to be inundated by meaningless words!
1) rocky - i have never seen any of the rocky movies, so this past week i decided it was my duty as a human being to watch them. so i started with the first one. i've got to admit, i wasn't terribly impressed. even taking into account that the movie is over 30 years old at this point, i'm not sure i understand the appeal. unless the underdog-sports story and the training montage trope were so underdone at the time that "rocky" came out that it really was a revolutionary movie, i don't really understand why it could have possibly been as popular as it apparently was. i mean, the story itself is pretty inspiring, and the last 10 minutes or so of the movie are fantastic, but otherwise:
- apollo creed is a completely one-dimensional character
- rocky seems like he might have some degenerative mental disease (and this is taking into account that he is obviously playing up the "italian hobo" angle)
- adrian DEFINITELY has some sort of degenerative mental disease
- it's not clear to me at all what rocky sees in adrian, other than she's the only woman in the movie who isn't a hooker
- it's not clear to me at all what adrian sees in rocky, especially because he's a huge meathead and refuses to get freaky with her once he starts his training
- the amount of progress rocky makes in his five-week training period is absolutely unrealistic
- the method by which he is chosen to fight creed seems extremely arbitrary and would NEVER HAPPEN in reality
i could go on. and you could of course argue that it's a movie from 1976 and it was going for the one-trick-pony, everyman, cheaply-produced movie approach. but still. i was really bored for the entire movie, and the only thing that kept me watching despite the fact that i literally threw my hands up and yelled at the TV in sheer frustration at least 20 times was that i wanted to see the fight. and it was good, but not good enough to make me want to watch rocky 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6.
overall: the movie equivalent of rocky's brain by the time his fight with apollo is over.
2) shoot 'em up - i had already watched 2 movies on the night that i started this one, and was actually not very attached to the idea of seeing it. i queued it up and was actually about to hit "stop" after the first minute or so, but then clive owen's eye-roll after watching the crazy gunman chase a screaming pregnant woman down a dark alley was so absolutely perfect that i decide to dedicate the next few hours of my life to watching the rest of the movie.
first of all, clive owen is such a pleasure to watch in just about everything that he's in that seeing him play the protagonist in this over-the-top shooter film so fun by itself, there probably didn't even need to be a plot. i mean, in a way there really wasn't. at one point it was explained why the guys who wanted to kill the baby wanted to kill it, and what all the tissue samples were for and everything else, but i really didn't get it, and clive explained it like he didn't really get it either, and the guy who later gave the "we caught you so we'll explain our evil plan speech" also seemed like he didn't know what the fuck he was talking about.
but anyway, the point of the story isn't the story, it's the shooting. and in this, the movie is hilariously excellent. i was on board for the first 2/3rds of the movie, despite the absurdity of watching things like clive owen cutting an umbilical cord with a precise bullet shot, because it the sheer madness of all of it was engaging. you definitely have to leave your brain at the door when this movie starts, but all the brash attitude and insane gunplay (at one point owen kills something like 50 guys singlehandedly in a gun battle, then falls three stories with a baby under his arm and both he and the baby live...everyone else, of course, does not.
the point where the movie lost me was towards the end. it almost seems unfair to take a movie that i mostly enjoyed for wearing its absurdity on its sleeve and slam it for the same thing, but the skydiving shootout was ridiculous, too over-the-top, and the effects shots during it were pretty freaking atrocious. i understand the up-the-ante mentality that went into this, but when the very premise is unrealistic, the least you can do is film it in a realistic-looking way.
overall: if you like serious sam or clive owen, good for a few laughs, but don't think (or look) too hard.
3) lord of war - i don't like schizophrenic movies. what i mean is, i don't like movies that can't decide what sort of movie they are. one moment it's funny and everyone's one big happy family, and the next they go all dramatic and then ten minutes after watching the protagonist light his farts on fire you're supposed to buy the idea that he's really just repressing the sadness he feels by being abandoned by his parents at age 4 and that he's never learned to trust again even though he really wants to. if you're trying to sell me 4 different types of movie in 120 minutes, odds are i'm not biting. but if you're trying to sell me a movie that expresses itself in 4 different ways over 120 minutes because it has an overall point to prove about the abundance and variance of the human experience over time...well that's something else entirely.
if you haven't figured it out yet, "lord of war" falls into the second category. coming out around the same time as "matchstick men" and "the weather man", two other generally unmentioned nicholas cage movies, "lord of war" was a film (along with the other two films) that i thought looked extremely interesting despite the mixed reactions but never quite got to see before it left theatres.
it turns out to be a really brilliant and multi-faceted look into the international gun trade of the last 30 years or so. i realize that nic cage is a very polarizing sort of actor; you hate him or you love him. i love him because he's very good at doing a lot of different things in one movie. he's not a one-trick pony, and while he might never be The Best dramatic actor or The Best dry humorist, he effortlessly transitions between about three types of character in this story and does it in a way that convinces you that he's actually playing the part of (gasp!) a human being.
he's an asshole and a hero by turns and portrays the complications really well. one other note, though: if you're already not a fan of cage, the fact that 1/4th or so of this movie is him giving snarky voiceovers to the action onscreen probably won't convert you.
i really liked this movie for its informational portrayal of the complicated issue that is the international illegal arms trade and for cage's brilliant performance as the man trying to personally deal with those complications.
overall: even cooler than the gold-plated kalashnikov toted my baptiste's son in the film.
Mar 25, 2008
you know you're a rock star when...
...you fall asleep with your ear six inches from your subwoofer while you're playing the new raconteurs album at just under neighbors-call-to-complain volume.
finally got it covered
that's a horrible play on words that is meant to tactlessly communicate the fact that i finally picked some "cover" art for the second record. i use the term "cover" loosely simply because i've never going to actually sell a version of the album that will be worth enough to spend the money and other resources necessary to print up cd-jacket type thingies. but it's fun to pick out art and think about album art designs, just like it's fun to do pretty much anything else involving colors and feelings and such things.
the first record's cover was the picture of me in the trash-valley on the west end of spokane, which was appropriate for what i think came to be the main theme of Not California and those songs. disillusionment, or maybe more exactly both thinking that what you have is something more than what you actually have and also missing out on what you have because you want it to be better and can't appreciate it as it is, was the theme of so many of those songs, either purposely or accidentally. actually, there's only one song (maybe two) on that record that aren't about those things. i remember starting the ideas for so many of those songs as being love songs, and instead they ended up being about learning that you can love something all you want but that doesn't change what it is. i guess that writing 12 songs about that sort of says something about me and my craziness. oh well.
standing there in spokane looking disappointed in a pile of dirt and garbage with a semi-fancy but semi-rundown skyline in the background seemed a fitting representation of this feeling: somewhat chagrin, somewhat hope, somewhat disappointment. mostly disappointment. of course, it has since occured to me that perhaps this concept is a little emo. interestingly, the subtext not visible in the picture is that i was on a trip with two of my best friends when the picture was taken and i was actually having a great time. the duality is ironic and omnipresent! goodness!
anyway, i wanted the cover this time to be less me-centric and something more abstract; after all, i'm basically reworking a lot of the songs i recorded last time, with 2 tracks from the third and upcoming record thrown in for fun (only both done different than they will be on LP3). so i started thinking about themes again, and i kept coming back to the word/title that's been floating around in my head for a few months now: "ricochet". it's a word i'd originally envisioned as a title for the third record, but the concept seems now more fitting in the instance of the second record. mostly because i rerecorded these old songs because i haven't been able to settle, in three years, on a specific way i wanted to record them that i'd be happy with. jammy? folky? death-metaly? i've done pretty much all those and none seemed right. then, during the practices for the susan's show this winter, i realized exactly where i wanted to go with them (with no small help from mike and justin), and thence came the morphing of this record idea from a 5 song EP to a 55-minute 8-track jam-monster deserving of its own fucking title and cover. i wanted to use "ricochet", because it's emblematic of why i haven't fucking managed to finish the new (third) record yet; because i haven't had any sort of stability (financial, emotional, social) in a year and a half and i haven't been able to put down enough tracks in one place to make a cohesive album. fuck, even when i DO finally finish the third record, it's going to be split into two halves because i wrote half of it six months ago in ohio and i'm writing the other half right now. so calling this "ricochet" is basically my way of saying "this is the best i could do while holding some semblance of a life together, but i'm proud of it regardless". so how to create a cover that captures that feeling? here's how:
i took this picture the other night, and when i was going through the pictures i'd taken that night, this one in particular caught my eye. it's a picture of the skyline of pullman at night, which i took from a hill on the edge of town. it just seems appropriate because of pullman's sort of centrality in all the different kinds of dislocation and uncertainty and ricocheting that i've done in the last 16 months or so. it's pullman, but it's not pullman, like you can't quite focus enough to make out exactly what it's supposed to mean, and that's sort of what the recording's about also. maybe the transition phase from the disappointment and loss of certainty from the first album to what (will hopefully be) a different, new stage of living in the third one. i don't know what the fuck i'm talking about.
anyway, that's the album art. simple, and fun, and complicated and stupid. i'm going to eat something. fuck.
the first record's cover was the picture of me in the trash-valley on the west end of spokane, which was appropriate for what i think came to be the main theme of Not California and those songs. disillusionment, or maybe more exactly both thinking that what you have is something more than what you actually have and also missing out on what you have because you want it to be better and can't appreciate it as it is, was the theme of so many of those songs, either purposely or accidentally. actually, there's only one song (maybe two) on that record that aren't about those things. i remember starting the ideas for so many of those songs as being love songs, and instead they ended up being about learning that you can love something all you want but that doesn't change what it is. i guess that writing 12 songs about that sort of says something about me and my craziness. oh well.
standing there in spokane looking disappointed in a pile of dirt and garbage with a semi-fancy but semi-rundown skyline in the background seemed a fitting representation of this feeling: somewhat chagrin, somewhat hope, somewhat disappointment. mostly disappointment. of course, it has since occured to me that perhaps this concept is a little emo. interestingly, the subtext not visible in the picture is that i was on a trip with two of my best friends when the picture was taken and i was actually having a great time. the duality is ironic and omnipresent! goodness!
anyway, i wanted the cover this time to be less me-centric and something more abstract; after all, i'm basically reworking a lot of the songs i recorded last time, with 2 tracks from the third and upcoming record thrown in for fun (only both done different than they will be on LP3). so i started thinking about themes again, and i kept coming back to the word/title that's been floating around in my head for a few months now: "ricochet". it's a word i'd originally envisioned as a title for the third record, but the concept seems now more fitting in the instance of the second record. mostly because i rerecorded these old songs because i haven't been able to settle, in three years, on a specific way i wanted to record them that i'd be happy with. jammy? folky? death-metaly? i've done pretty much all those and none seemed right. then, during the practices for the susan's show this winter, i realized exactly where i wanted to go with them (with no small help from mike and justin), and thence came the morphing of this record idea from a 5 song EP to a 55-minute 8-track jam-monster deserving of its own fucking title and cover. i wanted to use "ricochet", because it's emblematic of why i haven't fucking managed to finish the new (third) record yet; because i haven't had any sort of stability (financial, emotional, social) in a year and a half and i haven't been able to put down enough tracks in one place to make a cohesive album. fuck, even when i DO finally finish the third record, it's going to be split into two halves because i wrote half of it six months ago in ohio and i'm writing the other half right now. so calling this "ricochet" is basically my way of saying "this is the best i could do while holding some semblance of a life together, but i'm proud of it regardless". so how to create a cover that captures that feeling? here's how:
i took this picture the other night, and when i was going through the pictures i'd taken that night, this one in particular caught my eye. it's a picture of the skyline of pullman at night, which i took from a hill on the edge of town. it just seems appropriate because of pullman's sort of centrality in all the different kinds of dislocation and uncertainty and ricocheting that i've done in the last 16 months or so. it's pullman, but it's not pullman, like you can't quite focus enough to make out exactly what it's supposed to mean, and that's sort of what the recording's about also. maybe the transition phase from the disappointment and loss of certainty from the first album to what (will hopefully be) a different, new stage of living in the third one. i don't know what the fuck i'm talking about.
anyway, that's the album art. simple, and fun, and complicated and stupid. i'm going to eat something. fuck.
Mar 24, 2008
more widget action
i just figured out how to html the aforementioned giant widget into my homepage (yes, i just used "html" as a verb). if you want to have your socks knocked off, go do something else. if you're bored and like your socks where they are, go check it out.
stop looking at me like that
i changed a bit with the blog tonight, visually. i wanted to put the kickass gigantic reverbnation widget in the sidebar, but it's just too big and bad for blogger. so i settled on a smaller one and tried to shrink down some of the other sidebar shenanigans, since i finally realized that not everyone runs at 1280x1024.
anyway, i couldn't decide whether to put that tiny player widget in the upper corner or to just put a banner with a link to the reverbnation main page. any opinions? is it stupid? is it annoying to go to a blog and have to eye-navigate around the player? it's not autoplaying for anybody is it? please god tell me it's not autoplaying.
anyway, i couldn't decide whether to put that tiny player widget in the upper corner or to just put a banner with a link to the reverbnation main page. any opinions? is it stupid? is it annoying to go to a blog and have to eye-navigate around the player? it's not autoplaying for anybody is it? please god tell me it's not autoplaying.
Mar 23, 2008
reasons to like obama: #327
i'm an obama fanatic, in case you didn't already know. but my primary interest in making him the democratic nominee is something a little meta (as we say in the business), and i didn't really have the language to explain it until now. thanks to this article, i've been able to sort of internally articulate how i feel. and now i'll attempt to externally articulate it.
the main reason for my love affair with obama candidacy isn't necessarily his stance on the issues. as a matter of fact, looking at it entirely quantitatively, clinton actually shares my stance on more issues than obama does. of course so does kucinich, but that's another thing entirely. it's not necessarily because i'd prefer a male president, or a black president, etc., ad nauseum. it's not even because of obama's impressive rhetoric or the fact that clinton is running her campaign like a goddamned ninja assassin instead of a human being (though that helps). the reason i like obama is because he's willing to look beyond the pre-21st century paradigm of "popular" democracy in this country and take the chance on something new. clinton is not. clinton is progressive on the issues ("progressive" being a relative term), just as much as is obama. but what it comes down to is that he is tackling those issues and this nomination in a way that tacitly acknowledges that the system is broken. we've moved on from top-down, quasi-fiefdom democracy if for no other reason than the internet (though there are other good reasons too). no one else seems to realize this. they rant and rave about how the system has failed us, how bush has failed us, and on and on, and yet they embrace the same system and try to use it to their own ends. it's not even a "if it ain't broke..." mentality because it's broke. it was broke in 2000, in 2004, and probably well before then, but we didn't have glaring examples like the florida recount or bush somehow getting reelected a second time staring us in the face yet. how does a president who garners an abysmal approval rating almost immediately after taking office in 2004 get elected to that office? well, it didn't help that the democrats chose to run john "diet bush" kerry, but still. if that election and all the following disgusting flaunting of the law that our government has exercised in the last four years haven't shown you the holes in the bottom of the boat, then you're not paying enough attention. it's not even a stance for far-lefters only nowadays. everybody knows something's wrong. it's just that the vast majority of people think of fixing it by changing the people in charge only (or at least it seems this way). clinton is no different. it's been pretty clear all along she's willing to do whatever it takes to win. i'd be surprised if if/when she does win, she even knows what to do after that. she gets into power, and then what do we have? a democrat version of the type of people who've been running this country for at least the last 100 years. white, rich people with little to no perspective on how little this country resembles the america of the 50s or even the 70s or 80s. they don't have a personal stake (i.e. nothing to gain) by investigating the system that's kept them rich and in power since the early 1900s, and who can blame them?
i think living in a system where democracy, at least to a degree, is a charade or used as a pacification/justification device is frustrating people. but a lot of people are either too cynical or too comfortable (sometimes the same thing) to want to invest in a change. or they conceive of a dramatic change as a change of staff or office. obama and clinton generally stand for the same things when you look at "the issues". but just looking at "the issues" is still filtering each candidate's approach to government through the same lens that we've always used when choosing a president. to me, obama seems to realize this. he seems to realize that there are more dimensions to, say, the war in iraq than either being "for" or "against" it. he's willing to recognize the complexity in issues that clinton and other candidates appear to simply see as checkmarks in a column on a scorecard. clinton wants to play and win the game, mccain wants to play and win the game, obama wants to step back and say "this isn't a game at all for people who aren't in positions of power, so let's stop pretending like it is". i like that. i like the idea of a presidental candidate who is willing to question things that need questioned, even as far as questioning the system by which he got to power in the first place. he seems to genuinely be interested in seeking answers instead of pretending he has them to score brownie points, and as sad of a trip as it's been, i'm glad that we as a country are cynical enough to be able to see this as a positive quality and not "waffling", which was such a huge (and completely asinine) issue in 2004. oh my god! a candidate is reviewing new information and reevaluating his/her stance? impossible! if we had more men and women willing to do this versus trying to exude confidence in the idea of the american world as a black-and-white, right-and-wrong construct, there would likely be thousands less dead americans in the middle east (don't get me started) and we would be in an international relations hole that will likely take decades to dig ourselves out of (if that's even possible). and i don't know that at this point in the 21st century america can afford to turn itself back into an isolationist state, which seems to be the other alternative (see: china).
anyway, that's my $.05. i still think the article above says it better than i. but i just had to get that off my chest/fingers. mmm...chicken fingers.
it's hard being a vegetarian sometimes.
the main reason for my love affair with obama candidacy isn't necessarily his stance on the issues. as a matter of fact, looking at it entirely quantitatively, clinton actually shares my stance on more issues than obama does. of course so does kucinich, but that's another thing entirely. it's not necessarily because i'd prefer a male president, or a black president, etc., ad nauseum. it's not even because of obama's impressive rhetoric or the fact that clinton is running her campaign like a goddamned ninja assassin instead of a human being (though that helps). the reason i like obama is because he's willing to look beyond the pre-21st century paradigm of "popular" democracy in this country and take the chance on something new. clinton is not. clinton is progressive on the issues ("progressive" being a relative term), just as much as is obama. but what it comes down to is that he is tackling those issues and this nomination in a way that tacitly acknowledges that the system is broken. we've moved on from top-down, quasi-fiefdom democracy if for no other reason than the internet (though there are other good reasons too). no one else seems to realize this. they rant and rave about how the system has failed us, how bush has failed us, and on and on, and yet they embrace the same system and try to use it to their own ends. it's not even a "if it ain't broke..." mentality because it's broke. it was broke in 2000, in 2004, and probably well before then, but we didn't have glaring examples like the florida recount or bush somehow getting reelected a second time staring us in the face yet. how does a president who garners an abysmal approval rating almost immediately after taking office in 2004 get elected to that office? well, it didn't help that the democrats chose to run john "diet bush" kerry, but still. if that election and all the following disgusting flaunting of the law that our government has exercised in the last four years haven't shown you the holes in the bottom of the boat, then you're not paying enough attention. it's not even a stance for far-lefters only nowadays. everybody knows something's wrong. it's just that the vast majority of people think of fixing it by changing the people in charge only (or at least it seems this way). clinton is no different. it's been pretty clear all along she's willing to do whatever it takes to win. i'd be surprised if if/when she does win, she even knows what to do after that. she gets into power, and then what do we have? a democrat version of the type of people who've been running this country for at least the last 100 years. white, rich people with little to no perspective on how little this country resembles the america of the 50s or even the 70s or 80s. they don't have a personal stake (i.e. nothing to gain) by investigating the system that's kept them rich and in power since the early 1900s, and who can blame them?
i think living in a system where democracy, at least to a degree, is a charade or used as a pacification/justification device is frustrating people. but a lot of people are either too cynical or too comfortable (sometimes the same thing) to want to invest in a change. or they conceive of a dramatic change as a change of staff or office. obama and clinton generally stand for the same things when you look at "the issues". but just looking at "the issues" is still filtering each candidate's approach to government through the same lens that we've always used when choosing a president. to me, obama seems to realize this. he seems to realize that there are more dimensions to, say, the war in iraq than either being "for" or "against" it. he's willing to recognize the complexity in issues that clinton and other candidates appear to simply see as checkmarks in a column on a scorecard. clinton wants to play and win the game, mccain wants to play and win the game, obama wants to step back and say "this isn't a game at all for people who aren't in positions of power, so let's stop pretending like it is". i like that. i like the idea of a presidental candidate who is willing to question things that need questioned, even as far as questioning the system by which he got to power in the first place. he seems to genuinely be interested in seeking answers instead of pretending he has them to score brownie points, and as sad of a trip as it's been, i'm glad that we as a country are cynical enough to be able to see this as a positive quality and not "waffling", which was such a huge (and completely asinine) issue in 2004. oh my god! a candidate is reviewing new information and reevaluating his/her stance? impossible! if we had more men and women willing to do this versus trying to exude confidence in the idea of the american world as a black-and-white, right-and-wrong construct, there would likely be thousands less dead americans in the middle east (don't get me started) and we would be in an international relations hole that will likely take decades to dig ourselves out of (if that's even possible). and i don't know that at this point in the 21st century america can afford to turn itself back into an isolationist state, which seems to be the other alternative (see: china).
anyway, that's my $.05. i still think the article above says it better than i. but i just had to get that off my chest/fingers. mmm...chicken fingers.
it's hard being a vegetarian sometimes.
Mar 22, 2008
REVIEW - some movies i saw, and how i feel about them
how better to welcome newborn sobriety into the world by spending the day grading 80 bibliographies/proposals and writing about movies?
damned if i can think of a better way.
i've been watching movies crazily lately (i mean that as "i've been watching movies while i am crazy"). there's not much else to do between 3am and 8am while coming off an anxiety attack. so...
1) juno - i loved ellen page in this movie. she was great. jason bateman was jason bateman, and jennifer garner was a psychopath. i don't know if it is my own natural fear of women who are borderline obsessed with reproducing regardless of how it impacts anyone but them (even that statement is phrased pretty judgmentally, huh?), but her character was one of the bad points of the movie for me. i didn't see jason bateman's character wanting to leave her because he wanted to "be Kurt Cobain", i saw him leaving her because she was fucking nuts and extremely selfish. did anyone (preferably women) think this also? it seemed like they weren't right for each other, but he was at least halfway trying to deal with it, while she was trying to patch it over by procuring The Baby.
there were some points where the dialogue seemed a little ridiculous. not as much as lots of critics have complained about, but occasionally. not enough to detract significantly from the movie. but it seemed like the movie was tripping over itself in trying to get us to feel real-world emotions while at the same time presenting us with a girl who just happens to be the Coolest Girl Who's Ever Gone To High School. it's like a superhero movie where we're supposed to feel bad because the superhero can't get his girl back. so fucking what? you're a superhero!
which leads to my last gripe: i loved michael cera's character (and why not?), but i didn't really buy that he was The Guy for Super Girl. so he's not a complete sleezebag, but what was so magical about him that it was worth spending 1/3 of the movie that could have been spent focusing on juno dealing with her pregnancy on, instead, his trials and tribulations with her? oooh, he skipped track practice to show up at the hospital for the birth of his son. wow! any guy who doesn't do that should be fucking punched in the balls. have we hit the point in our culture where if you're not beating and/or berating your girlfriend/wife you're a hero? what the hell.
despite my ranting, i really liked this movie. it was cute, if a bit schizophrenic, there was a lot of good dialogue (even if sometimes it seemed like diablo cody was making ellen page just act like she would at 30 instead of a 16 year old), and the characters were largely interesting and engaging (and i liked the parents; i think there really ARE parents out there like that in the world because i've met some). i dislike (generally) the moldy peaches and am frustrated by the idea that because they sound different that they are somehow immediately good at music. but that's just me. i think in a way it was a good soundtrack for the movie, if you're into that sort of music.
overall score: a stack of pancakes that would be better if only they didn't have that "new" ingredient that everyone was talking about and were instead just good pancakes.
2) into the wild - this movie made me cry. granted, i was a little bit of a whack-job at the time. but still. that's a rare feat. usually only girls and onions make me cry. or cute girls chopping onions when i am standing near them.
i really, really like this book, and so i had pretty high expectations, especially considering the movie involved sean penn (who i don't like), emile hirsch (who i like), and eddie vedder (who i sometimes like and sometimes dislike). okay, so perhaps my expectations were mixed.
the movie stuck shockingly well to the book, which in this case i think was a bonus. it employed a system where it switched regularly between chris's stay at the magic bus (as he slowly sort-of starved to death) and the trip he took to get to alaska in the first place. this is occasionally broken up by panoramic wilderness shots, often combined with voiceovers either by hirsch (playing mccandless) or jena malone (who i would send flowers to if it would end well, which it wouldn't, and who plays chris's sister). the transitions from the "present" (in alaska) and the past are pretty seamless and aren't marred by really obvious markers; i really appreciate when filmmakers are willing to assume their audience has at least a 70 IQ and can follow these sort of narrative shifts. if nothing else, you can tell which part of the story is happening by looking at the landscape around chris, which is a really good technique to employ (whether intentional or not on the part of the filmmakers) because the movie really is a lot about place, and landscape.
anyway, if you have read the book (and if you haven't you should, right now), things play out pretty much as expected, although through a series of great acting performances and a touching and subtle score including some acoustic eddie vedder songs (only one of which seemed intent on beating you across the face with a catchy chorus trying to communicate A Message). the thing that really sold me on this movie is that it's interpretable. again, it requires you to care about, and to think about what's happening. sometimes you want to punch chris in the face for being an ass, sometimes you're jealous of him, and sometimes you just don't know what to think. he himself seems to go through these stages also, and so the whole thing ends up being a really engaging movie-viewer dialogue. if you think the idea of running off to alaska, burning all your money, and hitchiking through the yukon is completely fucking stupid, you're not going to like this movie. if you hate society and think that being a hermit in the wild is the best idea ever, you're not going to like this movie. if you actually want to think critically about these two things, you'll like this movie. i also liked this movie.
overall score: watching a frozen waterfall thaw on the side of a mountain in the rising sunlight.
3) dan in real life - i came into this movie expecting something like "in good company"; another movie about life and the things that sort of pop up unexpectedly that you deal with as best you can, and how that's a little bit of heroism in itself. that's not really what it was about, mostly, and so i was a little disappointed. however, it's also not a bad movie for what it was.
what it is (and i'm biased because i don't get these movies), is another one of those films where an upper-middle class white family goes on an annual (i assume) trip from their home in the northeast to somewhere else in the northeast, closer to the beach. there they stay in a cabin for a week, have an amazing rapport with each other (even though there are 30 of them), play games that no family would enjoy playing together, talk about their problems, show no signs of dysfunction, and otherwise escape from the pressures that they assumedly have in their real lives. the protagonist, as it turns out, is the single, late-30s-something son of the family who (surprise!) has kids of his own and (surprise!) lost a wife who he never stopped loving. and goddammit if he doesn't just get to the family's ocean retreat and fucking learn things about his life! he totally walks on the beach, and plays on the lawn, and fucking meets this girl who might just change his life for the better! sw33t!
so steve carrell is pretty great, as always, though he seems to be fighting against the material he's given to reach his usual range of goodness-ness. he is playing opposite dane cook, who doesn't do too badly in a not-completely-bodily-humor role, though he's cast as the douchebag, womanizing brother who appears to maybe have feelings but really doesn't, presumably so he didn't have to work too hard on his range.
the whole shebang is overlaid by music by sondre lerche, which is pretty badass and would be badasser if it was easier to care about the actual movie. the chemistry (how i hate that word, but what else is there?) between carrell and juliette binoche (who i thought was a weird casting choice, but of course she's excellent) is really well done, as are the scenes featuring carrell and his daughters, but a lot of the rest of the film falls into the sort of white-people-in-rhode-island-on-holiday genre, and so the film feels uneven. nobody explained to me either how this random french woman not only ended up in rhode island but ended up dating a total douche to the point that he starts having Real Feelings. or maybe binoche is supposed to be covering up her french accent. if so, though, well...i have bad news for you.
this was a good film, nothing spectacular, but better than lots of other movies that try to do the same thing. it loses or gains points on the super-cheesy ending, depending on how i feel at any given time. okay, it might have gained some points for the ending with carrell and his daughters chasing down binoche (which was cute, but fit into the story well), but then it immediately lost those points by transitioning directly to the credit sequence/wedding footage, once again putting forth the awesome american cultural idea that:
1) you know who The One is for you after a weekend in rhode island and
2) marrying that person cements the rest of your life in some sort of perfect closure that eliminates all sadness, change, or variables.
overall: like a banana split. you eat the two out of three ice cream scoops you like the best, but by the time you get to the third you're sick of ice cream and/or have an ice cream headache.
as a sidenote, i totally slept for something like 10 hours last night. apparently i just need to get drunk whenever i want to sleep, and i don't have panic attacks and/or wake up in the morning wanting to kill everyone. i can't possibly think of a downside of having six drinks every night, so i guess that's what i'll start doing...
damned if i can think of a better way.
i've been watching movies crazily lately (i mean that as "i've been watching movies while i am crazy"). there's not much else to do between 3am and 8am while coming off an anxiety attack. so...
1) juno - i loved ellen page in this movie. she was great. jason bateman was jason bateman, and jennifer garner was a psychopath. i don't know if it is my own natural fear of women who are borderline obsessed with reproducing regardless of how it impacts anyone but them (even that statement is phrased pretty judgmentally, huh?), but her character was one of the bad points of the movie for me. i didn't see jason bateman's character wanting to leave her because he wanted to "be Kurt Cobain", i saw him leaving her because she was fucking nuts and extremely selfish. did anyone (preferably women) think this also? it seemed like they weren't right for each other, but he was at least halfway trying to deal with it, while she was trying to patch it over by procuring The Baby.
there were some points where the dialogue seemed a little ridiculous. not as much as lots of critics have complained about, but occasionally. not enough to detract significantly from the movie. but it seemed like the movie was tripping over itself in trying to get us to feel real-world emotions while at the same time presenting us with a girl who just happens to be the Coolest Girl Who's Ever Gone To High School. it's like a superhero movie where we're supposed to feel bad because the superhero can't get his girl back. so fucking what? you're a superhero!
which leads to my last gripe: i loved michael cera's character (and why not?), but i didn't really buy that he was The Guy for Super Girl. so he's not a complete sleezebag, but what was so magical about him that it was worth spending 1/3 of the movie that could have been spent focusing on juno dealing with her pregnancy on, instead, his trials and tribulations with her? oooh, he skipped track practice to show up at the hospital for the birth of his son. wow! any guy who doesn't do that should be fucking punched in the balls. have we hit the point in our culture where if you're not beating and/or berating your girlfriend/wife you're a hero? what the hell.
despite my ranting, i really liked this movie. it was cute, if a bit schizophrenic, there was a lot of good dialogue (even if sometimes it seemed like diablo cody was making ellen page just act like she would at 30 instead of a 16 year old), and the characters were largely interesting and engaging (and i liked the parents; i think there really ARE parents out there like that in the world because i've met some). i dislike (generally) the moldy peaches and am frustrated by the idea that because they sound different that they are somehow immediately good at music. but that's just me. i think in a way it was a good soundtrack for the movie, if you're into that sort of music.
overall score: a stack of pancakes that would be better if only they didn't have that "new" ingredient that everyone was talking about and were instead just good pancakes.
2) into the wild - this movie made me cry. granted, i was a little bit of a whack-job at the time. but still. that's a rare feat. usually only girls and onions make me cry. or cute girls chopping onions when i am standing near them.
i really, really like this book, and so i had pretty high expectations, especially considering the movie involved sean penn (who i don't like), emile hirsch (who i like), and eddie vedder (who i sometimes like and sometimes dislike). okay, so perhaps my expectations were mixed.
the movie stuck shockingly well to the book, which in this case i think was a bonus. it employed a system where it switched regularly between chris's stay at the magic bus (as he slowly sort-of starved to death) and the trip he took to get to alaska in the first place. this is occasionally broken up by panoramic wilderness shots, often combined with voiceovers either by hirsch (playing mccandless) or jena malone (who i would send flowers to if it would end well, which it wouldn't, and who plays chris's sister). the transitions from the "present" (in alaska) and the past are pretty seamless and aren't marred by really obvious markers; i really appreciate when filmmakers are willing to assume their audience has at least a 70 IQ and can follow these sort of narrative shifts. if nothing else, you can tell which part of the story is happening by looking at the landscape around chris, which is a really good technique to employ (whether intentional or not on the part of the filmmakers) because the movie really is a lot about place, and landscape.
anyway, if you have read the book (and if you haven't you should, right now), things play out pretty much as expected, although through a series of great acting performances and a touching and subtle score including some acoustic eddie vedder songs (only one of which seemed intent on beating you across the face with a catchy chorus trying to communicate A Message). the thing that really sold me on this movie is that it's interpretable. again, it requires you to care about, and to think about what's happening. sometimes you want to punch chris in the face for being an ass, sometimes you're jealous of him, and sometimes you just don't know what to think. he himself seems to go through these stages also, and so the whole thing ends up being a really engaging movie-viewer dialogue. if you think the idea of running off to alaska, burning all your money, and hitchiking through the yukon is completely fucking stupid, you're not going to like this movie. if you hate society and think that being a hermit in the wild is the best idea ever, you're not going to like this movie. if you actually want to think critically about these two things, you'll like this movie. i also liked this movie.
overall score: watching a frozen waterfall thaw on the side of a mountain in the rising sunlight.
3) dan in real life - i came into this movie expecting something like "in good company"; another movie about life and the things that sort of pop up unexpectedly that you deal with as best you can, and how that's a little bit of heroism in itself. that's not really what it was about, mostly, and so i was a little disappointed. however, it's also not a bad movie for what it was.
what it is (and i'm biased because i don't get these movies), is another one of those films where an upper-middle class white family goes on an annual (i assume) trip from their home in the northeast to somewhere else in the northeast, closer to the beach. there they stay in a cabin for a week, have an amazing rapport with each other (even though there are 30 of them), play games that no family would enjoy playing together, talk about their problems, show no signs of dysfunction, and otherwise escape from the pressures that they assumedly have in their real lives. the protagonist, as it turns out, is the single, late-30s-something son of the family who (surprise!) has kids of his own and (surprise!) lost a wife who he never stopped loving. and goddammit if he doesn't just get to the family's ocean retreat and fucking learn things about his life! he totally walks on the beach, and plays on the lawn, and fucking meets this girl who might just change his life for the better! sw33t!
so steve carrell is pretty great, as always, though he seems to be fighting against the material he's given to reach his usual range of goodness-ness. he is playing opposite dane cook, who doesn't do too badly in a not-completely-bodily-humor role, though he's cast as the douchebag, womanizing brother who appears to maybe have feelings but really doesn't, presumably so he didn't have to work too hard on his range.
the whole shebang is overlaid by music by sondre lerche, which is pretty badass and would be badasser if it was easier to care about the actual movie. the chemistry (how i hate that word, but what else is there?) between carrell and juliette binoche (who i thought was a weird casting choice, but of course she's excellent) is really well done, as are the scenes featuring carrell and his daughters, but a lot of the rest of the film falls into the sort of white-people-in-rhode-island-on-holiday genre, and so the film feels uneven. nobody explained to me either how this random french woman not only ended up in rhode island but ended up dating a total douche to the point that he starts having Real Feelings. or maybe binoche is supposed to be covering up her french accent. if so, though, well...i have bad news for you.
this was a good film, nothing spectacular, but better than lots of other movies that try to do the same thing. it loses or gains points on the super-cheesy ending, depending on how i feel at any given time. okay, it might have gained some points for the ending with carrell and his daughters chasing down binoche (which was cute, but fit into the story well), but then it immediately lost those points by transitioning directly to the credit sequence/wedding footage, once again putting forth the awesome american cultural idea that:
1) you know who The One is for you after a weekend in rhode island and
2) marrying that person cements the rest of your life in some sort of perfect closure that eliminates all sadness, change, or variables.
overall: like a banana split. you eat the two out of three ice cream scoops you like the best, but by the time you get to the third you're sick of ice cream and/or have an ice cream headache.
as a sidenote, i totally slept for something like 10 hours last night. apparently i just need to get drunk whenever i want to sleep, and i don't have panic attacks and/or wake up in the morning wanting to kill everyone. i can't possibly think of a downside of having six drinks every night, so i guess that's what i'll start doing...
cold roses
first song i heard during that crazy weekend at the end of january, up and down the west coast in a fucking neon blue focus that wasn't mine:
cold roses
The mirrors in the room go black and blue
On a Sunday morning in her Saturday shoes
We don't choose who we love
We don't choose
The lights over the Midway melt on the street
In a Sunday shoes, with her Saturday feet
She don't love who he choose
She don't need what she use
Daylight comes and exposes
Saturday's bruises and cold roses
Cold roses
Nothing but the sunlight will help you grow
From underneath your bed you can't see the window
We don't choose what we see
We don't choose
Fortunate and angry just like a child
All that money buys you medicine but can't buy you time
We don't choose what we love
And she don't need what she got
Daylight comes and exposes
Saturday's bruises and cold roses
fucking great song...probably some of my favorite cardinals lyrics. anyway, i'm still pretty smashed, so i guess i'll save the pontificating and let the lyrics speak for themselves. and go play starcraft.
here's the soundboard from the archive.
cold roses
The mirrors in the room go black and blue
On a Sunday morning in her Saturday shoes
We don't choose who we love
We don't choose
The lights over the Midway melt on the street
In a Sunday shoes, with her Saturday feet
She don't love who he choose
She don't need what she use
Daylight comes and exposes
Saturday's bruises and cold roses
Cold roses
Nothing but the sunlight will help you grow
From underneath your bed you can't see the window
We don't choose what we see
We don't choose
Fortunate and angry just like a child
All that money buys you medicine but can't buy you time
We don't choose what we love
And she don't need what she got
Daylight comes and exposes
Saturday's bruises and cold roses
fucking great song...probably some of my favorite cardinals lyrics. anyway, i'm still pretty smashed, so i guess i'll save the pontificating and let the lyrics speak for themselves. and go play starcraft.
here's the soundboard from the archive.
drunkfest!!
i gave up on the idea of not drinking, becaust thinking about not drinking is not thinking at all. got that? good. now hold on..
here's a new feature on the blog where i make a fucking ass of myself.
here goes...
so i was all staring at the stars and thinking "god, the stars are far away but if you're close to them they look like the sun" and i couldn't decide if that was boring or the best thing ever. then i ate these nachos and i was like "OH FUCK THESE ARE THE BEST THINGS EVER". so that fixed that problem.
anyway, i'm straight-trippin' boo. so i'd like to apologize for anyone i might have inconvenienced tonight, not the least of which whose owner of the bar that i walked on the roof of. i mean, fuck, that was cool, but whoops.
so finally i'd liek to say in closing that we'll just pretend this never happened and go on with our lives. i love you and you love me and that's really all that matters. that whole thing with the snowman and snow-woman was just one big, three-way misunderstanding.
so i'll see yo utomorrow and by then i expect to be totally ready to say "what the fuck was this all about?" and possibly delete it.
for now i have some crazy ass rainbow gnomes bouncing around my room and in my brainpan that i need to feed with some sleep cookies. hallelujah.
good night.
here's a new feature on the blog where i make a fucking ass of myself.
here goes...
so i was all staring at the stars and thinking "god, the stars are far away but if you're close to them they look like the sun" and i couldn't decide if that was boring or the best thing ever. then i ate these nachos and i was like "OH FUCK THESE ARE THE BEST THINGS EVER". so that fixed that problem.
anyway, i'm straight-trippin' boo. so i'd like to apologize for anyone i might have inconvenienced tonight, not the least of which whose owner of the bar that i walked on the roof of. i mean, fuck, that was cool, but whoops.
so finally i'd liek to say in closing that we'll just pretend this never happened and go on with our lives. i love you and you love me and that's really all that matters. that whole thing with the snowman and snow-woman was just one big, three-way misunderstanding.
so i'll see yo utomorrow and by then i expect to be totally ready to say "what the fuck was this all about?" and possibly delete it.
for now i have some crazy ass rainbow gnomes bouncing around my room and in my brainpan that i need to feed with some sleep cookies. hallelujah.
good night.
Mar 20, 2008
"diet coke is my baby" or "dude, what did that dead horse ever do to you?"
so i have often enough expounded various theories, thoughts, and feelings regarding my caffeine use in the last few years. i've been known to swing from bible-belt condemnation to heroin junkie appreciation in the space of, say, a day or so. even this waffling has been attributed to both caffeine overuse and caffeine withdrawal (though on separate days). so after about four years of basically emphatically embracing every single degree of "yay" or "nay" possible at different times, i decided to do the unthinkable: sit down and do research, and then follow it up with a few field tests and come to a conclusion that the scientific method could be proud of.
we're not too post-modern for the scientific method yet are we? i hope not. it'd be great if somehow postmodernity led us into a new theological conservatism.
i don't know what the hell that means.
so my original theory was that caffiene was evil. i got infected with this idea that it was bad for you health-wise and that it turned normal people into annoying-as-fuck Type A assholes, effectively converting them into machines to do america's "work-till-you-drop" bidding. i still sort of think this, but we'll get there.
eventually, i came to embrace the diet coke because it seems to help the sort of rapid-fire stream-of-consciousness writing style i use when working on albums, articles, etc. it made me more inhibitionless. the energy of the idea and the excitement overpowered rational thinking. i had enough energy built up inside that jumping off the ledge was just a way of wringing it all out. and that wasn't bad.
when i got to pullman and started the MA program, i reverted to opinion 1. mostly because it was a really challenging environment, emotionally, socially, academically, professionally, and i didn't want to wade through it in jump-off-the-cliff mode. it was a self-defense mechanism to make sure that i remained self-aware enough to get enough sleep, to interact meaningfully with people, to be fully aware of my surroundings, to wield a sword instead of a nuclear bomb. or a lightsaber instead of a blaster if you prefer.
eventually this lofty dream dissapated, due partly to circumstance and due partly to the collapse of my own discipline. it was easier to spend 18 hours a day working (4-5 of those socializing/slacking off) than it was to spend 12 hours a day working diligently and then have time for sleep and relaxation. everybody around me seemed already enmeshed in this full-steam-ahead-consequences-be-damned environment, and so it was really easy to say "fuck it, i'm on a rollercoaster!" and spend days at a time listening to my adrenals screaming.
while this was all going on, i was wavering between personal opinions. sometimes it was "teh caffiene turnz you into a zombeh!" and sometimes it was "america makes it so you can't live without this stuff and i want to have sex with diet coke!" sometimes it was in-between.
so last week, i FINALLY spent a LOT of time researching caffeine: its chemical effects, its makeup, its health effects, etc. i was trying to separate company propaganda from hippie-dippy rationalizing, from actual scholarship. and what i found, pretty much universally, is that caffeine is not at all a health risk unless you're using too much of it. unless you're using enough to initiate serious withdrawal symptoms, there's pretty much no way to hurt yourself. your body just adjusts. now there's a part of me that insists that it's sort of illogical that overloading your adrenal system daily for 50 years is probably not good for you, but so far studies haven't confirmed that. so i'm stuck between what seems to be common sense and results of scientific studies. one thing the studies are generally in agreement on is that "too much" caffeine (resulting in "bad" effects) is a different level for pretty much everyone. same as alcohol, THC, and other things that i actually haven't abused in the past.
so i figured i'd experiment on myself. that's not as cool as it sounds. basically, what i did all this week, when i was working 10-12 hours a day and sleeping about 2-3 (on average) due to my anxiety issues, i completely avoided any caffeine and tried to see if it effected me at all (i.e. if i just fucking died to death).
and it didn't. i felt essentially the same as i do with it. i was a little less happy-go-lucky all day and a little less scatterbrained (bad and good respectively), but since those are apparently the main effects of inhaling a healthy amount of caffeine, i sort of expected that.
but i didn't die of sleep deprivation. i didn't become all mushy Type B hippie goodness. caffeine essentially makes little to no difference. so here's my decision. it might come as a surprise, but it's an agree/disagree sort of thing. compromise? me? nah...
i think it's like any other drug. if you overuse it, you're going to a) become a huge asshole and b) probably hurt yourself. i've been one of those people who "need" it to get started in the morning, and i don't see how that's good for you. on the other hand, it does give you a little boost, and it's nice in that way in the same way that smoking is nice. or how it's fun to drink sometimes because it loosens you up. i guess my point is, i sort of realized that it really ISN'T bad by itself. and can sometimes even be good. i think the problem (and way back when, the beginning of my concern before i got sidetracked) is that our society in particular (or culture, whatever you want to call it) really still adheres to that industrial-revolution-era mentality of "work-till-you-drop". if you don't fall into bed exhausted at night from doing something you hate, then you're not american, dammit! and caffeine helps perfectly with this. it'll convince you you're happy when you're not, it'll convince you you're rested when you're exhausted, and it'll allow you to perform distasteful social functions that normally you'd be smart enough to avoid.
this semester, i've cut back my use a bit to only a certain amount a day, and i find that it really helps. it's nice to have when i have it, and then by the time i'm ready to transition out of "crazy-afternoon-work" mode it's worn off and i can be a different sort of person when i'm just ready to hang out or relax. so it's good.
i now am willing to accept the fact that using caffeine won't kill you or destroy your body's ability to (insert whatever vital function you like here). however, i still see it lumped into the same usage category as sleeping pills abused by people who wouldn't need them if they could more constructively deal with their issues, as tylenol downed by the bottle by people who don't think it's important to address the fact that they might be sick or to find out why, and as alcohol or recreational drugs used by people not just occasionally for fun, but often because those people are hiding from something. that i think it a problem. and i've done all those things before so i'm not trying to preach from a silver pulpit. i'm just saying that the thing itself isn't bad (as i might have previously believed) but that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be more awareness across the board concerning the capacity for which it can be abused (and teaching college i'm in a unique position to provide evidence of said abuse by about all 80 of my students each semester). i'm still concerned about my own ability to use it to avoid problems (and not doing that), and i'm still concerned about a lot of the people i know that do this on a regular basis. but it's good to know (or at least think i know) that the substance itself isn't necessarily to blame. so now i can slam a diet coke tomorrow and then instantly become cooler and more attractive! FUCK YEAH! AMERICA!!!
we're not too post-modern for the scientific method yet are we? i hope not. it'd be great if somehow postmodernity led us into a new theological conservatism.
i don't know what the hell that means.
so my original theory was that caffiene was evil. i got infected with this idea that it was bad for you health-wise and that it turned normal people into annoying-as-fuck Type A assholes, effectively converting them into machines to do america's "work-till-you-drop" bidding. i still sort of think this, but we'll get there.
eventually, i came to embrace the diet coke because it seems to help the sort of rapid-fire stream-of-consciousness writing style i use when working on albums, articles, etc. it made me more inhibitionless. the energy of the idea and the excitement overpowered rational thinking. i had enough energy built up inside that jumping off the ledge was just a way of wringing it all out. and that wasn't bad.
when i got to pullman and started the MA program, i reverted to opinion 1. mostly because it was a really challenging environment, emotionally, socially, academically, professionally, and i didn't want to wade through it in jump-off-the-cliff mode. it was a self-defense mechanism to make sure that i remained self-aware enough to get enough sleep, to interact meaningfully with people, to be fully aware of my surroundings, to wield a sword instead of a nuclear bomb. or a lightsaber instead of a blaster if you prefer.
eventually this lofty dream dissapated, due partly to circumstance and due partly to the collapse of my own discipline. it was easier to spend 18 hours a day working (4-5 of those socializing/slacking off) than it was to spend 12 hours a day working diligently and then have time for sleep and relaxation. everybody around me seemed already enmeshed in this full-steam-ahead-consequences-be-damned environment, and so it was really easy to say "fuck it, i'm on a rollercoaster!" and spend days at a time listening to my adrenals screaming.
while this was all going on, i was wavering between personal opinions. sometimes it was "teh caffiene turnz you into a zombeh!" and sometimes it was "america makes it so you can't live without this stuff and i want to have sex with diet coke!" sometimes it was in-between.
so last week, i FINALLY spent a LOT of time researching caffeine: its chemical effects, its makeup, its health effects, etc. i was trying to separate company propaganda from hippie-dippy rationalizing, from actual scholarship. and what i found, pretty much universally, is that caffeine is not at all a health risk unless you're using too much of it. unless you're using enough to initiate serious withdrawal symptoms, there's pretty much no way to hurt yourself. your body just adjusts. now there's a part of me that insists that it's sort of illogical that overloading your adrenal system daily for 50 years is probably not good for you, but so far studies haven't confirmed that. so i'm stuck between what seems to be common sense and results of scientific studies. one thing the studies are generally in agreement on is that "too much" caffeine (resulting in "bad" effects) is a different level for pretty much everyone. same as alcohol, THC, and other things that i actually haven't abused in the past.
so i figured i'd experiment on myself. that's not as cool as it sounds. basically, what i did all this week, when i was working 10-12 hours a day and sleeping about 2-3 (on average) due to my anxiety issues, i completely avoided any caffeine and tried to see if it effected me at all (i.e. if i just fucking died to death).
and it didn't. i felt essentially the same as i do with it. i was a little less happy-go-lucky all day and a little less scatterbrained (bad and good respectively), but since those are apparently the main effects of inhaling a healthy amount of caffeine, i sort of expected that.
but i didn't die of sleep deprivation. i didn't become all mushy Type B hippie goodness. caffeine essentially makes little to no difference. so here's my decision. it might come as a surprise, but it's an agree/disagree sort of thing. compromise? me? nah...
i think it's like any other drug. if you overuse it, you're going to a) become a huge asshole and b) probably hurt yourself. i've been one of those people who "need" it to get started in the morning, and i don't see how that's good for you. on the other hand, it does give you a little boost, and it's nice in that way in the same way that smoking is nice. or how it's fun to drink sometimes because it loosens you up. i guess my point is, i sort of realized that it really ISN'T bad by itself. and can sometimes even be good. i think the problem (and way back when, the beginning of my concern before i got sidetracked) is that our society in particular (or culture, whatever you want to call it) really still adheres to that industrial-revolution-era mentality of "work-till-you-drop". if you don't fall into bed exhausted at night from doing something you hate, then you're not american, dammit! and caffeine helps perfectly with this. it'll convince you you're happy when you're not, it'll convince you you're rested when you're exhausted, and it'll allow you to perform distasteful social functions that normally you'd be smart enough to avoid.
this semester, i've cut back my use a bit to only a certain amount a day, and i find that it really helps. it's nice to have when i have it, and then by the time i'm ready to transition out of "crazy-afternoon-work" mode it's worn off and i can be a different sort of person when i'm just ready to hang out or relax. so it's good.
i now am willing to accept the fact that using caffeine won't kill you or destroy your body's ability to (insert whatever vital function you like here). however, i still see it lumped into the same usage category as sleeping pills abused by people who wouldn't need them if they could more constructively deal with their issues, as tylenol downed by the bottle by people who don't think it's important to address the fact that they might be sick or to find out why, and as alcohol or recreational drugs used by people not just occasionally for fun, but often because those people are hiding from something. that i think it a problem. and i've done all those things before so i'm not trying to preach from a silver pulpit. i'm just saying that the thing itself isn't bad (as i might have previously believed) but that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be more awareness across the board concerning the capacity for which it can be abused (and teaching college i'm in a unique position to provide evidence of said abuse by about all 80 of my students each semester). i'm still concerned about my own ability to use it to avoid problems (and not doing that), and i'm still concerned about a lot of the people i know that do this on a regular basis. but it's good to know (or at least think i know) that the substance itself isn't necessarily to blame. so now i can slam a diet coke tomorrow and then instantly become cooler and more attractive! FUCK YEAH! AMERICA!!!
two completely unrelated videos
it says something about the state of our fucked-up news industry and 21st century american "journalism" that this speech hasn't gotten any press, but there it is. almost immediately on the heels of the "race" speech that was all over the news, obama gave a speech in NC concerning the war in iraq. and in a reflection of a point that obama brought up briefly during that "race" speech, because, presumably, this iraq speech wasn't inflammatory or controversial or just plain parallel to what the mainstream media deemed to be the interests of their consumers enough to get coverage, it didn't get covered. but it's a great speech and if anyone had actually seen it, it might have gone along way towards shutting the traps of those who insist that obama is all rhetoric and no details, plans, etc.
this other video is for the Black Kids' "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You". everybody knows how i feel about the Black Kids, and it's finally almost time for their LP to come out. apparently "INGTYBHTDWY" is going to be their first single, and i can't argue with that. the video for the song popped up on stereogum today...now; i'm not much for music videos at all, and this one didn't really change my mind in one fell swoop, but the second half of it is really cool (including the laser-color-bubble-gun fighting thing), and the song is so badass you can always just close your eyes and listen if you don't like the video. there seems to have been some remixing or something from the original version of the song. it sounds a little cleaner, which of course i'm disappointed about because i'm lo-fi like that. but it's still the same song, and it's still damn good. oh, and the lead singer's reaction to losing his girl at the 1:32 mark is literally what happens to me everytime i see a girl i like falling for some douchebag. so now you know not to stand behind me when that shit's going down.
this other video is for the Black Kids' "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You". everybody knows how i feel about the Black Kids, and it's finally almost time for their LP to come out. apparently "INGTYBHTDWY" is going to be their first single, and i can't argue with that. the video for the song popped up on stereogum today...now; i'm not much for music videos at all, and this one didn't really change my mind in one fell swoop, but the second half of it is really cool (including the laser-color-bubble-gun fighting thing), and the song is so badass you can always just close your eyes and listen if you don't like the video. there seems to have been some remixing or something from the original version of the song. it sounds a little cleaner, which of course i'm disappointed about because i'm lo-fi like that. but it's still the same song, and it's still damn good. oh, and the lead singer's reaction to losing his girl at the 1:32 mark is literally what happens to me everytime i see a girl i like falling for some douchebag. so now you know not to stand behind me when that shit's going down.
i fucking love girls with blue hair
i was thinking about this today because i ran into a girl with blue hair and was like "yeah, i fucking love that". then i was all like "i'm gonna buy this piece of sweet-ass pizza and fucking eat it at my fly-as-shit table with my holla-if-you-hear-me chair".
here's a picture of boromir extending the meme from last week in hilarious, B.C. Rich-specific ways:
here's a picture of boromir extending the meme from last week in hilarious, B.C. Rich-specific ways:
Mar 19, 2008
everyhair in its right place
i've decided to officially change my crazy homeless-guy haircut style model from ryan adams:
to thom yorke:
it doesn't have anything to do with music. i just like that extra mullet-y thing thom's got going on. it's like he's from europe, so it's not really a mullet. it just means he's sort of a filthy guy. but not that his wife wears undersized daisy dukes and the back window of his pickup is completely opaque thanks to a confederate flag interspersed with calvin urinating on various things that are important to other groups of people.
i'm going to get right to work on this. expect unattractive results in 2-5 months.
to thom yorke:
it doesn't have anything to do with music. i just like that extra mullet-y thing thom's got going on. it's like he's from europe, so it's not really a mullet. it just means he's sort of a filthy guy. but not that his wife wears undersized daisy dukes and the back window of his pickup is completely opaque thanks to a confederate flag interspersed with calvin urinating on various things that are important to other groups of people.
i'm going to get right to work on this. expect unattractive results in 2-5 months.
Robert Plant: no true son of Gondor?
"aw fuck", part seventeen
so i had to quite literally (you can imagine how that works) drag myself to bed last night at 1am because i was nodding off on the floor. but guess what? you got it. i woke up at 4am and freaked out rather than going back to sleep. it was awesome. then i ate some sandwiches. then i fell asleep on the floor at 8am (with my phone in my pocket, thank goodness) and the phone alarm woke me up at 830 for conferences. i'm on my way over there in a minute.
i didn't think it was possible to get more twisted and confused and weird about life than i was at this time last year, but i was definitely wrong. i've bested (or worsted?) myself. i think it was better last time because even with all the weirdness i was invested in some happy things, and invested in some other people. now everything's just focused in this laserbeam of survival. like i could probably cut open someone's corpse and sleep inside right now to survive a blizzard, but i probably couldn't hug someone to save my life. weird, huh?
despite continuously insisting he's not going to do so, RA's been blogging a bunch lately; that's always fun to read first thing in the morning. i actually sort of envy him...it would be so badass to just be living in a hotel in france, waking up to the rain and writing songs all day. of course, there are bad things about that, too, i'm sure. but at least it would be interesting finding out what they were.
my sink drain(s) do(es)n't work anymore. they just came in yesterday to fix my ceiling for the fifth time and so far it's holding up. but now, everything i wash anything, the water just builds up in the sink and takes 10-15-75 minutes to drain. i should live in the woods. there aren't any drains in the woods. are there drains in france? there must be drains in spain, right?
i didn't think it was possible to get more twisted and confused and weird about life than i was at this time last year, but i was definitely wrong. i've bested (or worsted?) myself. i think it was better last time because even with all the weirdness i was invested in some happy things, and invested in some other people. now everything's just focused in this laserbeam of survival. like i could probably cut open someone's corpse and sleep inside right now to survive a blizzard, but i probably couldn't hug someone to save my life. weird, huh?
despite continuously insisting he's not going to do so, RA's been blogging a bunch lately; that's always fun to read first thing in the morning. i actually sort of envy him...it would be so badass to just be living in a hotel in france, waking up to the rain and writing songs all day. of course, there are bad things about that, too, i'm sure. but at least it would be interesting finding out what they were.
my sink drain(s) do(es)n't work anymore. they just came in yesterday to fix my ceiling for the fifth time and so far it's holding up. but now, everything i wash anything, the water just builds up in the sink and takes 10-15-75 minutes to drain. i should live in the woods. there aren't any drains in the woods. are there drains in france? there must be drains in spain, right?
Mar 18, 2008
cardinalstube
that portmanteau didn't work as well as i thought it would. my bad.
so instead of going to sleep in order to stave off another potential attack of insanity, i've been watching ryan adams videos on youtube.
after the madness that was the 2-night, 2-show end of january, i was so incredibly blown away by the cardinals that i, strangely enough, stopped listening to them. sort of like if you have the best date in the world one night and then suddenly the idea of helping your girlfriend weed the garden the next morning just seems like a chore. like you've reached the top and there's nowhere to go but disappointment. this cardinals-exile was good, because it allowed me to finally stop listening to the 30-some shows i had on my hard drive and actually burn them, plus it allowed me to spend a month finding new bands that i like (lots of them) and to get into some good live shows from bands that i had, until then, somewhat failed to appreciate (radiohead, wilco). i'm almost glad trey's been on vacation for a year, because otherwise i'd be up to my armpits in cd-rs and listening to the same three bands i've listened to for three years.
anyway, i think the cardinals drought has passed. i'm ready to weed the garden (that just sounds dirty, i don't know why...oh yeah, because i'm a deviant).
here's a few clips from the easy tiger live video set i found on youtube. here's hoping to jeebus that they're still going to release this on DVD someday. i'd pay asinine amounts of money for it. watch for the lasers coming out of ryan's eyes (seriously) on "goodnight rose".
i was going to watch "over the top" tonight. it's so bad, it's good, and then bad again, and then wraps right the fuck back around to good. no, no, it's just really bad.
goodnight rose (with some ryan shenanigans and lasers):
off broadway (i tried to find a version with the intro jam, but alas):
so instead of going to sleep in order to stave off another potential attack of insanity, i've been watching ryan adams videos on youtube.
after the madness that was the 2-night, 2-show end of january, i was so incredibly blown away by the cardinals that i, strangely enough, stopped listening to them. sort of like if you have the best date in the world one night and then suddenly the idea of helping your girlfriend weed the garden the next morning just seems like a chore. like you've reached the top and there's nowhere to go but disappointment. this cardinals-exile was good, because it allowed me to finally stop listening to the 30-some shows i had on my hard drive and actually burn them, plus it allowed me to spend a month finding new bands that i like (lots of them) and to get into some good live shows from bands that i had, until then, somewhat failed to appreciate (radiohead, wilco). i'm almost glad trey's been on vacation for a year, because otherwise i'd be up to my armpits in cd-rs and listening to the same three bands i've listened to for three years.
anyway, i think the cardinals drought has passed. i'm ready to weed the garden (that just sounds dirty, i don't know why...oh yeah, because i'm a deviant).
here's a few clips from the easy tiger live video set i found on youtube. here's hoping to jeebus that they're still going to release this on DVD someday. i'd pay asinine amounts of money for it. watch for the lasers coming out of ryan's eyes (seriously) on "goodnight rose".
i was going to watch "over the top" tonight. it's so bad, it's good, and then bad again, and then wraps right the fuck back around to good. no, no, it's just really bad.
goodnight rose (with some ryan shenanigans and lasers):
off broadway (i tried to find a version with the intro jam, but alas):
Mar 17, 2008
a re-up (whoops)
i doubt anybody cares, but i realized after actually listening to those mp3s i uploaded last night that i totally didn't track them correctly (most likely because i didn't listen to them, blah blah blah). so i retracked them and slapped them into a torrent.
so if for any reason you'd like to hear the songs, they should sound better in terms of organization and sound quality now. i can't vouch for singing quality or playing quality, though.
if you're from the past and don't have bittorrent, i can do the yousendit thing again.
new torrent
i tried a new method of making the torrent this time, so if it flakes out, let me know.
so if for any reason you'd like to hear the songs, they should sound better in terms of organization and sound quality now. i can't vouch for singing quality or playing quality, though.
if you're from the past and don't have bittorrent, i can do the yousendit thing again.
new torrent
i tried a new method of making the torrent this time, so if it flakes out, let me know.
oh man...
well, it's been a week. once again i've survived spending almost the entirety of nine days alone in pullman. for most people, thanksgiving breaks and spring breaks are cause for rest (maybe) and celebration (definitely). i've had 1 or 2 of those in the last few years, but generally they're just cause for trepidation and then, eventually, extreme loneliness and too much introspection.
i'm good at introspection; it's my thing and it's one of the things that's made me a lot healthier mentally in the last 10 years than i was in the years before that. but even too much ice cream gives you a badass headache.
i'm going to ramble, so if you don't like looking at car accidents, you can stop reading now.
the last few days (as you might know if you've been reading lately), i've been dealing with some pretty hardcore insomnia, brought on mostly by the fact that once i finished all my spring break work on tuesday or wednesday and everyone had pretty much left for break, i was just sort of hanging around, watching movies and doing weird music shit (which you can download for your amusement on my previous entry). the problem with this is, it gets old after awhile. i like having time off. i even like having time to myself. but not a lot of time. i'm a pretty solitary person, but i at least need something to do. and i haven't had that this week, or even really much this year at all. its been another limbo year (in some ways, not in others), and i'm sick of limbo years. i'm sick of living from march to march in this stupid grad school application cycle. i haven't really had anything concrete in my life since, oh, 2002 or so. that's six fucking years. granted, after my first year at WSU i had a minor degree of stability in knowing that i was coming back the next year for sure. but at the beginning of that next year my fiancee and i broke things off, she moved out, and about 10 other things that i'd rather not talk about happened before december, so i'm not sure how much i can even apply the word "stability" to that year.
i don't expect a lot, stability-wise. i don't want to sound like your typical american dreamer, because i'm not. my life is built around change, around learning, around saying things like "oh fuck, i just spent 4 years doing THAT the wrong way" and being able to be okay with it because i've learned something. i don't want to necessarily stay in the same place fo 20 years, or have a job where i get a gold watch for putting in 40 years in the same office. i don't want to have a job that pays 200,000 a year so that i can cover my basic expenses with 15 percent of my salary and sit on the rest in case i wrap my car around a tree and end up traction. that's not how i roll.
but for fuck's sake, this is getting old. i guess i feel like in the last 5-6 years, for the most part all my introspection and outrospection and exploration (geographically and existentially) has, in a lot of ways, just led to showing me what i might actually want right before it's whisked away from me and i'm forced to work with something else. i can go out to the bar and strike up a conversation with someone interesting-looking just as easily as the next guy. i can throw a trip together and spend a week camping up and down the coast and having a great experience. i'm glad i can do those things. but that doesn't, in some ways, replace having people (or even jobs, hobbies, etc for that matter) that i can get attached to for more than six months without having to start over when those things and people end or leave.
i mean, sure, i've got a lot of friends. good friends (and family) that i've known for years. but they're (almost entirely) thousands of miles away. and i keep in touch with them via the phone, email, etc. and i'm really grateful that that can happen. but sometimes it just doesn't substitute well for having someone sitting on your couch, in person, listening to you blab about your stupid life, or helping you plan a road trip into the middle of nowhere or just watching TV so you're not doing it by yourself.
there are people here i could do that with (and have), but largely i'm a fan of non-shallow friendships, and those take awhile to build up. i mean, i have my share of "let's hang out once a month or so and talk about sports" type friends, but generally i only pursue those friendships as a gateway to eventually more meaningful relationships. that's just the way i am. there's nothing inherently wrong about surrounding yourself with 300 drinking buddies, it's just not what i'm interested in. and i suppose maybe that's my bad for expecting more and then complaining when i don't get it. i don't know. but i don't think it's something that's going to change.
man, i'm totally coming off as high-maintainance, aren't i?
jesus, did i spell "maintainance" right? or is it "maintenance"? whatever. i slept from 8am to 4pm yesterday, and then fell asleep at 1am just a bit ago and woke up at 3am, ready to go. so i guess i'm just staying up until my conferences start and then doing those for 9 hours or so. blarg. the good news is that i actually filed my taxes awhile ago while i was just sitting up doing nothing. it seemed like the right thing to do. so i'm getting 1066 dollars. is it sad that i laughed because that reminded me of the norman invasion? i'm also probably getting that 300 dollar bush-distracts-people-with-money thing. but i'm not sure.
anyway, i guess i'm just frustrated with what seems like my inability (maybe like 40 percent my fault and 60 percent circumstance's fault) to hold on to anything that matters in my life for more than like a year or so. usually it's okay because i love new things, but sometimes (usually around april, ironically) it just gets really old. i'm not looking for 2 kids and a white picket fence, but it'd be nice to have something to care about that wasn't a guitar. maybe i could write a song about that. hah.
though, honestly, the loneliness thing i can deal with. it's not a function of anyone else's life or a career or whatever to provide meaning for my life. that's my thing, and so when there's a problem with it, ultimately it's my responsibility to deal with it. which of course i'm trying to do, and will get better at after i bitch about it awhile longer. the thing that i don't have as much control over is, i think, that i want to be able to use some of my time, energy, etc to actually mean something to someone else again. i feel like i haven't done that for a long time. maybe i'm not explaining that well. it's all well and good to have your own stuff to do/care about/etc. and i definitely have those things. but there's still a lot of me left over. i want to be close enough to some people that i can do things for them, too. i feel like an unintentional miser. it was different back when, say, i lived in kent, and there were tons of opportunities to actually help people i cared about and do things that benefitted them and not just me. i don't really feel that way anymore, and i think that's the main reason i feel like i'm sort of wasting my time. i have all this stuff i want to do, so many things i want to see and write about and care about and enjoy and work on and teach about and get paid for and take pictures of and sing about, and i could do it all, fucking all of it, by myself. but that makes it all pointless. what the fuck is the point? there isn't one. it's like yelling into a well and hearing your voice echo back at you. maybe awe-inspiring for a second, but you're still essentially talking to yourself.
i wouldn't mind being in love again, either. of course that's always going to be only half up to me, so i don't try to have too many expectations on that front. but it's hard sometimes. most of the relationships i've had have been really shitty regarding actually being able to work with the other person to make both of our lives better, both as a unit (bad word choice; couldn't think of another) and as individuals. but i think i might have learned lately how to be a lot better at this, and i'd like to think i wouldn't fuck it up so badly if given the chance again sometime.
well whatever. now i'm less embarrassed about my shitty music post last night, and more embarrassed about this. but if i don't post it, then i feel like it sort of misses the point. too bad mike doesn't have time to comment on my blog anymore; i know he'd at least actually read this and write a near-as-long response :) he actually left me a nice message this morning, which was cool.
anyway, i don't know what to do, where to go, pretty much anything. i guess for now i have to finish my job by may, and then after that, assuming i don't get my job back or get into school (both of which are looking very, very much like they're not going to happen as of a few days ago), my life will have pretty much completed the transition to utter pointlessness. so if anybody has any suggestions/jobs/ideas, whatever, feel free to shoot them my way. i don't even really care if i end up scaling fish or shoveling gravel, i just want my life to be about something other than me for once.
i've still got three hours until sunrise. i should probably shower. the red eyes and complimentary eye-bagginess are going to be unprofessional enough as it is. smelling like a zombie probably won't help.
i'm good at introspection; it's my thing and it's one of the things that's made me a lot healthier mentally in the last 10 years than i was in the years before that. but even too much ice cream gives you a badass headache.
i'm going to ramble, so if you don't like looking at car accidents, you can stop reading now.
the last few days (as you might know if you've been reading lately), i've been dealing with some pretty hardcore insomnia, brought on mostly by the fact that once i finished all my spring break work on tuesday or wednesday and everyone had pretty much left for break, i was just sort of hanging around, watching movies and doing weird music shit (which you can download for your amusement on my previous entry). the problem with this is, it gets old after awhile. i like having time off. i even like having time to myself. but not a lot of time. i'm a pretty solitary person, but i at least need something to do. and i haven't had that this week, or even really much this year at all. its been another limbo year (in some ways, not in others), and i'm sick of limbo years. i'm sick of living from march to march in this stupid grad school application cycle. i haven't really had anything concrete in my life since, oh, 2002 or so. that's six fucking years. granted, after my first year at WSU i had a minor degree of stability in knowing that i was coming back the next year for sure. but at the beginning of that next year my fiancee and i broke things off, she moved out, and about 10 other things that i'd rather not talk about happened before december, so i'm not sure how much i can even apply the word "stability" to that year.
i don't expect a lot, stability-wise. i don't want to sound like your typical american dreamer, because i'm not. my life is built around change, around learning, around saying things like "oh fuck, i just spent 4 years doing THAT the wrong way" and being able to be okay with it because i've learned something. i don't want to necessarily stay in the same place fo 20 years, or have a job where i get a gold watch for putting in 40 years in the same office. i don't want to have a job that pays 200,000 a year so that i can cover my basic expenses with 15 percent of my salary and sit on the rest in case i wrap my car around a tree and end up traction. that's not how i roll.
but for fuck's sake, this is getting old. i guess i feel like in the last 5-6 years, for the most part all my introspection and outrospection and exploration (geographically and existentially) has, in a lot of ways, just led to showing me what i might actually want right before it's whisked away from me and i'm forced to work with something else. i can go out to the bar and strike up a conversation with someone interesting-looking just as easily as the next guy. i can throw a trip together and spend a week camping up and down the coast and having a great experience. i'm glad i can do those things. but that doesn't, in some ways, replace having people (or even jobs, hobbies, etc for that matter) that i can get attached to for more than six months without having to start over when those things and people end or leave.
i mean, sure, i've got a lot of friends. good friends (and family) that i've known for years. but they're (almost entirely) thousands of miles away. and i keep in touch with them via the phone, email, etc. and i'm really grateful that that can happen. but sometimes it just doesn't substitute well for having someone sitting on your couch, in person, listening to you blab about your stupid life, or helping you plan a road trip into the middle of nowhere or just watching TV so you're not doing it by yourself.
there are people here i could do that with (and have), but largely i'm a fan of non-shallow friendships, and those take awhile to build up. i mean, i have my share of "let's hang out once a month or so and talk about sports" type friends, but generally i only pursue those friendships as a gateway to eventually more meaningful relationships. that's just the way i am. there's nothing inherently wrong about surrounding yourself with 300 drinking buddies, it's just not what i'm interested in. and i suppose maybe that's my bad for expecting more and then complaining when i don't get it. i don't know. but i don't think it's something that's going to change.
man, i'm totally coming off as high-maintainance, aren't i?
jesus, did i spell "maintainance" right? or is it "maintenance"? whatever. i slept from 8am to 4pm yesterday, and then fell asleep at 1am just a bit ago and woke up at 3am, ready to go. so i guess i'm just staying up until my conferences start and then doing those for 9 hours or so. blarg. the good news is that i actually filed my taxes awhile ago while i was just sitting up doing nothing. it seemed like the right thing to do. so i'm getting 1066 dollars. is it sad that i laughed because that reminded me of the norman invasion? i'm also probably getting that 300 dollar bush-distracts-people-with-money thing. but i'm not sure.
anyway, i guess i'm just frustrated with what seems like my inability (maybe like 40 percent my fault and 60 percent circumstance's fault) to hold on to anything that matters in my life for more than like a year or so. usually it's okay because i love new things, but sometimes (usually around april, ironically) it just gets really old. i'm not looking for 2 kids and a white picket fence, but it'd be nice to have something to care about that wasn't a guitar. maybe i could write a song about that. hah.
though, honestly, the loneliness thing i can deal with. it's not a function of anyone else's life or a career or whatever to provide meaning for my life. that's my thing, and so when there's a problem with it, ultimately it's my responsibility to deal with it. which of course i'm trying to do, and will get better at after i bitch about it awhile longer. the thing that i don't have as much control over is, i think, that i want to be able to use some of my time, energy, etc to actually mean something to someone else again. i feel like i haven't done that for a long time. maybe i'm not explaining that well. it's all well and good to have your own stuff to do/care about/etc. and i definitely have those things. but there's still a lot of me left over. i want to be close enough to some people that i can do things for them, too. i feel like an unintentional miser. it was different back when, say, i lived in kent, and there were tons of opportunities to actually help people i cared about and do things that benefitted them and not just me. i don't really feel that way anymore, and i think that's the main reason i feel like i'm sort of wasting my time. i have all this stuff i want to do, so many things i want to see and write about and care about and enjoy and work on and teach about and get paid for and take pictures of and sing about, and i could do it all, fucking all of it, by myself. but that makes it all pointless. what the fuck is the point? there isn't one. it's like yelling into a well and hearing your voice echo back at you. maybe awe-inspiring for a second, but you're still essentially talking to yourself.
i wouldn't mind being in love again, either. of course that's always going to be only half up to me, so i don't try to have too many expectations on that front. but it's hard sometimes. most of the relationships i've had have been really shitty regarding actually being able to work with the other person to make both of our lives better, both as a unit (bad word choice; couldn't think of another) and as individuals. but i think i might have learned lately how to be a lot better at this, and i'd like to think i wouldn't fuck it up so badly if given the chance again sometime.
well whatever. now i'm less embarrassed about my shitty music post last night, and more embarrassed about this. but if i don't post it, then i feel like it sort of misses the point. too bad mike doesn't have time to comment on my blog anymore; i know he'd at least actually read this and write a near-as-long response :) he actually left me a nice message this morning, which was cool.
anyway, i don't know what to do, where to go, pretty much anything. i guess for now i have to finish my job by may, and then after that, assuming i don't get my job back or get into school (both of which are looking very, very much like they're not going to happen as of a few days ago), my life will have pretty much completed the transition to utter pointlessness. so if anybody has any suggestions/jobs/ideas, whatever, feel free to shoot them my way. i don't even really care if i end up scaling fish or shoveling gravel, i just want my life to be about something other than me for once.
i've still got three hours until sunrise. i should probably shower. the red eyes and complimentary eye-bagginess are going to be unprofessional enough as it is. smelling like a zombie probably won't help.
Mar 16, 2008
bedpost to bedpost AM
that's not as sexy as it sounds. basically it's just me being awake all night for the ninth or so night in a row, wandering around, looking for things to do. i went out planning to do another marathon walk earlier, but as i was walking i was talking to my mom in 2am-as-fuck ohio, and she became convinced that i was going to get raped by space monkeys in a dark, lonely field littered with the dead from the Dagor Bragollach. so i had to go home so that she could go to sleep and not have nightmares about Glaurung eating my face.
so i've just been sitting here doing my usual stuff, writing emails, getting rejected by grad schools, wearing weird clothes. i just get weird during breaks because i'm mostly completely by myself for nigh on a week, and it's hard even for a guy who can spend hours playing with a box to entertain himself that long. to be fair, i was invited out to a few shindigs this weekend, but i passed because by then i had descended far enough into my weirdness that the idea of suddenly encountering lots of people yelling and drinking and being all "whoop there it is!" sort of scared me. i'm an extremely social person, but i'm just generally turned off by large gatherings sometimes, especially those with lots of drinking involved. i like socializing in small and intimate ways, most of the time. and i don't, like, "disapprove" of drinking in a grandmotherly way or anything, it's just that unless i'm in a very certain mood, like 10 percent of the time, drinking a lot results in a depressing-inducing comedown. also, going to the bar and being the guy not drinking is a possibility, but let's face it: drunk people and sober people speak different languages. and it's not fun hanging out people that you can't communicate with or relate to at all. plus, a large majority of the time you drink with a group of people, it's pretty much the same. everybody gets drunk, yells loudly about shit that wouldn't be interesting if you weren't drunk, someone makes a bad life decision, and everyone else laughs at them, you grind your way through the hangover in the morning and then once everyone's capable of reasoning again, you reminisce about all the wacky shit you did that you can't really understand anymore. it's fun, yeah, but i've done it 1,000 times since i turned 21, and i don't feel the need to do it more than a few times a year nowadays. i don't know if that makes me old. maybe it does. if i was drunk at least i'd pass out. instead, i'll fall in bed at like 7am and then wake up a few hours later looking like this:
and you get all wacky from having too much time alone on your hands so you start taking pictures of yourself in the bathroom mirror.
i watched "in good company" last night, which is one of my favorite movies. it's probably the fifth or sixth time i've watched it, and i JUST NOW realized that the CD/Game Exchange (which i miss dearly) did that shit to me where they sell you a box that says "widescreen" on it, but the disc is fullscreen. so even though i've watched the DVD many times and survived, now that i know it's fullscreen i need to buy a widescreen version. it's my favorite movie, man!!! i'm a widescreen junkie!! i need to see the other 40 percent of the picture or a part of me withers and dies!!! a part of me bill withers and dies!!!
i also got a package in the mail from my friend sarah the other day. she's awesome. i hope she never realizes how awesome, because then she would also likely realize that she deserves better friends.
so anyway, when i'm not reading tolkien mythology or worrying about whether they're actually going to make the hobbit movie or eating bagels with horseradish on them and then blowing the hell out of my nose and possibly screaming in pain, i make music. some of you might know this about me. well, this week was supposed to be the week that i finished my second record (so i can start on 3, 4, and 5, which are all partially written already). well, i ended up FUCKING GRADING until wednesday morning. and then on thursday i went crazy, and according to the pictures above i'm not uncrazy yet. so not much recording got done. i've been practicing and playing a lot, even writing a little, but no progress on the actual album. so tonight around 1am i picked up my acoustic guitar and sat in the Batchair (since the recording area is the Batcave, i figure the chair should be the Batchair).
i started playing music, as i often do, and singing. however, there is one important difference this time. i hit THE SWITCH first. THE SWITCH is the mechanism with controls my pre-arranged mixing board/recording/amplifier/etc. power supplies, essentially allowing me to record at any time with the flick of a switch and not much else, i arranged this setup because sometimes my audio ideas literally last something like four minutes in my brain and i'll forget them before i can get everything calibrated correctly.
anyway, i thought it might be fun to record my midnight ramblings and post them, as a sort of internet-y penance for not getting any work done on the record. none of it's anything new, and some of it isn't great, but i know at least a few people might want to check it out. i recorded it using the stereo setting i use by default for my album recording, so the singing's in one channel and the pick-less guitar strumming (it was 1am and i have neighbors) is in the other. it's long, and slow, and sloppy. but it's music. which is better than not having music. if you have better music to listen to, by all means go for it. if not, well then here you go. i should mention i didn't listen to this. so if this is weird i will be suitably retroactively embarrassed.
1. all along the watchtower (bob dylan)
2. millie
3. loving cup (the rolling stones)
4. i still miss someone (johnny cash)
5. wading in the velvet sea (phish)
6. ways to fly
7. sunshine
8. "that spells 'bed' in music" improv song
i might be back later. i'll certainly still be awake. see you in the internets.
so i've just been sitting here doing my usual stuff, writing emails, getting rejected by grad schools, wearing weird clothes. i just get weird during breaks because i'm mostly completely by myself for nigh on a week, and it's hard even for a guy who can spend hours playing with a box to entertain himself that long. to be fair, i was invited out to a few shindigs this weekend, but i passed because by then i had descended far enough into my weirdness that the idea of suddenly encountering lots of people yelling and drinking and being all "whoop there it is!" sort of scared me. i'm an extremely social person, but i'm just generally turned off by large gatherings sometimes, especially those with lots of drinking involved. i like socializing in small and intimate ways, most of the time. and i don't, like, "disapprove" of drinking in a grandmotherly way or anything, it's just that unless i'm in a very certain mood, like 10 percent of the time, drinking a lot results in a depressing-inducing comedown. also, going to the bar and being the guy not drinking is a possibility, but let's face it: drunk people and sober people speak different languages. and it's not fun hanging out people that you can't communicate with or relate to at all. plus, a large majority of the time you drink with a group of people, it's pretty much the same. everybody gets drunk, yells loudly about shit that wouldn't be interesting if you weren't drunk, someone makes a bad life decision, and everyone else laughs at them, you grind your way through the hangover in the morning and then once everyone's capable of reasoning again, you reminisce about all the wacky shit you did that you can't really understand anymore. it's fun, yeah, but i've done it 1,000 times since i turned 21, and i don't feel the need to do it more than a few times a year nowadays. i don't know if that makes me old. maybe it does. if i was drunk at least i'd pass out. instead, i'll fall in bed at like 7am and then wake up a few hours later looking like this:
and you get all wacky from having too much time alone on your hands so you start taking pictures of yourself in the bathroom mirror.
i watched "in good company" last night, which is one of my favorite movies. it's probably the fifth or sixth time i've watched it, and i JUST NOW realized that the CD/Game Exchange (which i miss dearly) did that shit to me where they sell you a box that says "widescreen" on it, but the disc is fullscreen. so even though i've watched the DVD many times and survived, now that i know it's fullscreen i need to buy a widescreen version. it's my favorite movie, man!!! i'm a widescreen junkie!! i need to see the other 40 percent of the picture or a part of me withers and dies!!! a part of me bill withers and dies!!!
i also got a package in the mail from my friend sarah the other day. she's awesome. i hope she never realizes how awesome, because then she would also likely realize that she deserves better friends.
so anyway, when i'm not reading tolkien mythology or worrying about whether they're actually going to make the hobbit movie or eating bagels with horseradish on them and then blowing the hell out of my nose and possibly screaming in pain, i make music. some of you might know this about me. well, this week was supposed to be the week that i finished my second record (so i can start on 3, 4, and 5, which are all partially written already). well, i ended up FUCKING GRADING until wednesday morning. and then on thursday i went crazy, and according to the pictures above i'm not uncrazy yet. so not much recording got done. i've been practicing and playing a lot, even writing a little, but no progress on the actual album. so tonight around 1am i picked up my acoustic guitar and sat in the Batchair (since the recording area is the Batcave, i figure the chair should be the Batchair).
i started playing music, as i often do, and singing. however, there is one important difference this time. i hit THE SWITCH first. THE SWITCH is the mechanism with controls my pre-arranged mixing board/recording/amplifier/etc. power supplies, essentially allowing me to record at any time with the flick of a switch and not much else, i arranged this setup because sometimes my audio ideas literally last something like four minutes in my brain and i'll forget them before i can get everything calibrated correctly.
anyway, i thought it might be fun to record my midnight ramblings and post them, as a sort of internet-y penance for not getting any work done on the record. none of it's anything new, and some of it isn't great, but i know at least a few people might want to check it out. i recorded it using the stereo setting i use by default for my album recording, so the singing's in one channel and the pick-less guitar strumming (it was 1am and i have neighbors) is in the other. it's long, and slow, and sloppy. but it's music. which is better than not having music. if you have better music to listen to, by all means go for it. if not, well then here you go. i should mention i didn't listen to this. so if this is weird i will be suitably retroactively embarrassed.
1. all along the watchtower (bob dylan)
2. millie
3. loving cup (the rolling stones)
4. i still miss someone (johnny cash)
5. wading in the velvet sea (phish)
6. ways to fly
7. sunshine
8. "that spells 'bed' in music" improv song
i might be back later. i'll certainly still be awake. see you in the internets.
Mar 15, 2008
"sport truck" my ass
so i was sitting here eating dinner and laughing at things on the internet, gearing up to wander around pullman for 67 hours again tonight, alone and cold and in the dark, maybe going to the bike path and trying to figure out how the bridge supports on that weird bridge over the river work, and i needed something to do while my computer burns the last few discs of wilco's 5-night riviera party from february.
fortunately, i was emailed this article.
first of all, i have to say that, solely from an aesthetic point of view, the sport truck is grotesque. search GIS for "pontiac g8 sport truck" to see what i mean. it's the one that looks like the mutated offspring of a giant banana and the black guy robot from transformers. this only reinforced the point that the article already made me want to make.
i just cannot understand why pontiac and a few other car companies (among them buick and cadillac, as cited in the article) continue to exist in the early 1990s. these car companies, as near as i can tell, only still exist thanks to misguided rich-ass american brand loyalty and inertia (which are basically the same thing). who the space-fuck is going to buy a 402 hp, 6.2-liter engine-based car? only 358,000 people apparently. and pontiac seems shocked. they attribute it to the fact that pontiac has failed to live up to its 1960s image, thus resulting in pontiac owners feeling they've been lied to. maybe, instead, they could attribute it to the fact that IT'S NOT 1960 ANYMORE! it's like people who insist they should have the right to have a laser guided missle system in their house because the constitution, written 300 years ago when everybody owned a rifle and you learned how to use one before you were allowed to kiss a girl, says we have the right to defend ourselves. hey pontiac: maybe you shouldn't be so surprised at the new CAFE standards. the rest of us have seen this coming for at least a decade. if you hadn't been obsessed with maintaining your car-as-phallus-extension business model you might have caught a wiff of the wind (of chaaaaaaaaange...)
i understand, in a warped capitalist way, the desire to create something that only the top 10 percent of the population (finance-wise) can afford. selling 10 $20,000 cars is the same as selling one $200,000 car. the thing is, though, that people with large disposable income are:
1) fickle
2) generally concerned with appearance, and maintaining said appearance, hence the need to buy a $200,000 car in the first place
obviously my example is a little extreme for pontiac's sake, but still. the type of people who are, in this day of hybrid cars and mpg standards and alternative fuel sources, going to buy a car that has a v8 and goes 0 to 300 in four tenths of a second are generally just going to care about how cool that car makes them feel. so if you don't maintain the image of being cool, you're done for. you don't have anything to fall back on like having a reliable car, a cheap car, an efficient car... you get the idea. you become pontiac, buick, cadillac, hummer. those other three brands aren't doing bad for now because they're a little higher up the income chain and people still associate them with badassedness. but once gas hits 5 dollars a gallon, it'll be interesting to see how badly people want to be able to fill up two parking spots everytime they go to wal-mart.
i get why the status quo is good if you're rich. if it ain't broke for you, it's not in your best interest to fix it. but it just annoys me how so many of these people who (supposedly) got rich in the first place by being cutting-edge, or innovative, etc. consistently clam up in the face of the one thing that's certain in the world: change.
in the type of energy crisis that we're entering (crisis being relative because we still won't be on par with most of the civilized world as far as gas prices go until we get up to a lot more dollars a gallon), it's completely obvious that these new standards, expectations, and concerns need to be taken into account and that people should stop being surprised when their new design for a 15 mpg road rocket for 2009 gets scrapped because, well, the earth is melting.
it reminds me (as most things inducing anger do) of the RIAA, who regularly resorts to byzantine and morally questionable tactics to bust individual citizens for infringing on their laws concerning a business model that became outdated the minute the internet became a household word, instead of finding a way to use the new system to their advantage. it just blows my mind.
/rant
//well, i'm off.
fortunately, i was emailed this article.
first of all, i have to say that, solely from an aesthetic point of view, the sport truck is grotesque. search GIS for "pontiac g8 sport truck" to see what i mean. it's the one that looks like the mutated offspring of a giant banana and the black guy robot from transformers. this only reinforced the point that the article already made me want to make.
i just cannot understand why pontiac and a few other car companies (among them buick and cadillac, as cited in the article) continue to exist in the early 1990s. these car companies, as near as i can tell, only still exist thanks to misguided rich-ass american brand loyalty and inertia (which are basically the same thing). who the space-fuck is going to buy a 402 hp, 6.2-liter engine-based car? only 358,000 people apparently. and pontiac seems shocked. they attribute it to the fact that pontiac has failed to live up to its 1960s image, thus resulting in pontiac owners feeling they've been lied to. maybe, instead, they could attribute it to the fact that IT'S NOT 1960 ANYMORE! it's like people who insist they should have the right to have a laser guided missle system in their house because the constitution, written 300 years ago when everybody owned a rifle and you learned how to use one before you were allowed to kiss a girl, says we have the right to defend ourselves. hey pontiac: maybe you shouldn't be so surprised at the new CAFE standards. the rest of us have seen this coming for at least a decade. if you hadn't been obsessed with maintaining your car-as-phallus-extension business model you might have caught a wiff of the wind (of chaaaaaaaaange...)
i understand, in a warped capitalist way, the desire to create something that only the top 10 percent of the population (finance-wise) can afford. selling 10 $20,000 cars is the same as selling one $200,000 car. the thing is, though, that people with large disposable income are:
1) fickle
2) generally concerned with appearance, and maintaining said appearance, hence the need to buy a $200,000 car in the first place
obviously my example is a little extreme for pontiac's sake, but still. the type of people who are, in this day of hybrid cars and mpg standards and alternative fuel sources, going to buy a car that has a v8 and goes 0 to 300 in four tenths of a second are generally just going to care about how cool that car makes them feel. so if you don't maintain the image of being cool, you're done for. you don't have anything to fall back on like having a reliable car, a cheap car, an efficient car... you get the idea. you become pontiac, buick, cadillac, hummer. those other three brands aren't doing bad for now because they're a little higher up the income chain and people still associate them with badassedness. but once gas hits 5 dollars a gallon, it'll be interesting to see how badly people want to be able to fill up two parking spots everytime they go to wal-mart.
i get why the status quo is good if you're rich. if it ain't broke for you, it's not in your best interest to fix it. but it just annoys me how so many of these people who (supposedly) got rich in the first place by being cutting-edge, or innovative, etc. consistently clam up in the face of the one thing that's certain in the world: change.
in the type of energy crisis that we're entering (crisis being relative because we still won't be on par with most of the civilized world as far as gas prices go until we get up to a lot more dollars a gallon), it's completely obvious that these new standards, expectations, and concerns need to be taken into account and that people should stop being surprised when their new design for a 15 mpg road rocket for 2009 gets scrapped because, well, the earth is melting.
it reminds me (as most things inducing anger do) of the RIAA, who regularly resorts to byzantine and morally questionable tactics to bust individual citizens for infringing on their laws concerning a business model that became outdated the minute the internet became a household word, instead of finding a way to use the new system to their advantage. it just blows my mind.
/rant
//well, i'm off.
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