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Junk Culture versus High Culture July 08, 2005
One of the things I always get intellectually reprimanded for is my willingness to inspect junk culture. Maybe that's why I share such an affinity with Don Delillo's character Murray Jay Siskind in White Noise. Here is a person who will read cereal boxes, transvestite magazines, talk to prostitutes, and analyze James Dean. Not necessarily in that order. I guess I feel that junk culture is responsible for subconsciously infiltrating many people's opinions as much, if not more, than high culture. Of course, this ties in to the whole whine about media representation that symbiotic crybabies love to denounce.I'm willing to address junk culture as much as I am high culture. But when people from above ask me why I'm wasting time with trash, my only answer is that looking at trash may be no less ineffective as soapbox divas who preach to the choir. It's one thing to discuss like-minded politics amongst your people, but to transgress the cultural line and dispose snobbery presents a greater chance of discovering hidden notions.I have recently conversed with a few people about my trans state. I think to see gender taboo as the only thing I break would be misleading. The concept is to transcend as many lines and boundaries as possible in hopes of understanding the comfortable states that have been left behind.
Do you want to supersize that McMansion? June 12, 2005
A friend from, ironically, Berlin, just told me about the existence of the McMansion. I have seen these abominations of space management in our neighborhood for years. Folks move into the neigborhood and buy up three old Cape Cod ranches, demolish them, and proceed to build a McMansion in its place, complete with on guard concrete lions flanking the driveway that stretchs approximately 12 feet to the front door.
Building a McMansion in our neighborhood, is equivalent to an undrafted Olympic sprinter going to an Old Ladies parchese club to compete against its members, and declaring himself the winner. If you want to impress me with that brand of gaudy affluence, then try, building one in New Canaan. Until you've pull that one off, let's not talk about it.
Jorge-Luis Borges in his story The Aleph described an object so small yet so large in what one is able to see within. It was as if one were looking into a universe. I sometimes feel that way when I visit a quaint charming cottage with a bit of character and lots of pretty flowers in that small plot next to the front door. I think in many ways, we've lost touch with the charm of small things. In a frenzy to compete against the Joneses and win, people seem to be outdoing each other from burgers, to hummers, to houses, jawlines, eyes, collagen lips, bust sizes. Few are questioning what the actual aesthetic of the bigger is better mentality. When I worked with a small financial company, I visited the CEO's McMansion out in Long Island. It was the opposite of the Borgesian Aleph:
It's incredibly big. But there was nothing inside.
I'll have a Frappuccino with that June 2, 2005
I was browsing a book on New York City Skyscrapers at a Barnes and Noble bookstore and try as I did, I was unable to ignore a mounting sense of dread with every page flipped. Finally it became apparent that I should either run for my dear life or brave the consequences by staying put. The source of this sinister surrounding, I pinpointed, was emanating from the speakers. Coffee-house muzak. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about: The Potpourri scented, falsetto-breaking, acoustic guitar strumming, mocha-latté sipping "it's all about me" lyric singing non-confrontational, bubble bath, rose petals on the floor Lilith Fair subdued unscratchable itch that sex-change candidates feel suddenly obligated to appreciate and keep copies of in their cd collection or IPOD library.
Well, before I could make a life-saving decision and put one foot towards the door, I spontaneously combusted, wheeled out a keg of Budweiser, slapped on a pump, subscribed to two years of FHM and Maxim, and changed a water pump on a Chevy 440 Big Block all at once.
This begs the question of what I sometimes call the Riefenstahl Complex, which most of you will recognize as the Wagner Complex. Can one appreciate Martin Luther's humanist-inspired lyrics when it is accompanied by a musical arrangement that is equivalent to a Tipper-approved template for a banal drone, or can one accept the finest fugal contrapuntal compositions of modernity when it is found out that the composer was also a Nazi sympathizer? Where does personal politics stop and personal aesthetics begin?
I did the best I could. I crawled up to the counter and asked what was being played at the moment. The store clerk smiled, "Do you like it?"
"No," I smiled back. "Just an addition to my unwish list."
Messenger versus Message May 24, 2005
© May 24, 2005 Pristine Ann Gee pristine@d332.com
I laughed long and hard the very day I saw what Strangers With Candy star Amy Sedaris really looked like. I fell in love with the series when it initially aired on Comedy Central. It seemed to me if John Waters were to make a sitcom, it would look something like this.
I was trying to figure out the cause of my laughter for a few weeks, and I think I may have stumbled upon a fragment of it yesterday. Quite a few movies have traditionally used knock-out lookers to portray shunned characters in our society. (Leonardo DiCaprio as a mentally challenged boy is an example) The allegory, I suppose, is to reveal to the viewers, the inner beauty of a person we would otherwise not recognize in our daily lives. All the surrounding characters in the movie will completely ignore the fact that the shunned character also resembles the world's biggest heart-throb of the moment, while viewers are left breathless, ready to tear their hair out at the roots, screaming at the screen, "WHY OH WHY CAN'T YOU ALL SEE THIS BEAUTIFUL PERSON'S PAIN! ARE YOU ALL BLIND?!"
Well, the double inversion in Strangers with Candy comes when they take a pretty attractive person, and make her as unattractive as possible...then give her a character ten times worse than her looks. Now all the viewer can muster up is something closer to "Okay, like, I'm so NOT feeling her pain right about now."
So that got me thinking about the message versus the messenger. We've all heard, "don't kill the messenger for the message." What's struck my curiosity is how the context of the messenger's identity has come to determine the meaning of the message. Many people won't flinch when a black person uses the "N" word or when a yellow person uses the "C" word. But the moment Mr. Entitlement comes along and mentions that slit in his white picket fence, all hell breaks loose. I'm not making a judgement call here. I know the relative position of power from which each speaker's identity hails does contribute to the context of the message. What I'm interested in is the implication of internet dialogue: Anyone can easily borrow an icon from somewhere else, create a racial/sexual orientation/gender identity, and enter into an online discussion group. Let's say all along a person has been contributing thoughtful issues, or noxious-terminologies-made-innocuous-by-assumed-identity, then all of a sudden he unveils his true identity. Will our feelings, which we associate with his identity, then color our impression of his formerly thoughtful observations and make his opinions no longer so? Or to put it simply: Who has the right to make a statement has overtaken what statement is actually being made. (I'm sure most of us are aware of the nuances of internet conversations to be able to waddle through subjective mud. Still, that doesn't prevent me from thinking about people who look at online photos of other people and making long observations....about what's in the background. Or people who check a writer's picture before reading what they have to say on their website, or people commenting on Current Music instead of entry posts)
But now you transfer this concept onto word choice, and substitute diction for identity and ideas for opinion. What happens? I sometimes think there is a World War III already in progress, and it is being fought online. Bullets have been replaced by words, labels, and terminologies. And the greatest casualty, may be ideas.
People as a trading commodity : When a woman is a woman and a man ain't nothin' but a male 5/21/05 09:01 am from clubplanet.com:
Clubber's Tip
Being on the guestlist does not guarantee admission. The venue door staff always has final say. So check the dress code, bring some females and don't come crying to us if you get turned away for showing up wearing sweat pants and those old Keds.Next Month in Cosmo:
"Ten Ways To Tell Whether He Loves You Or Whether He's Just Using You To Get Into A Club To Check Out Other Girls Brought To The Club By Other Guys Who Just Wanted To Get In."
Setting the Mouseketeer Trap 4/14/05 09:11 am
I'm slow. So it's all right that it has taken me years to realize that the spirits Lady MacBeth speaks of pouring into Duncanbat could be interpreted as ideas and suggestions.
Conspiracy theories, by their tendency to be both unprovable and undisputable, can be hecate uttered, poisoning the well so badly that even a Ringu II child couldn't crawl out of.
Take this one that was casually yapped across two chocodiles at a 7-11 last week during a sanitation workers' break: "Aw, Geez Jake, ya know society functions on the joy of the schadenfreude: People are just hanging around, waiting to see you go down."
Then I suddenly remembered a conversation I had with an accounting manager at my last job and he said, "People suck. That's why we go off into our little corners, make our little family, and hope that that family cushions us from the rest of the world."
Tabloids, news, gossip magazines. Whoever wants to revel in the joy of accomplishment or good deeds when it's not Christmas? Show me something bad so I know I got it good and it can get worse. We vote the sexiest woman of the year only because it'll be that much more delicious in the oncoming weeks when news of the sexiest woman with a secret Ben-and-Jerry's addiction overloading the stairmaster at a Hollywood spa breaks.
I'm still waiting for the New England Journal of Medicine to report that driving SUV's will make your sons gay.
I'm thinking about all this as I'm inching along bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Pulaski Skyway as rubberneckers check out the latest serving of blood guts and gore.
I employ the white noise of radio to cancel out the incessant microwave of cell phones reporting details of the pile-up to family members at home where the sponge cake is being fluffed to soften the landing for a 9-5 lifer with 34 more payments till the next televised promise.
And the first thing I hear is a woman's happy voice as she chirped triumphantly about Ms. Spears' baby:
"You can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you can't take the trailer park out of the girl."
Random Oggling 3/30/05 08:46 pm I talk more about girls than guys. I rarely think or lust after existing men. No, the guys I fantasize about are fluffy like the Michelin Tire man, smell like fresh laundered sheets, have strawberry Cool Whip™ on their heads, speak Portuguese with a Jersey twang, and can prepare a mean falafel while topping me in the sack.
I really need to create an updated list of onscreen guys I dig. For now, I'll admit: I watch those Mummy movies because Arnold Vosloo is such a hottie. (sighs) I can look at this picture below all day dreamy-eyed. He makes the list of the top 10 movie hunks who can play big daddy to this galboy anyday.
You Will Always Be Fruity To Me 3/30/05 08:52 am When I was a kid on a family outing and a Sinatra song came on the radio, my dad casually dispatched: "you know, Sinatra would go to a casino in Vegas or Atlantic City, and he'd find the best looking showgirl or waitress, and offer her a few hundred dollars to get down on all fours and he'd ride her around like an animal on the lounge floor in front of all the other hotel guests. If she refused, he had enough pull with management that he got her fired immediately." From that day onwards, everytime I hear a Sinatra song, I'd wince, thinking about that story.
It's taken me all my life to come to terms with the fact that creativity (and ability) has absolutely no relationship to humanity.
I call this the Leni Riefenstahl Complex; not who Riefenstahl was, but how people have been unable to accept her work because of her Nazi past.
Flip this around and the flaw to that logic is immediately exposed. If morality was an indicator of artistic abilities, then it should follow that Mother Theresa may have died an undiscovered Picasso.
Recently, I was put to the test. The best dance/drum machine software in production is Fruity Loops. I wanted to purchase this program in it's new name FL Studio. I was told the company changed the name for fear fruity will earn them an association with homosexuals.
I was shocked. Is this urban legend? Was this company started by a bunch of schoolboys during recess in the schoolyard? And didn't dance music owe a hell of a lot to homosexuals in its evolution in the 70s?
No, sadly, it is true. The company who makes this internationally-renown software not only states this as one of the reasons for the name change on it's website but credits the move as a necessary one to appease, specifically, the homophobic hip hop community.
I think it's an unnecessary cause for concern, since a cursory online survey of discussed topics involving FL Studio has shown that it is the cracked version of this software that's caught on with its users.
Chromatic 3/26/05 01:56 pm As a thank-you note to everyone for taking the time to fill out yesterday's poll, I present to you guys, this entry: My sister has abandoned her old car on our driveway. We are planning to donate it to charity. It still runs, but it's been sitting in front of one of the garages for months. Everytime I look into her abandoned car I seem to see something I haven't seen before. Early the other morning, I found myself sitting inside my car staring at an air freshener hanging from the rear mirror. It said: "To-Do List: Ass. Gas. Grass." Complete with line drawing illustrations.
Like many people, I tend to think of kaleidoscopes as handheld creations where a mirror-lined tube enlarge and rearrange its pretty, colorful contents when seen at different angles.
I think seeing a kaleidoscope in it's traditional proportion is limiting.
If we remove the spatial limitations from what constitutes a kaleidoscope as well as the expectation that the tube spins its contents for our viewing pleasure, then a car can qualify.
Even one's surroundings: The world.
Look at it once, and see something. Look at the same thing again, and see another thing, another way.
The Shadow Of Your Smile 3/22/05 10:30 pm I'm terribly homesick for Rio de Janeiro.
I've been singing Astrud Gilberto songs for weeks since Carnaval passed.
I miss the warm gentle evening breeze blowing in from the South Atlantic.
I go and buy a bottle of Cachaca this evening to make Caiprinhas and listen to Baden Powell.
I swear: Some Brazilian man come and rescue me from this country and take me home withcha!
Now I have to crack my head thinking up another signature outfit 3/19/05 02:50 pm
It was bound to happen sooner or later. I have been dressing like this for almost five years, and now I am going to be walking down the street with 5,412,547,641 other people dressed like that and bystanders willl be going, "She must be trying to imitate that style in that new movie that just came out. It's all the rage these days. People are no longer original." I swear: My next outfit will be a postal worker uniform.
Anyway, FYI, this is a Angela Robinson's remake of her lesbian short film of the same name:
ps. Janet plays Janet in both films. YAYY!!!!!!!!! I like Janet. (Notice her same pose different facial expression in both pics above). The top one is the mainstream heterosexual-friendly coquettish "am i good enough for you?" face, while the bottom one is the lesbian "buzz off sausage boy!" look.
I can't decide which "current mood I'm in" to select for this one 3/18/05 12:55 pm It's been often said that the WWW and Internet (post military era) is one gigantic social experiment. Most if not all of us have, at a moment of narcissistic weakness have taken an online quiz.
The structure of a search engine is identical to an online quiz: One enters the initial info (search string) and proceeds to click from the choices that are given. Pop up screens are either clicked on, or closed. The labyrinthian trail is charted from the moment SEARCH is clicked, until one walks away from the computer -which is never, if you look at hours as inconsequential units of time. At the end of each of our session, we get handed the results we were looking for.
In the meantime, somebody somehwere has added once more to the growing map of our behavioral instinct in a maze.
It's been said that data-mining is big business. A gigantic database of profiles of every individual who have access to the internet and chose to use it is growing and becoming more accurate with each passing day.
In the end though, I think the differences will be negligible.
You can't compare snowflakes with snowflakes.
Pristine's Heterosexual Post of the Year 3/16/05 10:09 am Ever since Big Joe brought up the matter of my first junior high school sweetheart last week (when I dropped in on his family), I have been having these tender loving dreams of sharing a bed with a woman. Not in a sexual way of course (Pat Robertson's boys would have to pray until Brad Pitt goes out of their minds for that), but more in a stuff animal-cuddly way.
One dream had me running into my junior high school sweetheart, us falling deeply in love with each other, getting married, running off, and living together caring for each other happily ever after.
The other one occurred two nights ago. I was cuddling with this girl in bed and she was forlorn, saying how her boyfriend was so far away in some other state, at work, never coming home and that she needed someone just to be near and to provide warmth. And I was shushing her in bed and holding her close against my body. There was this tenderness emanating from the nexus of our being one, a warm comfy cotton blanket wrapping around a deep calm and a gladness in humanity which keep dreams joyful on the last mile of winter. And even though I'm alone in this world, it gave me hope, and it made me look forward to waking up and embracing another day.
Pristine recommends (don't worry, no spoilers at all) 3/15/05 01:51 pm Don't you just hate it when you come across a movie that makes you say, "oh for heavens sakes, I've squandered all those valuable hours of my life to meaningless low-rate movies when I could have been watching this." Here is one of those movies.
I'm one of those people who don't like to read synopsis and summaries before I watch a movie. Let the story unfold on it's own. Let the film-maker tell the story, why read the captions?
But I will say this: The first thing that struck me wasn't "Wow! Asian people in an Asian metropolis actually have emotions and feelings and are not just monkeys jumping up and down ingratiating themselves to Bill Murray or Gwen Stefani!" but this:In childhood, groups of friends see each other in the daylight at schoolyards.
In adulthood, groups of friends only see each other in the artificial light of after-work hours.
The next time they meet, it will be under the flourescent light of the hospital.
So What's So Great About Those Burberry Scarves Again? 3/12/05 01:31 pm Watching Godfrey Reggio's shamanistic Koyanisqaatsi is akin to inspecting the sedimentary layers that went into erecting the artifice of values and beliefs within me. I think many of us chose to construct, fortify, feed, and add to a set, a system, our own personal structure substitution to institutionalized religion. After all, if everyone agrees to believe that A=B and B=C, C becomes A. That off-road SUV is a sign of an adventurous car owner who takes roaring trips through the glacietic wilderness on his office desk as he works overtime to pay off the inert hunk of metal outside in the parking lot. The expensive basketball sneakers automatically asserts that its wearer can have 3 extra seconds of airtime on the court. That plasma-cam-mail-web cellphone can get him in with the hot girls at the dance club VIP room....if he didn't have to go to bed early so he can work Saturdays to shave off the revolving debt. Or the classic war horse: Wearing expensive jewelry diamonds shows your value. I find it's important to periodically clean house: Reexamine, reevaluate, re-deconstruct a personal system. I ask: Where did this come from? At what stage did this get incorporated into my beliefs?
I think if you go back and carefully pick it apart, you'll find that a good deal of B is an illusion. You will find that C, in fact, does NOT equal A.
How do I take all the B's out of my life and keep the structure from crumbling?
Online Sharing and Online Stealing 3/4/05 10:53 am In several ongoing conversations with friends and contemporaries, it has been brought to my attention that it bothers the hell out of them that I casually and freely share most, if not, all my thoughts online. The topic is stealing.
I have witness several instances as close to home as friends on my lj friends list who have had their lj icons, phrases, ideas stolen by other lj users. Some ten years ago, I was walking around in the east village wearing all white spandex (something akin to a fencing outfit), and within a week, friends reported another person walking around in the same getup. I played a pink electric guitar onstage at the Mercury Lounge in the nude wearing nothing but a Spam can. A few months later, Cynthia Rowley was making belts with Spam can buckles, and some topless Asian guy was playing a see-thru guitar on an all-pink Candies Lisa Loeb ad in Vogue.
I'm sure it's all coincidence and just my imagination.
"Doesn't it bother you that you brainstorm all day and night and come up with a few thoughts, then you share them online, and people just walk off with it and use it to write a paper, get laid, or even make money from it?"
Well, I'll confess that it bothers me that there are people out there who are utterly lacking in originality. I've always said that I felt sad for people having to go through life knowing that they are inferior copies of the real thing. I imagine it would be difficult to get through the day knowing you weren't the real thing, but then I have been told there are apparently many people who can do it without giving it an ounce of thought. And coming from two cultures that thrive on copying (Asian: westernization, dvd piracy, style copying, fashion accessory brand name copies, design copy, patent violation, copyright infringement) and (Trans* : Celebrity impersonations, female impersonations, lip synching, copying the other gender's flaws and mannerisms), I must say: I wouldn't want to belong to any club that already has another me in it.
I've only considered this topic seriously because my music recording career ended when I refused to be a ghost writer in my own band. Because of the polished pop sound we had, the record label said they will continue our three-record deal IF I relinquished the lead and tucked myself away in the shadows onstage and let "hot white attractive girls" (yes, those were the actual elected representatives considered) sing words and perform music from the scenes in my life, as if it were theirs. "Kind of a Fred Schneider type thing" were the exact words the label owner proposed.
I said no.
All this week, I have been in contact with BMI representative, my publisher, and the copyright office for registering new works that I have written. I plan to send them off to the record companies. Of course, there's no guarantee they won't take it turn it around, slap their names on it, and have their label stars record it. No royalties, no proper credit. I won't even get laid.
Most of the people I have spoke to so far have told me not to put any original work online. To be fair, these people are also folks who download whole movies, songs, software off the internet, so they know everything in question here is only a matter of clicks away. But the more interesting question they raised was this: Just what is it that you gain from sharing your works and ideas online? A few comments? A few compliments? While a dozen faceless strangers are walking off with the bulk of your best work?
Ironically, the most memorable song is about copying. So if you wanna hear it, come on over, I'll play it for you.
But I am curious to hear what creative people think about sharing their unpublished works online. Does it bother you? How do you work around this misgiving?
The Gym II 3/3/05 12:29 pm Okay guys, help me out here. Does this ever happen to you? What's the deal with this: I'm at a gym donating two hours of my time to fight against the Hostess cupcake menace when a couple should walk in. The man goes off to the weights and the girl comes over to the cardio machines. She picks one next to mine and starts her workout. From the corner of my eyes, I can see the guy eyeing both of us from across the room. The moment I visibly pick up my head and turn to look at his girl (actual translation: I was checking her workout hoodie just to make sure we were both not wearing the same one from Rampage), he is immediately over by her side making a display of talking to her, asking her a question. I mean: They just walked in together a moment ago right?
This continues to happen with many different couples. It can't be my imagination. I know the guy is marking his territory saying:
"I got two words for you buddy: Shes. Mine."
He gave me two words alright. Weak. Insecure.
Answer to yesterday's How Well Do You Know Me? Quiz 3/1/05 06:25 am QUESTION: Which of the following conversations was your humble online journalist involved in with a classically-trained, fine arts painter under one of Christo's Gates this past Saturday evening?
CHOICES (and answers):
1) "Don't be making me laugh! C'mon! This is serious! We are in the presence of art. Let's walk solemnly and absorb taste!"
explanation: This was an actual conversation between a couple ahead of us.
It's been proven by the New England Journal of Medicine that taste can only be absorbed while standing still or sitting. That's why people frown at the fidgeter at operas as the philistine of the group, but nobody ever complains about the person who falls asleep.
________2) "I think if he held the installation in springtime, the chiaroscuro effect of the moving curtains would have created shimmering gradations of saffron reflected off the leaves. Marvelous!"
explanation: This is something I would think to myself, but never torture anyone in my present company with. I save that pleasure for livejournal.
________3) "21 million $%*!@&# dollars! Do you know how much porn you can buy with 21 million dollars?"
The correct answer. The fact that we were discussing porn bears no reflection on our outstanding moral fiber. Instead, it speaks volumes about how dull discussing art is.
________4) "Are you aware that None of your business who I date translated into Chinese means I date strictly Caucasian men who look like the infantry battalion sargent who came to burn down my village 20 years ago?"
explanation: This couldn't realistically have been a conversation, since we all know that the proper Chinese translation is Okay, so he doesn't look like an Abercrombie & Fitch model, but this genuine Louis Vuitton handbag easily hedges his L.L. Bean looks up to a J. Crew, at the very least.
(That crack isn't going to score me any Starbucks Gourmet Brownie Points with the Banana Republic)
________5) "I remembered that one time when Taco Bell had a two-for-one special. I swear. Like Christo's masterpieces, you could see it from space."
explanation: I have inadvertently made a comment about Christo's artwork here. Men around the world are glad that people like Dali confirms their belief that it is still the motion of the ocean that truly matters.
Sabbath disMissives 2/27/05 09:41 pm Once I requested that an internet gentleman caller email a picture of himself. He sent a close-up of his unit in a state of excitement.
In my rejection reply letter, I wrote, "With a face like that, how could I possibly take you home to meet my momma?"
Guys who visited my webpage tell me they go to my gallery first. They said "if you don't look good, who the hell cares what you have to say?" So I posed with a copy of Plato's Republic and never had to put on makeup again. 2/26/05 11:21 am Why do women get drinks bought for them when their bust is visible... ...but men get ticketed when they decide to carry their socks in their drawers?
Current Mood: Pizza Hut, Three Times A Day
Current Music: The Sound of One ThighMaster Snapping
People Who Meet Online Are Going To Raise Kids Who Only KNow How To Meet People Online: Internet Realities and Cyber Selection 2/22/05 12:11 am
It greatly disturbs me that the internet is wholly remiss of an important portion of society in that it is a filtered representation of only people who have access to computers AND choose to share their thoughts and supposed wisdom online. Thusly, not only is the next generation of people going to be weaned - by process of unnatural selection -'on net-ty-knowledge by 'net-ty-people, but the group of minds who make their survival on a process commonly known as street knowledge and street smarts will all but disappear from the real world.I thought about this yesterday while standing in the middle of central park. I often think about the movie Total Recall in its post-modern concept of artificially implanted past, thereby creating an artificial reality in the present. I have been spending time thinking about how people use to operate in the days before the internet and world wide web came along. And suddenly this revelation occurred to me:
The internet dating routine has inverted the process of courtship.
On the internet today, we use filters to narrow searches and criteria on our perceived ideal mate. The computer does the number crunching before spitting out a list of possibilities. Matches based purely on word choice, or in e-harmony's case, some mysterious god-like hash that deems one person fit for the other. Then after more words are exchanged, phone calls made, instant messaging, emoticons, jpegs, blog urls traded, a physical meet is agreed upon. But make no mistake, the initial component of attraction is word choice.
Try to think back to the days before the internet became the matchmaker. How did people hookup? How did people pick each other up? Most importantly, how did they determine who to toss the bait to?
Answer: Appearances.
By appearances, I include body language, behavior, physical traits, and overall beauty. But the animal magnetism and attraction still needs to connect before a decision is made.
I think the internet, combined with the PC movement of the nineties, have made people forget what it is like to act, react, and decide in real time. Not only is there a war on words, but love is begun on words.
It seems that most of the relationships I have started on the internet have stayed internet relationships. But relationships that start from people grabbing my arms in public and saying, "baby, you're coming home with me tonight" have stayed....*cough*...relationships that don't need no stinkin' words.
Happy Birthday to the Gal of the Southern Gothic 2/19/05 01:17 pm People have often repeated and appropriated the title of her book The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter into songs, phrases, and torches of self-pity. When I ask them what the book is about, I usually get a "I dunno. I never read it."
Well, today is her birthday, and it's one that I rarely miss. Glenn Gould, Coltrane, McCullers are the three that I have marched in to the memory of my different drummer.
I once went up to Oak Hill Cemetery on Carson's birthday with a cassette player containing Glenn Gould's reading of Bach's Die Kunst Der Fugue Contrapunctus XIV, with the knowledge that the author originally pursued a career in piano and had a penchant for Bach as well.
Carson once said: "There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished."
In Gould's recording of the XIV, the piece breaks of on measure 239, and remains and unfinished song.
After three hours walking around the high lawn section of the cemetery, and finding out the cemetery office had already closed down for the day, I gave up looking for the headstone. I thought about the unrealized classical musicians that appear intermittently throughout her short stories, Poldi, Wunderkind, and Lonely Hunter, as I sat down under a tree surrounded by a silent majority. I press the PLAY button on the new cassette player.
The cassette jammed. No sound came out.
more on McCullers
Best Valentine Day Gift Ever. February 14, 2005 9:30pm Is going to a rally to support fellow Asians speaking out against Hot97......
...and turning around to see Afrika Bambaataa and the Zulu Nation standing alongside you.
As you all may know, there's been this brewing "Tsunami Song" saga on the hiphop radio station that has reached international attention. (A lesser known fact is that another controversy around the same radio station involves a face-slapping cutting contest that rewards $500.00 to the young girl who can slap her contestant in the face with the greatest force).
I was in shock over the weekend when my sister and I tried to rally Asian colleagues for support. Most of whom shrugged and said, "you go ahead and represent me. I don't want to get involved." Bullies are all the same. They call you out, either step up or step off. Otherwise, don't expect to get respect handed to you on a plate. Nobody gets anywhere by sweeping things under the rug and pretending everything is ok.
I think it's important to understand that it is a free country. I support free speech and I support diversity. And in supporting these two things, I am fully aware that I have also agreed to let ignorance itself in with the wise and sensible people.
Hip hop is under no obligation to be politically-correct. It is under no obligation to preach moral instructions. (I myself squirm a little when I hear long Baptist sermons sampled over a nice fat beat.) But what I think is at question here is the brusque, cutting remarks made in this incident: It's the putting-down of another ethnicity. It's saying: "We've got the upper hand now, it's our turn to give and it's your turn to take it." In order to get a grasp of this form of put-down, you have to look at the cutting contest itself. Look at the history of jazz and the blues though: There were cutting contests from almost a century ago. Cutting contests still exist in drag balls in New York today. The essence of a cutting contest, is, in and of itself, the manifestation of the American spirit. How do I one-up this? How do I make this better? How do I beat the competition and stay ahead? And in doing so, innovations are improved upon and moved one step closer to superiority. Rappers have been known to do cutting contests too. It's not so much the showdown itself as it is the latent image of what it is like to be "put down" in front of everyone. As much as most of us may not want to admit it, fear, hate, anger, prejudices, frustration and the opinions of our enemies may secretly add into the mix which fuels the creative process.
So for this reason alone, I support free speech and in doing so, I know I have agreed to let disrespectful and impolite comments in through the front door. Certainly no creative art forms are under any obligation to answer to any gracious behavior.
But hip hop is under an obligation to make sure that it does not pass the legacy of acquired racism on to the next generation and the next minority group.
Hip hop has this golden opportunity to make a difference these days, when the next generation of kids from all race, class, geographical backgrounds and walks of life around the world are looking to it for expression, fashion, ideas, and a voice. I know that race relations still has a long way to go in this country, but if you have the prize in your hand, why follow in the footsteps of your oppressors when you can make a shining example and lead?
Be a trendsetter, not another delivery boy.
Numbers and Game Hotties 2/8/05 03:08 pm Game Theorist John F. Nash Jr. was seen through Hollywood lenses as Russell Crowe. Fair enough, I can see the resemblance.
I just finished Simon Singh's excellent Fermat's Enigma. A book detailing the evolution of how the proof to a 350 year old mathematical theorem was finally solved by a Cambridge-Princeton Numbers Theorist.
I'm surprised Hollywood hasn't made a movie yet. Here is who I think should play Andrew Wiles.
Now don't be a wuus. If Wiles could spend eight years combining elliptical modular relationships, the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture, the Kolyvagin-Flach method combined with the Iwasawa theory, and Galois groups into a 130 page manuscript to solve a one line equation, surely you can make a small leap between him and a rock.
...or we could just get Mia Kirshner and a bunch of hot-looking girls and title the movie "The L-Series for Clock Arithmetic Solutions to the Elliptical Equation."
What?
Breaking News 2/8/05 10:24 am
Lexicographers, etymologists, and style editors are working round the clock to reverse a black hole that has been inadvertently created in dictionaries around the world by Hilton's overusage of the word "hot." In-Style Magazine Editor Lisa Gabor has mentioned the possibility of a page nip-and-tuck that is currently the....
when the substitute became the principal 2/7/05 09:38 am I have become increasingly despondent with the internet as a socializing tool. Don't get me wrong: It works...as an accessory, an enhancement to everyday real-time (RT) living, not a replacement for it. There was a time when computer reality was regarded as virtual. It wasn't suppose to replace reality. It did. The convenience, accessibility, and availability of the internet is seductive, but regardless of how fast your connection is, it will never beat the dexterity of real-time social interaction.
I have become increasing fascinated with pre-internet people as men of action . Their system helps me recall how we use to operate, how we functioned and interacted with each other before the World Wide Web came along. I must say that as far as romantic relationships go, very few connections have substantiated for me. Despite all that I have done online, it's the real-time incidences that have formed memorable ties. Guys who have grabbed me as I was walking by and started an interesting conversation. Everything with those guys came to fruition, full realization, completion. On the other hand, E-donjuans are suspension bridges that never reach their destination: Endless lines of internet suitors pile on the promises of the world, the seven wonders, endless, undying lo - FRED! ARE YOU COMING TO BED ALREADY?! WE NEED TO GET THEM KIDS OUT TO CAMP TOMORROW!".
- the user has logged off -
I guess looking into a monitor and making virtual promises with your fingers while the wife is asleep, is a little bit different than looking into someone's eyes and making good a gentleman's word.
An American Institution 2/6/05 11:41 pm I've been waiting all week for today.
I take off my shirt, I call friends, we load up, drink beers, eat junk food, look at the leftover time, laugh, talk, stop halfway through, and the second part begins.
You know: Laundry day.
I'm sure it's just an act and has absolutely no bearing on what's really go on inside the performer's head. 2/2/05 01:23 pm A friend took me to see a local drag show the other night. The girls were fantastic, they had great bodies, they danced up a storm.
The MC was a drag queen too. I don't know what her deal was, but it was raw sewage that was coming out of her mouth.
Farting, belching, loud hostile non-stop racist remarks (against Asians, Native Americans. It was as if Shaq bought a wig and decided to start hip hop radio station), non-stop cursing, obscene talk, abusive language attacking the audience. Almost as if he were saying, "just because I'm wearing a dress and this is a performance, I get to hide behind this woman and say all the nasty things in the world, and she's gonna take the blame."
It's aliberation from all that is not allowed in respectable society.
I don't know. Shaving, putting on make-up, and climbing into a corset seems like an awful lot of work just to use a dessert spoon for soup.
Gated Community, Columbia, Maryland (part 3 of 3) 1:09 PM,2005-01-30 I would have made a good speech writer for activists if I were born thirty years earlier:
"Driving out 50% of the peanuts by filling up the space with mediocre Brazils does not make a mix Quality."
Columbia Maryland (Part 2 of 3) 12:23 2005-01-30 My best friend was an unwitting employee of a ring of the Sports Memorabilia Scam that made the papers and reached the Federal level of prosecution. His boss's entire family has been sentenced to prison terms. I've always thought that this case of forged Sports Memorabilia is a good microcosm of the transparency of attainment. Collectors found joy in owning an otherwise inert daily object that has been "handled" by their idol. The signature is the authenticator of the object being touched by the hand of their god.
But now, not only has it not been touched by their god, it's just been touched by a mere mortal, a pretender to the throne of another mere mortal. And upon this, joy, happiness, and contentment were founded.
I think this represents many aspects of the culture of consumerism, and education. I don't pretend for one moment that something like the sharpening of one's intellect is on any level, above buying a new playstation at the local WalMart.
Columbia, Maryland (part 1 of 3) I'm helping a friend move into a new apartment in Columbia Maryland.
First night.
The empty living room is freezing despite the high themostat setting. Must be all the big glass sliding doors that open out into the porch. When we talked, foggy trails of steam came out of our mouths. I slept with folded arms in my jacket. I kept on thinking about 1990 in Scotland when I slept with the alley cats under the dumpsters in the rain.Second night.
I am tucked under an inflatable mattress for warmth. I used the box that contained the large screen tv and another for an IKEA sofa to build a fort around my mattress. We didn't talk that much and slept early, because the cable man was coming in the morning.Third night.
The internet is up, cable television has been turned on. My friend has the eerie blue glow of death on his lifeless face as he chatted in the AOL chatrooms. In both living room and bedroom, televisions blare with the same commercial promising a new Ford SUV with 0% financing and guaranteed approval. "We have 95 million dollars to loan. Nobody will be turned down. Get that SUV you have always wanted."We didn't talk anymore.
The cable man was the snake.Technology, the apple.
Newsflash: Gallup Shows That Statisticians Get Laid More Than Doctors 11:18AM Jan 19, 2005
When my friend Jimmy was courting his now wife Berthie, my pops took her aside and said to her, "You've got a good catch, don't let him go." Berthie nodded. But my pops added, "He's got a degree in Archaeology and he loves his work. So the older you get, the more he'll treasure you."
We always laugh when we remember that conversation. I think another catch would be a statistician.
Talking and more importantly, listening, to people on the dating scene, I have been telling them to repeat what they want out loud. Stuff like "I'm looking for a hot babe who is nice, open-minded, smart, available, looking for someone, and is not attached."
Now, do you need a statistician to explain the probability of this scenario existing?
It's true. I think if anything, statisticians, having the ability to see the graph for the curves, will be the least likely person to hold out.
I'm just glad I was never good at math.
Reality versus Reality 9:01AM Jan 13, 2005
And now, on cd332's internet dating newsfront...
Just kidding. Last night I hung out with my friend Robert. It was kewl. Almost like getting recharged on optimism, you know? Anyway I've been thinking lately about truth and stuff. I had this one friend who thought he was gonna see a bunch of girls with triple D cups in lingerie and fire engine lipstick making out with each other when I said we'd be swinging by Jeanie's pad who lives with a bunch of lesbians. So he was like all excited and icky.
Well, he was treated to a bunch of girls in lumberjack shirts in Mack truck caps, and right up the front driveway, they were logging redwoods in a combination between Paul Bunyan and the Brawny towel man.
"Oh gad!" he exclaimed in that heterosexual Howard Stern way. "This reality is no fun. I'm going back to my reality."
The Guitar Years 2005/01/08 08:21 pm
This is not officially an entry. Just a slice of something I am working on on my website:
I played in front of a live audience as a teenager with a band. The whole well-endowed prowess of pelvis-thrusting rock guitar gods made me laugh. I applied the devil may care attitude of rock-and-roll to itself and short-circuited its accepted image. I wore a cute mickey mouse t-shirt 3 sizes too small, tight corduroy brady bunch jeans with pretty sneakers and adorable pink shoe laces. The metal headbangers there to see other bands thought I was the biggest limp wristed fairy in town.
Here is a live recording of me playing my first guitar in front of an audience that night. 1985 (type: mp3 size 1.5 mB)
(the delayed reaction at the end still makes me laugh to this day)
"At Least I Admit It." 9:16AM Jan 7, 2005
I've been thinking about our modern system of simulacra where absolution is exorcised by admission. Talk shows, tell-all autobiographies, Catholic confession booths, even the judiciary system of plea bargaining, is based on the shamanistic dance of admission. In acts of great consequences, they are unable to hold up of course. Hitler and Pauly Shore, to name a few. No amount of admission of such frightful acts can clear the wrong-doer. But as the levels of severity trickle down through layers of white lies, the acceptance of this system increases.
All of us have heard the phrase: "Look, at least I admit it." We all accept this admission as some makeshift substitute for absolution. But really, what is admission? Does the act of expelling the actual words (that describe an act) from the mouth of the wrong-doer grant instant redemption?
It's a red-herring, much like a story that mixes fact with fiction. We'll forgive a Hollywood hottie for over-indulgence at the Betty Ford clinic. She's admitting it right? If you don't pay attention though, the line gets blurred and pretty soon "Sure, I ate two more chocodiles than Billy, but look, at least I admit it" becomes "Sure I shot the convenience store clerk but Billy ate the chocodiles. But look, at least I admit it."
THE GYM 2005/01/04 10:21 am
Part of my annual new year routine is to on it's way:
I drive over to the gym, where it's parking lot is packed to maximum capacity as Humvees, Range Rovers, and Ford Mauler Eddie Bauer Edition SUV's circle around, jockeying for that one parking spot that is 20 feet closer to the front entrance, so its drivers have less distance to walk, and will be the first to get to the threadmill for a full workout. Happily everyone's new year temper is kept at bay by the full featured DVD player and television on the dashboard of their Military Mall-abled Vehicles. After all, 5 minutes away from the television may very well be a lifetime.
Inside the gym, I discover that all the elliptical machines, stairmasters, and threadmills have been upgraded for the new year. Each is now fitted with a touchscreen web-surfin monitor in place of the original LED workout display. That way, each person can check their stocks, balance that with how global casualties will affect the price of their barrel of oil on MSNBC on the twelve televisions mounted from the ceiling, buy/sell and manage their portfolios, talk to their brokers on the cell phone, read what the New England Journal of Medicine's latest report is on prolonged exposure to monitor radiation, and shoot off an email or two to warn friends all for that excruciating 15-minute minutiae of time when they are working out.
I hate to see what they have in store for the bicycle seats next year.
I go to the front of the room, sit down on the wooden bench and open my brown paper bag. I take out a double-fudge cheesecake and a can of Olde English 800 and start gorging myself.
40 stabby eyes that were busy shoveling whole turkeys with creme brulée chasers into their gullets a few weeks ago (with the intention they will lose it all come January) now look at me as if I had somehow hidden the word "moderation" from their dictionaries.
With heavy creamed lips, I looked up and grunt a bullish, "Jeez Harry, I think I'm letting myself go."
It. Is. Finished.... or is it? 2004/12/26 5:38 pm
I celebrate Christmas.Just not this way:
Morning till sundown, the bumper-to-bumper traffic persists. Loud thumping android dance music or gangsta rap thunders out of 12 1/2 inch car speakers at overcompensating suburban wigger levels. ("Hold up dawg, your mom's on the cellie, she needs you to pick up some Woolite") One week leading up to Christmas, non-stop traffic commuting between the eighteen supermalls in the quarter square mile (Pictured above are a few rocket scientists who had the very original idea of using our residential road as a short-cut between Old Navy and Old Navy). What is suffering on the cross when one has to bear a fourth of a mile in a Hummer 2? Have you ever heard one person this season say, "I got some terrific gifts for everyone yay!" No. It's always a disgusted sigh at the completion of an arduous chore: "FINALLY, I've got all my shopping out of the way." Oh Jesus. You don't know pain.A short gasp and the actual day is over. Today, the traffic is back in place. The returns, refunds, exchanges are on its way.
8000 people dead in Asia, and I'm offended you used the word "Christmas."
Anyway, I wasn't really paying attention because I need to go to New York City to get laid. Another movie with flying Asians have hit the big screen. Better get me some before all the hotties realize my peeps can't stay airbourne for 20 seconds.
Jesus stood in line at the Customer Service for your choices.
Smile.
The E-Boy Feedback Forum [2004/12/22 12:38 pm]
During the past Summer, we had a party and a gal was seriously into one of our friends. We were bound by loyalty to friendship to tell the unsuspecting girl that Jeremy was a swell pal. But we were also bound by our duty to humanity to inform the lass TO GET THE HELL OUT WHEN YOU STILL CAN GIRL! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GETTING YOURSELF INTO! DURACELL WILL BE SENDING A REPRESENTATIVE TO AWARD YOU WITH THE STATUS OF THEIR MOST TREASURED CUSTOMER FOR BUYING THE MOST AMOUNTS OF D-BATTERIES. A HUNK OF SWISS CHEESE HAS MORE PERSONALITY THAN THIS DOOR WEDGE YOU ARE ABOUT TO DIVE INTO THE ABYSS WITH. RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!
I believe everyone deserves an opportunity to change. Everyone deserves to be able to start anew with a clean slate at one time or another.
But personalities can't change.
For that reason alone, I propose an e-dating online service that puts newly matched couples in touch with their ex-partners.
That's right. No holds barred. Dig up all the dirt, shovel it, pile it on. Who does that player think he is, plying his wares and selling his week old expired routine to innocent me? If they are vicious lies, the accused will have nothing to worry about, he'll effortlessly pull himself out of it by proving the accuser wrong. But if it's the truth, well, there you go: you're talking hundreds of wasted hours and attention that could otherwise be given to Ben & Jerry. Get the facts. This is the Department of Relationship Affairs, the Better Dating Bureau, the Eboy Feedback Forum.
Because when you think about it, there's technically nothing to change,
...unless we know what is being changed from.
datezillas: the romance of growing up and being realistic [2004/12/22 12:38 pm]
I was helping a friend out on setting up a profile on one of those online dating websites. On his request, I logged on to have a look at the website's "picks" for him.
I've always wondered what their algorithm hash for matches are. Do they hook up givers with takers? Attentive people with the needy? Livejournalists with employers?
The process was set up like a Shaolin temple. There were gates and progressive chambers to pass through.
Anyway, the profiles on the first wave of women were brutal. I call them datezillas. Middle-aged, parent, divorced. These women don't have time to mess around and make one more mistake. They cut to the chase. We've all heard about speed-dating. Well, this is sniper-dating: Five things you can't do without: "1)Money 2)House 3)Support 4)Security 5)Coffee."
Five words that could take out cupid at 500 yards like a .270 winchester
I know I would feel pretty unromantic just knowing if we were stuck on a lifeboat, I'd get sent overboard before her cup of coffee.
No. You couldn't see romance with the Hubble.
It did nothing but reinforce my suspicions that courtship, passion, sex are mere tools to carve out and provide for the family unit. The assurance that another same-named offspring would carry the heritage one more circle.
How could we possibly flourish in a world where love depended solely on "what can YOU do for ME?"
the sands of time, falling through my fingers 12/12/04 12:17 pm
Getting rid of my unused tools of creativity is the traveling equivalent of consumerism.
I tell people I once owned a music instrument with which I recorded my music on a cassette.
When asked to show the instrument, I answer that it has been sold, and no longer in my possession.
When asked to hear the recording, I answer that the cassette player has been sold, and no longer in my possession.
Getting rid of my personal tools of creativity is the equivalent to traveling.
There is no evidence of where I have been or what I have done.
The fleeting experience is fading in my memory as we speak.
Future acquaintances will have to either take my word for it, or rely on the inner light that glows from places visited, people met, things created.
BUY ME THINGS! NOW! 12/9/04 10:38 am
Guys I know there's a National Buy-Nothing day. I know there is rampant mindless consumerism out there as we get down to last minutes of shopping for the holidays. I know we should live beneath our means.
But you know what? Screw it.
I've been out of work for ten months. I need to learn to adapt. I need to butch it up and get with the program of the new internet generation. When in need of hard-earned cash and gifts, there's nothing that beats good honest meat-and-pataeterrs asking for it from complete strangers online.
So here is my Amazon Wishlist.
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