hip to be square

American Psycho - I watch it when I'm horribly stressed out. There's a kind of vicarious relief I get through watching Christian Bale act like an entitled sociopath. Even sociopaths can be incredibly witty. There's some really clever dialogue and a constant self aware mocking of the culture of the 80's. What did people in "Mergers and Acquisitions" do anyway? Or as Patrick (Bateman, and if you don't know that by now why are you here?) liked to call it "Murders and Executions". At the same time, even if Patrick is a sociopath he has this gross appreciation of the more meaningful (supposedly) subtexts of horribly superficial 80's music. He explains part of this to Paul Allen as he gets ready to bash his face in with a very brand new axe. Part of me wonders if there's an off screen visit to a hardware store, the ritual of it -- the premeditation of the death of Paul Allen. Would he be happy? Would he walk down the aisle and fantasize? Would he buy a really expensive axe? (Seems so from the look of the film). Patrick must have OCD. One can tell by his diet, his morning beauty and exercise regimen, but mostly from the way he protects his floors from Allen's blood by taping down the New York Times Style section. I can just see him on his hands and knees making sure that everything is just so. And then I laugh at the idea of him actually doing that, because it seems so antithetical to who he is (the manual labor I mean). But it must just be part of that initial pre-murder frenzy of excitement.

So here is where I stumble -- that axe can do a lot of damage to a human being, as evidenced by the massive quantities of blood leaking from Paul Allen. So how has Patrick not completely chopped up his floor? How is his pretty blonde hardwood still intact? Or has he had parts replaced offscreen?

I do have to say that Paul Allen was kind of a pain in the neck (ho ho) and I'm not sad to see him go.

I know the whole thing is a commentary on how superficial the 80's were, especially on Wall Street in NYC -- but I find it perhaps...unintentionally funny. I mean..."Phil Collin's solo career seems to be more commercial and therefore more satisfying in a …narrower way."

Anyway, I have to return some videotapes.

I can't think of a clever title

Having divergent musical tastes can be isolating. Shut up, I'm not whining that I'm so original. I'm whining because I don't know how to share something that I love so vehemently-- that makes my life so worth living--with other people. I think I've invested too much emotion into some of the shit I listen to. But...that's because I've basically felt like a goddamn orphan half my life. That's where I go to gain my equilibrium. Ugh, floodgates.

This always happens when I go see my doc. I get invaded mentally and physically. There was a needle in my arm, that's physical invasion, in case you were wondering. But then there's also the whole talking about why I'm stressed out and not able to sleep thing. Sigh. Pandora's box.

Some days I get out of class, put my headphones on, light a cigarette and just... feel how tired I am. I like to think about it in terms of technology, most people autopilot home. My autopilot corrupted a long time ago and has no proper coordinates. So effectively, every once in a while I stand in the middle of the sidewalk thinking about where the fuck it is that I'm going. I go through a roster in my head of the places I have gone -- having moved a lot, my mind passes by all the apartments in the east end, my mom's house, the apartment in Little Italy and then finally settles on where I am living now. Sometimes I forget and think about how I'm going to walk down to take the College streetcar, and then realize I'm wrong. What the fuck? I'm still not completely unpacked because once again this is a temporary location. It's one thing if you do it out of choice, if it's part of your career. Personally I wouldn't mind living a nomadic lifestyle as part of what I did for a living, but again, there's a certain grounded-ness I would be afforded by an income that would guarantee that I would have a home base. One of my own choosing, that I built for myself.

For me it's not quite a choice, I can't live with my mom and her husband, it's just not possible, for whatever reason.

Yet, right now my home base resides in the sound of my mother's voice and my laptop. Ridiculous, I know. But I have more, I guess I would call it faith for lack of a better word, in technology than I do in people. Or perhaps it's not faith, it's just reliance. Which can be bad in its own ways. Sahira was just reminding me "you also expect people to be more in touch with technology than they are" - a product of the fact that I myself am always plugged in. It's comforting. My inquisitive nature is satisfied by the instant gratification of being part of the wikipedia generation, which in turn pacifies the other unrest.

In a larger sense all of this writing that I'm doing is about trying to understand the human condition. My human condition. The success of most of which has to be based on communication, it has to be. To me the internet is probably one of the greatest catalysts for communication, you know other than actually talking to people in real life and stuff.

Fuck, I have digressed so much. But I think the point is that I've in a way replaced a large part of my life that should be a human component with...well...technology. I fear it's all just filling some horrible whiny Freudian void. Or Jungian. That sounds better.

I have several friends who would argue with me about this and say "no no no, you're horribly social and you have tonnes of friends". I do. But just because people are talking it doesn't mean they're communicating, or that they're listening.

Lately I've been doing a lot of listening. I think it's starting to dawn on me literally right now that maybe that's been bringing me down just a little bit. All the same I feel that in my eternal quest to understand myself better I can't shut the fuck up. Which can alienate everyone.

So sometimes I retreat and I get really otaku like about someone or some band, and it makes me feel a lot better -- it may not be healthy but it works. It's kind of like being in an English class and reading a novel and peeling back the layers of meaning. The stuff I listen to is imbued with so much a) the artists meaning and b) meaning I project on it to deal with my own shit. It's not like I expect people to take away that same experience, but man...sometimes there's just a segment that reaches a part of me that I can't explain and why wouldn't I want to share the awesome with someone else? However, I have yet to meet someone who feels the same way about one or two things I love or at least has that innate understanding for the need of it. Sometimes I wonder if that's asking too much. Probably.

Hey, I'm kind of like a snail now that I think about it.

Snails are cute, maybe I'll leave it at that for now.

my power weakens due to lack of yellow sun

I haven't been around here in a while. Mostly because I've been too busy being addicted to information. I swear to god, Google Reader is crack for people like me. I don't even know what that means because I don't know any people like me (read: crazy). This year has spun me around like a whirling dervish. It started out kinda good, then it got kinda bad -- lather, rinse, repeat. I would say from mid-July to around a couple of weeks ago was probably one of the most memorable periods of my life, hands down. Mostly because of the places I got to go and the people I got to meet, more on that later.

In the past day or two I've thought of several topics I'd like to address and the fact that I had somewhere near 70-ish posts last year and what feels like all of 3 this year really lit a fire under my ass. I mean maybe if I cranked my output to one a day from today until New Year's I could catch up, but not bloody likely. Anyway, I was all set to come home and write about oh I don't know, how I'm so happy that Kanye is self actualizing (I'm laughing at my self for the turn of phrase here), how twitter is the most awesome sauce in the world, how y'know, there's this dude whose writing I love and how I totally got to experience his awesome -- that kinda stuff. I was Speedy Gonzalez-ing to kind of a good end to a semi good (if long) day. I actually got to my first class on time (Prof seemed impressed), I picked up a book I needed to read, finished In the Skin of a Lion with notes, ate a pretty decently healthy lunch, had delicious and pretentiously named coffee, made an interesting observation in my CanLit class, blah blah.

And then somewhere on the way home it all went sideways, I got all tired and cranky. I felt completely out of my skin. Luckily a friend came over with wine and illicit books (illicit because I can't really read them until class breaks for Christmas) and restored some of my humanity.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that everything seems to be winding down. It gets dark really early and my fragile inner ecosystem/equilibrium (I'm being borderline sarcastic here people) is craving massive doses of sunlight and coming up short. The adrenalin high is over now and I'm going through some sort of experiential withdrawal. That's what winter seems to be all about. Man, bears know where it's at.

I think I'm trying to keep a light tone here because I actually feel quite meh about everything right now -- although to be fair it's 3am. I'm about to head to bed with E.M. Forster's Howards End. The reason I'm here though, why I couldn't wait until the sun came up (however feebly) is because I found something extra redeeming about my night.

Whenever I feel really really down in the dumps there's a certain URL I direct myself towards. It doesn't happen too often but it works. I won't tell you what it is, that would give away the surprise. The short of it however, is that somehow I was reminded of a conversation -- which I had conveniently archived (huzzah!) and as I went through it I got an idea for a short story. So I wrote all the dialogue down and I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do with it. I'm going to sneak an hour of poking at it into my plans tomorrow.

I'm tired, but also cautiously chuffed.

Dyson FTW

I'm a fan of bathing - of baths that is, because I tend to be a cleanly person. So here's my pickle - I live in a pretty cold house. Generally if I close the door and the windows tightly and make sure the hot water heater is full I'm pretty set, other than the fact that a) my bathtub is not long enough for me b) there's no goddamn tv in the bathroom. So I did all of that today. Except I've been using eucalyptus epsom salts (shut up I've been sick) and um...there's this odd effect. You know how...you eat a tic tac and breathe in and suddenly your mouth is super cold and stuff? Yeah. Think of that happening to your entire body as you get out of your really hot bath. #fail

It was worth it though, I was reading this awesome Nathaniel Hawthorne short story - Roger Malvin's Burial. That's usually why I take baths lately, because I need to read something and I find myself not being able to expend the focus.

So I'm standing on my bath mat shivering, and suddenly I think: hey Dyson, make an airblade. For my entire body!

I take my music way too seriously

So I'm going to fill it out here and hopefully people aren't horrendously annoyed by it. It's that whole 15 albums in 15 minutes thing so feel free to skip it, but it's something that is important to me and I may take more than 15 minutes to fill it out because well, I'm me.

1) Hello Nasty - Beastie Boys - the first album I ever bought, loved Intergalactic, still do -- I mean they namedrop Spock. Word.

2) Synkronized - Jamiroquai - one of the first albums I ever listened to all the way through, and he's an avid car collector, amazing dancer, and it just makes me wanna shake my ass, as it were.

3) Siamese Dream - The Smashing Pumpkins - I love Billy Corgan, he is such a dictator in his bands, I identify with his control freak tendencies. But that's not why I love this album, there are some really beautiful songs on there and some horribly sad ones, it got me through the first few years of high school and appealed to my inner goth (we all have one so shut up).

4) Lateralus - Tool - my initiation into probably the most influential and important band in my life, as y'all know from one of my previous posts. I don't think I need to say anything else.

5) De-Loused in the Comatorium - The Mars Volta - their first album. Niall played this for me the first time he ever came over to my house. The name had been bouncing around in my head for a long time before I listened to it. I loved it almost instantly. The first song that got stuck in my head was Eriatarka, and it still harkens back to that time. I can smell the snow in the air when I listen to it. But Cedric had me at the opening line of the first song "Clip side of the pink-eye flight/I'm not the percent you think survives/ I need sanctuary in the pages of this book"

6) Relationship of Command - At The Drive In - I didn't get into this album until fairly recently - my relationship with ATDI was almost contingent on my breakup, I started seriously considering their work near the end, and it sort of snowballed from there. Originally I was listening to This Station is Non Operational which is a compilation of their stuff. But Relationship of Command is where I really started appreciating Omar's musicianship. He says he hates the way the album is mixed but I just don't care. It's a seminal work. Anton Corbijn directed the video for Invalid Litter Dept. which is the inspiration for the name of my non existent second blog (registered, never used). One Armed Scissor - the third song and most commercially successful ATDI single is what this blog is named after - "self destruct sequence/ this station is non operational/ species growing/ bubbles in an iv loitering".

7) 808's and Heartbreak - Kanye West - I started listening to this almost as soon as it came out - and it's not necessarily the album itself that's important, but the surrounding occurrences. September 2008 was a schism in my life, and the first single was out and for some reason I started listening to Kanye. Also I had seen him on some sort of awards show and noticed him for the first time in my life. I always thought he had a weird name, one that I liked saying but now I realized that he was good looking, but more importantly, damn he dressed well. In a way I suppose I actively sought him out. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that I liked listening to the album the whole way through. Then for some reason I went to his blog which I found hilarious, but it led me to something even better. 'Ye links to a lot of interesting things, one of which is highsnobiety, which led me to selectism, which in turn led me to Tony. So there are all sorts of amazing associations surrounding this album.

8) Amnesiac - Radiohead - it took me forever to get into Radiohead, or I should say it took me forever to finally listen to Radiohead, and the first song I ever really heard was I Might Be Wrong. Tracy (mom's friend's girlfriend's kid) downloaded it onto my laptop and then dragged me to their concert in Montreal. Radiohead is like that old comfortable sweater that you love and will never ever get rid of. And I mean that in the best way. I feel like there's nothing I can say about them because they're that good. Almost everyone accepts it. For good reason.

9) Raindogs - Tom Waits. Just watch Down by Law.

10) Return to Cookie Mountain - Tv on the Radio - Tunde Adebimpe, seriously, I love his voice. They're just ridiculous fun and have meaningful lyrics. I can dance to this album which is new-ish for me and I've found myself listening to them a lot in the past year or so.

11) Latin - Holy Fuck - I discovered this band thanks to Karis, we were in NYC because I bought tickets to go see Omar and the next day Karis dragged me to this show. I say dragged because I was being a sulky child. But I am so very happy that she did because the headliner was Holy Fuck (she wanted to see Indian Jewelry). There was some sort of instant chemical connect-- like love at first sight. I downloaded their albums as soon as I got home and dragged a friend to come see them in concert (again) immediately thereafter. They're from Toronto, lucky me! This album is currently in heavy rotation.

12) Xenophanes - Omar Rodriguez Lopez - everyone who knows me knows the name Omar, I don't even have to say the full name anymore, they just know. You've already seen his name in this post. He is half of the Mars Volta. He is a musical prodigy. A genius. This album is sung entirely in Spanish and the vocals are by Omar and his girlfriend Ximena Sarinana. It feels like a product of their love. That's the only way I can describe it. When looking in my iTunes top 25 played songs, the first five songs are all off this album. I will never get over it.

13) Medulla - Bjork - it is a vocal soundscape. The use of instruments is kept to a minimum. Guest stars include Rahzel and Mike Patton. It is at once incredibly simple and very complex. I think everybody should listen to this album at least once.

14) Station - Russian Circles - in the past few years I've been getting more and more into exclusively instrumental music. Russian Circles is a band I ran across on the SargentHouse website. I like to call my foray into this band a type of musical nepotism. Because in truth Omar belongs to that label. That's besides the point - these guys own. Seriously. I saw them at Sneaky Dee's when I was still living in Little Italy - I went alone, I stood beside the drummer during the entire opening act and didn't know it. It was hands down the best $12 I've ever spent on a semi random show. They shook my world and continue to do so on a daily basis, Harper Lewis is one of my favourite songs on this album and it is a sonic assault on my ears. But don't just take my word for it. GO!

15) Amputechture - The Mars Volta - the one Mars Volta album that I didn't listen to immediately when it came out. In fact I didn't listen to it until after The Bedlam in Goliath. I don't know why - I was afraid maybe. I have one word for all of you: Tetragrammaton.

So yes, that's it - it took forever. Hope it makes sense.

Halloween...

That's me in the background -- how was your night?

Stay Lit

I've been AWOL. You must forgive me - I've been living this incredible life for the past little while and I'm afraid of waking up and finding that it's all been in my head. Let me give you the reverse chronology of what has been happening, starting with the week I've had. I've been getting better at some things you see - levelling up so to speak, in Mario terms. About a week ago I did something incredibly out of character for me, an aberration. And I don't regret it- not one bit. The week following this has been a wide spectrum of feeling. Immediately thereafter I was feeling peaceful, calm and balanced. As the days passed it became less so and I started becoming that person I always had been - neurotic, cynical. So somewhere between my shower and getting dressed and going to class yesterday I decided to put an end to it. It happened, it was awesome, I wouldn't give it back, it is now out of my hands - so let's throw it all to the wind and say it is what it is and let it go. Regardless of how ridiculously strongly I feel about it. The idea that I can feel this way - that I am capable of it, is freeing.

I'm being intentionally obtuse because I feel a bit bittersweet but you know what? I'm only 25, there will be more of this I'm sure.

The reason I've not been here other than what I said previously is that in some ways this blog was dedicated to me working out my issues with ...well you know...that kid. That's done now. And I do still feel the need to write but - it's easier to write about harrowing adventures and misery than it is about happiness for me. But you know what? I had an adventure with Karis a few weeks ago - and it was awesome. We went to NYC -first time for me, second time for her. And it was a shit-show. Three days spent in Manhattan/Williamsburg and lots of running around. I mastered the subway almost immediately, not afraid to whip out a map whenever I felt like it. We packed a lot of stuff into three short days. Neither of us had gotten any sleep before we left and as Karis was getting ready and I was already waiting in the car complaining about being late for the ferry to the airport her dad asked "so what concert are you going to?" at which point (much like Bart Simpson realizing his permission slip for the awesome field trip was lying under his pillow) realized that my Omar Rodriguez Lopez tickets were sitting inside Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 on my incredibly messy desk. And for the first time in 12 years I was glad that Karis had a tiny bit of a tendency to be late.

Stomping around Manhattan was fun after we had dropped our bags off - resting in Central Park and walking around 5th Ave., wondering why there were guys with earpieces walking around, envying the 13 year olds gathered around one of the exits of the park arguing about where they were going to go for a snack and which route they should take. Lucky. After Lego store (at which I picked up gifts for friends and took many pictures and repeatedly squealed with young-boy-ish delight) we decided to get food and head over to the show. The burger joint we stopped at was Bill's Burgers where the poutine was named "Disco Fries" and Karis not so subtly pointed out to Tony (who recommended the place) that as I ordered them I made a very 80's dance move. *facepalm* @ myself. But if I can't laugh at myself I may as well quit trying to live. I won't even try going into how incredibly amazing the Rodriguez Lopez Group concert was. Deantoni Parks is a master, a fucking drum master. I...there are no words. If there's anything close to a religious experience for me - this is it. This was it. This is one of those things in life that is worth trying to hold on to your existence for; this type of moment. Everything just clicks and suddenly life makes sense and everything is perfect.

Don't take my word for it.

I stocked up on Omar shirts and then skipped and sang all the way home on the hipster shuttle (the L train) with Karis and got home and dreamt of Omar and little dancing Cedrics all night (even though Ced wasn't there). Next morning we were going to meet Tony for the first time. Which is funny - because I had bought tickets to the concert first and this was a bonus, but I had realized (and noted to Karis and Karen), that really....I was more excited about this than the Omar thing. It turned out to be awesome. I mean TG's body of work speaks for him as a cool/interesting/stand up guy more so than mine does, but I was really really happy. Still am. We went to this ridiculously awesome little restaurant with fascinating seemingly original fixtures - the kind of place - had I lived in NYC would become my watering hole just because of the amazing light and a truly comfortable feeling. I used to feel that way about Tequila Bookworm before they moved. So we hung out, talked, I feel like we probably could have been there all day. We had to keep moving though because we had such a limited time.

Karis mentioned that there was a concert going on that night at Le Poisson Rouge - and I was somewhat tired and whiny - as I'm apt to be when I don't have enough alone time or time to digest and process everything I had just taken in. So we decided to go see this thing. On our way there we stopped at a cafe to have some sandwiches and beers and we bumped into a lovely young man named James Perkins - I couldn't help but notice he was reading the Fountainhead (which is one of my favourite novels) and we struck up a conversation. He's pretty interesting, into fashion, used to be in finance or something like that, and an outside correspondent for FOX, blah blah. He was very kind and funny and a delight. Gave me his card and told me to keep in touch. I found New Yorkers to be very friendly. So then we schlepped ourselves over to Poisson Rouge - turns out the opening band was Holy Fuck, from Toronto - and I fell in love. I do that a lot. They blew me away - and finally there's a Toronto band that I can feel excited about. (except for You Handsome Devil) They're interesting, dynamic, kinetic, creative, everything. We enjoyed ourselves, got a bit smashed (as it were) and danced up a storm (separately) because I don't like going in the pit area. The music they make - there's a feeling of it traveling through you on a molecular level, like neutrinos through everything, becoming part of you. We made our way home and then the next day we slept in and went to meet up with my friend Emile and Karis's friend Joanna in Greenwich Village. Stopped off and got some comics (om nom nom) and hung out all night long. It was a good end to a really good weekend. Emile was really funny - a sense of humour I could really relate to. And walking around NYC was a lot of fun. We didn't see all of the things I would have loved to see, but I got to visit New York at last and it started out with one incredible reason: seeing my favourite musician, and I left with a lifetime of amazing, happy, wonderful memories.

I think that's it for now.

when I am king!

First day of school. My first class was absolutely phenomenal. 19th Century American Lit with Professor Paul Downes. I was sitting in the corner with a 2nd year student - and I've had class with Downes before so I was anticipating him walking into the room for a reason. He's wiry, has the perfect sprinkling of grey in his black boyish hair, and dresses well - sort of like a late 80's to early 90's British hybrid of punk/Radiohead, but academically. It works for him. Then he opens his mouth...my remark to 2nd year student "And cue all the red blooded females in the class falling in love". I like to think I'm a wit.

Anyhow I really wanted to get into something that really annoyed me during the class. Well it was less annoying and more just "what happened?". We're starting the class off with the Declaration of Independence, and today we looked at photocopies of the pages of an actual US passport. Some part of my brain kept telling me that there was something illicit about that, probably because I'm crazy. Anyway the overarching theme was this harkening back to the frontier and symbols of Freedom such as the bald eagle. Downes pointed out the irony that the bird almost went extinct, that was very enjoyable. The images broke down a bit like this: bald eagle/mountains, Mount Rushmore, the west coast/train, the midwest/man ploughing, cowboys, Statue of Liberty, a totem pole, a ship, and a satellite. Very very frontier, and new in depiction.

So...usually when I'm in a class where I feel very engaged a I get this build up in my chest and it becomes this explosive thing that just has to come out otherwise I might spontaneously combust. I like participating. Can you tell?

I forget what line of questioning we were following but my mind made a jump re: the design of the passport. He motioned for me to make my statement so I launched into it and was trying to explain that rather than it being the people who designed the passport trying to romanticize the frontier/self made man aspect of the United States it seemed more like a practical choice. The fact that there are no cities represented in the passport [to me] points to the creators/designers need to avoid controversy. How does one pick cities that are emblematic of the United States without creating some sort of outcry from citizens about how one city is better than the other? I think that if it were Russia, at least they could just put Moscow in the passport, and nobody would say anything because that's just how it is. But the US is actually a conglomerate of many little countries. NYC, it can be argued is it's own country, and LA is just whack (I say that in a loving way). To me it points to a kind of fracturing (which is so American Lit) of the unity of the US (in the present), the designers had to go back to a different time to create a sense of again - unity, etc.

I'm halfway through this statement when some girl just randomly cuts in to what I'm saying, very loudly. She was trying to claim that there was a city represented in the passport because of the Statue of Liberty, and kept trying to run away with this, so I countered with the fact that there was absolutely nothing other than the top part of the statue seen in the image which I believe was a deliberate choice. Lady Liberty is an emblem for Freedom. (it has to be capitalized, you know it does) I finished my statement, which was appreciated. I just don't understand why this girl felt it was so important to not let me finish and had to jump in and not wait. Was that so important? Why was it so important? It just threw me off for a moment in terms of pettiness.

I later decided that it was because I had looked at her earlier and possibly showed some form of disapproval for her choice of outfit. She was wearing white dress socks with black leather secretary shoes with thick chunky heels, grey bell-y bottoms and a white oxford-ish shirt, but with embellishments. It was kind of wanna-be Audrey Hepburn but not quite hitting the mark. Missing it by almost a mile. It was the shoe/sock combo that got me I think. I was going to make a comment about it earlier but then it developed into a whole story because she decided to go and be passionate about something I actually think was insignificant and eventually banal.

BUT I think it's interesting that I've never experienced something like it before at U of T. It whet my appetite for shooting people down.

I'm gonna let my brain marinate in that for a bit. It's gratifying.

not so linear after all

Remember how I mentioned on twitter that we should talk about how Lateralus was a seminal record/song to my maturing as a person, or a stage thereof? That time is now come.

Lateralus came out May 15th, 2001. I was like what...in grade 10 or 11? It was the first Tool album that I had ever listened to. From beginning to end. I was hanging out with my friend Jonathan at the time and he wouldn't stop going on about this one band who had a hilarious song named "Prison Sex". So finally I gave in. And it was everything I had ever been looking for from a collective and spoke directly to some part inside of me that I could never place until then. A place I couldn't really put into words. I'm not going to review the record, I'll just tell you what it means to me.

First off the men in Tool are incredibly technically proficient. Danny Carey is someone I will always look to as one of the best drummers of our time. But right off the bat the thing I connected with most was Maynard's voice - absolutely primitively growly, yet at the same time he has this capacity to sound like (for lack of a better word) an angel. This duality is instantly obvious and incredibly magnetic. Then there are the lyrics. Usually that is what I listen for first - this is what gets me hooked. So it's grade 11(ish) and of course I'm going through an incredibly angsty phase. My parents are being dicks, mostly my stepfather, life at home is...unbearable, I'm depressed, problems feel insurmountable, I feel disconnected from society as a whole. I'm not accepted -- the people at my school, well they're not nice. Yet despite everything I have this amazing capacity to try to live life as fully as I can, it's been one of the constants in my life. The fact that I experience things very intensely in terms of my feelings means that the lows are incredibly low, but the highs.....are unlike anything else -- the closest I've come is being on fentanyl when I was in hospital.

So this record comes around and I listen to it, and I'm discovering all of these interesting things, realizing the references. Finding out more about what this band is all about. Finding out about the origins or influences of the songs. The first one I really listened to a lot was Schism - which to me is about how lack of communication is what causes the breakdown of relationships, universal right? But...just...the way it's put, and yes it's pretentious but it's so eloquent and elegant at the same time "The light that fueled our fire then has burned a hole between us so / We cannot see to reach an end, crippling our communication" wordy and kind of complex, but absolutely beautiful. But....lateralus - the song...was what really opened my eyes, I suppose. I don't even know what I mean by that.

Anyway here's a little bit about the technical side of the song: via wiki:

The song is known for its distinct time signatures. The time signatures of the chorus of the song change from 9/8 to 8/8 to 7/8; as drummer Danny Carey says, "It was originally titled 9-8-7. For the time signatures. Then it turned out that 987 was the 17th number of the Fibonacci sequence. So that was cool." (this made every magazine, though Spin mostly label Tool as math rock)

This is going to sound so granola-y but, it's probably the most positive, life affirming song I have ever encountered. It's funny because it comes right after a song that is so absolutely angry - Ticks&Leeches (about the record company and the shit they had to deal with re: that). Maynard sings about everything that people experience "over thinking over analyzing separate the body from the mind" I have a tendency to pick everything apart, obsessively, compulsively. I have such a hard time turning my brain off so that lyric is hilarious to me. It's like "dude you are speaking to me!" But it's about more than that - it's about pushing oneself to new levels, to keep going, despite everything that's trying to hold you back in your life, to fight against gravity, to break free. "There is so much more and beckons me to look through to these infinite possibilities". And my favourite line, one I use all the time "Feed my will to feel this moment/urging me to cross the line", it's about living in the moment, living for the moment, about embracing the things in your life that make you feel the way you need to. It's about pushing the envelope "watch it bend".

There's more. I feel like ever since actually digesting this, all of it, I try to live a no holds barred life. There is no tomorrow. There is only today. There is only this moment which keeps going but will never be the same. And sometimes I slip, but ... damnit I only have one life, I refuse to regret anything. I would rather do, and fail, than not try at all. And if I'm afraid at the moment...I will do what I need to so that hopefully, if my moment extends itself to a future, I will be braver then. "Whatever will bewilder me". This song reinforces that even though the world can be a horrible, terrifying, hostile place - it can also be beautiful. Sometimes you have to seek the beauty out, it's not always just there for the taking. But...but but but....even when life has you down, even when everything seems like it's falling apart, even when you're incandescent with rage...you need to remember that a moment will exist, or has existed where everything came together, everything fell into place, even if it was just for a split second there was that joy where you were aware of that one amazing feeling of just...getting it, getting life. Sometimes they're few and far between - these moments - and sometimes they won't stop coming and you get overwhelmed. But they're what we live for. I grasp them tightly. I look forward to more.

So even though I'm cynical, and bitter, and humorously angry half the time -- I do still believe in people. I mean...I say I have no faith, and to a certain extent this is true. I operate under the logic that mostly everyone I know will disappoint me somewhere down the line, it's just a matter of time. But this doesn't preclude me from still loving them. Because I guess despite everything even though it doesn't seem like it, I'm a huge optimist, huge. But that's our secret okay?

ps. here's a link if you're interested

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateralus_(song)

an ancient shrewdness in the vein

Sometimes someone comes into your life and is able to clarify things that have been stumping you for ages in a split second. I'm always suspicious when I become fast friends with newbies because usually it ends badly, but I think this is different. Okay okay I'll stop being cryptic. A friend from LA came to Toronto this weekend and we had such a great time. It's rare that I connect so well with another female. It's been happening more lately - oh my god we're growing up.

Anyway we went out to dinner and everything just flowed so naturally, it was easy, and it was such a relief. I only wish she could have stayed longer -but...responsibilities, husband and gorgeous child were waiting. We talked about everything under the sun as if we had known each other forever. And she helped me clear up a huge mystery in my life - something that has been a source of pain in my life, and I am grateful. I wrote about it a while ago. You know "this is not-blank-blank-dot-com". I felt that someone I had respected and admired had kind of shafted me, but she explained it to me from a perspective where...it made sense. And suddenly that...pain (an ache sort of) had been lifted. I also didn't really realize that it had been weighing on me that heavily until the weight was gone. Shit gets intense fast around here.

So over dinner we talked about many things. And I think I'm finally able to (thanks to our conversation) write about this thing that's been germinating in my head for just...like...you know....the past year or so. Every time I've tried to write about this it's been a pain in the ass, because I get all muddled and about four hundred different things come out but....I'm going to try, damnit. And also I just found out that someone is doing a PhD candidacy about the use of sound in animation, so if I wanted I could totally use this as PhD material...if I choose to do that. Shit. Scholar for life?

I'll start this the way we started speaking about it. One of the things about Emma I love is that she straddles the line, her background is American but also Mexican. I think that's a one-two punch that she packs - speaking another language (if only that) is an advantage, always. Not to mention having a sort of perspective on things two times over. Anyway - so I was fascinated because - of course I'm fascinated with Omar and Cedric and everything they do. I don't know why, but all of their work is just incredibly satisfying to listen to for me. They too straddle that line between American and not. The reason Omar/Ced are different from other immigrants/newcomers to the states is that a) Omar is from Puerto Rico which is basically part of the states, and Ced is from Texas. Moreover Spanish speaking denizens of the United Sates are becoming more prevalent and accepted - correct me if I'm wrong but is Spanish not a language that is actually taught in American schools also?

One of the things Emma and I talked about - or that I naively brought up was that I think Spanish should totally be adopted as a second language in the US of A. I know - the squishy middle of the passion flakie that is the United States would NEVER go for it. People are too afraid of change - even if I think it would be so so so beneficial to the population.

So then I went on to my larger point - I've been in discourse with a lot of American Literature, learning about the tradition of it, marinating my brain in it so to speak. Reading a lot of Frank O'Hara, Williams, Raymond Carver, Henry James, Pat Parker, etc. There are so many that I'm not mentioning -- but these people really set the American Tradition in terms of writing, even if a whole whack of them were Ex-Pats.

I feel like the entire list of authors we read was incredibly well curated and Scott Rayter was incredibly intense in the way he delivered his lectures, it was phenomenal and I'm sad the class is over. Having said that -- because we read a lot of poetry it reminded me of the strains of a thought I had a while ago.

A little while after Spook Country originally came out there was some sort of convergence in my life. I had been listening to a lot of Frances the Mute and the Bedlam in Goliath because I was deathly afraid of listening to Amputechture (I still don't know why to this day, but it's become so dear to me). To complete this trifecta I had begun taking a class with Skye at his behest because one of his friends (Stuart) was teaching - it was Latin American History from x Century. (I forget exactly) but I think we started somewhere in the vicinity of Porfirio Diaz, well give or take a hundred years. So I had Spook Country which from one angle submerged me in this crazy world of this Cuban immigrant to New York - Tito, and his intensely idiosyncratic and religious family (I was re reading the book). I was thinking "this is weird, but kind of beautiful". At the same time I was listening to two albums by a band I love-- and frequently describe as being the only thing that can describe or define everything that's inside of me that I can't translate into words--which were more than 30% in Spanish. Not to mention when the band started Omar wanted it to be some sort of offshoot of salsa music. Which it is. You can definitely shake your ass to a lot of their material. Or at least I think so anyway. And then on top of it I was buried in all this information about Latin America, tonnes of primary documents - and Stuart really delivered in his lectures. It was some sort of nodal point for me.

After everything went down in my personal life that year - I needed a distraction, so I became ensconced in a haze of just...mostly Omar's music. It was comforting. I branched out, listened to more of At the Drive In, and then started exploring the larger catalogue. There are so many things he's done, De Facto, El Grupo Nuevo, At the Drive In, The Mars Volta, and then independent stuff or collaborations with John Frusciante. Diving into this world was a relief. I think this is where the idea started gestating. I think that Cedric Bixler Zavala is probably one of the most interesting lyricists of our time. I think this is because he has to bounce off of Omar's control freak qualities all the time....so let me explain.

Omar is kind of a megalomaniacal dictator, and I say this with awe, love, and respect. (I've pieced all of this together from interviews I've seen and read over the years...). Something about how he writes all of the music and then has everybody record it separately and then Cedric gets to listen to it and write the lyrics. Cedric has his own process too - instead of explicitly trying to write lyrics that have some sort of larger meaning he sounds out words that he thinks flow properly with the music - which is how he's able to get that beautiful juxtapositional cadence. You know what I mean? Not really? Over the years though (in the Mars Volta) Omar's been letting go of that, and generally meaning can be derived. It's just a very interesting way of writing. The other thing that tickles me pink is that Cedric's biggest vocal influence is Bjork.

Knowing that, I really want to get into the meat of my thought. Having read the lyrics of Cedric for the Mars Volta, and subsequently getting so involved with all of the other music Omar makes, and the stuff he's done with Ximena Sarinana, I really think that overall these things they've written should be considered poetry. And if they are poetry they are definitely part of the new canon of the American Literary Tradition. Yes, some of the lyrics are in Spanish, specifically those from Xenophanes, but so is a large portion of Amputechture, and Frances the Mute. I think that the lines are definitely blurring - especially (as I've mentioned previously) since Puerto Rico is part of America, and Latin culture becomes so much more prevalent across even say just the southern States. I have a feeling that people would argue against this -- specifically from a xenophobic point of view. But I also think that it's something beautiful and enriching. Anyway - this is kind of a conclusion I've come to on my own, and I'm sure it's not...unique or new or whatever, but it's something that I've wanted to explore for a long time now. Especially since I find that so much of TMV's material is so meaningful to me. I would definitely have to sit down and gather everything up and analyze the influences and all that fun jazz, and I think that's a project that would be really fun to take on in the future. It's easier to write about what you love.

Yeah...I think that's all for tonight.

well, that was unexpected

All of the interesting stuff in Toronto seems to happen in an Italian neighbourhood retrofitted as the new club land du jour. At 4am.

It was supposed to be a quiet night in - no concrete plans to speak of. Hoped to head to bed early-ish, do a bit of work in the Wasteland. But I'm here. Isn't it fun when a gaggle of people you've never met in your life...following a pied piper, show up at your house un-announced? I know I can handle my own, but I also know when I'm outnumbered. I suppose my face showed the right amount of chagrin for them to realize they should not invite themselves inside. Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset. It was just weird.

I'm somewhat easily put out of my comfort zone - it's easier to keep people at a remove. Like Jenn says on the IT Crowd: "I can't let you into my apartment, that's my special place!" Only worthy people may enter. It gets better though. The parties decide to branch off, go get pizza and come back. In the hubbub of all that it's decided that half will go to a house party and I take on the responsibility of walking a friend to a part of the neighbourhood where someone is waiting for him. I'm on my street now, so close to home and a man is motioning at me from a car - I take my headphones off. (Can't he see that I'm deeply contemplative of the material at hand?!) He asks me if I know where there's an after hours pub. I tell him I don't, he tries to engage me otherwise, I give limited answers and make off like I need to leave. He doesn't get it and I'm getting somewhat annoyed now but try to stay polite. He parks the car and gets out - accuses me of being a lesbian (because I have short hair?) and then says I don't want to give him my phone number because he's black.

I tell him trying to guilt me isn't going to work, he can't play that card. I leave.

What the hell?

SERIOUSLY? Where did you learn this approach, person I have never met in my entire life who's trying to pick me up on a side street at 4 in the morning? Do you really think I'm going to tell you anything?

Bewildering.

Sleep.

the literary version of a grunt

So hard

Why

Does this have to be so hard?

To have had

So much

To lose

To be given something that’ so easily

Taken away

The visceral draw

The perennial kiss

Or so you think

Until one decides

It’s not enough

They don’t want to try anymore

You’re not enough

It’s too hard

It hurts

It’s easier to leave

But not really

When they leave

You dissipate, even though it was your idea.

So you give up, because it‘s too hard. It’s too hard to try to find the yang to your ying.

Because your ying was never there

Not like the novels that tell you, that perfect one

The one who sees into your soul

And doesn’t mind that it’s a dragging on progressive psychedelic song

One that drags on forever – with twists and turns, complications, conflicts, fallacies

Hypocrites

They lie, they just want your passion, without matching it

Without ever thinking that perhaps this is the hardest thing you’ve ever done

Because you know the world, know its internal logic

Know that everything will work out

Except for this

And then you think

Perhaps I’m not destined for this, despite the fact that you don’t believe in destiny

Destiny is bullshit.

All that matters is the math, the equation that tells you – death is inevitable

Is it worth it? To search for that one? The one who is on the frequency you occupy?

Does this exist?

For some lucky ones.

Not you, though. Not you.

So you go to bed, and think about the only figments that haven’t disappointed.

They’re so far off, and it’s more comfortable that way.

Because if they fail….what will you do?

Haven’t gotten that far yet.

And then you think of the one who told you that the reason you want to be fluid is because you feel you can't have limits.

That happens to those without family. Without home.

How different it could all be, with such a small cartel of variables. The math – if only it would add up to your favour. But it never does…does it? Something always stands in the way. Then you wonder – is it yourself that stands in your own way?

What now?

You take it like a man, on the chin. No reaction. Pretend it’s fine. Find your armor.

Sow the screaming eagle patch onto your jacket. Steel yourself. Fasten your bindings, fix your helmet, fortify your scabs and scars. Think about the release. Race down the mountain.

Update your software. Upgrade the hardware. Fix your stock. Keep going. Don't look back ,just...keep going. Like clockwork.

It can be a lonely existence, being human. Laugh, cynically.

list of crap I want

for my birthday! I know it seems selfish, but whatever,

people generally suck at getting me stuff I like, so ...here's a list:

1) Omar Rodriguez Lopez (I'm kidding, although I'd love to meet him)

2) http://outlier.cc/main/womens-daily-riding-pant.php The nicest cycling pants I've seen for a girl

3) The Byson Gilet: http://www.allsaints.com/product/?all=1&page=1&category_id=118&&prod_desc_id=5051214488783&position=10

4) The Typographic Desk Reference: http://typedeskref.com/

5) some sort of LEGO

6)The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

The thing is, I don't really need anything....except for a billion dollars ;)

this is not -blank- -blank- dot com

Anybody who knows something about me and something about the writers I'm into will know exactly what the title of this post is referencing. Somehow part of me is trying to avoid writing an essay that's due tomorrow (it's mostly been composed in my head, but it just seems like nothing new can be said about this book and I've read it before and the exercise feels like cheating if you've read the book and in some way it feels like I've completely misunderstood it). Anyhow that's a digression from this digression.

Fuck you, I'm Batman. Anyway.

Back to what I was talking about originally. A fraction of a moment ago I had a witty reparte with someone on twitter, and it made me kind of really really sad. Because it reminded me of the crass British man whom I haven't spoken with since....well...a long time. We had a moment or two and it was really fun keeping up the correspondence, but I think there was an expectation or two on his part that I didn't live up to and thusly have been either discarded or relegated to some sort of heap of rejects. And it kind of breaks my heart - in several ways, because he's just darned cool, and funny, and charming, and incredibly sweet, not to mention a fucking GENIUS. I kind of love him in a fucked up way - in that idealistic "we've never really met and so we can say stupid things to each other and it'll always be perfect because of that" way. Except then we did. And it was amazing! It was everything I wanted it to be and more. I suffered horrible withdrawal afterward. He was so....fucking.....awesome. And not just because of the obvious things about him - I felt we had lots to talk about. It didn't feel awkward - it was easy and fun. I desperately wished he lived here, or closer to here, so we could be friends in that regular friendly way.

I don't know exactly what he thought was going to happen, but I worried that he thought it was going to be something else. I was somewhat contagiously sick, so even if somehow I had neglected my sense of morality and ethics, nothing could have happened. So I wonder if that was what he wanted - or if he had no expectations of me. Especially when I think about how exactly our "relationship" started.

All I know is that for a brief, spectacular moment, he lit up my life in an amazing way. Because he was someone that I felt I could really get along with so well, which I haven't felt in some ways since, well..you know...that thing I keep talking about and the reason this blog came to be in the first place. (duh, N)

So I continue to abide, and every now and then, I deeply miss the crass British man. He stole a piece of my heart.

think...laterally

Just a short one today - and this is why:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dm2glu3WLGk&feature=player_embedded

This song has always been something that I've considered a turning point in terms of my appreciation of music. It has a life of its own. If it were to be translated into a painting it would be incredibly rich- with many shades and layers of complexity. Some people consider it noise - because they don't take the time to actually listen to and appreciate all of the seemingly loose threads that weave together and eventually come to culminate in something that is beyond my scope of description. And that's just on the sonic level. When examined under the hood - the music actually follows a mathematical sequence - the fibonacci. This is not news but perhaps it makes sense that in some way it would be more pleasing to the ear, just like the fibonacci sequence is found in objects in nature - such as "branching in trees, arrangement of leaves on a stem, the fruitlets of a pineapple, the flowering of artichoke, an uncurling fern and the arrangement of a pine cone." (wiki)

I think I'm trying to draw some sort of parallel between the two...is that clear?

Anyhow - this version of Lateralus makes it easier to discern all of the different melodies coming together at least slightly more easily than the original.

Which you can find here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDlC7oG_2W4

how far you've removed yourself from the human condition

I got a new book today. I already own a version of it - but this one was nicer. I didn't know that I would love it so much the first time around so I bought a cheap copy - and since we're reading it again for another class I wanted one that I was in love with visually as well. It's got the giant whale eye on the back cover - gorgeously illustrated.

The thing is, it didn't make me feel better about my day at all. Usually books do that, especially pretty ones. And then I realized that ever since around February my levels of contentment have been in steady decline. I don't know why. Perhaps it's all the drug switcheroo, maybe it's levels of stress getting out of hand - not knowing how to handle everything. Compartmentalization is key, but it's also hard. Have I said that before? I feel like I'm losing my perspicacity - and it might be the drugs I'm on right now.

I've noticed that my vision has been getting worse - and I've been slurring my words a little bit more. I'm worried that if it's not the drugs, it's me getting stupider. Getting older is starting to scare me.

I wake up at night having panic attacks about death. This has been happening since I was around twelve years old - but it's more frequent now.

Perhaps the bupropion is working by waking me up - but that's all it's doing, it's not helping me process information from an outsider's standpoint. So I'm left where I began - being too inside of myself to view things objectively. It's frustrating.

I've also felt homeless for a long time now. For the longest time my home was where Niall was. He was the family I chose (however unwisely) and there was comfort in that. After our end I spent time with Karen and then finally went back to my mother's house. But it didn't feel right, it felt transitory, I never fully unpacked. Then I moved in to my current apartment - but now I'm moving out because of an uncomfortable situation. I've moved so many times - it's really wearing me down. After this move I don't want to move for at least the next three years.

At the same time I feel like I'm waging a one man war against a fully stocked opposition. I've never faced a challenge in ideology like this before and I don't know if I have the strength to fight it at every step. I have the conviction but my drive is falling away. Compromise is one thing, but seeing a future where people wear you down is .....well it's defeatist in a sense, and it's me getting ahead of myself. But I honestly can't see any other way it would go down. I've never been a minority before. I've never had to contend with a large family. I miss the intimacy of conversation with Ron and Ada. Hell, I just miss them. I miss interesting political conversations over dinner - I miss being liked for my qualities, qualities they actually took the time to find out about. I've never had an exceptionally large family and after moving here it got even smaller. Technically I have a mother and a half brother. My stepfather never adopted me.

So I've learned to cope - I have friends who I consider family. My unwillingness to spend time around people who I haven't specifically chosen for that purpose is incredibly low to nonexistent. It's a learned behaviour. Why would I want to spend time around people who don't really know anything about me? Oh they know superficial surface stuff - where I go to school and what I study, but past that they don't seem interested. And that's fair - people have shit going on in their lives. At the same time - it was easier to imagine a future with people who cared about my opinion. And yes, again it's me getting ahead of myself - and that might seem stupid. But it's not out of any sort of romantic sensibility - it's practicality, perhaps it's my Darwinian imperative - my brain just does the math, automatically. I can't help it.

Which brings me to the conversation I've had with several people over the past two days - about how my theory is that money can basically solve for anything.

I haven't actually done the math yet on this one - it would need actual figures, but...it could work. A perfect scenario. Love is a relatively new concept in terms of people pairing off. It causes probably as many headaches as it does happiness. So what I proposed to my friend Walter is a situation (we had around six separate conversations that night). If one were to possess x amount of money they could do whatever they wanted. Provided that they weren't a complete asshole they would have close friends with whom they could spend time - this could be the backbone of their community. Obviously there would be family in the best case scenario, mother/father/sibling. So there would be conventional relationships to a certain point, but instead of seeking out a long term partner based on the concept of "love", if one had x amount of money, one could buy someone's time in order to fulfill their sexual desires. It wouldn't necessarily be a problem because money can buy you basically anything you want - it would just take a certain amount of time to find the right person. Once you frequented this person it could become a thing - in terms of physical needs. And it would have the potential to actually be better than a physical relationship based on the concept of "love". Why? Because. There would be an exchange of goods for money, and this is conducive to a person communicating more clearly exactly what they want.

Which I guess brings people to the decision over whether or not they consider prostitution to be morally wrong etc., but personally I don't really care. (I mean I care about the fact that there are studies that show that women who have been abused are more likely to become prostitutes, but that's a whole different conversation) If people want to have sex and don't have a partner, they can see a sex worker. Dan Savage would agree with me, he's kind of the king of that stuff.

Anyway, that being said, it takes the pressure off. Unconditional love is probably the best kind, and you're very hard pressed to find something like that from a romantic partner. I mean it might happen despite the fact that you're not conforming to society's standards etc., but you can be content even if it doesn't. And you can have kids if you want - adoption, or if you're a woman, insemination.....so it's all upsides.

Of course this is all hypothetical and mostly a thought experiment thing, don't go and start thinking that I'm a jaded and cynical near-25 year old who knows nothing about the world, because that's patronizing.

Kind of like the time I told my cousin Tom that I was an atheist and he was like "oh you'll get over that as you age"....yeah...thanks.

the irony of hate, join me

When I get mad, this is what I go through in my head to feel better:

Cravely : Okay I know it was difficult for you to come here hat in hand (pause) it's not the kind of (pause) upbringing --I guess is the word I'm looking for, it's not the kind of man you are. I understand that, I'm not looking to humiliate you, not looking to exact a price in any way so why don't you just apologize, we'll call it uh water under the uh damn and go about our business.
Gust : Excuse me what the FUCK!
Cravely: What?
Gust: What the fuck are you talking about?
Cravely: Claire George said you were coming in here to apologize.
Gust: I'm supposed to come in here so you could apologize.
Cravely: According to whom?
Gust: Claire George.
Cravely: You told me to go fuck myself, I'm supposed to apologize to you?!
Gust: Also water goes over a dam and under a bridge you poncey schoolboy.
Cravely: Clearly there's been a miscommunication between Claire George and somebody.
(maintenance man fixing the window pokes his head in)
Maintenance Man: Excuse me, does this look alright? (points at glass window seperating Cravely's office from the rest of the floor)
Cravely: Yah.
Maintenanace man: I could sand it down a little?
Gust: I've got no fuckin' idea who this guy is.
Cravely: HE is HERE to fix the glass you broke the last time you were here. (to Mainenance man) Could you just excuse us for a second? (shuts door)
You tell me to go fuck myself and I'm supposed to apologize? You break my window, *I'm* supposed to apologize?
Gust: The Helsinki job was mine!
Cravely: The Helsinki job was NOT yours if it WAS yours you'd be in Helsinki.
Gust: Alan Wolfe stood in this office....
Cravely: Alan Wolfe is no longer
Gust: It was ON THE BOOKS
Cravely: Alan Wolfe is no longer the director of European Operations he does not make those appointments, I do.
Gust: Promises were MADE.
Cravely: Not by me.
Gust: I've been with the company for TWENTY FOUR years, I was posted in Greece for FIFTEEN - Papa Andreiou WINS that election if I don't have the JUNTA take him prisoner. I've advised and armed the Hellenic army! I've NEUTRALIZED CHAMPIONS OF COMMUNISM. I'VE SPENT THE PAST THREE YEARS LEARNING FINNISH! WHICH WILL COME IN HANDY HERE IN *VIRGINIA* AND I'M NEVER EVER SICK AT SEA. SO I WANNA KNOW WHY I'M NOT GONNA BE YOUR HELSINKI STATION CHIEF!
Cravely: You're coarse.
Gust: Excuse ME?
Cravely: For Helsinki I need someone with diplomatic skills...you don't have them.
Gust: Is that right?
Cravely: That is right and I don't know why the hell I didn't fire you when YOU BROKE MY FUCKING WINDOW.
Gust: Oh yes sure you do, Cravely...
Cravely: Look Gust....
Gust: Yeah you're fuckin' Roger's fiance and you know I know....
Cravely: I'm not...I'm not....I'm not even gonna dignify that with a response.
Gust: Yeah yeah, you're dignifying her in the ass at the Jefferson Hotel room 1210....but let me ask you...the 3000 agents Turner fired was that because they lacked diplomatic skills as well?
Cravely: You're referring to Admiral Stansfield Turner?
Gust: Yeah the 3000 agents each and every one of them first or second generation Americans, is that because they lacked the proper diplomatic skills or did Turner not think it was a good idea to have spies who could speak the same language as the people they're fucking spyin' on?
Cravely : Well I'm sorry but you can hardly blame the director for QUESTIONING THE LOYALTY to America of people who are just barely Americans in the first place.
Gust: Yeah. Well I'd like to take a moment to review the several ways in which you're a douchebag.
Cravely: GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY OFFICE.
Gust: Yes Sir (salutes)
Cravely: Before I end your career asshole.
Gust: Yes Sir (mockingly)
(Gust opens the door to leave and bumps into Maintenance Man)
Gust: Yeah my friend I'm gonna need you for a second (grabs hammer from Maintenance Man and smashes the newly repaired window in Cravely's office)
Cravely: GOD DAMNIT!
Gust: My loyalty! For twenty four years people have been trying to kill me! People who know how. Now do you think that’s because my dad was a Greek soda pop maker? Or do you think that's because I'm an American spy?Go fuck yourself, you fucking child! (Exuent)

So, Gust Avratakos was a real guy. His dad was a soda pop maker. I've always wanted to be able to go on a large tirade against someone who was pissing me off, this lets me experience that vicariously. And Philip Seymour Hoffman is a motherfucking genius.

have we met?

Please allow me to introduce myself I'm a dame of wealth and taste/ I've been around for a long long year/ stole many a man's soul and faith ~

Actually when you really think about the lyrics of that song and how in the intro Mick Jagger sings about Pilate and the title of the song being "Sympathy for the Devil" well...I don't know if this is something that's really obvious to people who are overt Stones fans but it makes me think of The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov. It's got the devil, and Pilate. But I digress...

I said something today which has been echoing in my mind for a while now : It sucks when people don't see you, or don't see you as the person you know you are, or refuse to.

Part of the whole year and a bit I had to myself as a single person was figuring out who I was separate from anyone else, what I really wanted in life, etc. Obviously this is subject to change but I am the type of person that doesn't waver much, consistency is something I value a lot. Possibly because in my last relationship someone was very inconsistent.

So now having entered into something new knowing all I know, it's very hard for me to be sympathetic to someone who wavers in decision making. I always try to tell the truth - especially at the beginning of new situations and ....well...I try to represent myself the way I am in my regular every day life. None of this "best behaviour" bullshit. I mean obviously I fret over what I'm wearing a tiny bit more but....that's always me.

And that's the point I'm making with my statement. Hello, have you met me? Perhaps I should tell you again: I like having alone time, I love reading, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about my hair, I'm superficial, I like men in tight pants, I stare at the Sartorialist's website hours on end, I think men's hair is important, I get uncomfortable if someone is wearing ugly shoes, appearance matters to me, I get theoretical erections over cars, airplanes and helicopters (sometimes guns), I am materialistic to a fault, I will cut my nose off to spite my face, I can be an asshole, I judge people quickly and harshly and find myself to be right most of the time. I am my own worst critic but I am also my own best champion. I can be incredibly narcissistic at times (eg. I wish I could clone myself in male form), and at times I revert to being a girl. I have no problem spending 200$ on a pair of pants or 3000$ on a computer.

But I love dogs, outdoorsy shit, rockclimbing, hanging out with my boys and buying them shots, working hard, and not taking myself (too) seriously, and if you gain my trust and friendship - barring some catastrophic event, I will always go to bat for you and defend you until my last breath. Kind of like a white knight, or that Rihanna song about the umbrella.

I also have several different plans for what to do when I finally graduate - considered the options and have given myself several possible routes to take. I know I want to have a house in Toronto (ginormous library a must), and an apartment in Vienna. I know that I want to write, but that it probably won't be my main profession if I choose to write novels, not at first. I know that whatever career I have (out of the ones I'm setting myself up for) I won't be compromising my fulfilment. I also know what kind of lifestyle I want to lead (and am leading), and I know what I need to do to support it. I want to be able to have the freedom to visit Europe more than once a year. I also want a dog (this could present a problem in terms of going to Europe more than once a year, but I've thought about it). I want to own a mid-engine car eventually, and I'm willing to sacrifice spawning offspring for a Veyron. (Although I think if I had "child" it would be the best looking smartest thing in the world, there's that narcissism for you)

I just...like things the way I like them...and I feel confused, betrayed, saddened and ....generally malaised when I find that someone has been not completely truthful with me. And not in one of those blatant lie kind of ways (although that too). I'm technically an adult. I can handle rough situations. If I have an issue that I need to discuss with someone I have already thought out the theoretical and practical sides and made contingencies for my contingencies, I look forward. I consider my options before I make a tactical strike. It's how I roll. So to have someone try to shoehorn me into being something I'm not, or adapt themselves (for whatever reason) into the image of what they think I want....well that's bad. Because it's ersatz, it's not real, and the facade will eventually slip, revealing a truth that may not be suitable - to any party.

And that makes people upset.

And then I get grumpy.

And you don't want that.

I'll go my own way

So Sahira and I went to see Massive Attack at the Sound Academy last night. She was late because she was helping her mom move,

more on that terrible story here:

http://www.healthzone.ca/health/newsfeatures/article/806414--can-linda-sepp-possibly-be-helped

The situation is just.....I'm tired of explaining it to people because it's such a long story, and it's really sad, and ridiculous at the same time, from a "can't we do anything about this" standpoint.

It seems cruel to move on from that to Massive Attack, but, at this point both of Linda's children (her son Skye is one of my besties) don't want to think about the situation. Anyway so - we were both in various stages of grump-dom. The weather in Toronto has been kind of shit lately, it was nice in the morning. Jacket weather however turned into violent rain, thunder and lightning. We took the streetcar down to around Cherry St. and then got a cab to the Sound Academy which is on the water. Nobody likes this venue because of how awkward it is to get there, if you don't drive you have to walk, or take a cab, it's completely out of the way. Our cabbie Bruce gave us his card so we could call him after the show because it was going to be a clusterfuck to get out of, cab-wise. We got in at around 9ish and got drinks. Some girl was on stage. Tight shiny tights and white shirt, weird glasses, we were like "wtf?". So we went closer and both looked at each other funny - she was kind of a hybrid of scenester and a throwback to the 80's. So we hung around and watched her - she was really spunky and energetic. I think what won me over was that she looked like she was having fun singing her songs and doing her thing, and no matter whether people were dancing or not she was optimistic. The other cool thing was that she was on the stage alone. She had all sorts of synthesizers and junk, probably some sort of MOOG and other stuff which I can't name. (a quick check of her blog shows she uses macbooks and gadgets like an OB-8, I wouldn't be surprised if she had a Buchla too)
She played piano too, well keyboard. We were totally into it by the end of her set. I ended up buying one of her supercool shirts and her EP. Oh yeah, her name is Amanda Warner (which I had to google) and her band name is MNDR. She was really sweet and signed the shirt for me, I'm wearing it right now.
here's a link to her myspace, it's the only place that actually has decent fidelity, (bad youtube, bad!):
http://www.myspace.com/mndrtronica
I Go Away and Fade to Black (which is her song for Black Flag I think she said yesterday) are awesome to start with.

The next opener after that was Martina Topley Bird. Let me just say - I wasn't super into her set, but fuck, she is absolutely gorgeous, like - "I couldn't take my eyes off her" gorgeous. She was also wearing an awesome sequinned dress (purple) with a hood and big shoulders. Her voice was awesome but her music just wasn't my cup of tea. It was also her birthday. I'm not sure how exactly to describe her music - it's kind of, well it reminded me of a British version of Andrew Bird, except he's waaaaaay cooler to me, with his hilarious lyrics (crazy, they have the same last name, and both basically appear on stage alone and create a wall of sound by/with looping/pedals). She was a little more jazzy - it's kind of what I imagine 40 year olds listen to. I don't know what that means, whatever (TG excepted). Anyhow after she was done we waited almost a whole hour for Massive Attack to come onstage.

And that's where the weirdness began. Don't get me wrong, the concert was amazing. Robert Del Naja is just....well...as well as talented, very good looking. The backdrop was great, interesting light show, lots of scrolling text - mostly political stuff, Howard Zinn quotes, etc. Each song had some sort of corresponding graphic displayed on the (I'm having a hard time describing it) ...light board? Maybe I can find a picture.

Ah there it is. It was for lack of a better word, COOL. That light fixture approximated photograph quality images - at one point during the encore there was a globe that looked three dimensional and had flight times on the side. It was, well it warmed the cockles of my heart. My favourite part might have been when binary was running all throughout - which reminds me I got one of the limited edition screen printed posters - it's pretty. This was the debut of the North American tour and they were all on top of it. It was easily one of the more fun concerts I've been to, just because of the dance-ability of the songs/tracks. 3D (Del Naja) brought Martina out for a few songs - namely Teardrop. I got goosebumps - I've loved that song since I was a young'in. Overall I feel sorry for whoever missed it - but they're doing it again tomorrow night at the same venue. I'm not really sure what else I can say about it - Massive Attack have been around for a long time -their music is very well known - I mean Teardrop is the intro to House (the show) in a lot of countries so they're definitely mainstream so I don't feel that I need to get into particulars about their music. The one thing that did strike me was how Radiohead-like the concert felt. And of course it's the other way around because Massive Attack have always been electronica whereas Thom et al., only got into that around Kid A and Amnesiac (both of which I love) - but both have an inherent danceability - this is important to me. Which people don't really know about me, it's not something I advertise. As a child of two dancers/choreographers, I'm not that good - rhythm I've got....dancing....eeeh, maybe.

The crowd was significantly older than Sahira and I, we may have been some of the youngest kids there. And thus the weirdness. I've never in my life been to a concert where people have been so incredibly rude and inconsiderate. People kept pushing and shoving, I got elbowed in the middle of one of my favourite songs, people kept bumping into me, and not a little bit, a LOT. People were coming out of the center of the crowd to get beer and drinks and go back, and they were completely careless about who they shoved. I don't understand this kind of attitude. You're there to see the show, pick a spot and fucking stay there, if you need a beer bring one with you, but once you're in the MIDDLE of the crowd you're disturbing other people's experience by constantly coming and going. There was a meathead in front of us who keept creeping on his girlfriend and just in general being gross, and shoving us a lot. I smashed my bag into someone on purpose because they kept pushing me forward, and I told a lot of people off. I'm pretty good at being pedantic and belligerent when I need to, but I've never been as close to punching someone as I was last night. My levels of rage were really high, and it somewhat diminished the concert for me. I've never been so ashamed and disgusted by the people of Toronto before. Here's hoping they were all from suburbs or something.

That being said, it was Martina's birthday and 3D asked us all to sing Happy Birthday to her, so we did - which was nice. Debut of the North American tour on her birthday and the whole crowd sings to her - she seemed so happy and embarrassed, it was adorable. Overall I had a great time - I'm just a bit sore about how rude people were. Massive Attack is definitely a show that's not to be missed, or at least experienced once in your life.

books

Usually I use the summer for pleasure reading (although I do that during school too) but the summer is when I can get most of it done. For example last year when I spent a month in Europe I read six books, mostly on trains.
So I already have a stack that I haven't read yet. It goes like this:
American Tabloid - James Ellroy
East of Eden - Steinbeck
Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (TG don't be mad I'm not done yet)
Foundation -Asimov
on top of that there are a bunch of magazines I haven't finished, like the Arts & Letters and Religion issues of Lapham's Quarterly (I've read some, not all, and I love reading ALL)
Then there's the new issue of Monocle that I picked up, and then there's the books I really really really want. Like NOW.
Those are:
Solar by Ian McKewan -a novel about an over the hill nobel physicist (to satisfy my physics fetish)
Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead - a new biography by Paula Byrne - because I loved Brideshead Revisited and think Waugh was extraordinary, that book got me through swine flu
The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano - I saw it in an ad on the subway, and I'm not gonna lie, the author looked really hot, also - prime numbers and being an isolated person (from the writeup on the ad) - sounds like good reading.
So that's everything I want to read or finish reading and then there's my school reading list:
The Novel (with Mike) list:
Robinson Crusoe (read it already)
Foe by J.M Coetzee
Tristram Shandy
Moby-Dick (read it already)
Emma - Jane Austen (read it already)
Little Casino - Gilbert Sorrentino
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Great Expectations - Kathy Acker
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Joyce
At Swim Two Birds - Flann O'Brien
Mrs.Dalloway (read it already)
The End of the Story - Lydia Davis
My other course, 20th Century American Lit list:
Paul's Case - Willa Cather
Souls Belated- Edith Wharton
The Beast in the Jungle - Henry James
The Awakening - Kate Chopin (read it already)
Mrs. Spring Fragrance - Sui Sin Far
selections from Up from Slavery - Booker T. Washington
selections from The Souls of Black Folk - W.E.B. Du Bois
Quicksand - Nella Larsen
The Wasteland/The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - T.S. Eliot (read it already)
Hills Like White Elephants - Ernest Hemingway
Babylon Revisited - F. Scott Fitzgerald
A TONNE of Robert Frost stuff
A TONNE of William Carlos Williams (who I love, feverishly and a lot of whom I've read, thanks to the aforementioned Mike)
A Rose for Emily - William Faulkner
Good Country People - Flannery O'Connor
Petrified Man - Eudora Welty
Going to Meet the Man - James Baldwin
A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams
Howl - Allen Ginsberg (already read, love)
selected poems of Sylvia Plath, Frank O'Hara, and Pat Parker
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Edward Albee
The Lady from Lucknow - Bharati Mukherjee
A Coyote Colombus Story - Thomas King
Cathedral - Raymond Carver
and finally People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk - Lorrie Moore
plus there will be a bunch of screenings
I so look forward to all of it - but how am I going to get all of my personal reading done? Oh the quagmire.

no sense at all

Most of my life I've been told I'm above average by various people around me, and at the same time disparaged by the people who are closest to me.

Think about how confusing it is when a woman admits to the rest of her family (in front of her child) that her husband had "brainwashed" her into hating and mistreating her own child for the better part of said child's life (oh maybe 11 years) . Then think of the same woman telling her child that she, in fact, is her favourite child, and that she's brilliant - it's too late.

This is my life. Moved out at 18. Already too mind fucked - and now, mid 20's actually trying to change it somehow. And then this assclown of a psychiatrist stares at me in my session - completely blanching on me. Does he even notice that my voice has dropped several octaves and turned into a monotone since the last time I saw him? Oh sure, it's just the stress of not getting your homework done because you know...you're a lazy slob. Which to some extent is the truth.

I mean - you should see my room. It kind of looks like a tornado hit it. Various empty bottles and papers, clothing all over the floor - papers all over the desk. Garbage. At this point in the night I would venture so far as to call myself a rapidly cycling extremely high functioning manic depressive, but....having both manic and depressive symptoms at the same time. And it fucking blows. Wait...what was my point? Right, back to this session. I actually express interest in change. I mention that I don't want to be the person with excuses, I want to not feel anxiety towards my assignments. I don't want to hide in my bed with a horrible feeling in my stomach about an essay that I have to write - waiting until the last minute because I'd rather fail by default than have to admit that I may not be as genial as I'd like to think I am.

And he stares blankly. Because I've painted a picture of my catch-22 existence and he doesn't know what to say. I mean other than handing me a winning lottery ticket he can't really do anything to help me, or at least that's what his face implies.

I can't live with my mother and stepfather.

How does one tenderly imply the crimes against one's physical and emotional self without being un-cliché?

Without being judged for the ramifications thereof and the violent tendencies they yearn to display every now and again?

Why is it that I can function absolutely perfectly for 6-8 months out of a year and then do this for the rest? (You ignore it for as long as you can and try to push through and hope it goes away?)

Why do I feel like a complete fake when I sit in that chair, like it's an excuse to not do homework. So, the long and short of it is: I can't live with them because it's bad blood, because there is no longer any room for me, because living there makes me feel worse than not living? The yelling, the constant phone, the physical clenching of my entire body, dreading hearing someone calling my name for any reason. I lock my door. There is no choice for a person like me, I must keep living, that is all there is. So I live, but it's not like I can devote as much time as I should to the work that I'm doing to be able to pull myself out of this situation.

And so to not have to think about it - which is where my mind goes when I'm frustrated and anxious about a paper, or an assignment, or a reading - I....escape. Be it with Cedric and Omar, or Dr.Sheldon Cooper, or Steinbeck and Gibson. Because I desperately want to believe that somehow I can live in their world. Either the world of savants or literary figures. I told my shrink - "...it's not like there's some magical course you can take that hands you a publishing contract at the end." So I have no motivation for University. Maybe you're an idiot and have not realized by now that I have no motivation for life at the moment. I mean being an atheist means that this is all there is. I accept that. But it also means I'm consigned to a life of mediocrity and I'm finally starting to accept that. And it tastes like ear wax?

This is the perfect example. Skye was taking one of those random IQ tests online today - he keeps scoring in the 130's. Skye's kind of a genius. I didn't make it that high. I know it's an online test, I know IQ doesn't really mean anything these days anymore, but fucking hell I only scored in the 75th percentile and fucking cock it means I'm average. It means I'm about as smart as everyone else. My whole life has been predicated on the fact that I'm better than everybody else. And yes this makes me an asshole. This happens when you have an under developed sense of self worth but an overly inflated ego. You balance in weird ways. I do want to rationalize it however, by saying that to some extent I think everyone must feel this "being better than others" because otherwise how would we live? We all have to innately think that we're unique somehow otherwise how would this experience be worth it? What would make our life different and meaningful? Sure there are infinite variables in everybody's life but....we've been sociologically conditioned to all want the same thing: a social survival of the fittest translated through notoriety, elite-ness and financial status.

Or maybe I'm just really really really skewed on what my values are.

On one hand I want... I covet the beautiful things in life, they bring me joy. Seeing an R8 on the street makes me feel at one with the universe, or...you know however you want to translate that high/zen feeling. The way those fluid lines come together, the animalistic power and growl of the engine, the gleaming headlights. In a stupidly fetishistic way it completely turns me on.

And yet I get the same things from Gibson - something about the way he puts words together produces a natural reaction that is not unlike Oxycodone. Why wouldn't I want to ignore everything else in the entire world and devote all of my time to reading his books?

So today at around 3am I experienced this unusual thought. I'm not special, or different. I am going to be consigned to mediocrity and banality for the rest of my life - and even if I'm not...who's to say I'll be happy?

Which is strange because I specifically recall some really happy moments of my life today. I looked forward to going to my new job. I loved talking to Aviv on the phone, he multiplies my innate happiness. I laughed genuinely at a TV show.

But - if life means perpetual debt, strife, depression, and mediocrity, and never rising above the average....well for a moment I saw the rest of my life flashing before my eyes and it was....boring. And in that split second I thought of, and rejected, premature ending....because I'm not a complete idiot.

But I think I came to a bit of a revelation. Pristiq fucking blows goats, and maybe so does my psych.

Also - maybe I need to work harder and stop being such a whinging cunt*.

This post is probably gonna be hella embarrassing tomorrow, or you know....in a few years. Oh well.

*c/o Damien Pease

how uniform your beautiful is...

Walter, Karen and I were sitting on my rooftop yesterday with the sun smiling down on us--and this funny conversation started as a result of a book I'm reading for one of my essays. It's Abelard's "Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian". It's one of those 10 page "summarize this" history class things. So far I'm really liking Abelard just because he's so out there and into himself. Reminds me a bit of me (you know -- the illusions of grandeur and whatnot). This is where I break the fourth wall a la Zach Morris and blatantly wink at you guys. The first thing that endeared me to him was his statement that all Jews are stupid and all Christians are insane. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not going to write off two whole sects of people as stupid and insane, that would be bad, but you have to admit it's hysterically funny, especially for something that's being written in the 1100's.

So as I was reading this text out loud to them (sporadically when something funny hit me) we got onto a somewhat sensitive topic that is covered quite extensively in it. Circumcision. Weird. I know. It's funny what's acceptable in our society these days and we discussed how a majority of males in the U.S.A. are for a lack of a better word "cut". Then we discussed personal preference for our hypothetical children. Personally I think it's more aesthetically pleasing, but I'm not one to discriminate. Recalling an episode of Sex and the City (I know, I know) a lot of women are just more comfortable with a cut "member"*. Eventually we decided that it was a moot point until any of us had kids or different sexual partners, etc. Walter didn't really participate in that as he likes girls. I think he was overall just amused by the conversation but not really contributing, except to make funny remarks every now and again and fist bumping with me. That's kind of how we roll, but I digress...(hey TG).

So then I had work today - my first shift at the new job, and while I took the book with me I didn't really have time to read it, my break wasn't that long. I got home and promptly passed out in bed beside my laptop (it sleeps with me when there's no man in my bed, I'm a dork). Hey, when it takes you three hours to build a goddamned chair because of shoddy engineering or machining we can talk. Regardless, I woke up at around midnight and decided to go back to reading the book. And....we are still on the topic of circumcision. And it's funny. So let me tell you why!

I'm dating a sweet Jewish boy. I'm an atheist, probably on the scale of Richard Dawkins who I know is almost fundamentalist in his views, which I'm not, but I do (to a certain extent) agree that religion can be a form of child abuse. So back to my point - I'm reading this text and this jumpst out at me : "The Lord forbids us to marry pagans and above all those pagans whose land we possess, saying somewhere: Take care that you never join in friendship with the inhabitants of the land which may be your ruin. Neither shall you take their daughters as wives for your sons lest they make your sons commit fornication with their gods". I believe that's from Exodus. It doesn't matter, what matters is, my boyfriend should be worried b/c I might make him have sex with the Large Hadron Collider. Muah hah hah. I love namedropping that thing by the way.

Also this other quote jumped out at me, re: women in this day and age who prefer cut men. "For the sign of circumcision seems so abhorrent to the Gentiles that if we were to seek their women, the women would in no way give their consent, believing that the truncating of this member is the height of foulness, and detesting the divine sign of holiness as an idolatry." Interesting how that has changed so much in the past oh - thousand years or so.

That's all for now....I'll update if there's more interesting material, or who knows, maybe I'll post my eventual atrocious essay on here.

Now that would be a hoot.

*Abelard's text refers to it as such also.