Hearts and minds

Never let your heart grow hard. Though a big heart brings pain, the alternative, the life of the hardened heart, is a scary thing. I sometimes see people whose hearts have grown hard, and their lives are boundaried by hate and anger, and fear, too, and I think that this is another kind of death-in-life, a living death where people go about the business of living without being alive inside.

So, for those of you who suffer and feel empathy and sympathy, don't ever close down that, even though it causes you pain. A big heart is necessary for a loving life, and for loving life, itself. If more people had big hearts, we'd have fewer wars and a more hopeful and happy world.

There are ideologies that have arisen around hearts of stone -- and not just on the Right, either, which prides itself on its hard-nosed (and hard-headed and hard-hearted) thinking; there are those on the Left who are that way, too.

The legacy of the hardened heart is that it blinkers your vision, keeps you from seeing what needs to be seen and, more importantly, felt.

Our world seems increasingly driven by hard-hearted people. Maybe it's always been that way, but perhaps it doesn't need to be that way. I know it's challenging because gentle, decent, imaginative, loving, empathic people are less likely to bring about social change than violent, ruthless, thoughtless, hateful, cruel people.

But by holding onto our hearts, we can bear witness to what we know is wrong, and not pretend it's not there in front of us. The hard-hearted want to bludgeon everyone into silence, to shut down decency and compassion as somehow immoral and uneconomical. Don't let them. Let your sensitivity and empathy pour into your day-to-day living, into your art, your everything.

Life's too joyful a thing to waste with a hateful heart.

July's nearly over

Man, did July fly by or what?

I can't even believe August is almost upon us.

Dog Days

Man, is it ever hot today. Tuh. I'm just trying to keep cool in the a/c, playing my guitar. It's one of those kind of days, I think. A very Saturday kind of thing.

I definitely need to start looking for new jobbage; with my boss leaving, all protection for our department will be gone in a month's time, during a time of reorganization. Yowza! So, that's one of my ongoing projects, now -- get new job, STAT!

Of course, in George Bush's America, if you're not in the petrochemical or military industries, good-paying work's not so easy to come by. Sigh.

Something silly and fun...

So long...

Music: Suede, "Together"

I'm in a funk right now. Annoying. Just for fun, I made a MySpace account (don't bother looking, you'd never find me!) just to see what could possibly motivate 95 million people to use something, and was amazed at how crappy their setup and their servers are. Blogger, even on bad days, is positively stately and grand by comparison. MySpace sucks! Even the layout is like the electronic equivalent of epilepsy! It was fun to link to a few of my favorite bands' sites, but aside from the obvious meatmarketry of MySpace, why anybody would honestly use it is beyond me. Social networking, my ass!

They updated our e-mail on our workplace system, changing us from Eudora to MS Outlook; still getting used to that.

Oh, and my head boss is leaving for another gig. I need to get out of this place, soon. I'll look in Chicagoland first, and then eyeball NYC and LA, see what I can scare up, jobwise.

Whoa. Flow.

Music: Suede, "This Time"

It's been a few days since I posted. Sorry! The weather the past few days was wonderful, summery but blessedly mild, with gentle breezes and ample sunshine. The kind of days where you want nothing more than to lay in the grass and watch clouds or sailboats float by, lost in a forever moment without a care.

I've been bad -- not writing nearly as much as I should; I'm normally prolific, but have been in a bit of a rut of late. I don't call it a block, because I never let myself block -- if somehow I stop writing, I force myself to write whatever and that jumpstarts my imagination, which steps in as a kind of boredom-alleviation defense or something.

Mortality was licking my boots over the weekend, making me think about this and that, how the delectable present and the tantalizing future all too swiftly becomes the regretful past. There is infinite power in moments, but it's hard for a human mind to stay caught in that moment for long. As a child, it was an effortless enterprise, and days were like years, and moments lasted forever -- flow, it's been called, the psychology of optimal experience. I remember those times, but I think as an adult, it's harder to hold onto that flow, the moments become fewer and fewer.

I still get it now and then, but not as much as I used to. Now, it's more of a bleary blankness when I'm not writing. I worry that that blankness will envelope me as I grow ever older, forgetting, losing touch. A sorrowful demise, a slow walk off the stage and into the everlasting darkness.

Not to be all dark and moody today; sorry. The Mondays and all! I try to cleave to the joy, thankful for my health, because sickness robs you of life, and as you slide from youth to maturity, health itself becomes something you can no longer take for granted. You fall down and get hurt, it takes time to heal. The pain stays with you.

Anyway, here's to flow, to the glorious and fleeting moments!

The Bubblemen are Coming

Mellow Yellow

Dread, sorrow, and shame

From a NYT article...

“The country has been torn to shreds,” a desperate Lebanese prime minister, Fouad Siniora, said at a meeting he had called of foreign diplomats, including the American ambassador.

“Is this the price we pay for aspiring to build our democratic institutions?” he asked in a bitter and emotional speech. “Can the international community stand by while such callous retribution by the state of Israel is inflicted on us?”

What people may have forgotten is that Lebanon had those elections earlier, leading to the surprise electoral win by Hamas. The demolishing of Lebanon is likely to end up helping Islamist radicals enormously, as they can say to the moderates: "Look what happens when you try to build a state! Israel just smashes it down!" The worst thing for Hamas was being charged with running a state -- dealing with public works, being accountable to voters, etc. It's comparatively easy for them to focus on guerrilla warfare with Israel. Given the huge disparity in military strength between US-funded Israel and Arab-funded Hezbollah, it's going to make guerrilla war ongoing and inevitable.

Our policy in the region has been locked in place since about 1967. It needs to change. Otherwise just endless cycles of bloodshed.

I know we're not supposed to/allowed to talk and think about the Middle East in any way other than "Israel 100%! Kill the Arabs!" but if any area needs honest attention from America, it's our policy there.

Just thinking...

So, over 90 million people are on MySpace these days. World's biggest meatmarket, right? Far out. I think the Net is radically changing human relations. I mean, Duhhh -- that couldn't be a more banal observation. But I remember when I was a 20-something, and we had a computer center (instead of a wired campus) -- e-mail was a rumor, not a reality. Everything was much more haphazard, dependent on time and place and circumstance. And yet, more natural, I suppose, more human. Again, Duhhh. There's good and bad with it, I guess. Maybe the sheer volume of people meeting each other increases the odds of something working -- but on the other hand, that volume also might make for more transitory associations.

The shrinking of the world has made it so. You find your soulmate in Rangoon, and you're in Kansas. Pre-Net, you'd never have met that person. Or persons -- maybe you have precisely 1,000 soulmates in the world, and the Net lets you reach out to 750 of them, you know? How does a person hold onto a relationship when faced with that?

The idea of "the One" has always been a romantic notion -- I've heard enough female coworkers talk about forgetting Mr. Right and opting for Mr. Good Enough, and guys joking about Ms. Right and Ms. Right-Now. Most of those people are 30-somethings, like me -- the last generation to know the pre-Net world. I don't know how 20-somethings and younger deal with the changes; they've never known any different -- a world without cellphones, e-mail everywhere, the Web, Internet dating, MySpace, etc. How that will influence human relationships (not just intimate, but across the board) hasn't even been really dealt with, yet.

For all the fundamentalists' insane carping about gay marriage killing Western civilization, I don't know if enough people have really thought about what the Net could be doing to change human relations, and at far greater speed. Not that I think it's necessarily a bad thing, these changes. Maybe the old ideal of The One should die, maybe it just leads to people being unhappy. I don't know. Unhappiness is central to the human condition -- we'll always be unhappy, I guess. Even perfection is an unhappy condition, in human terms -- we can't know it, and if we did, we'd probably be bored.

Cool Like That

The storm cooled things off considerably. Yay! It was crazy-hot yesterday, and even last night, until a big storm came in and cooled things off, at least for now.

Hot child in the city

Blazingly hot and humid in Chicagoland today. Hope the power doesn't go out like it has in the past, when everybody's got their air conditioners running. Meantime, the coal-fired power plants continue belching skyward. Yech.

Solar and wind -- someday we'll go that way, though I think it's too decentralized to appeal to the real power players, who favor centralized energy sources like nuclear. In the US, though, Coal will be King way longer than it ever should, unfortunately.

Anyway, what else? Kinda hurt my knee jogging this morning. That'll teach me. I should've just sat inside and watched the morning news!

Lots of homeless sleeping in the park, all over the place.

Music: Catherine Wheel, "I Want To Touch You"

Buzzcocks (recap)

Good show. Blazingly hot at the Double Door, everybody sweating. The crowd was very mixed -- fogies, hipsters, tattooed hooligans, punks-n-posers, frat boys (?) with their dates, that kind of thing.

The Buzzcocks came on around 11:30 p.m., after a lengthy period where roadies were trying to hoist their banner for like 20 minutes, a very Spinal Tappish moment, until they finally got it up and people cheered.

Buzzcocks looked old (cuz they are -- like in their early 50s, now), but they were nice and tight, played a good mix of new and old tunes. Old ones included "Orgasm Addict", "What Do I Get?" "Ever Fallen in Love?", "Autonomy", "Noise Annoys", and "Fast Cars" (I was amused at that one, because I shouted out "FAST CARS!!" while they were between songs and that was the one they played next. I don't think they heard me; it was just the next one in their setlist.)

The crowd went nice and wild -- so often, Chicago crowds are too polite for their own good, but this crowd got into it straightaway, with people jumping and pogoing and slamdancing and otherwise getting wild. There was even some periodic stagediving, which got the divers tackled by the security.

It looked like Mohawk Night, with lots of kids sporting the old look, perhaps wanting to see some old-school punks in action. Most of them didn't slam, oddly enough. I wanted to get into the mix, but was wearing sandals, and figured slamdancing wasn't appropriate for a 36-year-old fella, anyway. But I did vigorously pogo in grand tradition during some of my fave tunes of theirs, and was absolutely drenched with sweat by the end of the show, which was a brisk 45-minute affair with about 15 minutes' worth of encores -- they played song after song, with (almost) no break between them.

Pete Shelley's gained some old-guy weight, but Steve Diggle looked like he was having a blast, doing some vigorous guitarwork and enthusiastic stagecraft flourishes.

I missed the first openers, but caught the Adored, who didn't really stand out to me. They're an LA band, I guess -- sounded like the Strokes channeling Interpol (kind of) with a little Dead Boys thrown in for seasoning (??) Didn't quite work for me, and they didn't appear to energize the crowd too much, who were all eager for the Buzzcocks to play.

Anyway, good show. If the Buzzcocks are in your town, you should catch them while they're still around -- they've still got the touch, and they're throwing in new songs off their recent albums, so it's not just a nostalgia tour.

Zen Commando

Vesper wrote (In "Hallways Without Walls") about how structure gets to her. I can relate to that. Even knowing that I have to be somewhere at a particular time oppresses me in an odd way. It's not like I don't value obligations to people -- it's just that, increasingly, if I have to be someplace at a particular time, it hangs over my head until the event occurs.

For me, anticipation is the killer, versus the actual execution of whatever task is at hand. Like the Buzzcocks show I'm going to see tonight -- I'm looking forward to it in spirit, but right now I'm all oppressed: "Gotta be at Double Door around 10 tonight." That obligation gets to me, and I won't enjoy myself until I'm actually there. You know? That happens to me all the time, like if I've been invited to a party or the equivalent -- until I'm actually there, the anticipation of it causes this odd dread in me.

I have that with flying, too -- I've been phobic about air travel since, I dunno, 1998. But the phobia is keenest for me before I'm actually on a plane. When I'm on the plane, I figure "Oh, well. Whatever happens, happens." -- I may not enjoy it, but I can deal with it. But nights before the flight, I'll bolt up in bed in cold sweat, having had a nightmare about flying, etc.

For me, it's really a control issue. Helplessness gets to me. I'd much rather jump over the wall than think about jumping over the wall. I'm kind of a Zen commando that way.

And I think schedules and structure impede that quality in me, and it oppresses me. I'm very much a live in the moment type of person -- the moment matters most to me (heh -- alliteration, anyone?)

It's going to be monstrously hot in the city this weekend. Heat indexes and ozone action days (e.g., smog alerts). Supposedly 100 - 105 degrees Fahrenheit, when the humidity is factored into the mix. Loverly. I just hope we don't have any brownouts or blackouts. If that happens, I'll just go to the lakeshore -- there's always a 15 to 20-foot strip that's cool there, because the lake is always cold.

I remember doing that in 1995, during the deadly heatwave that killed something like 500 to 700 people in the city (and got woefully underreported at the time -- glad somebody wrote a book about it. Anyway, the city was deadly-hot, and everybody went to the lakeshore, this huge, almost Biblical-looking throng of people, all along the lakeshore, taking dips in the water, hanging out on the rocks (when the rocks were still there -- the city is very foolishly replacing the wonderful tumbledown limestone boulders with lackluster, unfriendly concrete -- it sucks!!)

Anyway, at the time, I lived in a third-floor walkup (no AC) and had long hair, and it was really nasty. Everything I touched was hotter than me. I took ziploc bags and filled them with ice, laid them on the tiled floor of the bathroom for my cats -- they didn't need any persuading, lounged beside the bags of ice. Then I went to the lakeshore, along with everybody else who lacked AC.

It was kind of a party at the shore -- endless numbers of sweaty, tired people. A good time, despite the misery of the day.

Meredith Reese

Taken (like so many fun memes) from Vesper!

1) Your Rock Star name: (first pet and current street name)

Elfie Clark

2) Your Movie Star name: (grandfather/grandmother on your dad's side and your favourite candy)

Meredith Reese

3) Your 'Fly Girl/Guy" name: (first initial of first name and the first two or three letters of your last name)

D-Ne

4) Your Detective name: (favourite animal and favourite colour)

Wolf Blue

5) Your Soap Opera name: (middle name and the city where you were born)

Tyler St. Louis

6) Your Star Wars name: (first three letters of your last name, last three letters of your mum's maiden name, and first three letters of your pet's name)

Nea Tyl Jin

7) Your Jedi name: (middle name spelled backwards and your mum's maiden name spelled backwards)

Relyt Relyt

8) Your Porn Star name: (middle name, father's middle initial, and the street you grew up on)

Tyler A. Overhill

9) Your Superhero name: ('The', your favourite colour, and the automobile you drive)

The Blue Escort

10) Your Ghetto name: (first two or three letters of your first name, -Shawn/Quan/Quita/Niqua, last name of whatever Prime Minister is on the currency you pull out of your pocket)

Daquan Washington

Buzzcocks

Tomorrow night. Gonna catch them. It's a late show, so I'll have to try to stay awake. I'm yawning just thinking about it. I'm sad that I'm going to be out of town when Radio Birdman are in Chicago (September 2). They're pretty awesome, and this is their first stateside tour. Drat.

Buzzcocks, "Ever Fallen In Love"

Banana Splits

This is trippy!

Fancypants

This one caught my eye on a walkabout. Gotta watch those fancypants unicorns!

Transfixation

I'm kind of addicted to Project Runway. I'm a sucker for those neo-reality shows. I watched the reruns of Season 2 and became transfixed by it! I was transfixed by Kara Janx -- even though she totally blew it on the show, South African accents are very odd to my ear.

Janx's decoy collection

That is, her stuff that she would've featured had she been in the final three; as it was, they filmed her collection as a fake-out for people trying to divine who made the final three. Her stuff was better than the actual final three.

I'm transfixed by design -- it's totally alien to me. I can appreciate good design when I see it, but I don't know how people do it. It's like magic to me. My strengths are words and performance, primarily. Design is like another language, but I find it interesting to watch.

Speaking of design, I'm also transfixed by the Mazda RX8 and the Jaguar XK3.

I'm transfixed by the massive fog that's progressively enveloping the city. First it ate downtown; then the lake; then the shore; and now it's outside my window. These summer fogs are odd.

Athanasia

ATHANASIA
by: Oscar Wilde

O that gaunt House of Art which lacks for naught

Of all the great things men have saved from Time,

The withered body of a girl was brought

Dead ere the world's glad youth had touched its prime,

And seen by lonely Arabs lying hid

In the dim womb of some black pyramid.




But when they had unloosed the linen band

Which swathed the Egyptian's body,--lo! was found

Closed in the wasted hollow of her hand

A little seed, which sown in English ground

Did wondrous snow of starry blossoms bear

And spread rich odours through our spring-tide air.




With such strange arts this flower did allure

That all forgotten was the asphodel,

And the brown bee, the lily's paramour,

Forsook the cup where he was wont to dwell,

For not a thing of earth it seemed to be,

But stolen from some heavenly Arcady.




In vain the sad narcissus, wan and white

At its own beauty, hung across the stream,

The purple dragon-fly had no delight

With its gold dust to make his wings a-gleam,

Ah! no delight the jasmine-bloom to kiss,

Or brush the rain-pearls from the eucharis.




For love of it the passionate nightingale

Forgot the hills of Thrace, the cruel king,

And the pale dove no longer cared to sail

Through the wet woods at time of blossoming,

But round this flower of Egypt sought to float,

With silvered wing and amethystine throat.




While the hot sun blazed in his tower of blue

A cooling wind crept from the land of snows,

And the warm south with tender tears of dew

Drenched its white leaves when Hesperos up-rose

Amid those sea-green meadows of the sky

On which the scarlet bars of sunset lie.




But when o'er wastes of lily-haunted field

The tired birds had stayed their amorous tune,

And broad and glittering like an argent shield

High in the sapphire heavens hung the moon,

Did no strange dream or evil memory make

Each tremulous petal of its blossoms shake?




Ah no! to this bright flower a thousand years

Seemed but the lingering of a summer's day,

It never knew the tide of cankering fears

Which turn a boy's gold hair to withered grey,

The dread desire of death it never knew,

Or how all folk that they were born must rue.




For we to death with pipe and dancing go,

Now would we pass the ivory gate again,

As some sad river wearied of its flow

Through the dull plains, the haunts of common men,

Leaps lover-like into the terrible sea!

And counts it gain to die so gloriously.




We mar our lordly strength in barren strife

With the world's legions led by clamorous care,

It never feels decay but gathers life

From the pure sunlight and the supreme air,

We live beneath Time's wasting sovereignty,

It is the child of all eternity.

What next?

It's been coolly humid in the city of late. I don't like it. Humidity always gets to me, since everything makes me sweat, and humidity does so even more.

Work has been perplexing -- odds are my position will change in the next few months. I can feel it. Not a problem, I guess, so long as I'm still paid as much or more than I am currently. But when things are in flux, at least workplacewise, you never know.

Been quiet around here, yes? Ah, well. Maybe I should make things more Wilde?

Wish You Were (Still) Here

Syd Barrett died. He was 60.

"Astronomy Domine"

"Arnold Layne"

This is a pretty good writeup on Barrett, from SLATE. Also, from Pitchfork, a good one.

Whoops.

I got rained on this morning. I'd left my umbrella at work. Really need a raincoat. Anyway, I was dodging raindrops and hugging brownstones to avoid the lion's share of the rain. Fortunately, not more than sprinkles, really. A heavy rain would've drenched me, of course.

It's a gloomy, overcast day. Let's set my iTunes to shuffle and see what's the first song of the workday...

Blur, "Beetlebum"

Wasn't this one about Justine Frischmann? Pretty song, whether about her or about drugs or whatever else it's about!

Versions

I like how they have two different videos...

Suede, Drowners (US version)

Suede, Drowners (UK version)

Sunny Sweaty Soccer Saturday

Sunny, hazy, hot, and humid today. Gonna watch the third-place soccer match today (Germany v. Portugal) -- hopefully it'll be good play. Tomorrow is France v. Italy, which should be a good game, if people really play hard (fingers crossed).

Nothing particularly inspirational going on. Amy has some primo flower pictures on her blog, so I figured I'd post a picture, too -- nothing as good as her shots, just keeping with the spirit of summer and all...



Hope I didn't post these already; they're not mine. I just liked the image of the flowers peeking out behind the wrought-iron fence, like defiant prisoners or something. Plus, the purple was really nice, dazzlingly vivid.

Tee hee!

Which British Band Are You?

Pulp, "Common People"

Seventh Day, Seventh Month

So, there you have it. Bush is in town, I guess. Lots of security out and about, helicopters flying overhead, police cars everywhere. In other countries, the leader doesn't travel with quite the security phalanx the US uses. And that was even before 9/11 turned everything upside down.

Bleah.

The gal who cut my hair on the weekend cut too much off -- I look like I've joined Fight Club, my friends. I didn't want to get so much cut off. I mean, it's okay for summer, but I was wanting to grow it longer, and so now I'm stuck. But at least my hair grows quickly, so it'll be alright.

What I'm looking for...

Brett Anderson

+

Jarvis Cocker

+

Damon Albarn

= the length/look I'd like.

So, I'll just sweat through the summer and let it grow longer again, and that'll be that.

Music: Blur, "Popscene"

Actorly

I'm in a giddy mood today. Not sure why. Just have the giggles. Stuff keeps making me laugh. That's good, though -- way better than the blues.

I need to find a good place (e.g., good training, but affordable) for acting in Chicago -- there are tons of places, but it's hard to know who's any good. I've been looking around, and everything seems so expensive. Guh. Screen is what I'd want, ultimately, even though I'm probably better-suited for theater. At 36, it's kind of daunting. I wish I'd done it when I was 26, and first thinking about it. Then again, I look more my age now than I did, then, which works out better.

Musical Meme

Another meme, this one taken from Dixie Peach... (slightly revised)

The idea behind the meme is that it's about music, and that you can put up to three answers to any question. But no more. One answer is OK, two answers is OK, three answers is OK. Four is not OK, and five is right out. Unless otherwise indicated, you can only choose songs, and be specific--putting "anything by Madonna" doesn't count.

NAME UP TO THREE:

Song(s) That I Loathe to the Core of My Being
Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) - Journey
Don't Worry, Be Happy - what's-his-name...uhh. Bobby McPherrin?
Baby I'm'a Want You - Bread

Musical Artist(s) That I Loathe to the Core of My Being
America
KISS
Journey

Rolling Stones Song(s) I Love
Gimme Shelter
Paint It Black

Beatles Song(s) I Love
Day Tripper (I think that's their best song that works as a stand-alone song, versus a Beatles song, which automatically acts as ear candy)
Get Back
Strawberry Fields

Who Song(s) I Love
The Kids are Alright
Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere
So Sad About Us

Reggae Song(s) I Love
I & I Survive - the Bad Brains

Country Song(s) I Love
One Piece at a Time - Johnny Cash
Heart of Gold - Neil Young (feels country to me)

Movie Soundtrack(s) I Love
A Clockwork Orange

Musical Sountrack(s) I Love
Cabaret
Tommy
Lord of the Rings

Cover Song(s) I Love
If I Were a Carpenter - the Small Faces
Down on the Street/TV Eye - Swervedriver
Orange Crush - the Editors

Contemporary Top-40 Artist(s) I Secretly Love
Not a big fan of Top-40
OutKast (kinda)

Song(s) That Bring Me to Tears
With or Without You - U2
Ghost World - Aimee Mann
She's Not Dead - Suede

Song(s) That Make Me (Shake My Ass/Watch Your Ass Shake)
Hey Ya! - OutKast
Mr. Pharmacist - the Other Half

Classical Composer(s) I Love
Mozart
Wagner
Schubert

Rap/Hip-Hop Song(s) I Love
Roses - OutKast
Fear of a Black Planet - Public Enemy
Clint Eastwood - Gorillaz

70s Disco Song(s) I Love
More More More - Andrea True

70s Supergroup Song(s) I Love
Immigrant Song - Led Zeppelin
I Want You To Want Me - Cheap Trick
Live Wire - AC/DC

80s Song(s) I Love
Pretty in Pink - the Psychedelic Furs
Sludgefeast - Dinosaur Jr
Eroded Freedom - Legion of Parasites

90s Song(s) I Love
Parklife - Blur
Supersonic - Oasis
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana

00s Song(s) I Love
Every Day I Love You Less and Less - Kaiser Chiefs
White Unicorn - Wolfmother
I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor - Arctic Monkeys

Metal Song(s) I Love
Hole in the Sky - Black Sabbath
The Hunter - Dokken
Remember Tomorrow - Iron Maiden

New Wave Song(s) I Love
Cars - Gary Numan
You're All I've Got Tonight - The Cars
Hanging on the Telephone - The Nerves (they did it first; Blondie covered them)

Soul/R&B Song(s) I Love
Get the Money - Gary Farr & the T Bones
I'll Keep On Holding On - the Action (try them; you'll like them)

Power Ballad(s) I Love

Prodigal Son - Iron Maiden (I think they're getting ballady on it)
Heaven Sent - Dokken

[I deleted the pre-1950s question, since there's really nothing I can think of]

Punk Song(s) I Love

Way, way too many to limit to three. But, if I absolutely had to...

Match/Mismatch - the Suicide Commandos
Marquee Moon - Television
30 Seconds Over Tokyo - Rocket from the Tombs

Singer/Songwriter Song(s) I Love
Choice in the Matter - Aimee Mann
Stupidity Tries - Elliott Smith
Heavy - Alison Breitman

MTV Video(s) I Love
I love videos. All-time faves? Jeeesh...

Sabotage - the Beastie Boys
Bela Lugosi is Dead - Bauhaus
Photograph - Def Leppard

Song(s) To Have Sex To
Ocean Size - Jane's Addiction
How Soon Is Now? - The Smiths
Blue Cream Sky - Experimental Aircraft

None Of The Above Song(s) I Love
Hell Hound - Sir Lord Baltimore
Freejazz - the Envelopes
Sugarless - Autolux

Disillusioned

Music: Soundgarden, "Black Hole Sun"

I'm in a down mood today, my friends.

Something that occurs to me from time to time is when somebody says they were "disillusioned" -- or experienced "disillusionment." At least in the States, that's seen as a bad thing. You know, like "I thought they were great at first, but I was completely disillusioned after seeing them."

But isn't disillusionment actually a good thing? Isn't it better to see more clearly, rather than less? I remember dating a woman who said "I'd rather have a gentle lie than a harsh truth." (I can't remember how she put it, exactly, anymore -- but that was the gist) And I remember being sort of off-put by that. All truths are harsh, ultimately. That's why people run from them.

America's a land of illusions -- the Fourth of July makes me think of that more than most holidays, like we're the Land of Liberty, Land of the Free, and people celebrate a long-ago battle with illegal fireworks, hot dogs, and alcohol, even as our country is in worse political shape than it's been perhaps in its entire history. It's a crisis that's been ~60 years in the making -- probably the moment the Department of War was changed to the Department of Defense, when our military no longer stood down, but remained permanently mobilized, when we moved from having an army of necessity to a standing army, and the Pentagon's budget bloomed into a toxic flower and then spread into a garland that hangs around our necks, heavy, like a chain, keeping us from spending on needful things, and instead engagin us in wars of opportunity abroad, again and again. Bleeding money and life and the future -- for all the talk of the Social Security lockbox (and, indeed, the moment the "lockbox" rhetoric appeared in 2000, I knew Social Security was in danger), the real lockbox is Pentagon-shaped.

Remember when they talked of the "Peace Dividend" (very, very briefly -- maybe three weeks in 1993, before it was sucked down the memory hole)? Anyway, those days are gone forever -- the terrorist bogeyman is too perfect. Never mind that a $420+ billion military budget won't...can't protect us from that bogeyman. It's incidental. The inertia of such huge spending dominates our society in frightening ways. Why do countries have coups? Because the military ends up being the only dominant institution -- all the others fade away, and you're left with the military. We're on that road, friends, and it frightens me. We need more disillusionment.

Anyway, here's to disillusionment, I guess. I'll raise a glass of existential brandy to it in a ghostly snifter and pretend to drink from it...

Somebody explain to me how these guys get pears in those brandy bottles.

Disillusion me, please!!

Bubblegum

I'll start today with a fun bubblegum song from the Fun-n-Games. I always like "a feminine portrait of grace" in the song lyric. The way they say "taste" is "tasssste-AHHH!"

THE GROOVIEST GIRL IN THE WORLD
Fun-n-Games

Sha la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la hey
Sha la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
There she was standing over by the telephone
Oh what a beautiful girl
Standing in the phone booth
Giving me a sweet look
Makes me want to give her a whirl
Hey little Judy in disguise
Lucy in the sky
Come fly with me in my balloon
Cause you're the grooviest girl in the world
You're a feminine portait of grace
You're the grooviest girl in the world
And I'm a guy with impeccable taste
Ah-yeah!

Walking such a long way
Talking to her all day
Sipping on a strawberry fizz
Playing with her long hair
Saying how much I care
Telling her how groovy she is
Hey little Judy in disguise
Lucy in the sky
Come fly with me in my balloon
Cause you're the grooviest girl in the world
You're a feminine portrait of grace
You're the grooviest girl in the world
And I'm a guy with impeccable taste
Ah-yeah!
Sha la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la hey
Sha la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la
Cause you're the grooviest girl in the world
You're a feminine portrait of grace
You're the grooviest girl in the world
And I'm a guy with impeccable taste

What are words for?

Thanks, Vesper, for another great meme...

1 What is your favorite word? Do I even have one? "Probably" is probably one I use most often. I like the wiggle room it leaves me. I like "Maybe" a lot, too, for similar reasons. I really like "Hello" because it's like social life to me -- I'd much rather say "hello" to someone than "goodbye." I like "hug" and "kiss" -- good words, good associations. "Hug" just sounds friendly -- I love to know who invented that word.

2 What is your least favorite word? Oh, man, I have a bunch. Phlegm and poop are ugly words -- I find "poo" more tolerable than "poop" -- that terminal "p" just makes for an ugly word, when paired with the leadoff "p" -- like "scoop" and "troop" don't annoy me, but "poop" does. I'd rather people say "shit" or "crap" than "poop" -- seriously! As for "plegm," well, I don't know how the Flemmish live with themselves! Hahah! I hate "Goodbye" -- goodbye feels like death to me. There are others -- as they occur to me, I'll add them. Right now, I'm blanking. Guh.

3 What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally? Honesty -- being able to stare hard at the truth without blinking, squinting, or looking away. I like that, and I respect it, too, because so few people ever really do it. Art is honesty to me -- even though art involves artifice, somehow that artifice creates truth, and I respect it so much.

4 What turns you off? Conventional thinking; fear of change; unwillingness to try or experiment. People being boring or whiny.

5 What is your favorite curse word? Fuck. Then Shit. Then Goddammit. Then Bitch.

6 What sound or noise do you love? Baby giggles or laughs -- it's impossible to find the world intolerable when you hear a baby laughing about something.

7 What sound or noise do you hate? Crying makes me sad, makes me feel bad for the person who's suffering, makes me cry, too; a sound I personally hate is whining -- I hate when people whine about something; I'd rather then do something about whatever's bothering them than hear them whine about it and do nothing.

8 What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Professional actor; I've taken acting classes in the 90s, always sort of thought about it, because I do it so instinctively, but have never fully pursued it. I'm seriously thinking of taking some screen acting classes, see what happens.

9 What profession would you not like to do? Anything that requires killing, maiming, or hurting people.

10 If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? "Welcome."

Obituary

Of course, Vesper has more cool memeish things going on, and, of course, I'm yoinking'em...

'What will your obituary say?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Abstract

Bleah

My boycat got me up; he just wanted me up, yowled me awake. There's a spider holding court in one of my living room windows, over the air conditioner, just perched there. It's overcast this morning -- the sky looks like periwinkle soaked in gray. The lake, a darker shade.

Went to some farmer's markets yesterday, the obligatory yuppie outing, right? Picked up a couple of pints of raspberries. I always like the market raspberries way better than the icky ones in the stores. Jewel, one of the large chain grocers, has what I call "insta-rot" produce -- I don't know what they do with it, but it molders so quickly. I usually go to Treasure Island, instead, which bills itself as a "Euro-style grocery store" and kinda looks like it. They have Napoleon on the side of their grocery bags, so maybe it's French-owned or something. No idea. The other chain is Dominick's, which are probably in the middle, quality wise, between Jewel and Treasure Island, at least from my perspective. Not counting some of the fancy boutique grocers out there, of which there are a few. Of course, there's Costco.

But anyway, that's why I hit the farmer's markets -- I like the fresh produce.

Hello, Kitty!

Saw this in a music store today: a Squier guitar with a Hello Kitty pickguard! Awesome! Hope you don't mind the Sun in the shot!

Tasteless

The Taste of Chicago has begun in earnest; Chicago's annual food orgy. Scary biz, that -- tons of people, scorching heat, various foods on sticks, purchased with overpriced food tickets. Avoid downtown during the Taste, unless you're a glutton (for punishment).

Happy Canada Day

I still don't know how it's celebrated up there, but kick out the jams, anyway, Vesper and Maddy!