Shut Up and Eat Your Beans!
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "armadill0" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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12:53 pm
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Oh Myspace, where were you for the first 23 years of my life?
NOT EXISTING FOR A GOOD FUCKING REASON!
This is one of about 30 daily bulletins compulsively posted by one denizen of my "friends" list (or FLIST, if you will):
>Date: Feb 16, 2007 12:27 PM
>Subject JC Died
>Body: I BET THAT 98% OF U WONT REPOST THIS!!!!
>When Jesus died on the cross he was thinking of you!
>If you are one of the 2% who will stand up for him then repost this w/the title: JC died
>JC=jesus christ
2%? Stand up for him?
I'd love to do a deep analysis of this particular chain letter, but I'm afraid it might turn up something so frighteningly unsubstantive that it turns the world's matter into "grey goo"; sort of like unpaired strange-flavor quarks are theorized to be capable of. Or am I a little rusty in the particle physics department?
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12:13 am
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Watching me watching myself watching someone else watching me watch myself watching "Inland Empire"
How meta is meta when it's in its 4th remove? This is certainly not the point of the movie, but this question of layers hearkens back to 19th century Irish novels-or at least a couple of them. This is the disjointed Lynch that almost focuses itself without really seeming like it's trying and then proceeds to observe itself refract again; by which I mean that while you watch you gather what nuts you can and try to catch glimpses, possibly refractory, of the tree they're falling from.
The imagery is stunning. Absolutely. The meticulous attention to surface, light, shadow and color is of course characteristic of Lynch; so is the pedantic presentation of objects and faces, which become motifs in the almost crystalline structure of their recurrence. The objects are certainly iterations of stock stage props: a gun, a screwdriver; they function, strangely enough, as anchoring centerpieces in the undulation of imagery. The faces effect an expressionistic repetition that is much of the momentum among the onslaught of imagery. The population of characters is familiar: Laura Dern and Jeremy Irons are the two most recognizable to me, although there are many others with former Lynch appearances. The music is once again brilliantly phase-matched with the other aesthetic elements. Much of the ambient noise is familiar from an aesthetic standpoint as well. These sort of Lynch "tropes" add an inevitable aesthetic deja-vu, but by no means is this movie as a whole simply another iteration of his style even if it contains such iterations; the climate is Lynch, but the weather pattern is novel and as such difficult to forecast accurately.
The narrative is, as I said, refractive as it enters Lynch's low-tech digital camera and kaleidoscopic as it leaves the projector. As gleaned post-viewing through reviews, the narrative attempts to vilify Hollywood through the unabashed presentation of images from Lynch's own "Inland Empire" (his mind) by using a number of different scene types and images, somewhere on the spectrum between apparent and abstract. I think this is somewhat oversimplified, but in retrospect it's certainly present. Some of the images bely such categorization, however: a recurring sitcom featuring anthropomorphic rabbits; a connection to Poland and an Eastern European circus troop. While helpful, it seemed impossible for any of even the most compelling reviews to consider the dimensions of the film. Most tellingly, the negative reviews-at least the ones I found-are either overly dismissive or downright idiotic; not liking the film because it's "weird" and lacks a "coherent plot" are ample doses of ipecac to have me vomiting on the shoes of the source of such vapid commentary.
While I was watching I didn't consider, explicitly, the implications of some of the images for Hollywood. For me, the most compelling elements are those of space, time and texture. Time, of course, is not linear in the film; neither is space. However, rooms become linked in an inextricable network in which the characters and scenes recur; one incarnation of Laura Dern wanders into the room where the human rabbit sitcom takes place while being watched on a television by another woman who is kissed by Laura in person (in her imagination) which is shown on the television as well and who subsequently goes on to have a fond reunion with the man who is otherwise identifiable as Dern's husband and as a Polish circus performer who tends to the animals. I'm having trouble wrapping this up in any blanket narrative description; suffice it to say that whatever good insight there is about the plot, there is much to consider, although it is no more or less than meets the eye.
Enjoy the inexorable parade of images and sounds.
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12:29 am
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Food for Thought
Suggested reading: The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan.
This book offers a good analysis of how food production works (and doesn't work) in the United States. The book is well-written and most speculation is well-referenced and fairly equivocal; i.e., the author considers more than one viewpoint (in fact he considers many). If you want explicit factual knowledge to expand what some of us already knew implicitly about the food system in a modern market-driven economy, this seems like a good place to start.
Although I haven't finished the book, I've already been surprised more times than I would have thought; my nausea at our way of life has grown considerably and I sort of wish I could retroactively vomit up quite a few "meals" I had earlier in life, although I probably wished that BEFORE I began reading this book. C'est la vie; read it.
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11:41 pm
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Holy shit, I'm updating mmmmaaaaaaaa!
The impulse to put something here was like an inducted current in my fingertips. Now, what was it? Oh, ya!
These images are strangely comforting to me; I'm not entirely sure why that is. Anyway, that is one big fucking thunderstorm, although it doesn't even come close to the severity of middle/south-U.S. thunderstorms of the early spring through late fall.
Also--Pan's Labyrinth: it is worth seeing. Even though it contains one of the more jarring scenes of violence I have watched in at least a decade (it made my jaded self dizzy to see it) it is a wonderful film, albeit one that I was scared to continue watching for fear that said violence might worsen or change forms; in reality it merely continued at a slightly less acute level. There is a creature in the movie that is awakened by the protagonist eating grapes from "his" feast table and who subsequently (the creature, that is) inserts his eyes into holes in the palms of his hands before giving chase. And this is all set during the Spanish civil war of the 1930's and 40's...
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02:16 pm
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More meat for the grinder, fuel for the fire, paper for the shredder...
Vernon Robinson runs for North Carolina congress on the "traditional American values: The Twilight Zone" platform; watch his ad here. (save link to watch video).
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10:27 pm
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Oodles and ends
Noone reads this shit. Oh well; so what? I just saw "Good night and Good Luck" and I feel compelled to offer observations, even if it is to a nonexistent audience. Senator Joseph Mccarthy's voice was certainly the frightening voice of the demagogue, full of pathos and passion. Strange that the politicians of today could have so little resonance with him in this regard and yet still effectively perpetrate their schemes in the public eye with little backlash. Maybe the problem, as the movie touched on, is and has been the same: television; more specifically, the general numbing effects of media in general on people's senses of right and wrong. Whether or not that statement is inclusive enough and also disregarding the question of "whose right" and "whose wrong": popular culture seems just as vacuous and (duh) oblivious to politics and current events today as it (apparently) was in the 40's and 50's during the Mccarthy era. That said, the movie was not about popular culture per se; it made a couple of fleeting references in the form of commercials and lectures, some of which were reenactments and/or fictitious. The real focus was on the workings of the CBS newsroom as it reported on Mccarthy, offering counterpoints and criticisms to his assertions and accusations.
Although adding little to what little I knew already about the era, the movie offered a sort of slice-of-life view of the dangers of dissent and also of the dangerous power of the demagogue, portrayed through the telecasts of Edward R. Murrow of CBS and his associates. The movie was presented in a stark black and white, with plenty of obvious attention to light/shadow nuances as well as tasteful camera shots. In its attempt to capture the fervor of the newsroom, the movie did very well, visually and otherwise. The dialogue came across as overly metered at times, however; the constant interruptions seemed exhaustively cued by the script, giving them an artificial flavor. It also became apparent that any subplots in the movie (a marriage between reporters at the agency, apparently prohibited by company rules; the friction between Murrow and his superior at CBS) were mere happenstance and that the real focus was the importance of critical reporting in the outing of Mccarthy as obsessive and dangerous in the use of his power as a senator, as was echoed by other members of the senate. I found myself enriched by the content of the movie but unmoved by the interactions and tribulations between and of the characters, whose purpose was more suited to a reenactment in the sense of a documentary. In some ways this was successful in portraying a sort of mood and in examining a sort of history of the era; in other ways it failed to transcend the newsroom melodrama that dominates its content, as in the end the insight offered on the informative and historical aspects is extremely limited and mixed in with the limited character and plot/subplot development.
All in all, it was enjoyable and entertaining but certainly fell short of being truly compelling aside from its apparent timeliness; we certainly could use a large amount more of critical reporting these days. Perhaps the movie's best point, then, is that the media has a responsibility, regardless of the topic, age, or variety of relevant political and economic pressures, to provide objective and critical viewpoints on current events that will inform and enrich its various audiences. In this sense the movie certainly portrays at least one media outlet that appears to live up to this manifesto much more fully than any of today; whether or not this is an accurate portrayal of the CBS of the 1950's is beyond me to confirm without more research.
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09:35 pm
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Teleology, smelly-ology
In a universe without an assigned purpose, we are all happy little clams free to adhere to the rock or other hard semi-porous surface of our choosing and suck sweet salty tidewater.
Oh ya: since I haven't posted in awhile I thought I'd drop some knowledge about some of my favorite words (most of which were gleaned from The French Leiutenant's Woman, a "post-modern" Victorian romance novel).
Courtesy of www.hyperdictionary.com:
Eyrie: 1. Any habitation at a high altitude.
2. The lofty nest of a bird of prey (such as a hawk or eagle)
Obfuscate: (To) make obscure or unclear.
Teleology: A doctrine explaining phenomena by their ends or purposes.
Reify: (To) consider an abstract concept to be real (concrete).
What fun!
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07:47 pm
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A plastic universe
I encountered a strange sort of "deja vu" today as I viewed a plastic planter from my deck. I often feel a sense of horror at realizing that objects like said planter were created somewhere by humans and that the world is strewn with an unfathomable amount of detritus that was made at one time by mankind, if only by the mere push of a button or pull of a lever. It's almost overwhelming to me to think of the complete obscurity that spawns these strange, dejected objects. Sometimes they're useful; often they are poorly made but serve some nebulous purpose. My perception of them is uncomfortable at best, a sort of embarassed acknowledgement of the extremely specialized purposes of man-made junk. We live in a world of polymers and polyamides. We wear them, break them, piss in them, sleep on them, listen to music that is burned onto them; we breathe, eat and drink them as they leach out and become our environment. We throw them the fuck away when we're sick of them; they will remain as time capsules, as glimpses into the life of the same race from which, today, come cries of "intelligent design" and "apotheosis of the living world", long after we've joined the dust they lay in. What a fitting irony that a pen cap and a dental floss dispenser wheel will stand forever referential to the glory of the productive capability of humanity.
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07:14 pm
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It's all a bunch of horseshit
I mean, of course, the media. Because it is. There is nothing substantive about it and furthermore, there is often something far more insidious in the constant slack and flood of news, commercial broadcasting and "entertainment". This is more along the lines of "beating a dead horse" than producing any truly enlightening thoughts, but allow me to describe a situation:
While at work, I listen to the constant blare of a classic rock station while I pound cheap pieces of metal into sheets of plywood. This station is a compromise between sweet silence and the buffoonery of KVI talk radio, which my "workmate" seems to enjoy. What both stations share and, in fact, what all commercial media shares, is a manipulative aspect so banal and patronizing that it almost seems stupid to bring it up. Well, I already have, so I might as well proceed. KJR classic rock, which features every overplayed "hit" song you never wanted to hear even once more, has a set of faux-genuine "listener raves" that are really just orchestrated advertisements for the station. One woman claims that KJR "gets her through the workday"; another exclaims that "rock is fun"; yet another expounds on the glory of hearing "only hits--no obscure music". I know, I know: these are obviously just obnoxious, stupid blurbs that anyone other than a blob of human jello can ignore. But hearing them day in and day out, along with an incredibly trite guitar riff, I begin to see a more devious plot at work. Akin to the mood-sensitive pastel color scheme (as a queue from you, Paul) commercial media seeks in various ways to jolt or soothe, to alienate or to bring into the fold; these attempts to stimulate act as gentle hammer blows, slowly culminating in a reduced ability to be objectively critical. This manipulation only lacks product placement, which is duly provided by commercial breaks between 5 and 20 minutes apart.
KVI (KTTH; whatever) isn't even worth discussing other than that it seems to use "indiscriminate anger" as a stimulus while KJR uses "perceived comfort through nostalgia", much like a golden oldies station would. "Kube 93" could likely be described as using "intimidating rap-culture iconography and machismo", while "The End" caters more towards a feeling of "disaffection and hopeless uniqueness that prevents one from bonding with others, but it's o.k. because we can all listen to angry, distorted music".
Whether I exaggerate or not, I've listened to these stations and feel that this mood typing isn't accidental, especially with all the commercial stations essentially under one conglomerate "roof", so to speak. I'm sick and fucking tired of listening to the same rock songs over and over, but I'm even more put off and even worried by the attempts at zombification that intersperse the musical drone, and hope that this subject seems to many people just as obvious and cliche as it does to me.
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07:48 pm
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Wanker
Back from B.C., and I can say that we are all well protected from any of the terror that runs rampant in Canada. Our border is like a selectively permeable membrane, through which only good, God-fearing citizens of America who Support Our Troops and whose Colors Don't Run and who know that Freedom Isn't Free can pass. The best bumper-sticker I saw on the way (I initially thought this one was facetious; it wasn't) was this: a star of David with JerUSAlem (U.S.A. in appropriate patriotic colors) boldly emblazoned on their back windshield, coupled with a license plate bracket pertaining to some Bible association. I suppose I'm actually pondering whether that's pro-Isreal/U.S. or some sort of Neo-Nazi "Zionist Conspiracy" satire. Who knows.
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10:44 pm
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Blargablargablarg
Shaking off yet another bi-weekly bender, I find the feeling is getting old. Hangovers certainly are a uniquely rotten punishment for having "too much of a good time". Oh well, it's better than getting VD. Unusually motivated today, I spent two hours in traffic driving my friend to the airport, after which I made a well-deserved trip to Musashi's where I enjoyed the foods of both land and sea. I like to try to incorporate as many critters into my meals as possible, including flying fish roe (Tobiko). The pure joy of eating Tobiko can only be attributed to the popping of thousands and thousands of tiny fish embryos between my teeth and basking in their saltiness.
I've been strangely apathetic lately, at least as far as having any meaningful opinion or input is concerned. I wonder if my cynicism is slowly morphing, ready to emerge from its rough-hewn casing as a brilliant butterfly of love and positivity. Then again, it's more likely just festering away, trying to find new ways to express itself, new pinnacles of vulgarity previously unreachable. The more I talk about personality traits as distinct entities, the less likely I am to have good mental health.
Therefore, on a brighter note, I'm headed to Squamish, B.C. tomorrow so a friend can photograph a couple of us climbing 800 ft. of brilliant stone. I think happiness is the chance to get away from the daily force-feeding via the newspaper spoon, as they say (they=Burroughs). So how to stay informed without tickling the flimsy, thin pages of the morning paper? I would certainly know far less about the Monorail funding crisis, among other jewels of knowledge. Oh well. I'll try to post some sports action photos on here sometime in the near future.
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11:11 pm
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No
Many greetings.
Another month and I have learned nothing but a little humility.
I learned:
-That I can fall and hurt myself repeatedly whilst attemping to walk on easy ground in the forest.
-I am lazy.
-I can browbeat myself into jumping off 60 foot cliffs into water, even when I think it will kill me for sure.
-Beer is expensive in Canada, and piping hot "Molson Black Label Supreme" is no safe answer.
-Crossing the U.S. border sucks a flaming, demonic cock because the Department of Homeland Security hires only assholes, washouts, deadbeats, (my hardrive just kicked on...are they listening?) ex-vice-cop shitbags, fuckwits, numbskulls, nerfherders and irresponsible twits (twats?). They couldn't find their collective dick with a fucking flashlight.
-I apologize for the voracity of the previous point.
-No, I don't.
-Is Canada better? No. My disappointment was palpable at the moment of this realization. They still aren't likely to start any wars anywhere, though.
Fuck it. What humility could I possibly learn through cynical observation? Well, as I struggle with power tools for a meager ration of extra cash, I realize that I expect way too fucking much. Out of myself I expect a glorious path of blazing fury: whatever I do must forge ahead of me like some mystical act of fate, like some incredible winding road that only could have been produced by Intelligent Design. Then there is always reality, as close as it always is, retarding my blithe aspirations. Or rather, exorcising my idiocy. There is nothing worse than a sense of invincibility; you can't learn one goddamn thing if you think nothing can touch you. Or if you think you can somehow proceed without sweating blood first. Or if you're dense as wet sand on the beach.
The point is, I only take note of great realizations like this one, these incredible breakthroughs in perception.
Then the sarcasm drips off the edge of the page.
It thunders away into the scroll bar.
Maybe I will type in this box more often, says I, but who knows.
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05:46 pm
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I don't remember writing that last one.
I really don't. Also, I can't understand it completely as it is poorly written.
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03:17 am
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Politics...or something.
Fuck it..
I can barely type a word if I know it will end up on"line". The prospect of being monitored by some undisclosed entity makes me hate the fact that I am somehow limiting this argument, that I am somehow encouraging the weak and silent to speak up. That said, I realize I am updating a 'livejouranl', not a goddamn neo-con fascist death-monger website; as far as I'm concerned, WE WIN MOTHERFUCKERS! Because your sites, even your blogs, are incredibly idiotic; your ideas are moot points, your presence suggests mere idiots.
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01:56 pm
[Link] | I will hereby submit my first link post to an article regarding
something I always knew but simply lacked the resolve to voice as a
concern. The headline is particularly grabbing: Unborn babies carry pollutants, study finds.
We can now rest easy, knowing the source of all of those nasty industrial carcinogens we've been worried about.
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10:40 pm
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They should call it "Ass-land"...huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh
And it wouldn't be the first time I attempted to coin that term...
aside from the plays and the restaurants, it is essentially a land of jail-bait ass to tempt even the most stoic shitbag with its...underage-ness.
The cottage I'm staying in has strange realist paintings of little nymph boys and mothers, etc. on the bedroom walls.
Luckily I've been hiking alot to counteract the melancholy of the town. Well, technically it's not the town that's melancholic, but that's not the point.
The POINT is, right now, to be honest, that my body wants to atomize into girl-seeking particles and...well, you know the rest.
There won't be no atomizin' in this neck of the woods, I reckin (sic).
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02:25 am
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A slight breeze
Summer is here.
The last yellow rose is slowly derailing itself from the bush in my front yard, petal by petal. I know summer is on its way when I can waltz about at 2am observing such things. Tonight I returned home only to hear the sound of drums beating somewhere in my neighborhood; holy shit, something other than silence! So I grabbed one of my flutes and meandered over to the next block, where I played for an hour or so to the beat of some hand drums which altogether weren't so bad. Especially when a certain girl took a drum and I instantly fell in love and, as always, ended up leaving for home in contemplative solitude, trying to picture her eyes and her fleeting congratulatory touches to my arm in response to my (mediocre, as I see it) flute playing.
If only. But earlier on it was the same. And later on it will doubtless be the same again. I'm beginning to feel the weightlessness of drifting, alone in my proverbial barque, rowing feverishly. The feeling is familiar; a few weeks ago, while climbing a 25-foot boulder alone in California, I lunged for the top and as my hand latched the sloping edge, my feet cut and I felt my hand slip a full 2 inches before my other hand caught the underside of the roof I was climbing over. I fully felt the weightless surrender of falling and half expected, half wondered at the prospect of pitching off backwards onto rocks, scree, and a pine tree, a landing sure to break at least both my legs, if not my back and neck as well. Instead of falling, I held fast and managed to get my other hand up over the lip and onto a large knob which ended my predicament. I spent a shaky five minutes thinking about the "why" of climbing, eventually settling on the fact that most of the time, it's worth the risk. When it isn't, it is necessary to contemplate the mentality behind pushing oneself to the very brink of destruction and perservering, even if it is only a highball boulder problem on a sunny morning in California.
But that weightless feeling of an almost sure fall...that feeling seems to haunt me through other aspects of my life, in situations where I cannot meet its challenge simply by holding on with body, mind and soul, clutching tenuously for the most subtle grains of the rock; when my physical and mental strength are no match for the social intricacies that life presents, I indeed feel weightless. And an almost biological urge produces a melancholic frustration...and yet the feeling itself is strangely exhilirating...I think sometimes I begin to understand, even if on the surface it feels like yet another anguished longing...
There is always a certain breeze tickling my face that says it is otherwise...and these days that breeze is getting warmer and sweeter day by day...
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07:27 pm
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California...
Soon I will be traipsing around the hallowed forests of Yosemite valley...or at least around the back of the four-star Awahnee hotel. Ah, nature. May we always have structures with windows so we might look out upon its glory. Wouldn't want to touch it, though. Ew.
All sarcasm aside, though: Yosemite. Rock. Sleeping outside.
Yum.
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02:06 am
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A CONSISTENTLY pointless activity at least. DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS, PLEASE!
Oh trim fiddlesticks in gossamer trump cards,
I primp and pluck thee gleaming trill creams,
starry night as stinky as rosebud pall bearers with a cryogenic, swooning love.
Hello, I'm whimsy and my trim is no apotheosis of neatness
or of filth; mere bubble wash and middling frenulum marks my speculations;
did I spew sprinkles or indeed did a doughnut, a torus, make its way
MOLYBDENUM! around my psycho-babble?
Snicker, snicker, snicker.
My id has sticker-shock from boobs while ego is inflated to a large factor
by xenon, I think I've got it; "it" being the dimple-faced super-ego
already mid-coitus in some mid-grade smoky layer of dimension.
Hark! Mine ears doth hear a kiss of some catalytic converter eeking out a niche
in some underside of some automobile driven by some precocious dame,
all cotton-swaddled, who already has several wives and several concubines,
all of which must fall within the standard deviation of fame and fortune and sling
and arrow both must penetrate and relegate to coldness my aching libido
until a copacetic space is glimpsed in the penumbra of chastity,
a scrimshawed whalebone prophylactic erected towards the sky;
oh the cimarrons must sigh and butt heads,
wool-clad maidens must claw their ways up mountains,
I pick ripe fruit from summit trees until their pain sensor nerves are demyelinated
and I must leave them to regain their rough, woody exteriors.
On the way down I find the wool-clads dowsing in the scree
with isochronal iteration, swing, swing, ding!
Oh that I had my whalebone, inscribed maniacally with mystic runes
of a type discernable to anyone with two eyes and an urge
to defenestrate someone of the opposite sex into their bedroom
in order to fulfill the nebulous urges of a rigid semiotic "shaft"
which might be interpreted symbolically as either restlestness
or fertility; metonymically I strive for clarity
which is actually purpose;
Oh my terrene pleasures, so multitudinal...
Oh, here a bevy, there a bevy.
My chicken-shit complacence must become learned, AHOY.
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02:22 am
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And another...
Pointless day? No, more dribble!
I must be wary of myself as I type, for I have indulged excessively in the truth serum, if there is such a thing as an excess of it.
And the tired march on. I noticed that I fit in rather well into the human organism; I display all kinds of characteristic power struggles and befuddlements. As I watch menacingly, my fingers strike the keys in some strange algorithm of memory and I create something between the boundaries of existence and oblivion, this layered strangeness unto which I type.
Those aforementioned gray boundaries have started to twinkle in some way as well, even as they make less and less palpable sense. I can see them, I think, like layers of wafer cake between frostings, but then what is frosting? Hydrogenated life in some structure-twisting catalytic derision...drifting...
The characteristic befuddlements..."you are human"...good gosh god deity yes! But I have zero trans fat. I am more human than thou, knave!
Because I fucking think so!
Even if I don't really think, merely react to stimulus!
But oh, what stimulus! Guv'mint firewater, sex impulse, populating the world with my demon spawn...
Or would they be angel spawn?...
Depends on who I fucked...
And maybe my half would be recessive...
You can't count on things like that, though. You can only dream. And hope you somehow benefit the organism. Because is there really any way you can harm it? None of our diseases seem entirely ubiquitous. There's a definite instinct undermining all dogma and so-called "truth" that's been discovered so far. As long as the instinct exists our acid/base truths won't melt a hole in our purpose paradigm, the one that has a new sea-change, as-they-say, often enough to keep the framework rather cherry.
A sea-change in the dominant paradigm.
I love how they talk in the seemingly infinite offices...
for one day, they will "go under"...
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