Tuesday, February 28, 2006

I spent a year in Kentucky one week...

A free trip somewhere I’ve never been, no rules, no parents and five good friends of mine, and I complain about it. Like any good American.

We think about it and we talk about it sometimes. Anyone can say anything, but all you hear is it was boring, or it sucked. Mostly it didn’t go anywhere like an anticlimax doesn’t go anywhere. The only events happen far away from the competition we came to see.
Collectively we do nothing.

It’s six friends and we talk about nothing because there isn’t anywhere to go. We talk about sex. We talk about philosophy. We talk about evolution and religion. We decide that Logan is the cynical one of the group. We watch video of car and boat accidents, shown in slow motion again and again, on TV. We decide that Cliff is the nice one who is slightly cynical. I’m a vegetarian at this point, so I eat french fries and an apple pie. They eat hamburgers and french fries. Avery is the only one brave enough to try the Big Mac soup. We decide that Peter is the cynical one of the group. We talk about Kurt Vonnegut books. We talk about the economic state of the 1970’s and the 1930’s and then we talk about girls. We decide that I’m the cynical one of the group.

Mike is just racist and Avery is only a jock who has pecks that look like boobs. And Billy could be cynical one day, but he’s younger right now.

We walk around town one day and now it’s a weekday. There are no shops, and the few still around are closed. There are no movie theaters.

These are the roles we play for the week. Before that curfew we even argue about what it means to be cynical and assign terms, saying you’re a cynical bastard and I’m just a cynical asshole.

It’s Saturday and already dark. Mike and Avery leave for a dance. (Mike and Avery are the ones that the rest of us know are not as intelligent but we never say so out loud.) The four of us left talk about the past. Peter’s been in something like this, and he tells us about how you never do as well as you should in the competitions. He says it always feels like something’s left unfinished, even when you’re stuck on a nowhere campus or in a nowhere town.

None of us talk about the competition much after this. We talk about the stupid, racist things Mike says. How he either doesn’t realize he’s is racist but how he is racist, or how he pretends he doesn’t realize he’s racist but how he is racist. We laugh when Billy tells us about Jack maybe masturbating, or something, in the middle of the night, in the bed they’re sharing. “And I wake up and the bed is, like, shaking.” At the end of the week we’re telling stories about the trip like it’s a reunion: our lives already separate with only the past in common.

Nobody wins anything. We get on a plane, we fly home.

I decide to write a story about it six months later. Once it’s in the past and it feels like a different life of mine.

The writer talks to Peter and Logan and Mike, saying how he wants to write a story about the whole trip. He needs to ask them about Kentucky. Try to figure out what they think it meant, he says, if anything. He always asks them for that meaning in one sentence or less, to be used creatively in a short story; a gimmick. All three say something, but no one is satisfied by what they tell the writer. Maybe they will get back to him with something better tomorrow, or whenever they think of it.

After that Logan sends the writer a three-page e-mail where he tries to interpret the trip. The email is about what it could have meant to other people. What it should have meant in our lives. “Had we won the competition, that is.” Mike doesn’t say much. He denies being racist. “At least we had a cool group of kids because otherwise it would have been even more pucking (sic) awful”. Peter doesn’t seem to be able to talk about the trip in the positive or as an answer and not a question. “What wasn’t wrong with Kentucky? What didn’t suck?”

No one can figure out the lesson.

The writer imagines the six of them at a reunion. They talk about how Jack maybe masturbated on the bed. Avery's implants. Big Mac soup. Not the competition.

Kentucky is an odd memory. The writer tries to make up a line too. Instead there are three thousand words where the writer describes things other people said and stretches the truth to make the story have a plot. There was also one quote the writer kept around – his rainy day fund – that fits the anticlimactic story with no resolution. So he used it. And it’s not his.

“The book says, ‘We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.’”

And maybe years later the writer will revise the story so it makes more sense. Or less.

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Saturday, February 25, 2006

And thought it was...

Now, this is just a story. How I remember things. But the question I’m asking about stories (true or false) is can they change things. Can this help?

We were friends during Sophomore and Junior years in High School. (Good friends we’d say.) And I did have a crush on her the entire time.

We talked to each other a lot during school (we seemed to have a lot of classes together). A lot through email. And occasionally over the phone. Naturally, since it was me, we didn’t hang out at all outside of school.

(I presume) we trusted one another and told each other things we didn’t tell other people. I felt like Taylor’s secret friend. (For a while my friendship with Taylor was the most important relationship in my life.)

But nothing really ever happened between Taylor and I, good or bad.

At the end of Junior year I stopped having a crush on Taylor, and – with due to her constant absence Senior year and boyfriend Brenden – we stopped talking. There was no fight or conflict... everything just eased off and eventually stopped.

Still, I tell a story (something that happened) where I’m a Freshman in college. I’ve not seen, spoken or thought about Taylor since Alexis’ party (graduation night). I bump into her on campus. We chat for a minute and I give her my email address.

She emails me a couple of times. I don’t respond, or maybe I do. She sends another email and I send her an email saying that I have no interest in being her friend again. That I don’t think we have or had anything in common… That I don’t want to find out if we do… That it’s a past I no longer think is possible... That I don’t care to explore or reinterpret the details and events ( I didn't that day as a college freshman and don't even now as a graduate student).

It wasn’t the nicest thing I’ve ever done, but I didn’t want her to think we were going to have a relationship like the one may or may not have had in High School.

So, there's a story.

Can this help?

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Friday, February 24, 2006

Netflix Two Cents: Oldboy

Oldboy (2003)

Verdict: Live squid eating! Live teeth pulling! Live gas masked menage-a-trois? Gorgeous, sinister - but ultimately a letdown.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

i need your love

WHY DON'T THE RAPTURE UNDERSTAND THAT I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT THEM?

shake shake shake shake shake
shake shake shake
shake shake shake
shake

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Entertainment!

Let's play a game.

Websites Content Barrier X will not allow Mark to see:

1. Mystery Link

2. Mystery Link

3. Mystery Link

4. Mystery Link

5. Mystery Link

6. Mystery Link

7. Mystery Link

8. Mystery Link

9. Mystery Link

10. Mystery Link

Okay. I am done. Your turn. [Jeremy cannot participate]

Monday, February 20, 2006

Scopic Fixations

We have all heard the stories about how Renshon is now a cyber-NARC for Citigroup - hell, I wouldn't doubt it if he was combing through our e-mails back in the days of IMP - but I was talking to a buddy of mine who works the same position for NASA, and he informed me that they have a policy that the most porn an employee can watch during a work day is three hours. 3 HOURS! Apparently they are worried that any more will interfere with 'company time.' I have visions dancing in my head of programmers testing particle accelerators with Riding Miss Daisy going on in the background. I'm no libertarian, but only the government would allot that much time for 'normalizing the vector:' "Boys, we won the Cold War; go knock yourselves out."

I tried to verify this by punching in NASA + Porn into Google, but this was the best I could come up with.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

IHOF: Modern Humorist

The Valentine's Day poem posted below got me thinking about the comedy in my life circa the turn of the millenium. Trust me, nothing deep or profound [that was what your were assuming, right?], just a nostalgia for the allusions and jokes circulating around my Freshmen year of college. One site in particular, Modern Humorist, provided me with plenty of agony and ecstacy during those delightful post-Y2K years.

Now, I am no internets scholar, but it always struck me as a shame that while its comedic contemporaries McSweeneys and The Onion continue to thrive, the Modern Humorist has slipped into relative obscurity. It was certainly not due to a lack of quality in the humor: from the parodic genius of the Holy Tango of Poetry to the now defunct (that is probably symbolic somehow) AskJeez, there were quite literally times when I was ROFL (and NIC5 had some painful linoleum floors). Back in our precocious days, Mark and I sent each other more then a few MH links including the the preview of the (then) upcoming Radiohead Album, OK, I Did It Again.

In 2003 the site didn't go out with so much as a bang, but a whimper as the founders left for greener pastures (and by that I mean talking heads on VH1) and the site was left abandoned with nary a mention of their plans to never publish new material again. I don't think the owners ever really found a way to generate enough revenue, and from interviews, it sounds like the website was merely an exercise in marketing-branding so they could move on to bigger and better things (and by that I mean talking heads on VH1).

Revisiting the site, it is sparser than I remember, but plenty of the humor (Real-Life Worst Case Survival Handbook: Orchestra Seats at 'Aida'; The Haunted Chatroom, a glimpse into AOHELL; WWJD?) has held up amazingly well over time (although the Darva Conger reference may have you rubbing your chin for a second or two).

So, Modern Humorist, provider of so many laughs and so many disappointed mornings of no updates:

I salute you.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

somewhere i have never traveled

an oldie, but goodie from valentine's day five years ago:

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

will you not ride the bone rollercoaster with me
for such small hands means not small salami

e.e.cummings

Only Love Can Break Your Heart

In honor of Valentine's Day, I offer you the greatest love song of all time...

Savage Garden - I Want You (Savage Garden)

Why lie?

Monday, February 13, 2006

Linguistic Update II

The expression goes that: Those who don’t learn history are destined to repeat it.

On further consideration a more accurate version would be that: Those who learn history are destined to repeat it.

Please make the necessary updates as soon as possible.

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Sunday, February 12, 2006

Well Excuse Me Judge Reinhold

Arrested Developed died the way it lived, uncompromised and unwatched (2.0 rating/3 share v. the Turino opening ceremonies). The meta-incest jokes of the Family Ties episode ("Marry Me!") were mind-blowing (away! you forget to say away again).

It was Arrested Development... :(

Saturday, February 11, 2006

They Are Night Zombies!! Part XII

"I don't know what it's like to be homeless, but being on exile island is a pretty good taste of what being homeless is like." - Bobby Jon Drinkard

In its twelfth season, and third visit to Panama, Survivor seems to have jettisoned any pretense of grounding itself in the symbology of the local indigenous culture (you know, like pirates from the Pearl Islands) - one of the reasons constantly cited to explain the show's success - in favor of the ridiculously arbitrary. Zombie heads? Wooden snakes? Exile Island? If anything, this season has its most obvious parallels to its Panamanian predecessor, All-Stars, in that the hook is based entirely on deviations in the game mechanics. So far, I am disappointed that the tribes were merged so early, and we will see if the hidden Immunity Idol will have more of an impact than last season when it merely delayed Gary's inevitable boot.

Yet, despite these faults, Survivor XII has come out of the gates as one of the more entertaining seasons as it has upped the wacko quotient by at least five. Splitting the group into four tribes really helped the editors cut together a decent premiere and it took no time at all for the contestant's neuroses to bubble to the surface. The schoolyard style merge was hilariously painful as all of the lunatics seemed to attract each other. Poor Melinda never stood a chance. Would you against a hippie-skippie turtle funeral director, a phyllophobe, and a psychotic chain-smoker?

This season has brought the crazy and I love it.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Love Is A Deserter

Mark, you hussy. I can't believe you are cheating on me.

And I had to find out like this?

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Karmacoma

Well, Goldenvoice has made my decision that much harder.























Massive Attack, along with Ted Leo + Pharmacists, have just been added to Sunday's line-up. On their website, Robert Del Naja mentions that they are going to be playing the Dusk Till Dark set on the main stage; he also dropped a little info on their recording sessions: "BEEN RECORDING PLENTY OF STUFF TO BE WORKING ON IN THAT SPACE BROOKLYN SESSIONS WITH TVOTR AND POSSE WERE AMAZING-GOT DOWN SO MUCH-7 SONGS/ VOCALS/ DRUMS/ PERCUSSION/ VIBES/ GUITAR/ BASS AND HORNS." Last night, I listened to a bootleg of the Vienna concert off their Mezzanine tour and they sounded amazing. Massive Attack is on the list of favorite bands that I still need to see live.

So, here is the plan. You all go to UrbanOutfitters (I know, I know) and enter your name in the Coachella sweepstakes. When you win the Grand Prize, you will gracefully take me with you as your guest. We will chill and drink Andre with Common and Devandra Banhart. I need you all to enter because the only thing I have ever won online was this back when I was 14.

Yeah, well at least it was autographed!

Monday, February 06, 2006

In It For The Money

As I enter the back-nine of the Winter term, my postings are going to become more sparse and incoherent (and prone to winded discussions of the OC - thank God Johnny was finally sacrificed to appease the perverted gods of the ever-contracting, incestual Newport world). Somewhere in the next five weeks I am supposed to conjure up a thesis on Transnational Fascist Ideology (yeah, I should probably post about that sometime) and a seminar paper on the Archeology of Fetishism. The latter seems much more exciting (titillating?) as I get to read academic journal articles such as "Freud's 'Fetishism' and the Lesbian Dildo Debates."

Super Bowl XL has come and gone; a mostly dull, lackluster affair. Ben Roethlisberger' s 22.6 (!) quarterback rating was the worst for a winning QB in Super Bowl history. By far the biggest loser of the day (besides all the chumps who bet against me), however, was ABC who [fumbled/punted/was forced to take a safety/threw like A.J. Feeley] throughout the broadcast. When Randel El landed on his head during a punt return, my friends and I were concerned whether he would walk again. The last image before the injury timeout was of Antwaan grabbing his back, but when ABC returned from commercials there was nary a mention of his condition. Was he hurt, paralyzed? We were left in the dark until he mysteriously reappeared on the field a few plays later. That was simply inhumane. ABC similarly left us clueless on stats all game. Fox, despite its penchant for trying ridiculous new camera technologies (bullet-time anyone?), always bombarded the viewer with even the most trivial of details.

And what was up with ABC's series promotions? Shaq pimping out Desperate Housewives, let alone making a free throw? Advertising Grey's Anatomy as anything other than the most insipid hour currently on television (a bomb in the chest, I mean really, come on - two weeks ago the main plot point was whether or not a dog was more important to Grey than George... umm, don't ask)? What marketing genius thought up the Lost + Robert Palmer spot?

Poor form ABC, poor form.

Saturday, February 04, 2006

I’ve never felt so stupid

The reading list is massive. The “thesis” for the class obscure. And my teacher whispers. (Sometimes I’m sitting three feet away, and I miss some important thing she says.)

Yet, I still think I want to be there (even if I did briefly look at dropping the class and replacing it with the more obscure “Thesis Hours.”)

The thing about the class is that I feel like I don’t have the basic body of knowledge that I should. The class is called Studies in Writing and Pedagogy, and (as I’ve mentioned before) it’s mostly Communications of Education students. In that sense, I don’t quite know the vocabulary. And everyone else’s analyses or explications always feel slightly odd –– in that I can’t predict that they would come from that direction.

I think – ultimately – it will be instructional. But for right now, I’ve never feel so stupid.

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