Dax's Christmas List

Money for some books
Ninja Turtle Sewer Base
Where's Waldo the Ultimate Fun Book
Monkey Mania
Ninja Turtle Ceareal [sic]
Donnatelo [sic] Suit
Pizza Party
Shiver Me Bones
Flying Pirates

Yooper Invasion to Commence

Yo Trolls,

Paul and Tristan are planning on boarding a Bradley Fighting Vehicle they stole from the Marquette Armory and plowing our way from Ishpeming to the Mackinac Bridge, and then down I-75 to southeastern Michigan, where we will proceed to party extremely hard, wreaking havoc and leaving the area in a shambles. They will arrive on the 3oth. Be prepared.

Religious Rarities ~ Post 1: Clarence 13X

The Nation of Gods and Earths, commonly known as the Five Percent Nation or the Five Percenters, is a social and Black revolutionary movement. It was founded in Harlem in the late 1960s by Clarence 13X, who proclaimed himself to be Allah (the Arabic term for God). The Nation of Gods and Earths angered religious and political leaders, who viewed the group as a radical offshoot of the Nation of Islam, which was already viewed by conservative Muslims as heretical. This came with the Nation having stated its predicted coming, and its goal of seeking freedom, justice, and equality from economic, political, social, and religious injustices in the United States and the world over.

The group was founded by Clarence 13X (Clarence Smith), who was deified by Five Percenters as Allah, and was also called the Father or Father Allah. He is credited with originated the teachings that form the foundations of the Five-Percenter movement. Clarence 13X, a Korean War veteran and martial arts expert, was a member of the Nation of Islam, and attended NOI Temple #7 in Harlem, New York, where Malcolm X was a minister from 1960 to 1963. Following his questioning about the unique divinity of Wallace Fard Muhammad being in opposition to the core teachings of the NOI, which taught of the divinity of all Black men, Clarence was disciplined by the group, and he was eventually excommunicated sometime in 1963. This led Clarence 13X to shed his Muslim name and beliefs, and to teach his own interpretation of NOI beliefs. He found success in late 1964, with the disenfranchised youth on the streets of Harlem, and won many young converts to his movement. The Five Percenters established a headquarters in Harlem, New York, known as the Allah School in Mecca, in 1967, with the help of the Republican Mayor of New York, John Lindsay, and his assistant, Barry Gottehrer.

She made dresses for them.

This whole thing is bizarre:
http://www.instructables.com/id/EPJA77NB7SET2JXXBN/

What You All Have to See.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dmVU08zVpA

Vail Diaspora Reunion Flyer Centerpiece

Dax left this out of his post ... I got your back, Dax!

3rd Annual Vail Diaspora New Year's Summit

Here's a rough idea (from what people have mentioned) of what the New Year's celebration at Adam/Stefan/Chris/Eddie's apartment may be like [all is subject to change]:

Su 12/31

Video Game Tournament
Fields of Industry Jam + Performance
Leopold Bros. until the ball drops
Dance Party at the apartment

M 1/1

WCBN - Josh will be DJing, others are invited to witness/help out.
Rose Bowl

Unresolved Issues
1. Some people have expressed interest in arriving to the apartment on the 30th -- direct inquiries to the residents.
2. Dinner -- nominations for a place? Once we have a consensus decision, we need to confirm how many people will be there.
3. Leopold Bros. -- this was chosen by default. It has sort of a communal experience, but if people are interested in going elsewhere...
4. A huge fuckin' stereo.

This is all up for discussion.

Purchase Suggestion

Dear Dax,

Thank you for your purchase suggestion. The library has recently ordered Illustrated Guide to Extended Massive Orgasm and we have placed a hold for you.

Sincerely,
Sarah Redman

Adult Selection Specialist
Capital Area District Library

Detroit Report

I'm coming to Detroit and the state of Michigan on the 19th. I'll be in the state until the 30th. I want to buy gifts for people back here and out there all in Michigan in order to help out the economy.

I still have my beard.

Bias?

This was the cover of the New York Post the day after the Iraq Study Group report was released:

East Quad Memories

Oh, soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife
Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life
But as we go our sordid sep'rate ways
We shall ne'er forget thee, thou golden college days

Hearts full of youth!
Hearts full of truth!
Six parts gin to one part vermouth!

Tom Lehrer

Tiny Tim

A conversation with my mother & sister:

Mom: Is this Tiny Tim?
Dax: Yeah. Are you a fan?
M: [pointing her finger accusingly] YOU are!
D: What are you talking about?
M: You used to love Tiny Tim. All his records are here.
D: When was I into Tiny Tim? And why would I have blacked out--
M: I used to run all over town looking for his records. Oh, you used to go crazy over Tiny Tim.
Nicole: Are you confusing him with Weird Al Yankovic?
M: Maybe it was Weird Al... But he saw Tiny Tim on TV once, too.
N: Was it love at first sight?

More Movie Madness

Hi guys,

I haven't posted in a long time. School wrapped up fairly well. It was really difficult, the most busy I've been in a long time, but I think I did a good job. Film school's pretty cool, I can tell you more about it over the holiday.

Well! Here's a nice holiday treat for you all. Youtube goodies.

Here is my fourth directing project. Again, I did not write the terrible script. This was my first ever video with dialogue. Also, look out for the dolly shots. I'm pretty pleased with how smooth they are.



Here's a video of Nicole counting change in our apartment.



I didn't make this, but it features Greg Tonner circa 2002 as a typing ninja. It's pretty sweet.



There's a couple more oldies, but I'll save them for later. Also, check out my Youtube favorites, I've been adding to it more and more: link.

Dax also has a great favorites section going, I'm sure he won't mind if I post it: link.

New Years Plans

Hey guys.

Sarah offered to have the New Years festivities at her house. We could get a keg and just have a blowout dance party. Some considerations:

1. If people wanted to go out to a bar it's a bit of a walk
2. The floors are not carpeted, so it wouldn't be comfortable to sleep there
3. Wooden floors are good for dancing and clean up of spilled fluids (whatever the fluids may be)
4. There's plenty of parking in that area

I was thinking everyone could pitch in $5-$10 for beer, champagne and some snacks. Of course the band can still play there, and we could go out if some people were willing to drive.

What do y'all think?

Ya, guys, I completed my thesis, hmah, hmah, hmah!

Just to inform all those people who are not here to share my joy at being done with this hunky paper I've written: I am fucking done!!! Well, at least with for now, but I actually have another 15-page paper due tomorrow that I haven't started yet. Anyway, I know this is boooring, and a bit self-indulgent. But the title is "Fragments of Babel: Marginalia on Reading and Translating Miroslav Krleza." It's 125 pages long and if they don't give me highest honors I will personally go into the Comp. Lit office strapped with dynamite, suckas! Not really, I am just glad I'm done with it.

Sees ya'll at the New Year's party where I can gloat some more (that's not gonna happen, don't worry). Suckas!

Beards 1

I'm growing a beard for the break, so that I don't have to shave and will have a warm face. At work here in Cambridge, Tahar is growing a beard because this year he will be doing hajj. He snuck up behind me today and saw that I had started a beard, like him. He told me and everyone around us that this year is the year of the beards. YEAR OF THE BEARDS. He said that our boss will think that we are both becoming radicals. Samira said that no women like beards...to be(ard) continued...

Pimp: The Story of My Life

A pimp is happy when his whores giggle. He knows they are still asleep... all whores have one thing in common just like the chumps humping for the white boss. It thrills 'em when the pimps makes mistakes. They watch and wait for his downfall.

"A pimp is the loneliest bastard on Earth. He's gotta know his whores. He can't let them know him. He's gotta be God all the way."

Top Ten 2006

One thing I like about being associated with all of you is the range of interests and fields of study represented within our social circle.

So, in the hope of continued intellectual cross-pollination, I propose that we all share equal to or less than 10 ideas/concepts/theories/experiences that most captured your interest this year. This can be interpreted narrowly or broadly.

Is this cool, or dorky?

from the 'mather a' to the magnificent mile: ishpeming rap video

this features people from p**L's high school (grades above), rapping in ishpeming and chicago.

Q: is this serious?
A: it is what it is. they hired a "model" to dance in it, went to chicago to shoot it, so yeah

enjoy: http://geocities.com/arbitrarydog/NSHome

if you can't get enough: http://www.myspace.com/northsidesyndicate

i'm back

well, i did it.

December 4, 2006

Dear Dr. ****,

Please accept this letter as formal notification of my intention to withdraw from the doctoral program in * * at the end of the spring 2007 semester.

This has been a tough decision, made even more difficult by the excellent graduate program here at **** and my admiration of the faculty, staff, and students. I am thankful for the opportunities that I have been provided here and look forward to completing the academic year before pursuing other opportunities.

Please advise me of the steps necessary to complete the M.A. portion of the PhD degree as they relate to the work that I have already completed.

Thank you for your understanding and help. If I can be of any assistance in this process, please let me know.

Sincerely,



**** ******

(United States of) Whatever

Goro should record a bonus flexi-disc single cover version of this song (to be distributed with NME):



Brian could do the narrative bits, with Adam interrupting him ("WHATEVER!") and both sing the chorus.

The lyrics could even be adjusted to fit Goro's thematic concerns (fetus rape, bloody stool, Pol Pot, etc.).

Looking Good

I must say, I disagree with Tristan regarding the mirror episode. Like I said, a brotha gots to look good for the ladies (see comment). If I don't look good, I don't feel good. And, as you all know, I like to look good, all the time, everywhere, at every moment, just in case I run into some dame who thinks that she's the one that needs to be looked at, adored, well we'll just have to reverse that, she'll have to think twice when she runs into my leather boots, white pants, slick hair, sun glasses, and trench coat. Red scarf too, perhaps a little bit of cologne. Love it. Gets her thinking, her faculty of desire swells up like a fuckin' sausage. Next time she sees you, she might try to spark up a little con-vo, and then things really get rolling, all of a sudden, you're at her place, candles, ribbed condom (always). You know the routine. Walk out the next morning as if you never met the bitch, smooth, and then try to get with her friends, you know, just to make her jealous. All from a couple of minutes in front of the mirror.

What chimney?!

Just because I've been thinking about this lately, I wanted to share the lyrics to the second verse of Elvis' festive little song, "Santa Claus is Back in Town":

Hang up your stockings
Turn off the light
Santa Claus is comin'
Down your chimney tonight

For some reason I'm really amused by sleazy holiday music...except for "Santa Baby", because that's just annoying.

John the Revelator

When I visited my cousin last week he got me high and showed me this animation he did to a song off Depeche Mode's last album.



After that I watched him change the baby's diapers, which equally blew my mind.

Taco Hell

Every time I work my way back up to eating Taco Bell, another nasty thing happens.

Self-Righteous Complaint

It seems that every single time I go into the bathroom near the computer labs at NYU's library, one or two guys are intensely preening themselves, fooling around with their hair and striking various poses while they stare at their reflections. To do this properly, they often have to stand a considerable distance from the mirror, I guess so they can approximate the perspective of the average onlooker. The thing is, this means that they obstruct my path as I try to walk past the sinks, and make me generally irritable when I have a lot of stuff that needs to get done and have to waste precious seconds working my way around them. I don't remember this ever being a problem at U of M - why are people here so damn vain? I want to say "Look, just take it easy. You're fine. It's 12:30 in the afternoon at the library, and you really don't need to have the perfect amount of faux-messiness in your hair while you write a paper or do your statistics homework. Nobody is going to be checking you out, and you're just affirming all my stereotypes about New Yorkers."

To All My Friends

I'm sorry for not keeping in touch. I don't know why, I just can't pick up the phone to call anyone, nor do I feel ready to answer the phone whenever I receive a phone call. It's not because I'm too busy, just not prepared. And now so many people are angry with me or at least think I'm a prick...there's nothing I can do about that. I hope that this will no longer be the case, and that I'll be able to call everyone who's called me. I hope you've all been well.

Little Yooper in the Big Apple, Part I

While trying to get some work done on an already overdue paper this evening, I got stuck putzing around on the internet for a while, and happened to find out that one of my favorite authors, Jonathan Ames, was doing a little show that night not too many blocks away from where I sat at the NYU library. I made my way over to the bar which was hosting the show, and was disappointed to find that it was sold out. The guy at the door said that I could wait around by the entrance to the theater, however, and maybe he'd be able to squeeze me in once everyone who had paid in advance got their seats. I was number three on the waiting list, which made me hopeful that things might work out.

The waitlist was quickly getting very very long, and lots of people were being turned away, while I waited with the two people who I thought were in front of me on the list. The theater was a little room with not very much seating, and as it became more and more crowded, the guy at the door kept reiterating that there was a good chance that he wouldn't be able to get us in. Then several of Jonathan Ames' friends came in, and of course they were given priority over us, and they had to go find more chairs for the room, and I figured that I wasn't going to get in. Then three more people came, and were talking to the guy at the door, when FIONA APPLE popped her head out, not five feet away from me, and waved them in. At first, I was thinking: "Wow, that's awesome! I just saw Fiona Apple!" A few seconds later, however, I realized that because Fiona Apple got her three friends in, I probably wasn't going to get in! "Damn," I thought, "Fiona Apple screwed up my evening. Now I'm probably going to have to head back to the library and read about complex sociopolitical interdependency between states." I perservered, however, despite the guy saying once again that we probably wouldn't be able to let us in. Then I heard Jonathan Ames come to the microphone and begin the show. They were showing it on a TV in a nearby room, but it wasn't the same. I went back to the door. Then, after a long discussion with one of his superiors, the guy told the two people in front of me that they would be able to go in, as long as they stood in the very very back. I thought initially that this meant me as well, and as I readied my fifteen bucks in my hand, he mentioned that he wasn't sure that I was going to be able to go in, because there wasn't any room left. He went back in the theater to check out the situation, as I looked over to see that the names of the girls he had just let in had been crossed off the list, and that they were AFTER my name. I was first, and deserved to be let in, and he knew that, but I was not an attractive woman in her mid-twenties, and so was going to have to wait. First Fiona Apple, and now this horrible inequity!

He soon came out, though, motioned me over, took my money, and let me in, mentioning that I had to stand in the very very very back. This meant that I basically had to stand in front of the bathroom door, which was in a little recess, and peer over people's heads at the stage. Luckily, I was taller than the others who were standing, so my sightline was not obstructed. People kept having to go by me to get to the bathroom, and I had to repeatedly push myself back into the wall so that they would have space to open the door, which was annoying. I figured this was probably the worst place to be in the whole theater. At least I got in. Then, a guy nudged pass me to use the bathroom, a fairly short bald guy with hipster glasses. It was MOBY. My backpack was in his way, so I moved it for him, and he was very polite. This was an odd celebrity experience, because I really don't like Moby and find his brand of annoying whiny political activism very irritating. He's like Bono, but his "songs" are 300 times more annoying. It was still weird that Moby was a full zero point zero inches away from me - a former pop culture phenomenon! I realized that I couldn't think of any of his songs though - I kept think of Fatboy Slim, whose CD I got back when it was big, and who I imagine to be Moby's big rival.

The show was good, but not what I expected. Jonathan Ames didn't to any readings. He screened a sitcom pilot that he made a few years ago. It was really funny - all about worrying that people thought he had a small penis. Then he started interviewing members of the audience, which turned out to be entertaining. While this was going on, I noticed that Finoa Apple was standing directly behind me - she had sneaked to the back of the room, I heard her tell a friend, because she wanted to stand up. I was worried I was in her way, so I asked her if I was. She said I wasn't, and soon left. I was hoping that our mutual experience standing by the bathroom door would lead to some kind of conversation, but it didn't. She's really short.

The finale of the show was Jonathan Ames arm-wrestling members of the audience (he beat them all), and then a guy with a prosthetic vagina -the Mangina- wrestled a 22-year old girl. Not arm-wrestling this time, but real greco-roman style. She won. There had also been a hula-hooper who was very impressive, and some kind of performance artist that I don't think anybody actually liked. It was fun. The end.

CB vs. BMP: Ensuing correspondence

As is predictable of me, I've taken this whole situation far too personally and far too seriously. Joel's attitude is much better than mine. Nevertheless, interested parties can read my emails to Brooks Thomas from the past 24 hours here.

We exchanged correspondence in awkwardly formal language. I think the issue has come to resolution, though. Brooks seems distressed over our reaction, which implies that he regrets posting the review, though he didn't actually apologize.

Nasty Bear Mountain Review

Check out this review of BMP's first EP, which we recorded in my bedroom when I lived on Ann St. It made me laugh. Every other review is approximately 3x better than ours.

celestial biscuit review

Okemos related coincidence.

I spent a fun-filled Thanksgiving weekend in Mexico with a close friend of Dax's younger sister. Kristie Timber. She knows several of you.

Meanwhile, southern Texas is still warm, still dusty and full of yellow butterflies. My neighborhood includes lots of stray dogs, a drug-dealing ice cream truck, a gunsmith, a Dairy Queen, a hammock, friendly neighbors, cockfights, and mountains of grilled meat and corn tortillas.

I like it mostly.

Happy Thanksgiving

Hi Everyone,

I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving.

Office Chatter

---

"Hey John. Seen Tad?"

"He left. I guess he left his door open."

"Yeah, Big T likes to live dangerously like that."

---

"What are you up to John? Controlling the world?"

"Sure."

"I know you. You're controlling the world. Nah, you're controlling the universe. You're the controller of the universe."

---

"What's crackin'?"

---

"Stayin' out of trouble John?"

Altman

Robert Altman passed away.

Waterboarding; Experiment

After seeing the recent publicity of people documenting themselves being waterboarded to see whether Cheney was right that it's not a form of torture..... we found out with Brian that it is. The average CIA agent can last 14 seconds in this type of torture, our own B. Wiers can last for 6. None of us would recommend anyone else trying this or doing it to anyone else.


]

30 Dicks

This is a pretty funny video.

The Chirps @ MySpace

A couple weeks ago I went to Mac's to catch Kid Congo Powers who wasn't really so great, but his opening act was.

In the bathroom I complemented the lead singer on covering "Honey Hush" and he said "Didn't we go to high school together?" It was Chaz Brackx, one of the crusty punks who hung out at the dark end of D-corridor.

You can hear Chaz sing here.

I like the first song that comes up but not so much the others. They were better live, except I didn't get to close because Chaz was whipping around his cane and tossing cigarettes over his shoulder at the crowd.

The Fiery Brook

The free, objective man doubtless finds things repugnant and distateful in Nature, but he regards them as natural, inevitable results, and under this conviction he subdues his feeling as a merely subjective and untrue one. On the contrary, the subjective man, who lives only in the feelings and imagination, regards these things with a quite peculiar aversion. He has the eye of that unhappy foundling, who even looking at the loveliest flower could pay attention only to the little "black beetle" which crawled over it, and who by this perversity of perception had his enjoyment in the sight of flowers always embittered.
L. Feuerbach

The Fall Car Ad

This is especially of note to Dax - a car ad with music by The Fall.

The election and my mom, a Platonist

I was happy about the elections, though one thing struck me when I was listening to NPR. There was this woman and she said something like: "So these people voted for Democrats, and now the Democrats have to pay up. What was the issue on people's minds? The Iraq war. And the democrats have not really devised anything to counter the administration. They have been complacent from the start." My cognitive dissonance finally dissolved, and I was like "Wow, a smart voice on the radio. Finally." She had this very smart voice so it sounded more impressive, but very direct, without some bullshit "objective" ambiguity. Anyway, I talked to my mom the next day and she was also ecstatic, but then I started complaining about how fucking long it takes for people to wise up, to see the most simplest of truths etc. I told her how smart I was and how I protested the war from the very beginning and all that. And she just said to me: "Dear Ljalja (that's my nickname), people have left their caves only yesterday." Then, I thought how my mom should be on the radio saying something like: "and so the American people have finally left their caves on Nov 7. in order to put their votes in a ballot box. Let's see how long will it take them to crawl back into them." I surmise not too long. But then again, I'm a pessimist.

Chicken a la Ishpeming

This is a wonderful demonstration of Yooper ingenuity. It's this creative spirit that will lead us to sovereign statehood, and make me the first governor of the state of Superior. Or maybe this guy.

Viral video infects Swim Club

This is really really funny:
http://www.vimeo.com/clip:114601#

So now what?

I thought it might be interesting to initiate some Superfriends post-election analysis. Good questions might be:

1. Is Democratic control of Congress going to change things in any substantive way?
2. Are the Democrats going to continue to be major wusses and avoid controversy at all costs?
3. Is there anything we can actually do about the war right now? Is pulling out feasible? Are we stuck there for as many years as it takes to gain some semblance of national security in Iraq?
4. Does Rumsfeld's long overdue departure signal any actual change in the Administration's policy, or is it just a superficial way of placating anti-war sentiment for a while?
5. I only voted with the majority of Michiganders on one of the five ballot proposals. Am I out of touch with Michigan?

I'm worried that the Democrats aren't going to be able to get their shit together, and are going to try to play it safe and avoid flak in the run-up to 2008. What they should do is pass a whole bunch of legislation like a minimum wage increase, environmental protection bills, and other popular initiatives that Bush will likely veto, making him look like an evil, uncompassionate idiot. The problem is that a lot of these new Democrats are pretty conservative, and may be reluctant to sign on to progressive legislation. Hopefully I'm wrong, and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid can whip their troops into shape and try to be as productive as possible. Also, there should be a lot of very dramatic public hearings about the conduct of the war. There are a lot of people who need to be brought in front of publicity-hungry Democrats so that they can be yelled at for hours in front of C-Span cameras. I would find this at least a bit cathartic.

As for Rumsfeld's resignation, I'm finding it hard to be too happy about it. Seriously, this should have happened at least 2 1/2 years ago (I'm being generous) and he absolutely should have been gone by midway through last year. It's hard to say whether we should just get out of Iraq, or whether we have the responsiblity to stay there until things start to look a bit better. (Which may not happen.) I'd like to hear what other people have to say about this - I find it very complicated. It's easy to say that we should never have gotten ourselves into this in the first place (as most rational people did before the invasion), but much more difficult to say what our policy should be now.

This one goes to Tarek...but not exclusively

I though you might like the philosophical overtones of this dialogue, from Krleza's The Glembays. Translated by your very own...

Hollow drawing-room conversation, or philosophy?

LEONE: Obscure is the world inside us, my dear, good Beatrice—so obscure. “Es gibt zwei Stämme der menschlichen Erkenntnis, die vielleicht aus einer gemeinschaftlichen, aber uns ubekannten Wurzel entspringen, nämlich: Sinnlichkeit und Verstand, durch deren ersten Gegenstände gegeben, durch den zweiten gedacht werden!” [There exist two trees of human knowledge, which may spring from the common, but to us unknown root: sensation and reason. With the former we perceive things, with the latter, we think.] Sinnlichkeit und Verstand, leave it to one Kant to illuminate this obscure world inside us! Indeed! A Propos: Kant! Last night, I found a solid achtundvierziger edition of Eueler’s Mechanics, hidden inside an armoire in my room. This Euler, with his differential equation, perceived things more lucidly than Kant ever did! And, if you please: forty years before Kant! Euler’s Mechanics was first published in Saint Petersburg sometime around seven-hundred-and-thirty-six! And the Critique, if I am not mistaken, was published sometime around seven-hundred-and-eighty-nine! (The fall of the Bastille! A curious coincidence of nature: La Grange was born in the same year as Euler’s Mechanics: thirty-six!) Yes! What is it that I wanted to say? Oh, right? That which is absolute, mathematically crystal-clear, was elucidated by Euler forty years before Kant, and, moreover, Euler is more logical, more consequential: he expressed the Unknown in a formula! This is essential: mathematics, symbolically speaking, comes closer to the Unknown than speech or image. A mathematical formula can clearly express that which neither image nor speech can, or even music, which is, respectively, still the most mathematical. To speak speech and to express oneself through speech is artism, an altogether artistic dilemma, and Kant wrote in the style of his own time, on the wings of rhetoric, in elevated Swabian: “auf den Flügeln der Ideen!” He wasn’t able to find adequately precise material for his expression: in this, precisely in this consists Euler’s relevance and greatness! As for me, the more I paint, the more I become convinced that da Vinci was absolutely right: the thing can be determined with precision only by means of an abstract mathematical coordination. And there you have it, my internal contradiction: instead of being a mathematician, I paint. With this internal fissure, what more can a man cultivate besides dilettantism?

ANGELICA: I don’t know, Leone… I beg of you, don’t be offended, I wouldn’t want to upset you, but after our conversation last night, I could never get past the thought (I thought of you practically all night), that is, I could never get past the impression—that you exaggerate in your speech! I am afraid that you take everything as wit! You are an especially witty joker. You are willing to ruin all your life-long labors for the sake of one witty combination, all the honest passion of your labors. You are willing to compromise yourself for the cultivation of wit! And I’ve kept silent during these seven years. Thinking in the service of wit is distinctively foreign to me. “Der Unterschied einer deutlichen Vorstellung von einer undeutlichen ist bloss logisch, betrifft nich den Inhalt.”[The difference between a clear and an unclear premise is only in logic, and not in its content.” And into the realm of truth one can only enter through the heart, Leone, only through the heart: through logic and witty words, never! Jede Logik ist nur eine Scheinlogik, ein Blendwerk! [Every logic is only an appearance of logic, an ornamentation!]

LEONE: So all that remains for us is the Dominican qualitas occulta?

Three Directing Projects

Here are three little exercises from my Directing class.

Project 1:

An adaptation of the rhyme:

Rain on the green grass
Rain on the trees
Rain on the rooftops
BUT NOT ON ME!

It didn't rain so I flipped it.



Project 2:

I wrote this one. The music is a single track of Josh's guitar from Fields of Industry covering Bear Mountain Picnic.



Project 3:

My directing teacher wrote this. The couple has just had a big fight, and the wife is supposed to be pregnant. It is cheese, I know.

When I'm Alone Absolutely, As When You.

If you want to kill yourself, why don't you want to kill
yourself?
Now's your chance! I, who greatly love both death and life,
Would kill myself too, if I dared kill myself...
If you dare, then be daring!
What good to you is the changing picture of outer images
We call the world?
What good is this cinema of hours played out
By actors with stock roles and gestures,
The colorful circus of our never-ending drive to keep going?
Kill yourself, and maybe you'll finally know it...
End it all, and maybe you'll begin...
If you're weary of existing, at least
Be noble in your weariness,
And don't, like me, sing of life because you're drunk,
Don't, like me, salute death through literature!

You're needed? O futile shadow called man!
No one is needed; you're not needed by anyone...
Without you everything will keep going without you.
Perhaps it's worse for others that you live than if you kill
yourself...
Perhaps your presence is more burdensome than your
absence...

Other people's grief? You're worried
About them crying over you?
Don't worry: they won't cry for long...
The impulse to live gradually snatches tears
When they're not for our own sake,
When they're because of what happened to someone else,
especially death,
Since after this happens to someone, nothing else will...

First there's anxiety, the surprise mystery's arrival
And of your spoken life's sudden absence...
Then there's the horror of your visible and material coffin,
And the men in black whose profession is to be there.
Then the attending family, heartbroken and telling jokes,
Mourning between the latest news from the evening papers,
Mingling grief over your death with the latest crime...
And you merely the incidental cause of that lamentation,
You who will be truly dead, much deader than you
imagine...
Much deader down here than you imagine,
Even if in the beyond you may be much more alive...

Next comes the black procession to the vault or grave,
And finally the beginning of the death of your memory.
At first everyone feels relieved
That the slightly irksome tragedy of your death is over...
Then, with each passing day, the conversation lightens up
And life falls back into its old routine...

Then you are slowly forgotten.
You're remembered only twice a year:
On your birthday and your death day.
That's it. That's all. That's absolutely all.
Two times a year they think about you.
Two times a year those who loved you heave a sigh,
And they may sigh on the rare occasions someone mentions
your name.

Look at yourself in the face and honestly face what we
are...

If you want to kill yourself, then kill yourself...
Forget your moral scruples or intellectual fears!
What scruples or fears influence the workings of life?
What chemical scruples rule the driving impulse
Of sap, the blood's circulation, and love?
What memory of others exists in the joyous rhythm of life?

Ah, vanity of flesh and blood called man,
Can't you see that you're utterly unimportant?

You're important to yourself, because you're what you feel.
You're everything to yourself, because for you you're the
universe,
The real universe and other people
Being mere satellites of your objective subjectivity.
You matter to yourself, because you're all that matters to
you.
And if this is true for you, O myth, then won't it be true for
others?

Do you, like Hamlet, dread the unknown?
But what is known? What do you really know
Such that you can call anything "unknown"?

Do you, like Falstaff, love life with all its fat?
If you love it so materially, then love it even more materially
By becoming a bodily part of the earth and of things!
Scatter yourself, O physicochemical system
Of nocturnally conscious cells,
Over the nocturnal consciousness of the unconsciousness of
bodies,
Over the huge blanket of appearances that blankets nothing,
Over the grass and weeds of proliferating beings,
Over the atomic fog of things,
Over the whirling walls
Of the dynamic void that's the world...

One more thing

This is my official prediction for the way things will end up on Tuesday night:

House:
Democrats gain 20 seats to win the House. They'll have 221 seats, and the GOP will have
214.

My official, hopeful estimate for the Senate:
Democrats gain 7 seats to take control of the Senate, 51-49.

Unofficial, worried estimate for Senate:
Dems only get 6, and things are tied, 50-50. Cheney breaks tie votes, so GOP barely holds on.

Governor of Michigan:
Granholm wins by 9%.

When I'm Tired.

You speak of civilization and how it shouldn't exist,
At least not as it is.
You say that everyone, or almost everyone, suffers,
From human life being organized in this way.
You say that if things were different, people would suffer less.
You say things would be better if they were how you want
them.
I hear you and don't listen.
Why would I want to listen to you?
I'd learn nothing by listening to you.
If things were different, they'd be different: that's all.
If things were how you want them, they'd be how you want
them, fine.
Too bad for you and for all who spend life
Trying to invent the machine for producing happiness!

I concur.

But before you do, make sure you study the ballot proposals, and don't make the mistake I did by waiting until the very last minute and having to learn about them in half an hour so I could get my absentee ballot in the mail before my statistics midterm. I ended up only voting yes on prop. 5, the one about education funding. The others are all confusing, and the parties haven't been taking a stand on any of them except prop 2, which is VERY BAD and hated by all sane people. (Both the Dems and GOP are against it.) My general approach to these things is that if you don't feel entirely comfortable voting for them, then don't - they are really difficult to change once they've been passed. It's hard to figure out which interest groups are pushing these proposals, and what the complicated ramifications can be. I voted for number 5 because it looked good and was endorsed by the Michigan Education Association, the teachers' union.

For help, turn to some non-partisan resources:
League of Women Voters: http://www.lwvmi.org/2006voterguide.htm
Citizens' Research Council: http://crcmich.org/election/

To see what your ballot's going to look like, go to www.publius.org


And, at the risk of being controversial, I would reiterate that the Governor's race is still really close, and that, as much as I respect those who prefer to vote Green, supporting Granholm is very important. She has done a genuinely good job in very difficult circumstances and fixed a lot of the shit that the Engler administration fucked up. She's doing a good job, and should be rewarded. If you care about the environment, education, social services, and open government, I would strongly suggest returning the Governor to office. She said nice things about me, as well.

Remember to Vote

...If you're able. I may have been disenfranchised (absentee ballot mix-up on Ann Arbor's part), so do it for old Graham.

Simply incredible.

I saw this about a year ago, and it blew my mind. This is Tayshaun Prince from his college days in Kentucky. The last shot looks to be from about 30 feet out.

I've been working in a coffee shop

This one customer keeps bringing in this ENORMOUS lab / golden retriever-type dog. It is seriously enormous, and dumb as a rock. The lady is really weird too, she seems like she's lost some marbles. Not like 10 out of 100 marbles, maybe only 3. But definitely some missing marbles.

You see, she always gets her bag of food, folds down the top, and puts it in her dog's mouth for him to carry. Then she turns to us and gives this look like, "Check out my dog, eh?" But everyone's already seen the trick, and no one is impressed. Even if we were impressed, no one would give her the satisfaction of a reaction because she's a show-off, and just so damn proud of her stupid dog.

One day my boss, Dave, was like, "Look, you can't bring this huge dog in here, he takes up the whole aisle, sheds fur everywhere, and people have complained. The woman flips out and says, "It's a Seeing-Eye Dog. It's allowed anywhere I go." And Dave was like, "I don't understand. You aren't blind." The woman got all huffy and left.

The next time she came in, the story was pried out of her. This dog has paperwork proving that it took Seeing-Eye training. But the thing is, the dog FAILED its test, rendering it unusable to a blind person. So this woman bought the dog from its trainers, and passes it off as a real Seeing-Eye dog just so she can bring it everywhere she goes! She's NOT BLIND.

And that is just one New Yorker out of 8.2 million of them.

I was reviewing some undergrad chemistry stuff and I came across this, which basically tells me that the last 14.999999999 years, 364 days and 22 hrs have been pretty boring:


"If current views are correct, about 2 hours after the start of the universe the temperature had fallen so much that most of the matter was in the form of H atoms (89%) and He atoms (11%). In one sense, not much has happened since then for, as fig. 1.1 shows, hydrogen and helium remain the most abundant elements in the universe."

Aunt Jane & Uncle Josh

On Monday evening, Jane and I became the proud Uncle and Aunt of Gram Lane Everett Willbrandt. The hat on his head was knitted to look like a pumpkin.

Now Its Halloween

Hello,

I wanted to share some pictures. Happy Halloween. Here are the pictures. I've been pretty busy lately. I traveled to Maine with my girlfriend Natalya. I was in Baltimore back in the start of September when it was still just two weeks old for Tarek.

The Greatest Halloween Present

Okay, so I haven't listened to it yet, but come on! It's Boris and Sunn O))) together! Look at them, they're terrifying! They totally took my idea of promo shots in a corn field, though. Fields of Industry will have to do something else, like sunflowers, maybe.

The packaging art is really cool on this one. Graham: you should check it out. It's like a miniaturized LP sleeve with gatefold. There are pictures of Sunn O))) and Boris looking like corn ghosts, monolithic, glacial epitomes of fear, and of course bat-infested caves (though I don't see any bats, but that's the scary thing, they're probably right behind me!).

Happy Halloween everyone!

My zombie plan

I'm listening to "Dig a Hole" at work. It makes me very happy.

"Blasting our way through the boundaries of hell, no one can stop us now."

"Our axes are growing with power and fury, soon there'll be nothing else left."


I've decided that grad school by itself isn't that difficult.

Bear Mountain Picnic has some new songs we recorded in Lucas's basement. If you want to hear them go here.

There are also a bunch of songs from the "bipolar bears," another bear band that I'm aquainted with.


My zombie plan is to own a house with one of those attics where you have to pull the stairs down from the ceiling. That way you could hide out in there and the zombies would have not access. What are your zombie plans?

A capella

Hi all, a few things:

I've been trying to do more New Yorky stuff in the past few weeks. Last weekend I went to see an exibit of chairs designed by David Byrne. It was no "Naive Melody" but pretty cool nevertheless.

On Friday Nicole, Tristan and I went to see the singer Petra Haden. Joshua B. clued me into Haden on a mix he gave me right before we moved. Haden does a capella recordings, and to recreate her music she sang with a choir of eight women. Half of the concert was a capella arrangements of The Who's "The Who Sell Out" the other was mostly her original compositions. It was great, I hadn't seen live music since I got out here. I miss being in a band.

Speaking of music, my uncle Matt digitized a recording of the late Pa Willey singing a bunch of old timey songs, including my favorite Irish chanty, "Carrickfergus." My grandpa played Irish drum in a few bands, but I'd never heard him sing before. It's really haunting to listen to them. He does "Amazing Grace," it makes me sad as hell.

My dad bought a used Subaru Outback. He has often described the Outback as his "dream car."

I won't be coming home for Thanksgiving, we're going to do it in Delaware. I will be around for Xmas break. There's talk of a Field of Industry show, which I think is a great idea. Maybe we can have a New Years Fields of Industry Dance Party? Nic and I have talked about it, and it seems like Ann Arbor is a good location for New Years - maybe at Adam and Stefan's place? Let's start talking about this.

I saw "Mr. Big" from Sex and the City.

There was more but that's enough for now. Miss you guys. I will try to post my directing projects for school via youtube soon.

-Graham

Vincent

What with Halloween coming up and all, I thought people might like to see this short by Tim Burton:



Taquito had this to offer: "i hate how his stuff has became so trendy for all of those 16 year old fucks that think theyre dark or interesting"

Is "whiskey sauce" really optional?

Auntie Tricia's Bread Pudding:

2 tbsp butter, + some for greasing pan
3 c. loosely packed, bite-size bread cubes
1 c. heavy or whipping cream
1/2 c. milk (not skim)
3 large egg yolks
1/3 c. sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Lightly grease an 8x8 baking dish and place the bread cubes in it. Melt 4 tbsp butter & drizzle over cubes, tossing them to distribute butter evenly. Set aside.

Combine cream and milk in a small saucepan and bring just to a boil over medium heat. While this mixture is heating, place egg yolks in a small bowl and beat them lightly, as you would an adolescent who stole the last seat on the bus when you were clearly headed directly for it.

When cream mixture comes to a boil, remove from heat. Whisk in sugar and vanilla, then whisk in egg yolks. Pour over bread cubes, covering all of them. Use the back of a spoon to even things out, if necessary.

Cover with foil and refrigerate for at least an hour and up to four hours.

Preheat oven to 325*F. Remove dish from fridge and cut six small vent holes in the foil. Bake, covered with foil, until the pudding is just set: 45 minutes to an hour. When done, remove from oven, uncover, and cool for 10 minutes. Spoon into dessert bowls and top with sauce or whip cream (I used apple butter, which was delicious. Here's a recipe for whiskey sauce).

in Igor's words...

"In these days of malicious anti-Russian propaganda by the Western media, Russians can draw strength from the fact that they are still the greatest people in the world, having invented this, the AK-47-shaped giant bottle of vodka."



http://beigor.blogspot.com

Videos

Clip from "El Santo vs. Blue Demon in Atlantis:"


Villainous man with office debunks Uri Geller:


This is both terrible and occasionally really good. Thought some of you might dig it (Tricia?).


PS. The kiss-both-cheeks thing has hit grad school like a swarm of bats. Also saw a guy kissing a girl's hand to say goodbye. I have taken up eating lox on everything.

Dilettantish poverty

I am sitting at the coffee-house without coffee. I've read a great essay by Nabokov on his translation of Onegin, with occasional jewles such as the following:
"A schoolboy's boner is less of a mockery in regard to the ancient masterpiece than its commercial interpretation and poetization. 'Rhyme' rhymes with 'crime,' when Homer or Hamlet are rhymed. The term free translation smacks of kanvery and tyranny."
Of course, refering to those translators who sacrafice the textual integrity of a work on the altar of doggerel verse and rhyme. But instead of subtleties of translation, I am dogged by another problem--cash. Hence the lack of caffeene in my bloodstream.
I have scrounged the ninety-five cents in my room, but the sixty-four cents in my bank account are beyond my reach. This is because the ATM machine will only let me take out ten dollars at a time, which I am obvioulsy lacking. And the bank, which is open and around the corner, can do this only with a check--which costs a dollar. Another option is to beg, but this is problematic for me, since I have an appearence of a dilettante and a faux aristocratic demeanor, which I intend to maintian at all cost.
The point of all this, if there indeed is one, is that those 32 cents (the coffee costs $1.22) will never be acquired, speaking abastractly and dilettantishly. It is that lack which makes happiness an impossible and thus a futile pursuit. However, this does not stop me from looking at my balance every half hour in order to see if some money from somewhere will magically appear. Plus, I had to take out extra loan, but the bastards at the Financial aid office are slow as hell and don't really understand my present need for caffeene.

Thugs and the Women Who Love Them

Kyra was getting ready to come again. Damn, I should have put on a rubber, he thought. This is definitely jail bait. As much as he wanted to let loose inside her, he knew he couldn't get her pregnant. As she screamed in ecstasy, Marvin had to be still and bite his lip to keep from coming with her. When her young body stopped jerking, he quickly pulled out. Kyra was knocked out again.

Hey Guys,
I got a new truck. Here is a picture of it from a recent trip Adam, Chris, Stefan and I took to Linens-N-Things. We needed to haul a lot of drapes.

A recent thought on the irrelevance of some academic philosophy.

Regarding prescriptive philosophy (that is, those systems that tell us what we ought to do) versus descriptive philosophy (that tell us what we do, and are probably enveloped and commonly referred to as sociology and psychology). The former, I think, are irrelevant and serve no social function except for the positive feelings enjoyed by those practitioners who find themselves regularly cited as correct in their analytical dealings. These are the well-respected ethicists (that are probably not worthy of respect as their profession is basically mental masturbation). The latter of the two systems, though invasive, I think serve a better purpose and are worthy of study insofar as their output is directed toward the betterment of applied purposes, e.g. facilitating expertise in social services, as well as support for social services.

Quoting Bowker and Star from their book Sorting Things Out, "abstract schema that do not take use into account--say, maps that leave out landmarks or altitude or how readers use maps--will simply fail. (That is, common sense will be seen as the precious resource that it is.)"

Software programmers that do not take users or users' behavior into account will create products that only appear useful to themselves. Human resource managers that create overspecified manuals regarding work procedure will eliminate the discretion of employees and the ability of an organization to deal with issues on a case-by-case basis.

Let lives operate as they exist, free from the torture of being forced to conform to the beautiful system constructed by the isolated mind that is likely driven by the compulsion to be correct in argument moreso than any ideal of welfare, individual or social.

Why the hell don't my students turn in their goddamn assignments on time?

CBGBs

For you New Yorkers...

The one time I was in there, my feet were frozen because I was trudging through snow in NYC with jungle boots on. I drank a beer and rubbed my feet.

CBGBs closed down. There's a lot of photos and videos in the New York Times. It's pretty sad, but no one's that surprised. Still, though, over 20 years that bitch was kicking...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/arts/music/17cbgb.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/opinion/l17cbgb.html

Mayor Bids Goodbye to CBGB

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg expressed some wistful sadness yesterday about CBGB, the legendary punk-rock nightclub on the Bowery that closed early Monday morning after nearly 33 years in existence. “We did everything we could to keep CBGB here,” the mayor said yesterday at a news conference with Adrian M. Fenty, a city councilman from Washington who is the Democratic nominee for mayor there. (Mr. Bloomberg, 64, turned to Mr. Fenty, 35, and said, “I’ll explain CBGB afterwards.”) Mr. Bloomberg reiterated that his administration had identified an alternative location for the club, on Essex Street. But the club’s owner and founder, Hilly Kristal, has said that the cost of preparing that space for use by CBGB would have been prohibitive, and that Mr. Bloomberg would not meet with him. Mr. Kristal has been looking at relocating the club to Las Vegas. “I’m disappointed that they’re going,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “It was one of these institutions that had been in this city, I think, for a long time in the grand scheme of things — for some of us who are a little bit older, a shorter period of time.” Mr. Bloomberg added: “We’ll be sad to see CBGB to go. It will be one less thing I could do on a Friday night.” SEWELL CHAN

Diamonds are for never

I was reading an blog post on some website I linked to through another website...you know how it is. Anyway the article is about how DeBeers (the diamond company/cartel) has convinced people that "A Diamond is Forever." He remarks on their current ad campaign:

"Any one of these ads might be amusing, even charming, on its own. But there are dozens of them, all based on these same idiotic, dysfunctional archtypes. 'Carve the turkey any way you damn well please.' Think about the number of assumptions there. A shrill harpie of a wife, so overbearing that she's prone to criticizing her husband's turkey carving, yet so inept that she can't carve the turkey herself because it's a man's job. A henpecked, spineless cad of a husband, so hapless that he accepts her orders to portion the poultry but then holds onto the resentment of her criticisms of his effort. A relationship so broken and twisted that his purchase of a blood-tainted rock from a monopolist cartel would appease her superficiality enough to get her to relent from her sniping at his performance of a trivial act. And this seems like a bargain because this man is so emotionally worthless that he couldn't just say, "Hey, if you want me to carve the turkey, you should probably be less critical of how I do it."

http://www.dashes.com/anil/2003/01/20/diamonds_are_fo

Zeno; Goethe; Leibniz; Pessoa; Leibniz

If there are many things, the things that are, are unlimited; for there are always others [i.e., other things] between things that are, and again others between those. And thus the things that are, are unlimited.

Don't do it! responded the captain, who unhappily crossed-out the convictions of others with his own while he from experience had learned that the views of men are much too multiple for them to be able to be gathered, even through the most rational representations, to one point.

There are no two indiscernable individuals. A nobleman with the spirit of my friends, in speaking with me in the presence of Madame l'Electrice in the garden of Herrenhausen, believed that he could well find two leaves entirely alike. Madame l'Electrice challenged him, and he ran around for a long time searching in vain for them. Two tastes of water, or of milk, seen under the microscope will be found to be discernable. It is an argument against the atoms, which are not less opposed than the void, according to the principles of true Metaphysics.

A row of trees in the distance, toward the slope...
But what is a row of trees? There are just trees.
"Row" and the plural "trees" are names, not things.

Unhappy human beings, who put everything in order,
Draw lines from thing to thing,
Place labels with names on absolutely real trees,
And plot parallels of latitude and longitude
On the innocent earth itself, which is so much greener and full
of flowers!
(7 May, 1914).

INDIVIDUATION, PRINCIPLE OF. "...his doctrine of a complete concept and of the identity of indiscernables. Given that no two individuals are identical, every individual substance has a unique complete concept in which is contained all the predicates that are true of it and which underwrites its identity a priori."

What swagger!

I hope some of you watched the Tigers game last night. Detroit earned their way to the World Series in dramatic fashion. Score tied, bottom of the ninth, two out, and Magglio Ordonez hits a massive home run to win the game. It was simply awesome, and became even more so once I read this in the Free Press:

With Detroit waiting for a hero, Magglio Ordonez turned to Tigers clubhouse assistant Tyson Steele in the dugout.
"You got the champagne on ice?" he asked Steele, before stepping onto the field in the bottom of the ninth inning. "It's over."

I think Magglio's approach is representative of the Jarosonian method. If you live a truly militant life, you will become so focused on your goals and so totally prepared for any possible situation that a positive outcome will be virtually assured. It's this kind of swagger and confidence that we tried to teach to you guys. Many of you, unfortunately, couldn't even summon up the resolve to finish a skinny paperback sci-fi book. Think of Magglio, and reconsider your relationship with the Jarosonian Institute of Knowledge. It's not too late to learn how to hit your own "home runs."

Queen + 50Cent = Q-Unit

Interesting remix, similar to the grey album. It's about a year old so maybe I'm late on this.




http://www.q-unit.net/

Watch out, trolls!

I was amazed to stumble across a blog devoted to one of my primary political concerns - securing the way for the eventual secession of the UP from the State of Michigan. It hasn't been updated since January, but I hope to learn who this enlightened citizen is. Have you seen this, Paul?
http://superiorland.blogspot.com/

Why Bollywood is pretty alright.

Friends,

Months ago my dear housemate Diana sent Claire, Marlowe, and I some Bollywood music videos that she had procured in Indonesia. This event opened my eyes to a whole new world, where 80's dance moves live in perfect harmony with electro-indian music and long-haired boys in spandex. Having just found the soundtrack to the movie Dil to Pagal Hai at an Indian import store (oh the benefits of city living...), I was inspired to look for the music video online so I could share it with you. As far as I can tell from the excerpts on the DVD from Indonesia, the plot has to do with two rock-star dancing babes who are both after the one male rock star singing/dancing babe, who is the actor appearing in almost every single Bollywood blockbuster from the last few years. I also highly recommend "Are Re Are" and the "Medley." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86p8wwltniA

Michigan Walk of Fame

Something wonderful has happened! Just this month the first inductees to the Michigan Walk of Fame were honored with bronze plaques in downtown Lansing! And they are accepting nominations for the next wave until November 1st! Go here to make a nomination:

http://www.michiganwalkoffame.com

There are so many C-list celebrities who deserve the honor, and now the whole world will know they are from Michigan! Pick your favorite: Bruce Campbell, David Alan Grier, Timothy Busfield, Art Clokey, Roger Corman... The list goes on and on! Now the great state of Michigan can properly honor her offspring...

I went with the obvious choice for my nomination:

"Iggy Pop has given an untold number of teenagers around the world a voice through his work in the late-60s proto-punk band The Stooges. A charismatic frontman, his primal energy inspired a whole generation to express themselves through music, and is known globally as a musical icon."

And why would 4th graders be interested in learning about Iggy Pop?

"Because he showed the world that the most important thing is to express yourself, no matter how unpopular your style may be. If you are true to yourself, you will one day be recognized as a unique individual and a visionary."

Radio Show

For those that don't yet know, there is a small piece of the Swim Club/Vailian diaspora on the airwaves and streaming online in the form of my freeform show Monday afternoons from Noon - 2:30 on WCBN. That's 88.3 FM in Ann Arbor and www.wcbn.org online. Call me and tell me to play songs.

Joshua

My weekend update

Lots of good stories popping up on here lately. I don't have as good of one, but here's what I did this weekend:

Fields of Industry played at the DAAC in Grand Rapids on Friday. Our friend Sarah Schaefer played casio and drum, and I accomodated for Joel's absence on bass by running my guitar through an octave pedal and into a bass amp in addition to my own usual setup. Caught up in the moment, I decided to open with "I've Never Been to Spain" (I think that's what it's called) by Three Dog Night--previously covered by the Suppertime Boys.

Saturday night, Eric and I played at the DAAC again, but this time we performed as Krasnoff, the sludge metal band we've been talking about doing for two years, but never actually doing. Krasnoff is a character based on a man of the same name that used to visit the public library branch I worked at. He used the library computers to write outraged letters to public officials on a daily basis and was prone to empassioned and violent outbursts as he chicken-pecked on the keyboard, some of them antagonized by computer illiteracy, but most of them brought on by the angst built up in his soul. The songs we performed are called "Will to Power", "Krasnoff's Rise" and "Betrayal", coinciding with Krasnoff's ambitions, his ascent toward the achievement of his ambitions, and the betrayal he suffers at the hands of his enemies. Upcoming chapters include "Krasnoff's Revenge", and "Take Back the Glory".

Long weekend in Roma.

I found this movie at a library sale yesterday and bought it for 7 cents. I'm excited about it.

I'm In the Buisness of Killin'

What up you pimp ass sleazy-motherfuckers. I'm glad to see that Shit has made it into a major talking point for the blog. The other day I was at a bar with some friends. We had just finished watching Godard's "Contempt" at the Johns Hopkins Film thingy, and decided we'd go have a drink. At the bar, some guys were playing pool, and a friend of mine wanted to play. I suggested to the other dude that we put some money on the game, cuz you know I got that machismo complex, at least in public. The guy sneered at me, and told me to buy him a beer. I laughed and walked away. Later, when I was having a discussion with a friend, the guy came back and started acting up. He said something like, "That's not cool, man...you better watch it next time." I said, "I was joking, relax bro...this isn't the right time." He says, "What's your buisness here anyway?" At this point, I was already quite drunk, and this guy was irritating me, and I felt that impulse of anger rise up, the excessive, the pure hate. I looked at him and said, with sinister eyes, "I'm in the buisness of killin'". I don't think he expected that. I know I didn't. He had a pool-stick in his hands, and could have easily struck me down. But he didn't. He thought I was crazy, and said that I should finish my beer and walked away. I don't know what would have happened had he decided to fight, I guess, at that moment, I was really ready for one, ready to pick up a glass and smash it in his eye.

The saddest thing in the world

Here in Harlem, strands of synthetic hair roll around like the wind-blown tumbleweed of the wild west. It either slips out of hairbraiding shop doors, or it is ripped off of nappy heads in catfights. Either way, it is here in abundance, and I have often had to do a skip-jump to avoid getting a clump caught on my sandal.

Yesterday, having a cigarette outside the post office, I looked down and noticed a pigeon with a mat of pre-or-post-hair-weave hair caught on its feet. The bird was doing a bit of a skip-jump himself, unable to walk like all the other pigeons. This was deeply disturbing, so I got out my Swiss army knife scissors and attempted to lure the bird in. I was getting closer, and put out my half-smoked cigarette for good measure.

Imagining throngs of people (or pigeons) celebrating my good deed, I inched closer and closer to the pigeon, my miniscule scissors at the ready. I was fully prepared to get pecked and shat upon, should I succeed in catching the crippled pigeon. Suddenly I noticed one of his little feet was mangled, slightly deformed, and it occurred to me that this poor pigeon has had a mat of hair weave for shoes all his life.

Just as the pigeon was within my grasp, a MOTHERFUCKIN ASSHOLE cock-walked down the sidewalk, plowing right into my pigeon-rescue zone, without just cause. The pigeon flapped away and a homeless man laughed at me from his post at the trash can, muttering something about futility.

The Dax is Back!

Ignore that previous post. Adam is a shithead.

Yay!! I joined the blog!!! Yay I'm Dax!!!

blood of virgins

dear friends,

while i'm an avid reader of the scsf blog, i've never actually posted anything. i wanted to take this opportunity to tell you all that i'm getting along just fine; grad school is engaging, i'm really into it, especially my libraries through the ages course. allow me to present an excerpt from my "medieval library circulation: practices and policies" textbook:

"for him that steals, or borrows and returns not, a book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. let him languish in pain crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to his agony till he sing in dissolution. let bookworms gnaw at his entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not. and when at last he goes to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him for ever." obviously librarians have lightened up in the last 1000+ years.

on another library related note, i came across this catalog record while at work: "cursed at birth, the beautiful and ruthless young erzebet becomes obsessed with achieving eternal youth and begins to bathe in the blood of virgin girls in order to preserve her beauty. based on the life of the 'blood countess,' who lived in hungary in the 1500s." and i for one thought goro's lyrics were entirely original. tsk tsk. see - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Báthory_Erzsébet

any whooo, dudes, take care.

yours, justin


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speaking of poo...

This is an excerp form my tranlsation of Krleza's essay on art:

"The great seigneurs received Persian emissaries and envoys of conquered nations while seated on chamber pots, which were given the name “topferl” in Maria-Theresian Vienna, and “chaise percée” at the Versailles of Louis the Sun King; phalanxes of hired drummers, quills, paint brushes, trumpets, flatterers and poet-courtiers stood in circle around this vulgar chair of Versailles, thus creating apotheoses on canvases, pathetic chronicles, legends, dithyrambs and hymns in stone and in words. And in order to hide the difference between the majolica of this apollonian chamber pot and ordinary plebian pots, artist’s hand had to adorn this courtly porcelain with decorative motifs; consequently, le chef d’oeuvre of this digestive throne became a brocaded antependium, a masterpiece of French embroidery, which beautified this all-too-human function in the honor and glory of ludicrous debasement and self-defecation that has lasted in human art even seventy thousand years before Dostoyevsky."

In fact, for an essay that delas with art, "bowels" have a very prominent place, and appear more than a few times.

Poo.

(Article copied from Alternative Library Literature, 1996-1997, p.34)

Ever notice that whenever you go into a library or bookstore, you have to shit? I always thought it was just me, but then I read an interview in the zine “Office Supply Junkie” with a woman who collects office supplies, and she brought it up.

Jeaneen: Buying a lot of office supplies kind of ties in with like, if you go to the library or sometimes a bookstore and you have to go to the bathroom. Tim and I have always talked about it, some of our friends have mentioned that too. Whenever they go into a place where things are organized and collected, especially a library, they have to go really bad.
OSJ: Often the same thing happens when I go to a thrift shop. And it’s not a feeling like “I have to find a bathroom soon.” It comes on real fast.
Jeaneen: Oh, yeah! Yeah!
OSJ: I used to think it’s something with all the banks of fluorescent lights, that the electromagnetic field was affecting my bowels. But it may be tied to this urge for buying filing supplies, or books, and being in this environment of organization, of anality.

That sent me to a library to search through the works of Freud. After a quick trip to the restroom, I found this in “Civilization and its Discontents”:

“The most remarkable of these character traits in an individual is found in the anal eroticism of young human beings. Their original interest in the excretory function, its organs and products, is changed in the course of their growth into a group of traits which are familiar to us as parsimony, a sense of order and cleanliness – qualities which, though valuable and welcome in themselves, may be intensified till they become markedly dominant and produce what is called an anal character.”

Intrigued, I asked some librarian friends about their bowel movements. “Libraries and bathrooms have always been a fascination of mine,” admitted zine curator Billie Aul of the New York State Library. “My study of this problem has led me to think that it hasn’t got anything to do with how anal libraries are. Rather it has to do with standing up for a long time looking at things that are just above your eye-level. It probably only works with people who like books, as I think relaxation has something to do with it.

“This phenomenon has important implications for bookstores,” she added. “Borders recently opened one of their chain stores here. I’ve tried to support the smaller local bookstores, but I always find myself at Borders. Why? I think it’s the bathroom. If the other stores would open their bathrooms to the public, I’m sure much of their business would return.”

Next in line was Jan DeSirey of the Hennepin County Library near Minneapolis. “For me it has to do more with guilt or anxiety,” she says. “I get anxious in bookstores. And the library I use most frequently is the one upstairs from Technical Services, where I work. I always feel rushed and guilty up there, no matter what I’m doing. Would therapy help? Deep breathing?"

Jan pointed me to an article from the September 1994 issue of Esquire in which Jerry Seinfeld reveals that he too has to poo whenever he’s faced with shelves of neatly organized books. The writer of the article describes going into a bookstore on Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles with Seinfeld, “despite Jerry’s lifelong knowledge that bookstores affect his intestines as would any laxative. ‘I think it’s the quiet. It creates some sort of rectal anxiety, if you’ll pardon the expression.’”

Finally, I contacted Nancy Bonnell-Kangas of the Columbus Metropolitan Library in Ohio and creator of “Nancy’s Magazine.” She suggested I start a zine, “Public Pooping: Libraries, Bookstores, Bodily Functions, Different Peoples’ Experiences, and Possible Explanations.” Don’t tempt me.

Originally printed in Chip’s Closet Cleaner, no.13 (1996), pp.33-4

O, how i shed tears for you, O Diaspora of Vail!

I am in the throes of thesis writing, familiar to some of you of more masochistic nature. Herb, in more than one sense, is helping (If only!).
Dear friends, do not soil your feet by stepping again into Vail. For she is no more...
The Nazi-hippy colonialists have stripped her of her identity, her vulgar idiom, and her future. The picture of Stephen, that brilliant youth with eyes like celestial doves, rots in the shadows, waiting for its redemption. Alas!
Seriously though, those shits have really gone too far. Yet I can't resist alone. Annie said she will be the avant-garde, or the remenant of the old-guard, but truly, has it come to this? Perhaps...
Please think of strategems to freak-out the sqaures that inhabit my and your metaphysical abode.
Otherwise, things to think about (my buudy ol' pal Frankie and I do this all the time at Ol' Town):
Where doe highjinx come from etymologically, especially the jinx part? No dictionaries allowed!
What about rapscalion, that saucy word that needs a codpiece to complete its meaning? (I think I just turned into one of those fat Renaissance fair dweebs, pardon!)
Anayway, that's enough for me. I had no sleep, you see. The dogs are howling from melancholy and the pastures are all mine, being deserted, at this time of night...

Video

This is a directing exersize I acted in over the weekend. Thought it was funny. I didn't have anything to do with the directing or writing, but I'll post some as I do them. Maybe don't watch it with the music?

PS. Dax is tracking down the footage from the "Point of Contention" shoot, and I'm going to edit it at school. Coming soon!

Ross' New Cell Phone Number

My new Address and Cell Phone number is as follows

413 Hoyt Hall
Ypsilanti, MI
48197

New Cell Number
734-218-5891

Give me a call!!!

Peace
Ross

Does anyone remember the McDLT???

I don't. But Jason Alexander sure does:

http://www.retrojunk.com/details_commercial/43/

I can't stop watching this, because the "jingle" is completely nonsensical. I can't detect a pattern or beat or rhythm in any way at all. Plus, at one point, they break into blabber-talk. Watch the woman in the red striped shirt. There's something about her...

Long Live the Queen

I'm interesting.

Hi all,

I thought an update would be a good idea. Also, how's everyone doing? What's that? There's stuff going on in your life? Well post that shit!

Columbia is a real full time job. I usually get up at 9:30 and I get back in the evenings, sometimes around 9. My classes are good for the most part, although I've been in crisis mode on and off since I started.

For one thing, people keep saying my stuff is "not interesting." "Interesting" is the most valuable currency at Columbia University. People are like, "I was a lawyer in Mexico City and I gave up my practice for the love of art films." And Columbia licks its lips and goes, "Mmm, how interesting!" One of my teachers criticised some of the class because we were too young to have done something interesting with their life. Fuck you! I moved into a one-room apartment and went tens of thousands of dollars in debt to study something completely ridiculous. That's interesting!

I have a screenwriting teacher that is really rough and nasty. The first thing she said to me was "Stop clicking your pen, it's masturbatory!" Her criticism is sometimes spot on, other times you have to pretty much ignore it or you'll get trapped. Because of this teacher, I became really defensive. I've been separating as much of my true emotions from my writing as possible. I've been developing a feature script that is really schematic - all logistics, no heart. I wrote a short script that had some heart in it, but got scared and scrapped it. The script I wrote in it's place was really cold. The characters were all cyphers acting irrationally. I didn't know how to end it, so I just had one character kill the other!

When I got my prof's notes on the script, she basically said it was so distant she didn't even understand what I was going for. I realized that I was being WAY to protective. There wasn't anything in there that had anything to do with me. And so, I'm going to try to put myself out there a lot more.

A funny turn, I've been really getting into my producing class. I might even major in producing, just so I can take more producing classes. This is funny, because I hate legal forms and math. But Columbia teaches a form of producing that's very weird. They even encourage a producer-screenwriter model, which is very unique to the New York film scene and Columbia people in particular.

My classmates are great. There's a "cool kid" group, but that's to be expected. It feels a lot like when I first went to high school. I get that "Where do I sit in the lunch room?" feeling sometimes.

Also of note, I went to get my haircut before class on Friday. I walked into a barber shop and asked if they were open. The hairdresser, a short Latina woman, nodded and had me sit. Then she told me she didn't speak English. I told her in my broken Spanish that I wanted long on the top, short on the sides. She gave me sort of a baby David Lynch. See photo below.

Love,

-Graham

Our little corners of the world

2005 Ten Safest Big Cities
(500,000 or More Population)
1. San José, CA (1)
2. El Paso, TX (2)
3. Honolulu, HI (3)
4. New York, NY (5)
5. Austin, TX (4)
6. San Diego, CA (7)
7. Louisville, KY (6)
8. San Antonio, TX (8)
9. Fort Worth, TX (10)
10. Jacksonville, FL (-)

2005 Most Dangerous Big Cities
(500,000 or More Population)
1. Detroit, MI (1)
2. Baltimore, MD (3)
3. Washington, DC (2)
4. Memphis, TN (4)
5. Dallas, TX (5)
6. Philadelphia, PA (6)
7. Columbus, OH (7)
8. Nashville, TN (8)
9. Houston, TX (9)
10. Charlotte, NC (-)

(2004 ranking in parentheses)

I thought this would be interesting, given the large number of Swimclubsuperfriends cities on the lists. Look, NYC is way safer than anyone imagined! However, I can't find anything about whether they use the crime stats per capita or overall.

Source: Morgan Quitno Press, based on 2004 FBI Crime Index
www.morganquitno.com
www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm

Chu Are A Donkey, Mr. Danger

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI0_VzFxTzs

Winkie.

One of the books randomly chosen for me to practice with during my training at the new library job was called Winkie. I think you all need to be aware that this exists:

"In Clifford Chase's achingly funny and surprisingly moving debut novel, a mild mannered teddy bear wills himself to life and winds up on the wrong side of America's war on terror.

After suffering decades of neglect from the children who once loved him, Winkie realizes that taking charge of his fate is as simple as knowing that he can do it. He hurls himself off the shelf, jumps out the window, and takes to the forest. But just as he is discovering the joys and wonders of mobility, self-determination, even love, Winkie's luck ends.

Having come upon the cabin of a reclusive professor, the bear finds himself surrounded by an FBI SWAT team, who instantly conclude that he is the evil mastermind behind dozens of terrorist attacks that have been traced to the forest. Terrified and confused, Winkie is brought to trial, where the prosecution attempts to seal the little bear's fate by calling upon witnesses from the trials of Galileo, Socrates, John Scopes, Oscar Wilde, and the witches of Salem.

With a cast of characters ranging from a lesbian Muslim cleaning woman to a stuttering lawyer and a Lacan-spewing bear cub, Winkie offers a scathing commentary on the paranoid times we're living through.."

The inside cover is decorated with headshots of a teddy bear. The LC cataloging data is listed as 1. Teddy bears -- fiction. 2. Terrorists -- fiction. www.freewinkie.com

New Front in the Graffiti War

But while Mr. Romero prepares to head to the studio, “BNE” remains at large, a fact that no doubt wears on Officer Christopher Putz, who oversees the San Francisco Police Department’s two-person graffiti abatement unit. Officer Putz, who has been on the graffiti beat since 2001, takes his work seriously; he will not allow his face to be photographed and he gives his age merely as “in my 30’s,” for fear of tipping his hand. “It’s a chess game,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/us/17graffiti.html?hp&ex=1158552000&en=019f6f0f717e5136&ei=5094&partner=homepage