Slouching Blog

Kafka's Diary

2009-11-02T00:19:47Z

“Gardening. No hope for the future.”

Something I'm listenin' to whilst not writing

2009-11-01T05:27:00Z

Writer's Block

2009-10-31T06:04:31Z

The original intent of starting a blog was to anonymously purge myself of complaints and banal observations both for the sake of ridding myself of them, and to share the misery with the other sad sacks of LJ. I've been avoiding -- perhaps denying -- this intent for about a week now. After reading a couple of other journals of lamentation I think it's past due to get started on my own.

A couple of magazines have opened up their period for accepting submissions. There's one online place that I've got my eye on. It specializes in flash fic, around 400 words. In the olden days this would've been a breeze. I may not have been able to pass muster 100% of the time, but I could produce something. Something I might even feel was unjustly declined.

Now, what ideas I have are abstract to the point of redundancy. I chew over the same five pages or less until the words lose their meaning. Even the material from other people that I read, while recognizing it as being quality, I feel disinterested in. The stories of joy and unique experience ring hollow to me. The dilemmas and the drama seem detached. Life is too vivid for me. Fiction feels like idolatry. There's more cruelty in a deliberate slight within the real world, than in a war on a fictionalized battlefield.

I use to defend art to the death. Art was my religion. Now I find myself rushing through books, not hearing music, feeling put upon by film. The muddled, chaotic and quite inimitable stream of my own thoughts are the only genuine experience in my life. I don't want to give up the old endeavors, though. I not only want back what I've lost, I want what I never had. I want what would seem ordinary to most other thirty year old men. But then I step up like naive Oliver Twist and politely ask for it all, as if by sincerity of desire I will be awarded, accordingly.

To struggle or transcend -- that is the question. Whether tis nobler to pursue ambition in the face of utter failure, or allow dignity and hope to be stripped away after the manner of the stoics and existentialists.

I wish, I wish, I wish. I wish I was a manager at a Denny's, drank beer with friends, could stop falling in love. I wish I could believe this cage was truly my home.

The Unnamable

2009-10-30T05:22:10Z

Samuel Beckett:

You must go on, that's all I know.
They're going to stop, I know that well: I can feel it. They're going to abandon me. It will
be the silence, for a moment (a good few moments). Or it will be mine? The lasting one,
that didn't last, that still lasts? It will be I?
You must go on.
I can't go on.
You must go on.
I'll go on. You must say words, as long as there are any - until they find me, until they say
me. (Strange pain, strange sin!) You must go on. Perhaps it's done already. Perhaps they
have said me already. Perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before
the door that opens on my story. (That would surprise me, if it opens.)
It will be I? It will be the silence, where I am? I don't know, I'll never know: in the silence
you don't know.
You must go on.
I can't go on.
I'll go on.

Black-hole, black-hole, nothing's gonna harm you

2009-10-29T16:46:23Z

I just finished reading Black Hole by Charles Burns. I'm thinking I'm probably the last literate person on earth to do so. I read Big Baby a few years ago so I don't know why I was so slow to get started on Black Hole. I thought I should finish it before they FINALLY get around to making the movie. I'm happy to hear Alexandre Aja is off the project and Fincher is now (according to Wikipedia) set to direct it. It definitely deserves a more stylized hand. Not that I think film can really capture the imagination of Charles Burns. And Cronenberg would be my choice for a body-horror story of this intensity.

And yeah, I have a chicks with tails fetish. That's pretty much the whole reason I wanted to give voice to this subject.

Oh noes! Good-looking brown people!

2009-10-27T16:13:24Z

Color My Blog

2009-10-26T15:54:51Z

I recently had a falling out with my best friend of five or six years. It really broke my heart. Around the same time a flash animator named SilverStitch from Newgrounds posted a follow up to his previous game 'Colour My Heart' that pretty brilliantly summed up my feelings. I suppose it's kind of like maudlin songs on the radio. They only seem acutely poignant while you're still stinging from romantic grief. At the end of 'Colour My World' there's a little poem that goes something like...

no mountain, nor sea
no thing of this world
could keep us apart
because this is not my world
you are

Profoundly corny, but right now it makes me want to crawl into bed and never come out. I've been listening to the theme music from Colour My Heart almost nonstop lately.

Anyway, both games are about a small anonymous stickman pursuing his true love through a monochrome world filled with discouragement. Newgrounds apparently doesn't allow embedding of media, not even music, so I'll just have to post a link.

silverstitch.newgrounds.com/

zSHARE - 201982_heartbeat.mp3

Shared via AddThis

My Ducats, My Daughter!

2009-10-26T15:35:25Z

I happened to catch Merchant of Venice on the TV the other day. It was on some chick network of all places. Sandwiched between reruns of Bridezilla. I had wanted to see it since it came out. I’m talking about the Al Pacino, Jeremy Irons version, obviously. I almost shelled out twenty bucks to order it on DVD out of a catalogue. It would’ve almost been worth it as it turns out.

Naturally, Shylock was made into an Unnaturally sympathetic villain, and the drama was bloated to cover up the existing absurd comedic flourishes. It was good, though. I don’t remember the original well enough to pinpoint what might’ve been left out, but nothing felt like it was missing. I liked the way they spaced the test of marriage throughout the whole movie instead of in one congested scene. That wouldn’t work on stage, but it fit perfectly on the screen.

Before watching it in this incarnation I took it for granted that it was an anti-Semitic story through and through. But now I’m again torn. Shylock is wronged to such length it’s difficult to hold it against him. I was surprised that they left in some of the more leading anti-Semitic lines. And even more surprised when I found myself agreeing with Shylock (Pacino with his anachronistic Yiddish accent was THAT good). His daughter was disobedient! A disloyal child is better off dead (read your Bible) and if she’s better dead, then all the better if she were dead with the jewel in her ear!

Perhaps the author didn’t intend for the characters to be absolute. Jessica fades into the background once she’s outlived her relevance (in the movie they add a bunch of ‘poignant’ scenes of her gazing at something or other).

Essentially, I think it’s a Christian (by way of Protestantism) parable about vows (am I stating the obvious?). Shylock, the miserly Jew abides law -- both religious and secular -- to such a hair-splitting extent that he loses everything. While Portia forgives an immediate and frivolous breaking of her husband-to-be’s promise. No one is really honest or noble in the story. Jeremy Irons is penitent in his tone, but his character’s lines imply a different attitude. The whole thing plays out a little like DW Griffith’s Tolerance. I imagine the original audience booed Shylock but chuckled at the ethical hypocrisy demonstrated by the oblivious heroes.

Christ in a Kilt

2009-10-26T15:34:20Z

Have you heard about the Iranian movie about Jesus? It’s suppose to be the Islamic version of the Gospel. Anyway, I figured it’d at least be interesting to see a middle-eastern dude finally play Jesus.

Check it out! He looks like an Allman Brother. Or Rob frickin’ Roy. Ach, one of ye’ll betray me. Who ye astk? Da one dat’ll nary pay fer his pint!

Anyway, I think it takes the tradition that ‘Isa’ is of a reddish complexion too far. Not to mention it’s adapted from the bogus Gospel of Barnabas.

Ask yourself, what would Fuckhead do?

2009-10-26T15:33:39Z

Best quote from Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson:

“Nothing I could think up, no matter how dramatic or completely horrible, ever made her repent or love me the way she had at first, before she really knew me.”

Dead Heart Bloom

2009-10-26T15:33:16Z

I hate most music nowadays, but occasionally a good new band will come along, and recently I’ve really been into Dead Heart Bloom. You can download all their music free from:

http://www.deadheartbloom.com/html/music.htm

I especially recommend ‘The Up & Down’ and ‘Flash in the Bottle’. A lot of it is quickly forgotten pop tunes, but when they hit the mark they hit it in the middle. A lot of their stuff has a weird faux-religious vibe to it. But very dark.

Beneath me, this awful city, it screams like an abattoir full of retarded children…

2009-10-26T15:32:52Z

I like to think of myself as a comic book nerd… but I’m not. I never kept my comics in plastic sleeves, I read them until they fell to pieces. I didn’t collect valuable pieces, I read what didn’t suck. I spent twenty bucks on an issue of Wolverine and I’m still sweating my cheap ass off over it. Can’t even bring myself to take it out of the package.

I’m hip, though. I have Maus on my bookshelf. I know who Neil Gaiman is. But I confess with no small amount of shame that I’ve never read Watchmen. Now the movie is coming out and I look like a douche. If I had been out working on beat-up cars and getting laid, it wouldn’t be so bad. But to be a burn-out and lapse into illiteracy is inexcusable.

So now I’m reading Watchmen… and it fucking rocks. It’s kind of like the bible. You think you know what it’s about even though you’ve never read it. Then you read it and it’s nothing but tits and swordfights and you wonder why churchgoers aren’t more like Lord of the Rings fans.

Rorschach is the coolest character ever. No surprise that he comes up on Google before the actual inkblot test. He’s got more riffs than William S Burroughs (see subject line).

As an act of contrition I’m not going to go see the movie. But honestly, there’s no way the movie could beat the comic.

Yes, comic. I’m still not queer enough to call it a ‘Graphic Novel’.

Gabor Kiss

2009-10-26T15:32:28Z

Speaking of comics, I’ve tried desperately to find the MySpace profile of artist Gabor Kiss. You’d think with a name like that it’d be easy, but apparently it’s a popular Hungarian name. There’s dozens of the bastard.

Anyway, I value his adaptations of Palahniuk’s ‘Lullaby’ and Clevenger’s ‘Contortionist’s Handbook’ more than the actual novels themselves. If I could live my dream I’d get my novel published and turned into a ‘graphic novel’. How’s that for convoluted? Give me a Pulitzer so I can have my own comic.

His style has a kinetic feel to it. It’s more like a memory than a representation. I personally believe art is dead. Everything is kitsch. But this, by God, is high kitsch. Notice how the backlighting turns both figures into shadows. It’s not just the con-man narrator who seek anonymity, it’s everyone. And via alienation and apathy we all achieve it. Sweet.

The Comedian… er, President is dead!

2009-10-26T15:31:37Z

When the film adaptation of ‘V for Vendetta’ was released, Alan Moore dismissed it (just as he dismisses all movies based on his work), claiming something to the effect that it was the result of Americans being too timid to produce their own satire, and choosing instead to hide behind a British accent. Well, I think I found the answer to that condescension. And it yet has a Brit origin. I’m referring to Black Summer by Warren Ellis. Sure, it’s a poor man’s ‘Watchmen’ but I still fucking love it.

Issue 00, John Horus of the disbanded Seven Guns walks calmly into the oval office and murders the President in cold blood. Full of militant patriotism and bearing quasi-Freemason symbols on his costume, he then gives a blood-soaked press conference explaining his action. In the following unbroken timeline he condemns the rest of his former entourage to the status of marked men –superheroes against the entire US government.

Poor Tom’s a-cold, and the Fool is hung

2009-10-26T15:30:53Z

I just watched King Lear on PBS, the one with Ian Mckellen. It was great.

Sylvester McCoy played the Fool. The Doctor as The Fool. Awesome.

But they freakin’ killed him! Hung him onstage! The Fool doesn’t die, he disappears in the third act!

It brings to mind how Shakespeare is misrepresented in the modern age. All the audience-play that would’ve been so significant on stage is rushed over in muttered dialogue.

The major subject in Lear is obviously identity. A king losing his authority, a son his father’s favor, a servant secretly remaining loyal to the one who exiled him. How much more meaningful amidst this play on identity would be Shakespeare’s tacit breaking of the ‘fourth wall’ by having the same actor that played Cordelia also play The Fool? On stage this would’ve been a cute wink at the audience – look, we don’t have enough actors, but there’s also subtext!

That just doesn’t work on screen. And Sylvester McCoy would look ridiculous in a dress. Especially the dress Romola Garai wore with her bosoms hanging out all over the place.

Goodbye Wordpress

2009-10-26T15:28:56Z

I started a blog using the free Wordpress template ages ago, but there was very little user inaction. LiveJournal is much more active so I decided to move my lame posts here before I start bugging people. Maybe I won't look so creepy that way.

But here's the old blog. Looks a lot better, I have to say. LJ seems stuck in the early millennium as far as customization goes.

https://slouchingpoet.wordpress.com/

Top 5 'Favorite' Celebs?

2007-08-21T01:09:43Z

(1) List 5 celebrities you would have sex with without even asking questions.
(2) Put all of them IN ORDER of your lust for them. (5 - 1, 1 is the hottest.)
(3) Say which movie/show/thing it was that hooked you.
(4) Supply photos for said people.
(5) Tag five people.

This is particularly difficult for me because I find few female celebrities (actresses or otherwise) attractive and as attractive as I think Colin Farrell is, I have no desire to go over the ‘other side’ just to compile an online list.

And let’s face it, to be considered shaggable Abigail Breslin is still way too young … in most cultures.

Have no one to tag, and I'm too lazy to look for pictures, but here goes:

#1 Shirley Henderson

I loved Trainspotting, but I barely remember her from it. She definitely won me over in Chamber of Secrets as Moaning Myrtle. And Intermission proved that it wasn’t just the one character that appealed to me. She has an undeniable tenderness and humor. She looks good with a ronnie, as well. She gets number one spot because she doesn’t seem to be changing any time soon.

#2 Young Gillian Anderson

Agent Scully was without a doubt the thinking man’s bit of crumpet. Small, plump and brilliant she was utterly at odds with the typical downloadable babe. Sadly, once the series was over Gillian Anderson bleached her hair, became thin as a board and started speaking with a weird fake British accent.

#3 Pre-op Christina Ricci

I always had a thing for Wednesday Addams and Christina Ricci pretty much spoiled the character for any other actress. She made Wednesday something new -- sardonic, strong and sexy. Tragically after becoming an Indie Film queen she got a boob reduction and brow lift that (along with blonde hair) completely changed her appearance.

#4 Kari Byron

Not really an actress, but surely a celeb. I think her inclusion into the Mythbusters TV show marked the ruination of the series, but she’s just so gorgeous her presence actually improved ratings. She's silly and Left-coast and something of a cry baby, but she’s also the quintessential pretty girl.

#5 Dolores O’Riordan

I loved her from the first time I heard her voice. Sure her grasp of rhyme is approximate and she sounds like she has more of a speech impediment than a brogue, but… her breathy love songs are the reason most religions forbid women’s voices in music.