The Milk Rooms

ANTIQUES - JWNS

2011-05-09T09:42:00.001-07:00

I haven't been posting much lately because all my creative energy has been going into this:

ANTIQUES - JWNS, out june 28th

I'll be in the shit working on the website and school until late June. Please keep your eyes peeled and follow me at the ANTIQUES WEBSITE for updates, art, videos, music, and info. We should have new singles coming out soon. Album drops on June 28th. It is amazing, truly. Hear the first single here.

I just put up a RIDICULOUS video today -- something about me spinning around a lightbulb upside down and the military ballet.(?)

After this dies down, I'll be back here, don't you worry, wit as acerbic and razor-sharp as ever.

This Post is an 8.7: Brief Thoughts on Pitchfork and Internet Music Journalism

2011-02-18T12:52:00.000-08:00

(I wrote this a little while back, but it seems timely with some of the speculation about the new RH album.)

People obviously take reviews on the internet a little too seriously and have a very aggressive stance toward Pitchfork. For me, I remember discovering Pitchfork when I was in High School (2000 or so) and I just used it as a way to discover bands I didn't have any other access to. I grew up in a small, rural town with no radio market for alternative music let alone an artistically-minded music scene. The only record stores were FYE and Borders (although to give Borders credit, they had quite a lot of listening stations and some of their college-age employees were forward about introducing music and hipping me to some things I never would've picked out for myself). For me, the internet and internet music journalism was a good means to an end, a way for me to explore and feed my eclectic and expansive music tastes.

But when you read the reviews, they obviously feel amiss. Nothing written in a music review is ever a valid substitute for a truly aural experience and attempts to capture that (especially on Pitchfork where the approach to music journalism is so pretentious and cliquey) often fall far short of describing what is truly great about music: immediate nervous interaction.
Even now, Pitchfork readership is just a matter of convenience and not of devotion to their semi-postmodern gospel. Now that I live in the city, I could frequent local record stores with niche markets and see unknown bands at clubs, but it's nice to test them out for free first via Pitchfork or any other blog that caters to my tastes. I'm a graduate student with very little money and what's more, I'm tired of the way youth culture has perverted the excitement of music into a vehicle for their immaturity (which is why I avoid all ages show like the plague... kids these days, etc. - get off my lawn!) The mistake people have is that they think they either have to read Pitchfork like sacrosanct commands or reject it out of hand as a sad faction of hipsterdom with domineering, ubiquitous control over the music world. Has it ever crossed anyone's mind that it might be neither and that taking either reaction is sort of fashionably knee-jerk?

Do I resent the fact that Pitchfork is a kingmaker for whether a band is good or not in the public domain? Sure, but I try not to think about that and just get on with my life. Music, to me, is largely personal rather than social, anyway, which I know will garner some disagreement, but hey that's just... like... your opinion, man. I like to sit and talk about music with someone just as much as anyone, but when it comes to a heated debate over the quality of something I lose interest. It's largely why I'm fleeing the "industry" sector of music, which is doomed to collapse eventually anyway. Music criticism (to paraphrase Frank Zappa) is analogous to fashion blogging in that the subjectivity is so varied and loaded with mythologies that to take them seriously is to no longer be yourself. I would write music criticism, sure, but I don't think I could ever be anything less than tongue-in-cheek in describing the quality.

My advice? Enjoy and read Pitchfork, but don't treat it like a touchstone of value or a pariah. Treat it like a damn good radio station.

The King of Limbs, Listens #1 & #2

2011-02-18T08:01:00.000-08:00

The King of Limbs, the 8th full length album from the relatively unknown band Radiohead, became available today for download (you may be familiar with their song "Creeps"). Watch as it takes over the rest of you and all your friends' days.

Forsaking the essay form for thrift. Thoughts in bulleted form:

Bloom is a jittery opener. A lot of glitchy energy going on and definitely influenced by Bitches Brew. Those drums are fantastic.
The new Morning Mr. Magpie is a highlight. I always liked that song. The arrangement is very "Harrowdown Hill" (from The Eraser) -- much of this album seems to have gotten the Eraser production treatment, but I don't think that's the essential gist of things. I hear much more free jazz in this and less dubstep.
Lotus Flower & Give Up The Ghost are the big highlights, nay, they are devastatingly awesome. Lotus Flower is a Thom vocal masterpiece. He's really kept his voice in top form and it works very well on the sultry tone of that song (and also on Little By Little)
Lyrical content, per the usual, is unremarkable. Thom has never been one of my favorite lyricists, at least not since Kid A, but he has a few highlights on this album (Lotus Flower, Separator)
People seem to be loving Codex, but I can't get on board yet. It reminds me a lot of Go Slowly without the anthemic payoff (which is secretly what all Radiohead fans want -- that anthemic Bends Pt. 2 they never got or got in OK Computer, but didn't accept).

I got onto my second listen while I was typing this and I've gone from thinking it was a good album to thinking that, yes, unfortunately it is another masterpiece. What a cliché. A Radiohead fan thinks the new Radiohead album is Masterpiece #5 (Pablo Honey, Amnesiac, and HTTT are their non-masterpieces). It's a very moody album and since it bears some sound similarities to The Eraser, I don't think it's going to win a lot of people over. But, I dig. Less immediately accessible than In Rainbows, but much more layered and neurotic, leaning towards an effusively dark spirited album. This is not the fun "band in the studio" album that In Rainbows was; this is a thematically less drippy, more restrained album.

That's it for now. More proper thoughts later, perhaps?

Yikes. (PALIN ALERT)

2011-01-25T09:17:00.001-08:00

Catchy.

Of course, in all the tea party fervor, people have forgotten those 8 years leading up to the economic recession... you know, when we let the free market run wild under the oversight of Republican [sic] leadership? I understand and agree with many Tea Party talking points, but find it a little stunning the way the Tea Party movement is exploiting its own working class and middle class members. It feels dangerously like a conspiracy.

Why Does Everyone Like Girl Talk So Much?

2010-11-29T07:32:00.000-08:00

And when I say "everyone", I mean why do people with respectable taste like Girl Talk? Particularly, when his music is far from having even an understandable appeal for music enthusiasts. I'm just going to rattle off a list of reasons why his appeal is so confusing to me:

1) He does the same thing on every single album. There's no progression. Play a song from Night Ripper next to a song from All Day and I couldn't tell you which came from what album. How uninteresting is that?

2) His selection of samples is uninteresting and, at best, only palatable as novelty. Once novelty wears off, then what? Is anyone genuinely excited about hearing Tiny Dancer mashed up with Juicy? I know both those songs. They're ubiquitous within the 18-30 year old demographic of music listeners thanks to Ben Folds, Almost Famous, and... well, whoever executed Biggie (the C.I.A.). Hearing them put together evokes about a 5 second interest in my head, the equivalent of: "Oh yeah. That's kinda fun. Don't really get the point/purpose, though. If it's to be danceable, couldn't I just put one or the other on and be just as sated in my thirst for ubiquitous karaoke mainstream songs?" In the meantime, play that shit for one of my music-loving, vinyl-ordering, skinny-jeans wearing friends and watch their faces light up: "Man, what a beat! Greg Gillis is on point, SON!" Meanwhile, I'm sitting there with a beat up Avalanches record in my hands, looking like Charlie Brown. Girl Talk's "songs" are the equivalent of YouTube viral videos of kittens that say, "Nom nom nom." Not even! At least the "nom nom nom" kittens reward repeat viewings. I listen to a Girl Talk song once and I throw it away like a half eaten Twinkie: "Oh, I get it. He put that song with that song. Cool. Next."

3) It preys on people's nostalgia and love of 60s-90s pastiche to an unforgivable level. This music isn't challenging in the least. It might as well be sold at Wal-Mart next to "Now: Vol. 46" and People Magazine. I thought the idea of sampling was that as a pastiche recycled art, it turned something old into something new. In the case of Girl Talk, it turns something old into something old played over top of or underneath something less old.

4) Those Girl Talk concerts look unbearably stupid. I bet all those people are really stupid.
See 2:55 for evidence of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxcCfqbazpg&feature=related

Olbermann Suspended: Thank You, Jesus

2010-11-05T11:03:00.000-07:00

(Courtesy of ugh, CNN.)

Keith Olbermann was suspended by MSNBC for contributing to Democratic candidates.

Apparently, this is an "ethics violation" in journalism, but is what Olbermann does actually journalism? He is the Bill O'Reilly of the Democratic Party. When he gets on TV every night and picks the "Worst Person of the Day" award from a myriad number of right wing demagogues, how can anyone call him a "fair and balanced journalist?"

As ludicrous as this so called "ethics" standard is, I'm happy to see Olbermann get a break from the air. If I'm going to watch any ridiculously biased liberal-lefty on cable news, it's going to be Rachel Maddow. At least she's entertaining and (most of the time) correct. Then again, I don't have cable. And I wouldn't watch cable news if I did. Opinion news and punditry now takes up about 95% of all cable news programming at a significant sacrifice to actual reportage, which is unbelievably sad when you think about it.

"30 Is the New 20"

2010-11-05T09:11:00.000-07:00

Quickly, because I'm busy.
I take exception with this phrase: "30 is the new 20" or "40 is the new 30".
Why?
Because I want to feel like I'm 30 when I'm 30 (albeit, I want to feel physically 20).
I mean, by extension of this logic, by the time I'm 35 I'm going to feel like a confused, jobless, broke college graduate trying to figure out what to do with my life.
Well, fuck that shit.
When I'm 35 I want all my plans to have succeeded. I want to be comfortable. I want to be in a strategic position to buy property within 5 years. I want a $50,000+/yr job. I want to live in that comfy and wonderful area between the suburbs and the city. I want 35 to be 35!
Who honestly thinks their twenties are the best years of their life? That is a sad, morbid philosophy. It means the next 60-70 years are just going to be a long decline with intermittent moments that MIGHT be as good as that one time when you were in your twenties... but, alas, it's not.

Dinner Tonight: 11/02/2010

2010-11-03T17:19:00.000-07:00

Or, more accurately, dinner last night.

I was shopping at Whole Foods on Monday and, to my delight, Wild Sockeye Salmon was on sale for a wonderful price. I got about 1.5 pounds.

SALMON MARINADE
I had debated whether or not to go Asian or rustic Italian or just straight up lemon butter with this preparation. In the interest of time and ease, I went Asian and I think what I came up with was very simple and delicious.

Half a lime
Mirin
Sesame Oil
Soy Sauce
Honey
Minced Ginger
Minced Garlic
Dash of Cayenne
Julienned Yellow and Green Bell Pepper

After I let the Salmon soak in the marinade for about 45 minutes (flipping sides periodically), I took it out and placed the portions on a paper towel lined plate to soak up some of the excess sauce. Then, I went to work dusting the non-skinned sides with the dry spices:

Black Pepper
A little Salt
Basil
A little Muchi Curry
Garlic Powder

(Now, I don't want you guys to think I was killing the salmon in spices. I was very subtle. Trust me -- it still tasted like delicious, robust salmon by the end.)

I heated the nonstick skillet over high high with no oil and once it was piping hot I laid the salmon down and let it get a really good sear on both sides, about 2 minutes per side. They were almost black in some palces. The dry spices made a wonderful crust. When I determined they were close to medium, I dumped the reserved marinade and bell pepper in and watched it caramelize in less than a minute, as I spooned the thickening sauce over the salmon. At this point, everything smelled wonderful and my mouth was watering uncontrollably. After about a minute of that, I turned the heat down very low and let the salmon portions rest in the sauce.

I served them over brown rice with simple sauteed asparagus, a few spoonfuls of the leftover sauce to dress the plate. It turned out pretty amazing.

Howie Hawkins Gets 50,000 Votes!

2010-11-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

Good News: Sharon Angle didn't win.
Bad News: Michelle Bachman still exists.

So, I realize everyone is down in the dumps today over the election results. To an extent, I'm not happy. But, I'm also with the crowd of people that believes that, while I have confidence in our president, our congress has been letting us down now and they're hitting historic lows in public confidence. Is this, like Obama says, a manifestation of media narrative or misinformation, a mistake in advertising Democratic accomplishments? I wouldn't buy into that entirely, though it is in part true.

Congressional approval rating has been hovering somewhere around 12%. Think for a moment about what in your life works 12% of the time. As consumer confidence goes, let's say our toasters and coffee makers only worked 12% of the time. Would we keep using them or would we return them to the store and ask for a refund? Since the Democrats won a near-mandate and took the power position in the last election, they were also setting themselves up to get crushed this time. Why? Because Democrats are not categorically liberals; they're moderates. Any legislation they've put through has appealed so strongly to a perceived bipartisanship and centrism (that doesn't exist) that they've hardly been able to get anything done we were hoping they would get done. Instead, they were met with no cooperation on the Republican side of the aisle from candidates who are categorically conservative, who say, "It's the economy, stupid", and then, underneath it all, harbor deep social agendas that are far more reaching and disruptive to Americans than anything the Democrats want to do (or have done).

So, I was excited in 2008. But you look at where we're headed and I'm not surprised Democrats are frustrated, particularly liberal ones. No single-payer universal healthcare; we changed the name of "The War in Iraq" to a "draw down", but read a newspaper and you'll discover it's the exact same thing with no end in sight. Democrats vote to extend war powers every time they step in the chamber and you know why? Because it's political suicide not to; the perceived narrative says that if you vote against patriotism and defense, you're a bad politician. They'll slaughter you for it in a campaign ad within six months.

One way to disrupt the power struggle and this structure of partisanship as a political tactic would be to extend congressional term limits to four years for all positions. Election cycles, like the Christmas shopping season, just get longer and longer, start earlier and earlier every year. It's no wonder progressive candidates can't put anything through in swing districts; they're too busy fending off attacks.

Another way is to finally vote for what you want.

If you don't vote for what you want, you'll never get it. Yesterday, Howie Hawkins received at least 50,000 votes in the New York Gov. Race, meaning that Green Party has a guaranteed spot on the ballots the next four years. Now we just need someone viable. Because I don't have faith that Democrats represent my interests appropriately; because I'm not happy with the job they've done; because I think the two-party system revolves more around campaigning than it does legislating. Every election cycle, we continue to vote in lockstep with candidates we are settling for because we're afraid to severely disrupt the status quo. In addition, 3rd Party candidate are 'weird'. I mean, just look at Howie Hawkins. He looks like a creep!

But when you read the article above, to all my true liberal progressives out there, tell me you don't agree with him. I am truly a green libertarian -- I don't want a government social agenda, I don't want moral centrism, I'm in favor of auditing federal spending (particularly the Pentagon and Defense Budgets, which run UNAUDITED WITH NO OVERSIGHT), and I agree with progressive tax rates for the upper class and extended tax cuts for middle class and working families. I believe in civil union equality and that the Government does not define or dictate religious or ceremonial practices, I believe in the right to choose and the initiative to make abortion less necessary, I believe in a systematic and full-stop to the hegemonic wars in the Middle East, I believe in 2nd Amendment rights for all adult Americans with strict regulations on automatic weapons (and also background checks to make sure we don't sell weapons to convicts), the abolishment of the death penalty, increased funding and rigorous standards for public school teachers, a better teacher to student ratio, and investment not in companies that send our jobs overseas, but ones that improve and modernize our infrastructure to help improve the environment and modernize our industry.

But, Democrats don't believe in those things.

Tommy Wiseau is Unhappy About the 2010 Election

2010-11-02T10:50:00.000-07:00

YOU ARE TEARING ME APART, SHARON ANGLE!

That said, please vote today.
And if you don't mind, please research all the candidates, not just the Democrats and Republicans.
...Vote Third Party.

Dinner Tonight: 10/29/2010

2010-10-29T17:09:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Dinner Tonight, a continuing Milk Rooms segment on the modest (yet delicious) culinary creations in Tim Griffiths' kitchen.

Dinner tonight is Herb-Crusted Roasted Chicken Breasts, mashed potatoes, and spinach salad.

ROASTED CHICKEN
Two Bone-In Chicken Breasts ($2.25 each - cheap!)
Dry-Rubbed with tarragon, basil, sage, garlic, salt and pepper.
Drizzled with olive oil.
Topped with sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme.
Also topped with a tablespoon each of unsalted butter.
I also put a little low sodium chicken broth in the skillet to keep things moist and promote gravy.

MASHED POTATOES
Super basic.
Potatoes, cream, butter, parmesan, salt, pepper

SPINACH SALAD
I don't know! Garen is doing it so it'll be a mystery.

SNACKS
Shropshire Blue Cheese and Pretzels

WINE
2006 Château du Champ des Treilles Le Petit Champ Bordeaux

We'll let you know how it turns out in updates.
I think it's a wonderful, basic, and cheap fall meal.

The Books - "I Didn't Know That" (Video)

2010-10-25T10:53:00.000-07:00

The Books, whose new album "The Way Out" is easily one of my favorites of 2010, have just released a new video for the jazz-fusion and sample-laden track "I Didn't Know That." It features golf instruction, gun ranges, exploding cars, and what could possibly constitute sexual harassment in some circles.

Check it out (courtesy Pitchfork TV - sorry, can't embed).

And here's another video of theirs, "Cold Freezin' Night".

Ah, Animated Gifs... Remember 1997?

2010-10-25T09:53:00.000-07:00

My Slow Goodbye to Facebook

2010-10-11T19:48:00.000-07:00

As you may have seen on my wall, I'm transferring all the posts that would usually go on my Facebook wall to this blog. You can see posts from below to follow my reasoning. It generally has a lot to do with my anti-Facebook stance.

As a way to get this blog rebooted and more active, I'm going to start by posting my last few posts on Facebook just to get out a few of the backlogged things I posted.

Hopefully, in this transition away from Facebook, more and more people follow me, comment, and have discussions. A lot of my friends and family are really smart and interesting and I just KNOW they have awesome things to say about the things I'm going to be discussing.

Below, you'll find a couple recent discoveries like Banksy's Simpsons intro, a clip from Whatever Works, a couple quirky and quick observations, and my hatred for anti-gay politicians.

Glad to have you all on board!

Best,
Timothy Griffiths

P.S.: I will be keeping Facebook for photos and as a means to communicate with distant friends, but in all other respects, my Facebook page will be getting dismantled and will become somewhat more anonymous. Don't be alarmed! I still love a lot of you!

Timothy Griffiths I've decided that I will ultimately phase out my Facebook usage to the point of deleting it (see my previous objections to FB), but I don't want to lose it as a vehicle for sharing my thoughts with people and facilitating discussion and debate on culture. Will you all promise to follow me to my blog (that is, if you ca...

The Milk Rooms

themilkrooms.blogspot.com

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Timothy Griffiths ‎(Reposted since the previous link died.) Just watch the intro. The Simpsons has jumped the shark. This is all Banksy. Ham-fisted, politically obtuse, darkly humorous, and fabulously inventive. APPLAUSE!

Hulu - The Simpsons: MoneyBART - Watch the full episode now.

www.hulu.com

Video description: Lisa coaches little league.

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Timothy Griffiths The calculator of my philosophical musings desperately needs an equal button.

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Timothy Griffiths A well-scripted moment in an otherwise lackluster narrative (Such is life!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hni0yeCMm6A

Whatever Works - 2009 - Woody Allen - Opening Sequence

www.youtube.com

Larry David

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Timothy Griffiths ‎"THIS, is cool?"

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/210218/go-with-the-status-quo

South Park: Elementary School Musical - Go With The Status Quo

www.southparkstudios.com

The Boys see what all this "musical" fuss is about, and vow to never be a part of it.

RECENT ACTIVITY

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Timothy commented on Brett M Griffiths's status.

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Timothy commented on Dan Roche's status.

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Timothy commented on Dan Roche's status.

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Timothy Griffiths I don't know why politicians won't make the connection between their harmful policies and rhetoric and the violence, suicide, and depression within the gay community. Paladino doesn't want to "hurt homosexual people", but he also doesn't think they should be equal. Paradox.

Carl Paladino: Don't Be 'Brainwashed' Into Thinking Homosexuality Is An 'Equally Valid' Lifestyle (V

www.huffingtonpost.com

New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino spoke on gay rights to a group of orthodox Jewish leaders in Brooklyn today, promising to veto marriage equality legislation and touting the fact that he didn't march in this year's gay pride parade.

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Timothy Griffiths Twenty. D. Energizers.

These Discussions Should Be On My Blog, NOT On Facebook

2010-09-29T18:19:00.001-07:00

Timothy Griffiths I suppose this is because religious people are probably indifferent about religious knowledge, particularly where Christianity is concerned; The practice, faith, etc. is more emphasized.

NPR: Survey: Atheists, Agnostics Know More About Religion Than Religious

Read Article

NPR News iPhone App

5 hours ago via NPR News · · Comment ·

- Jonathan Clark Yeah. THAT'S the reason.
  5 hours ago ·
- Timothy Griffiths
  Now Jon, be nice...
  
  Seriously though, I am willing to grant you that plenty of religious people remain willfully ignorant of religious knowledge because they're anti-knowledge or anti-inquiry or they're not intelligent enough to process abstract thought. Those people exist and I have met them.
  
  However, I also know plenty of religious people I count as my friends and family and I don't consider most of them willfully ignorant. It's mostly that those of us who are agnostic or atheist classify ourselves as such because of our interest in open ended theory, opportunities to learn, and the universe as it exists. We are more interested in the stuff that makes religion what it is. Your average Catholic probably doesn't care about transubstantiation's meaning because they do it out of rote faith and practice; it's less important for Lutherans to know who Martin Luther is than for them to go to church and talk to one another. The faith and practice of people doesn't hinge on their knowledge of world history and they don't always feel it is necessary to reconcile a world view with a spiritual view.
  
  Since you or I have more objective points of view on religion (we aren't members of a church) we are free to practice our inquiries without disturbing our own notions about faith, spirituality, and God. There also is no danger of going to Hell when you don't believe in it.
  5 hours ago ·
- Jonathan Clark
  And I say that what you just described is exactly the problem: the emphasis on obedience and action in lieu of knowledge and nuance. The idea that religious people make HUGE claims about the nature of EVERYTHING (scientific superiority, history, morality, geography, government, etc.) without either much knowledge of opposing viewpoints or, even, their very own religion – that is the issue at hand, not whether or not such-and-such religious person is dumb or not. I'm not interested in calling people names (at least, in this discussion). The individuals are not the problem; it's the way in which religions stifle intellectual curiosity, the way they appeal to a part in us that feels too overwhelmed, too unequipped to deal with uncertainty and mortality, that it allows figures in authority to simply tell us what is true instead of encouraging us to investigating it ourselves. That religion has found a way to characterize blind obedience as somehow commendable and virtuous is a testament to the depth of its dizzying misappropriations of basic human shortcomings. And because SO many people are religious, the individuals, who alone are not evil, add up to a great force of ignorance and, often, hatred. They may be able to justify their less-than-knowledgeable religiosity by referring to the way their upbringing promoted action instead of thought, but it doesn't make it any less harmful to the greater world. THAT'S what I meant.
  4 hours ago ·
- Clay Couturier
  Thank you for posting an interesting article and also your comments. I would also agree with Jonathan’s point that calling religious people dumb or not intelligent is counter productive. Ignorance on the other hand seems to be spreading in all areas of knowledge. The manipulation of truth itself by our political institutions and commercial interests has become so commonplace that people have learned to avoid claming to know anything. Nobody wants to learn anything because the next day the political party with the opposing agenda will call your new knowledge a hoax. Or you learn something that later you find out was completely made up because somebody was motivated by profit to lye. This I think is the main reason Americans have chosen to be ignorant. They have given up and consider it hopeless to attempt to know something.
  3 hours ago ·
- Timothy Griffiths
  ‎[DISCLAIMER: This is not an essay and it's not well-reasoned; It's the first draft of an emotionally affected rant resulting in haphazard discourse and lots of spelling and sentence structure errors. Take what you will from it.]
  
  Hmm, let's back up.
  
  I understand Jon's point about how people being dogmatic about their religious beliefs and spirituality can be problematic. To go back to my initial comments, I don't think I ever said that this wasn't a problem and there's evidence widespread throughout the world and our history that it is. Is it a remediable problem? That's debatable. People will probably always find arbitrary (so-called) objective truths to form factions over. Like you've said, these factions can be used to propagate ideas that are ignorant and hateful. I take it this is your primary concern with organized religion (and perhaps spirituality as a whole, but I'll let you say it): That (like, say, in politics) people form under the banner of "might makes right" and urge homogeny through hegemony, solidarity through forceful conversion. This article makes this even worse (and more ironic) by displaying how ill-equipped these people are when it comes to their own knowledge regarding the very belief system they're trying to nuclear bomb the Earth with.
  
  Yeah, that definitely stifles all the great dialectic exchanges we could be having in the world. Furthermore, it may or may not promote violence and hatred against people depending on the severity of the belief and the military might of the authoritarian people urging the dogmatic system.
  
  Of course, my opinions on these matters are tinged by my personal politics pertaining to religious freedom, so bear with me as I take that into it.
  
  Somehow, throughout the course of human history, most cultures have agreed that hurting or harming other people is wrong and they extol the virtues of this principle. The people that find the justifications for this principle are most often perceived as radical, would you agree? Why can't we then sort the wheat from the chaff and see that the external practice of religion is the mitigator that decides its own virtue?
  
  The best I can understand my own existence and experience is by way of my perception. Perception though, like anything, is a symbol, a sign, a myth that within encapsulates the inherent meaning of our entire lives. It's an arbitrary signification validated reflexively by its own existence. Unfortunately, you can't remove perception from its own circular logic chain. Perception feeds perception feeds perception and what's worse is that usually when it comes to the abstract, it's mostly subjective. (Take right now for instance...)
  
  So, what's the opposite of perception?
  
  ...
  
  Anybody?
  
  Here's what the dictionary came up with: denseness, ignorance, inability, ineptness, obtuseness, stupidity.
  
  So when I say the word "perceive", there's no actual verb in the English language that means "To not perceive". All the ones listed above do not literally mean that. Is this problematic? Maybe. I couldn't say. It's interesting that most of us in the academic field rely on a concept to clarify or own existence that is, itself, a tautology - things are what they are - because we can't conceptualize or experience the opposite.
  
  I, by my own perception, can't judge whether or not certain concepts based on other people's perceptions are "real", or at least concrete, because they seem to exist in the ether, the abstract, outer space, far far away. In linguistic terms, I can understand the signifier, but not truly what is signified. The sign itself is alien to me and, furthermore, so is the meaning and the symbolism. I talked about transubstantiation earlier; transubstantiation may make people feel certain things or realize certain truths, but I couldn't tell you what the fuck they are because when someone hands me a wafer and a glass of red wine, I think it's food and drink. I've never personally experienced in the flesh or seen proof or evidence of things like ghosts, out-of-body experiences, heaven, hell, God, the spiritual presence of Jesus, the existence of a spirit -- You could even argue that someone's very ability to perceive, understand, and process thought validates their own belief in a "spirit" or "soul", an idea that some factor explains our ability to question or own existence (of course, who is to say a rock or a tree doesn't question its own existence? We don't speak their language -- we don't even really know if they have one). It's possible you could even convince me, but not likely.
  
  That's because I belong to the school of (to quote Bill Maher) "I Don't Know". I don't know, but I know that I don't know. And ultimately, the only virtue I can extol is that everyone on the Earth shouldn't give up on trying to figure out what there is to know, whether it be tangible or intangible. That, I feel, is the goal -- find out as much as you fucking can while you can. I would urge people who follow religion (like Jon said) blindly to explore the alternatives and ask questions that challenge our own preconceptions and presuppositions. Explore those notions within and outside of your own religion; Explore them in other religions; Explore them in philosophy; Explore them in geography; Explore them in astronomy; Explore them in all your available memes.
  
  Jon, I know you are not pigheaded or stubborn; you are very rational-minded and intelligent, so I know you're not trying to convey some of the things I'm about to accuse you of conveying (ha!), but I consider that atheism itself is a "knowledge limiter" that hurts people in the same way dogmatic beliefs do. A lot of the criticisms you've made about organized religion and spiritual beliefs can also be made about secular societies, particularly where political regimes are concerned. Stalin, Mao, Hitler, etc. all believed in a brand of homogeny through hegemony, that if we all believe in one set of virtues and goals, we all march towards the same promised land of human relationships.
  
  So yes, I am against reflexive logic; yes, I am against human ignorance; yes, I am against the limitation of knowledge - but I qualify these opinions: I am against these things when they become politically motivated and result in oppression. This is probably because I don't give a fuck about anyone else except myself. I'm self-centered. I don't think we need to consolidate opinion to further the human race. The concept of the human race as collective is dead, if there are was a concept.
  55 minutes ago ·

I Think Not Having a Job is Getting to Me

2010-09-21T21:14:00.000-07:00

Either that or I'm drinking too much coffee and I have the jitters to the point where my fingers just shake and type the first words that come out of my head. What have I learned from this? For starters, I'm really narcissistic (I comment on my own Facebook statuses). Also, I don't think I have any practical connection to the so-called "Real World" people used to tell me existed.

From my facebook page:

Timothy Griffiths Is it just me or is the early critical buzz over "The Social Network" sort of unbelievable? I mean, essentially the movie is free advertising for a service that is already massively popular and has a gargantuan revenue stream and grip on culture. Furthermore, it looks like total schlocky bullshit. It's a Hollywood-conference-room flick.

(I realize the irony of me typing this criticism on Facebook.)

7 minutes ago · Comment ·

- Timothy Griffiths
  I also realize that Jesse Eisenberg and David Fincher are involved and I guess I like them both, but I don't feel obliged to excuse them for making a publicity elephant for Facebook. Though, Fincher's best work is behind him at this point. The trailer makes the movie seem like style over substance and in terms of color scheme and photography it looks just like Seven or Fight Club. I'm not interested.
  
  And, just to be immature for a moment, Justin Timberlake? Bye Bye Bye? Dirty Pop? Fuck that guy. Stay out of my movies.
  5 minutes ago ·
- Timothy Griffiths
  And let's add these considerations:
  
  1) Is it really okay to glamorize Mark Zuckerberg by making him a Hollywood protagonist (thus, a hero)? Is he really more complex and worthy of note than the CEO of the Pepsi Corp.? Let's say for a minute that someone DID make a movie all about what a great big invention Cocacola was. Or McDonalds. Or WalMart. Would you be as into it? Of course not. Because you're probably an anti-establishment, liberal-humanist, socialist-leaning twenty-something and you think those capitalist pigs don't deserve their own Hollywood movie to sell their product.
  
  2) Wasn't The Curious Case of Benjamin Button really terrible? Wasn't it just Forrest Gump set in New Orleans with Brad Pitt? Except instead of being retarded he has a weird aging disorder?
  
  3) Shouldn't we all just finally quit Facebook and Twitter? I haven't even used Twitter, other than to observe my mom's tweets (and she's one of the best "tweeters" *cringe* I know). I'm tired of the reductive, instantaneous impact these programs make on our lives. They reduce privacy, increase peoples expectations of your 24/7 availability as a human being, and turn what was formerly intellectual discourse into 1,000 character disorganized ramblings on movies and music you like/don't like.
  
  4) Why won't anyone hire me to complain about social media like this? You know what really grinds my gears? That I'm a brilliant genius and that no one will pay me to be a brilliant genius.
  
  That's it folks. That's a wrap. As Daniel Plainview once said, "I'M FINISHED."
  4 minutes ago ·
- Timothy Griffiths People used to take life seriously as a social practice. Now we just click away at our keyboards until our fingertips go numb and our eyes go myopic.

Cokie Roberts & David Bowie

2010-08-16T10:53:00.000-07:00

Separated at birth?

New Sleigh Bells: "Treats" (Listen Now)

2010-05-12T07:52:00.000-07:00

(The) Gooooooooooo Team!!

The debut album by Sleigh Bells is finally out digitally on iTunes and it's called Treats. It's dazzling. Listen here, thanks to NPR. The cover art is a grainy photo of colorful cheerleaders in a pyramid, their faces obscured like crumpled pages of a magazine, holding pom-poms out in the air.

Very fitting.

The bombast, kitsch, and enthusiasm of this record is ridiculous. I can say a lot of things that have already been said about a pretty hyped up band, but I'll try not to. Sure, the songs are catchy, centered around repetitive anthemic calls ("Got my A-Machines on a table, got my B-Machines in a drawer"), and that appears to be the draw for people, but there's a mystifying tightrope being walked here on an album I've found full of contradictions. One one hand, it's crunchy, unlistenable lo-fi, drums compressed and guitars blaring in unison with thick analog synths. On the other hand, it's a sweet vocal lilt that works inside and outside the destructive rhythms (the most complex composition being the finger-snapping "Rachel", complete with a soothing melody, seemingly cribbed from Roy Orbison), as they emphasize stutter-step beats, double the guitar lines, and shout like rolling snare drums. Songs like "Kids" and "A/B Machines" contain lyrics of optimistic fodder and feel good shout-alongs. The opening track "Tell 'Em" does the same, introducing us to summer possibilities: "You can do your best today." This is all peppered with just enough cynicism or satire to abstain from a reputation as a flossy, throwaway, rock-hop album.

The production alone disqualifies it's own categorization. Certainly, I've never heard song forms that work as breezily and effortlessly as these sound so noisy. I think of my minor-acquaintances, for instance. Some of them like M.I.A., so they may appreciate the beats and the dancehall influences, but could they really enjoy the sound of an album as abrasive as this one? This seems to be what the Loudness War has driven us to: musicians finding a way to artfully navigate the compression path, like guerilla appropriation of thick treble and bass. On Treats, Sleigh Bells take the sound of overblown car stereo speakers playing over-compressed, loud-eq'd music and turn it into something wonderful and new and as an audiophile of sorts, I greatly appreciate that. Who knew that was a sound worth exploring? (It's great in headphones, it's great through your home speakers, ok through computer speakers, and I haven't tried it yet but it's probably great in the car.)

I'm hesitant to give them full credit for this movement. They have their influences (see: Wavves, Times New Viking, M.I.A., The Go Team, Toni Basil - hell, while we're at it The Beatles, The Velvet Underground, and T. Rex). Everything is derivative, right? But then, I can't help that sense that I've never heard music like this, or maybe that this is a giant leap forward in the evolution of sound. Compositionally, it's fine work, very poppy and a lot of fun to sing out. Production-wise, it may prove to be a landmark, spurring a horde of Sleigh Bells sound-alikes over the course of the next few years. Not that I'm excited about that. Is there room for another band like this in the hypemobile? Treats is so singular that I hesitate to think it could be expanded upon, maybe not even by Sleigh Bells themselves.

So there it is: I've proclaimed the imminent death of this music before it's even properly-released (which, I don't even know what that means anymore). That's also fitting. The album whizzes by at a lean 32 minutes from short track to short track, sharp and enticing. By the time the album hits its apex of tracks with "Crown On The Ground" through the title song, you are keenly aware of the arc and that it will curve downwards and be over soon. And you don't want it to end.

VERDICT: HOORAY! CHEERLEADING MUSIC FOR MISANTHROPIC, ELITIST, POOR PEOPLE LIKE ME! 4.5/5 STARS.

(As an aside, let's all play the Pitchfork guessing game for their stupid ratings system. I'm venturing 9.6, which is perhaps a little strong, but I can't help feeling this is going to be THE great album of 2010 - I'm holding back all judgement until the new Panda Bear comes out)

Trailer: I Am Love

2010-04-05T11:57:00.000-07:00

Lo Sono L'Amore or I Am Love was much fawned after at early film festivals this year. It stars Tilda Swinton as a russian immigrant in Milan, who marries into a wealthy family. From the poster design to the mere notion of Tilda Swinton learning Russian and Italian to star in this, I'm gushing with excitement. The trailer can be viewed here.

This movie should prove that Tilda Swinton is one of the most talented and hard-working lead actresses in the business. I also can't get over the light and dark visuals, the epic sweeping camera shots, the burgundy soaked backgrounds, and the operatic score; it's as if this film is screaming out it's own possibilities as an instant classic.

One quick note: after watching this and also seeing the recent trailer for My Own Love Song (which I won't even link you too because it's so godawful), it's become more apparent to me what constitutes good trailers vs. bad trailers. I mean, who knows? None of us have seen either movie. My Own Love Song could be loads better than I Am Love. But trailers alone? MOLS is disgustingly bad, IAL is grandiose pleasure. Specifically, I enjoy the lack of dialogue, voiceover, or titlecards. I don't need so much direction. Show me enticing visuals and music with some small semblance of plot and I will be intrigued, curious. Bombard me with every facet and detail of the plot along with the most hamfisted bits of dialogue taken out of context? Not so much.

Two Reasons Why Bjork Is An Aeon of Some Sort

2010-03-31T13:43:00.000-07:00

Reason #1:

Reason #2:

Excerpt #6: Unmitigated Rage

2010-03-31T13:12:00.000-07:00

The stars dusted the sky over like powdered sugar, so dense that the deep blue of space couldn’t even be seen. The stores were closed, but the bars were open. Quiet fell from beacon to beacon on the street, scattered conversations by the movie theater, drifting bodies walking home two by two from the saloons, as Douglas and Duncan walked under street lamps and past taverns and doors where people smoked and leaned against telephone poles and brick walls as if a government curfew had called conspirators into the basements to whisper of revolution. By the time they reached the motel, the road was black and empty and the cars weren’t approaching from either direction. The moon highlighted the shape of black mountains jutting into the atmosphere, the webs of the thick constellations painting the city in bright splendor, snowcaps glowing on the peaks. They could see everything and they could hear the river black and boiling over the stones in the dead quiet of the night, before a semi-truck approached from the bridge and past into the motel parking lot, blinding the men with its headlights, noxious fumes drifting through the night. They masked their mouths and headed in swiping their hotel room keys and saying goodnight to each other.

Douglas placed the burrito for his wife on the bedside table. She was curled on her side. He thought she was sleeping with the lights on until he saw her over a magazine, turning the pages listlessly. Next to the takeout box was a glass of water and a pregnancy test. He picked it up and examined it. His voice was calm and steady.

“You took a pregnancy test,” he said, nonchalant. She gave him no response. “Is the box around here somewhere?”

“It’s in the trash, in the bathroom.”

“Well,” he said, “What does one line mean?”

“Not pregnant,” she said in a low voice. “Negative.”

“So, you’re not pregnant.”

“No.”

“Okay,” Douglas said, relief pouring over him that he wouldn’t let show. “How do we feel about that?”

“I don’t know, Doug. I guess I don’t care either way, really.”

“You don’t care.”

“No. How do you feel?”

Douglas tapped the tip of the pregnancy test against his fingers before realizing there was probably urine all over it. He chucked it back in the trash where it clinked against the plastic sides and he went to wash his hands, responding to Leena from a distance. “I just wonder why you felt the need to take one in the first place. You’re over forty, for one, and you take your birth control regularly.” He turned off the faucet and shook his hands over the sink to air dry them. He wiped them on his pants, his heart beating harder now. “Right? You do take your birth control. I mean, we spend money on it.”

“Oh, give it a rest, Doug. I stopped taking the pill in October.” Douglas returned to the sink and splashed water over his face. Returning to the bedroom, he kicked his shoes off next to the bed. “Remember just after Halloween?” she continued. “It was a Monday. I don’t know why I remember. You were putting kindling in the fireplace. We were going to build a fire ‘cause Duncan, he was at a friend’s house…”

“October,” he said. “Yeah, I remember that. Well, you would’ve known by now if you were pregnant. Christ, Leena, you have to take the pill regularly, still. I think now you have to go back to the doctor and get on a new regiment. You’re out of sync with your biology.”

“I know how to take birth control, Douglas. I’ve been doing it for years.”

“Apparently, you don’t. Apparently, I have to tell you.” They stopped talking for a minute and Douglas didn’t move a muscle in his body. He just stared at her as she changed postures between guilt and anger. “Why would you stop taking the pill, Leena?”

Leena shut her magazine and got up from the bed, marching to the bathroom and shutting the door. Douglas followed to the door and rapped with his hand. “Why would you stop taking the pill? Come on, I asked you.”

“Leave me alone.”

“No! You don’t get off like that. Answer my questions.”

Leena sat on the toilet and covered her face in her hands. “It fucks with my hormones. I have irregular periods! I’m tired of taking pills, Doug. Are those good enough reasons for you? That enough explanation?” She got up and opened the door, marching straight through Douglas and back to the bed. Douglas followed and stood only inches from her back, breathing down her neck.

“I want to be involved in decisions like that. I want to know if you decide to go off your pills.”

“I told you not to come in me. At the end of October. Remember? I told you not to. And you’re going to put this shit on me? No, I don’t think so.” Leena flung clothing out of her bag, working her fingers through the linen. She clenched sweaters in her hands and gripped them until her fingers turned white from the pressure. Douglas paused.

“I don’t remember that. How am I supposed to know when you decide to maybe get accidentally pregnant for no reason? Sorry for thinking my wife was a rational person.”

“Oh yeah, how are you supposed to know? You just stick it in, right? I’m just a hole to you.”

“Oh, Leena.”

“You don’t listen or notice anything. I told you I was depressed. I told you I was tired. You think I like being treated like a whore?”

“Who said whore? No one said whore, Leena.”

She threw the duffel to the ground, spilling a makeup bag.

“You don’t even know,” she shouted. “How can you not know?”

Douglas’ feelings fell from rage to exasperation to confusion. He watched his wife’s back heave in sputters as tears began to erupt from her. He couldn’t see her face, but he knew the whimpering.

“Tell me,” he said.

“I can’t.”

“Just tell me, Leena.”

She sat on the bed, but Douglas wouldn’t come over. He balled up his fists, not knowing if she was cheating, if she was spending money behind his back, or if she had some incurable disease like the pathetic heroine of an old movie. Something drained from his pores that felt good: unmitigated frustration. Some kind of primal therapy, he thought to himself. Something about this was ecstasy to him. Something was great about seeing his wife crying and helpless, staggering over the correct words to say.

“You’ve been so freaked out about money lately and I don’t know what I really wanted, but I had to take care of it. So, I called my Mom and I said, ‘Hey Mom, can me and Duncan come up for a weekend? I have to get some secret Christmas shopping done and I can’t have Douglas around.’ I went to the clinic and Duncan stayed with them. No one knew where I was. They thought I was with my high school friend Lisa. It was easy. I was in and out, just a local anesthetic. It was early term. Lisa picked me up and I slept on her couch all afternoon. She made me tea. She took really good care of me. I got some really good painkiller from her from Guatemala,” she said, stopping and giggling. “They didn’t know the gender, obviously. They didn’t know anything about it. Sometimes, you know, I think it was a girl. But that’s just me. Maybe it was another boy.”

“God damnit,” Douglas said, low. Leena sat on the bed, staring at the green carpet. She was done crying. Her last few tears fell and she sniffed and gained control of her body. The moths of the seedy motel circled the lampshade by her bed.

“Couldn’t afford it anyway, could we?” she said. “Then, of course, you wouldn’t let up on me when I got back. I had to wait a couple weeks after. I couldn’t just jump back in bed with you. And I try so hard to please you, but I can tell it’s never enough, is it? And after that, I think, well maybe I should take the pill again. Maybe I should get back to the old disciplines. Maybe exercise and diet will help me feel better about this. Make me forget that I feel the way I do. I couldn’t start again. I tried, one day, getting back into my routine. I felt nauseous all day long. I threw up. It was awful. But I didn’t want you to suspect anything so I started throwing the pills in the toilet and flushing them down every morning. I kept the pillbox on the bathroom counter. I know I probably sound really selfish right now. I’m not trying to lie, Doug, honest. I’m done lying.”

Douglas nodded his head.

“But Doug,” Leena continued, “If I told you all the things I really wanted to do…”

The neuron processors and brain functions of Douglas had slowed to the point that he could no longer develop any rational response nor a witty retort for Leena’s confession. So he simply responded with ‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘Right’ at various intervals.

Retreating through time, he examined a memory from when he was a child. It was of his mother entertaining her friends and playing cards. She let him sit at the table and eat macaroons while she talked with her friends about polite things. He read comics. Carter Olson came home and stood at the table for a few minutes, monitoring the ladies’ bridge game. He was a gruff man in a brown suit. He had a mustache that was rectangular and carefully groomed and it matched the color of his suit. Leena’s voice fell softer and softer until he couldn’t hear it any longer.

The heater turned on automatically, the deafening sound of hot air permeating the room like tear gas.

“You should have told me,” he said, finally. “I had a right to know. I deserve better than that.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Yes, you could’ve.”

“I couldn’t,” she said again. “I couldn’t, Doug.”

Officially rejected from all grad schools,

Duncan Olson

P.S.: I was depressed, so I stopped writing for two weeks. Feels good to be back, even if my characters are all the more whiny for it.

Excerpt 5: Dreaming of Sioux Falls

2010-03-16T21:57:00.000-07:00

Catching the attention of Leena was Great Western Leather & Goods. She pulled off right outside of Sioux Falls and they went inside the large warehouse of a store and she forgot about her exhaustion and worry for a little while. The family stocked up on mercantile goods; three cowboy hats, two lassos, two authentic western shirts with pearled snap buttons, and a dark brown pair of cowboy boots for Leena that Douglas found ridiculous.

“You’re never going to wear those,” he said.

“Don’t make fun of me. They’re mementos.”

“They’re shitkicker boots,” said Douglas, as Duncan laughed.

“We can’t all wear yachting shoes,” she said.

They began to notice American flags everywhere, at the top of gigantic flagpoles that towered over the outlet malls and car parks surrounding Sioux Falls. Douglas scoffed at the unwavering patriotism. New revelations came to pass. Duncan had never known it existed, but sure enough, they passed a combination buffalo ranch and discount shoe store. It made them all feel good and satisfied their senses of self, but also, they all secretly yearned for this kitsch, to throw off their burdensome feelings of superiority. Leena in particular spent almost an hour daydreaming about Douglas opening a shoe store in South Dakota. She could work at a flower shop and on her days off, plant a new garden along the spacious sides of their cheap suburban home. She dreamed of a little girl whose hand she could hold. Her name was Beatrice. She saw Douglas dressed down in casual clothes and her self in long blue cotton gowns with white paisley patterns. Leena tried to imagine where Duncan would fit into her clairvoyant wishes, because she loved him and he was her world, but after a lot of deliberation, could not visualize him in Sioux Falls, not in the house, not outside the house, and not around the town. Perhaps he had continued west, to California and onward; Japan, China, Thailand. He trekked the Himalayas, hiked through the rocky red soil of Northern India. Duncan’s hair grew long. His skin went from pale to orange to red. She saw him enter Italy on foot and wander through the streets with tin cups and carabineers clinking against his large backpack. Was Duncan that kind of person? She didn’t know. Thirteen years he had been alive and he would be an adult before she knew it, yet she didn’t know for sure what direction his life would take. And perhaps it was foolish of her to think she could guess. Anyone can change as much within three months as some do in five years. Change doesn’t come gradually over time, as some think. It comes in spurts of stunted growth and broken ambition, settling for this option, settling for that, maybe once in your life getting what you wanted without a negative consequence or a worry in your head. Still, as dusk approached and a reasonable hotel offered them rest for the night, Leena dreamed that something big would happen, bigger than any of their lives could contain.

Been doing some research and it appears that people are starting to hear back from NYU, Brooklyn, and Hunter. I haven't heard, thus, my confidence is in the gutter. Send your bribes to the appropriate department heads.

Best,

Duncan Olson

New Recipe: Cod and Blood Orange Ceviche

2010-03-11T10:22:00.000-08:00

Ingredients:

1 lb. Cod, filleted, deboned, and cut in 1/2 inch pieces.
1 clove of garlic, minced
about 1/4 of a red onion, diced
about 1/4 of a cucumber, peeled and diced
1 small tomato, pulp and seeds removed, chopped
1 serrano chile, seeds removed, diced
1 tsp. salt
a sprinkle of black pepper
some fresh cilantro (or italian parsley)
dash of oregano
dash of cayenne
juice of 4 limes
juice of 4 lemons
1 blood orange, peeled and cut into segments
1 avocado (for later)

1. Combine cod, garlic, onion, cucumber, tomato, serrano, salt, pepper, cilantro, oregano, and cayenne in a medium sized bowl, preferably pyrex or ceramic (something non-reactive - metal and plastic aren't good for this sort of thing).

2. Pour lime and lemon juice over ingredients and stir so everything is well distributed. Some people like to use, like, tropicana orange juice, but I think those people are cretins.

3. Place a little more blood oranges and a few sprigs of fresh cilantro (or parsley) over the top. You're going to be stirring this all anyway, but at least it's pretty now, right?

4. Cover and marinate in the fridge for 3-4 hours. Stir every hour to expose more of the fish to the acidic lime juice. The ceviche will be ready when the fish have turned from a translucent light pink/grey to opaque white.

5. Serve with some sliced avocado and either warm tortillas (for ceviche tacos) or tortilla chips (I like blue corn ones, myself). I even ate at a place one time that served it with warm, homemade potato chips with fresh herbs. It was pretty great.

6. Drink a corona or a margarita or something else that goes deliciously with South American cuisine.

In all honesty, this is still in the fridge and I haven't tried it yet, but I know it'll be good. This is really easy to make and it's delicious and healthy, so you should make it often.

Five Things I've Noticed About My Novel

2010-03-05T00:19:00.000-08:00

1. As a writer, I'm obsessed with people's idiosyncrasies and will need a severe editorial eye that isn't afraid to cut.

2. This story is going to be really crazy and weird once I get back into the narrative present again. Oh, the things I want my characters to do. You can't imagine.

3. Making people feel tight economic circumstances accurately is really
hard to do in text, but I'm doing okay so far.

4. The more I write, the slacker my attention to detail is getting. I think I need to write less on days when I have to work and that way my revisions won't be hell, due to the ramifications of sloppy prose.
Then again, I'm also pulling some good lines when I'm not
really paying attention and the music is loud and I'm just beating the keys with my fingers. So who knows what the best approach really is?

5. I apparently refuse to use any name brands or make any cultural references. But that doesn't surprise me. Screw Kleenex, Xerox, and Coke. Screw them all!

Excerpts 3 & 4: People Like Me & Atlases

2010-03-05T00:07:00.000-08:00

From p. 35:

He shuffled his lines. “My selection is too boutique,” he explained to Leena. “Nobody cares if it’s American made, hand-stitched, or certified by the APMA.”
Leena became concerned when Douglas would get up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom for an hour at a time. The glowing light from under the door kept her awake, but she never dared to enter. To know Douglas was to know the solitary space, the isolation that he required as a human being. This was until one time, concerned she heard whimpering and grunting, she entered to find him sitting on the toilet with the checkbook and a pile of invoices.
“Go back to bed,” he snapped.
“Go back to bed? You don’t bark at me that way, I’m your wife!” she yelled back.
“Just leave me alone, okay? Just leave me alone? Please?”
When morning came, they saw Duncan off to school and Douglas had some time before getting on the road.
“What are your plans today?” Douglas asked Leena. She was staring out the kitchen window at Duncan, who was waiting at the top of the driveway to board the school bus.
“No plans yet. Strange. It’s like winter steals all my motivation.”
“It’s only October,” said Douglas. He picked her breakfast plate up from the table and took it to the sink where he did the dishes.
“You don’t have to do that if you need to get on the road.”
“I don’t mind. Gives me a minute to relax. Who would care if I were late? Who buys shoes at 10:00 AM on a Tuesday?” Douglas finished the last few pieces of silverware and wiped his hands on a towel. He stood inside the silence of the room, facing away from his wife, the still dawn, the dust on the windowsill, and the running water enveloping him in a cloak of anonymity. His back to Leena, the world disappeared.
“People like me,” she said.
“People like you?”
Douglas began to observe two Blue Jays who took seed from the same feeder.
“People like me buy shoes at 10:00 AM on a Tuesday.”
The way she said it, ‘People like me’, caused Douglas to wince and his ears to perk up, as though a high pitched bell had been struck somewhere beyond the frosted windowpane. Who was this woman becoming? She was once a vessel for creativity, endless promise, and love. She was love. When they met, she had been a bartender, but she also sold concessions at rock concerts. She had never left the United States, but she had somehow seemed worldly, infallible, and beyond the realm of material things. For her, it had been any excuse, anything to have a good time, all she desired in the world.

From p. 40:

Douglas, still in his pajamas, walked by the refrigerator and examined the front. Leena had left a help wanted ad posted on the door. It was a company that sought to hire and train insurance salespeople. There was also a page torn from a music catalog, this time with two separate items circled: a red electric guitar and an enormous silver amplifier that looked like a nuclear bomb.

“What the fuck?” said Douglas out loud, before resigning himself to the truth that he would definitely be buying both things.

He took the catalog page from the fridge and set it on the table, determined to get the Christmas shopping at least seventy-five percent done that day. He ripped a page from a notebook and wrote the header “CHRISTMAS SHOPPING” at the top, waiting for ideas to come. Then he ignored that same task and pulled his atlas of the United States from a high shelf of the bookcase, to look through the route that Triple-A had planned for them. There were a thousand little towns on every page. The camping spots were marked with red teepees, famous landmarks drawn in an iconic fashion and labeled with green text. Tracing his finger along I-90, he went West. Whenever Douglas looked at maps, though, and he’d never admit this to anyone, he always felt a certain vertigo, like lying on one’s belly and peering over the edge of a jet wing. To stare at water was the worst part of all. Sometimes he’d use his finger to deviate from the path and see what the states of the Midwest had to offer. Then he shut the book and remembered where he was, the clap of the cover producing a dull hum through the boxy kitchen. There was a lot of shopping to do. He vowed not to go to the mall if he could help it.

Owen Pallett - "Lewis Takes Off His Shirt" (live)

2010-03-04T23:45:00.000-08:00

Not only one of the best songs I've heard in ages, but just look at this performance.

I played at a rainy outdoor festival one time and I was scared shitless. Owen Pallett really owns it here.

(I don't love his other albums though, under the Final Fantasy moniker. This song though? Wonderful.)

Hoagland

2010-03-03T08:20:00.000-08:00

Below is one of my favorite Tony Hoagland poems. As a side note, I'm reading a new book to replace 2666; White Noise by Don DeLillo. My friend John lent it to me. It's not bad so far, but not my favorite book either. It's funny, I'll give it that. I've never thought I would be a big DeLillo fan just based on what I've heard about him. A lot of the book so far has been devoted to stern, and perhaps too on the nose, criticism of consumerism and contemporary family culture. I sort of find it abhorrent or at least boring when books forego their narratives almost immediately in order for the satirical elements to take center stage, but I've seen worse (and seen the opposite - literature directly praising pop culture and consumerism in the most gratuitous manner possible).

WHAT NARCISSISM MEANS TO ME

There’s Socialism and Communism and Capitalism,
said Neal,
and there’s Feminism and Hedonism,
            and there’s Catholicism and Bipedalism and Consumerism,

but I think Narcissism is the system
that means the most to me;

and Sylvia said that in Neal’s case
narcissism represented a heroic achievement in positive thinking.

And Ann,
who calls everybody Sweetie pie
           whether she cares for them or not,

Ann lit a cigarette and said, Only miserable people will tell you
           that love has to be deserved,

and when I heard that, a distant chime went off for me,

remembering a time when I believed
                    that I could simply live without it.

Neal had grilled the corn and sliced the onions
                      into thick white disks,
                      and piled the wet green pickles
                                            up in stacks like coins
           and his chef’s cap was leaning sideways like a mushroom cloud.

Then Ethan said that in his opinion,
if you’re going to mess around with self-love
              you shouldn’t just rush into a relationship,

and Sylvia was weeping softly now, looking down
           into her wine cooler and potato chips,

and then the hamburgers were done, just as
the sunset in the background started
                      cutting through the charcoal clouds

exposing their insides – black,
streaked dark red,
                      like a slab of scorched, rare steak,

delicious but unhealthy,
or, depending on your perspective,
                                            unhealthy but delicious,

-- the way that, deep inside the misery
           of daily life,
                      love lies bleeding.

Excerpt #2: A Funny Guy

2010-03-02T23:21:00.000-08:00

From p. 23 or so:

   “Is it bad? Good?”
      “You’ll see. I’m making pot roast.”
      Douglas wasn’t amused by the game Leena was playing, but he hadn’t planned on stopping at the library that night anyway, so at 6:00 PM he locked the door, batched the credit card slips, counted the till, filled out the book, watered the plants, grabbed a plastic baggy from the middle drawer of his desk, and left out the back.
      On his way home, he drove his car through the crepuscular hours with the windows wide open, going down the back roads, listening to Eddy Arnold, and dangling a joint between his fingers, singing, “The cattle are prowlin’, the coyotes are howlin’, way out where the doggies roam.” Summer was just starting.
      Home; he could see perfectly through the dark, if not a little bit blurred, the windows of his house that cut a sharp yellow beam into the night, the interior like the inside of a jack ‘o lantern, his wife and son at the table in the kitchen, applying the finishing touches as they frosted a double layer cake. Choosing to be on the safe side, he leaned against his driver’s side door in the secluded driveway, a voyeur on his own life, and chewed a piece of gum as he watched the show. Leena was not a good cook, usually, but her pot roast had two great qualities: the gravy and the fact there was plenty of it and now, the drifting scent of boiling onions came from the kitchen window and over the flower boxes and stirred Douglas’ grumbling stomach. He spit the gum out on the gravel and marched up the steps, into the sight line of Duncan and Leena. It almost upset him that they looked so happy.
      “Dad! Dad’s home!” said Duncan, skipping to the door as Douglas opened it.
      “Duncan, hey,” said Douglas, “Smells good in here.”
      “Leave the door open,” said Leena, “It’s so nice out tonight. Are you ready to hear the good news?” Douglas, not fully processing any of what she said, opened the fridge and took a beer out. Then he leaned against the countertop and looked at his family’s expectant faces.
      “What was that again?” he mumbled.
      “Duncan’s report card. Are you alright, Doug?”
      “Your eyes are all red, Dad.”
      The voices in the room oscillated from wall to wall like ping pong balls in a reverb chamber. Douglas rubbed his temples and furrowed his brow.
      “I have been having the worst headache,” he explained, though that couldn’t be further from the truth. “And my seasonal allergies always get to me this time of year. How’d we do, pal?”
      The form of the report card, as Douglas held it up too close to his face, was divided into two sections, the grades and the comments, and it read as so:

English: A
      Math: A
      Biology: A
      History & Social Studies: A
      Music: A
      Gym: A
      Health: A


Comments:
Mr. Studebaker, Homeroom: Duncan is polite, courteous, and funny - a pleasure to have in my classroom.
      Mrs. Tranier, English: Duncan is always eager to share the things       he’s writing in his journal. He is funny and enthusiastic.

Mr. Begovich, Biology: It’s a joy to teach anyone as devoted to learning as Duncan. A funny guy, too (although, he sometimes is too easily distracted by things outside the window).
      Ms. Karapolous, History & Social Studies: My second time teaching       Duncan, he takes an especially large interest in my class. I
      think you may be fostering a future politician (maybe not such a
good thing? I joke!) He also has a great sense of humor.

      The word ‘funny’ had appeared three times in the comments section before Douglas himself began to chuckle. “’Funny’”, he said, repeating the word out loud to his wife and son. “You’re a riot in the classroom, Duncan. You don’t tell me any jokes at home. What gives?” It wasn’t the grades that impressed Douglas. The shoe salesman figured that in a world where men with ‘C’ averages in college could become president, it was probably more important to be a smooth talker and have good connections, areas where Duncan seemed amply qualified, than to get all As. If a twelve-year-old could garner these kinds of reviews from teachers three or four times his age, Douglas thought, imagine what he could do in any walk of life once he hits his stride. He wouldn’t have to wash anybody’s dishes, cook anybody’s meals, scrub anybody’s floors, file anybody’s papers, or fit anybody’s shoes. Men who started where Duncan started went places; they got shoe shines at train stations without even a shred of shame apparent on their faces; the first thing they read in the paper was the stock report, not the obituaries or the gossip columns (rather, they used those to start fires in the fireplaces of their enormous chateaus); their liquor cabinets would always be full with interesting bottles of scotch and they’d use metal tongs to put their ice in a glass; they made the decisions that moved the wheels of society and not through slow, aggregate pushes like butterfly wings against the wind, but as though their ideas and actions were mountains of coal being shoveled into tall, black furnaces.
As he lowered the report card from his face, the foreground and background images would not reconcile and the various objects moved from soft to sharp focus, some things amplifying into a bright and ghostly double vision. His face broken out in a gleeful smile, he finally focused on his son, who stood with his hands in his pockets, a backwards baseball cap on, and a mess of hair sticking out from under it. Duncan was proud, his teeth white and glistening. Then his face receded through time as though drawn through a singularity or a straw, until it filled the space at the end of a long tunnel of orange light, the rays from the overhead lamp drawing hexagon cells of peach and crimson through the tears that were streaming from Douglas’ eyes.
      “Doug?” asked Leena, “Doug?”

This thing has officially begun to dominate my life and the blog and I've only been working at it for a short while. I hope people enjoy these excerpts. Some of them are going to be crap, no doubt (I've already made drastic changes to the "windsor knots" part), but that's why we revise, right?

Cheers,
Duncan Olson

Excerpt #1: Windsor Knots

2010-02-28T18:02:00.000-08:00

From page 11:

They had healthy bi-weekly sex in the master bedroom, long after Duncan went to bed. In the mornings afterward, they’d feel groggy from lack of sleep, but always more relaxed, always a little more attentive to the dishes leftover in the sink. Douglas got up early before work and completed projects for Leena that he thought made her home life better; he filled the birdbath; he powerwashed the vinyl siding; he mowed the lawn while he drank his coffee; he installed a cheap spice rack that hung on the wall above the oven. Then he'd go to work where, yes, he was utterly miserable most of the time.
Take the example of his tie:
His tie, when he walked in the door of Olson's Dockside Shoes, was tight to the first button, but after lunch, it had always settled around the second button and his collar would be undone. By 4:00, he had usually taken it off and to boot, he rolled up his sleeves. In the old days, when first taking over the store, following Carter Olson’s death from a long battle with cardiac-related issues, he tied double-windsor knots. Day to day, he couldn’t even remember how to tie them and for some reason he couldn’t even learn to do it through repetition. Consulting a book from when he was a child, Lessons on Being a Gentlemen by H.A. Gudgen, he made the effort to tie the fat knot every day of his life. Then when Duncan turned two, the boy got into the habit of ripping the pages out of his mother’s magazines. It only took the mistake of leaving Gudgen’s book within Duncan’s grasp to send Douglas back to tying a regular old knot. He contemplated pasting the materials back together, but then, within a few seconds, an epiphany on knots struck him and he found himself joyfully realizing he didn’t care. How closely did anyone examine his knots? he wondered.

I think this is going to take me about 4-6 months.
But I've never actually done this, so... there you have it.

Best,
Duncan Olson

I'm Writing a Novel (Seriously)

2010-02-27T20:52:00.000-08:00

YES, I'm writing my first novel.

The working title is Monument.
It takes place in the fictional city of Elkhorn, SD.
The main character's name is Duncan Olson.
I have notes, plans, and pictures pinned all over the wall above my writing desk.
This will be a very research heavy project involving things I don't even know about (but want desperately to learn about) and I expect it'll take a while to finish the first draft.
More details and excerpts to come.

What I ask of you: If you happen to know me, you'd know that I read, write, and obsess constantly over the quality of my work. I'm perhaps, too apt to giving up on things I believe aren't working. In the case of this novel, my first, I'm willing to accept the idea that it might just be a learning experience. But even it's just that, I have to finish it. While I already have one writing peer helping me with this, perhaps you can too. Every week or so, can you guys remind me to update this blog about the novel and subsequently research and write this fucking thing? I'm thinking I might cancel my Facebook account in the interim. I hate Facebook anyway. I don't know why I still go there. FarmVille? Mafia Wars? What the fuck are these things?

If my novel turns out half as good as this one, I'll kill myself in the most painful way possible.

Best wishes to you and yours,
Duncan Olson

Teabaggers vs. Truthers: Which Group Has Shittier Representation?

2010-02-12T07:38:00.000-08:00

I'm on a Bolt Bus on my way to Boston, about to record the new ANTIQUES album, which is going to be fucking epic. I'm going to try to keep you all updated about this on the blog if I have time - photos, audio, video, what have you. Just keep your eyes peeled.

Anyway, I'll be gone for four days, so here's a quick thought to tide you over (hey, just because I'm on a bus doesn't mean I've stopped my constantly angry political train of thought - Angercrat 2012).

So there are 9/11 Truthers.

And there are Teabaggers.

The former, at it's best, asks legitimate and important questions about the accuracy of the 9/11 Commission Report, the misconceptions surrounding US intelligence failures, the role of our government in funding and supporting Al Qaeda (before Bin Laden went all rogue on us, a la Sarah Palin - he's such a maverick), and the political nature and spin of the events. The former, at it's worst, is a lot of anti-semetic, psuedo-liberal, irrational, faux-communist, self-righteous twat undergrads who think George W. Bush bombed the WTC. They say things like "It was a controlled demolition!", or "The planes was actually missles!" Way to go, geniuses. Just because you saw it in a movie on the internet with a cheesy narrator doesn't make it true.

CEO of 9/11 Truthers, Barack Hussein Obama

Then there's the latter, a group of people that is large, angry, and politically active. Teabaggers: They demonstrate, they get media attention, they do all the things I wish Gay people did en masse and they have no problem rallying the support to make it happen. It just goes to show how money is more important to anyone than civil rights. If only we could find some way to tie gay rights to gay monetary well-being, but I digress. At their best, this group has legitimate concerns about the role of government in our lives; they're worried about plans the administration and the congress are putting forward; they don't want their tax dollars to go to bank bailouts, or to pay their fiscally irresponsible neighbor's mortgage, or their fiscally irresponsible congress' pork barrel/earmarking; they want the government to provide less support for the indigent and unemployed of society and more support for the middle class worker. I mean, there's actually a lot of good stuff this group wants to work on. At their worst, they are Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, the asshole who said "Barack Hussein Obama" at the convention in order to incite anti-Muslim fervor, people who bandy about the terms "socialist" or "communist" without knowing what they even mean or cracking a book on either philosophy to see what they're all about, the people with the 'Hitler' signs, the people who think Obama is a muslim or a muslim-socialist or a commumuslisocialjew; the uber-rich bankrollers with bad intentions,... basically the people with the loudest and most annoying voices.

CEO of the Tea Party Movement, Rupert Murdoch

Well, you can probably already guess my opinion. But what's yours? Who has the worse half? (Or in the case of the teabaggers, who has the worse 75%?)

(Politically) Seizing the Opportunity of Climate Change

2010-02-11T07:57:00.000-08:00

In the wake of any major weather event, it's the responsibility of various news outlets to tell us who is to blame. George W. Bush caused Hurricane Katrina, Barack Obama caused the Haitian Earthquake (not to mention the Nigerian Underwear Bomber), and the Jews plotted 9/11. We know all this is true because anything bad that happens is always the fault of the president or the government. After all, the president these days is perceived to be as powerful and commanding of your life as some omnipotent deity. He controls the weather and he can foresee attacks on America. Of course, he does nothing about them. It's time we start asking the president to make it sunny and 75ºF all the time, to put a halt to hurricane season, and to end all terrorist attacks once and for all.

The men who control the weather, God #43 and God #44.

Oh, wait - he's not God?
Oh.
Well, that explains why all these freaky blizzards have been happening lately in Washington D.C. Now that I know Obama had no control over it, it all makes sense. You'll still find multiple news agencies using these storms, though, to shift blame, fervor, money, and opinion where they want it. Here's just a sampling of news headlines on various websites that relate to the storm:

Drudge Report: "Dallas wakes up to snow", "NYT: Blizzards Are From The Warming..." (and then if you read the NYT article, this is not at all what it says... more on that later...)

Fox News: From an article titled: "Snowball Fight On The Hill Over Government Shutdown": "The best thing is we're not passing any legislation, which ultimately will save the government a lot of money," [Sen. Coburn (R., Ok.)] said. "We're not gonna be blamed for this one," he added, alluding to a prior shutdown in 1996, caused by a dispute over the federal budget... and then later it continues... Liberals found their own metaphoric barbs in it. "This storm can try as it might," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) "but a few feet of snow have got nothing on Senate Republicans' ability to paralyze Washington with their blizzard of filibusters and procedural gimmicks."

And here's another article from their Political Grapevine: "Global Warming Hearing Postponed Because of the Snow" Somehow I doubt I need to elaborate on the framing involved in that article.

Washington Times EDITORIAL: Well, they just come right at it with the obvious angle: "Record snowfall illustrates the obvious: The global warming fraud is without equal in modern science." Now THAT is an intelligent opinion.

New York Times: Leave it to them to come at it from a reasonable, if somewhat base-level liberal angle: "Climate Change Debate is Heating up In Deep Freeze". (Read the whole thing here)

Note the use of the term "climate-change" instead of "global warming". Right wing news agencies will more often deem it warming when there's a blizzard because snow automatically refutes warming in their minds. Of course, if you've been politically and ecologically aware over the last 15 years, you might've figured out by now that scientists have been calling the environmental climate change and discovering new complexities in the nature of it.

Nevertheless, it's troubling the way politicians and journalists seize the weather as a way to bolster the issues they promote or the narrative they're presenting, respectively. If you're a climate change believer, the recent blizzards could represent evidence that our contribution to the environment is provoking huge weather events and you will use the blizzards to support your claims . If you refute climate change (or global warming), you will immediately point at the snow and say, "Look! It's snowing in record amounts! How can our globe be warming?" and you will use the blizzards to support your claims.

A heatwave? People on the beach? In BRAZIL? SNOW IN WINTER IN D.C.!??! This is obvious proof that there is/isn't global warming/climate change.

Each position is equally silly and misinformed. I cede the benefit of the doubt to climate scientists and meteorologists on this issue, not to journalists and politicians and the spokespersons of causes. Also, a single blizzard on the East Coast is not the deciding factor on an issue of this magnitude. Concurrently, they're experiencing a record heatwave in Rio De Janiero right now. Does that mean Global Warming is taking place, but only in South America? Most scientists will tell you that, yes, there is overwhelming evidence that climate change is occurring in recent times and that human behavior is an important contributor to it. Those same scientists will tell you that the projected major effects that could occur, if they do occur, are irreversible at this point. We are already seeing some tangible differences in our environment due to our contribution in the post-industrial age and maybe those would be enough to convince you that we have to self-regulate. Smog-alerts, dirty rivers, poisonous drinking water, melting glaciers affecting arctic wildlife, flooding, erosion of shorelines, etc. are all in some way affected by our environmental contribution. Are we all naïve enough to think that we DON'T have an effect on the environment? We are part of the environment; a large, commanding, seven billion people. Just look outside at our infrastructure. A garbage man comes to take away your waste material every week and put it somewhere. Where do you think it goes? You flush the toilet and your shit and piss and water are carried away, but to where? Not being a scientifically-minded person, not being a staunch environmentalist, and not being a democrat, even I understand this.

What I also understand is to what extent people will spin events to suit their needs, so I guess none of this surprises me. It just makes me silently shake my head and wonder if anyone is actually taken in by it. Remember, the primary function of journalism is supposed to be to inform and help us. It's not supposed to divide and solicit opinion by cleverly marketing the news. We shouldn't allow our politicians to misinform us either, not while a simple google search or a little bit of research can set you straight. Read a decent news source, read a book, read a goddamn encyclopedia. PUT A LITTLE EFFORT INTO IT is all I'm saying. In this world of 24-hour-news-cycles, the internet, and constant stimulation, you people should be more well informed, not less. A world of information has been laid at your feet. Use it.

Sarah Palin Needs a Fucking Dictionary

2010-02-09T08:12:00.000-08:00

Left to right, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh

I would like to tell everyone a story about why I hate all politicians, all political pundits, and all news organizations.

FIRST, last summer, Rahm Emanuel stated that the strategy of liberal democrats in congress regarding health care reform was "fucking retarded". Now, I'm sure you and I get caught saying this word from time to time and yeah, granted, it's not a word which should be used as a derogatory adjective. If I'm going to get all self-righteous about people using the word "gay" then I should probably be the same way about the word "retarded". We need to do our best to respect our fellow citizens. That being said, Rahm Emanuel should be reprimanded because of his status within the administration and it is good that he's apologized. The President is not only our president; he often assumes the mantle of standard bearer and there's no place for callous disrespect from members of his office.
This is not to say I think Emanuel should be fired, as Sarah Palin has recently suggested. Firing Rahm Emanuel for saying the word "retarded" is one of the most idiotic things I've heard in a while.

Which brings me to the SECOND event. Less than a week ago, Rush Limbaugh took to the airwaves to discuss the Rahm Emanuel/Sarah Palin flap and Emanuel's use of the word retard. Rush Limbaugh has certain hardlines as a political commentator which invigorate his base. The angle he chose to approach was not so much support for Sarah Palin, but criticism of the politically correct nature politics takes on, particularly from the left. He, as usual, was less than eloquent and his points didn't make a bit of fucking sense.

"I think the big news is the crackup going on. Our politically correct society is acting like some giant insult has taken place by calling a bunch of people who are retards, retards.

I mean, these liberal activists are kooks. They are loony tunes. And I'm not going to apologize for it, I'm just quoting Emanuel. It's in the news. I think the news is that he's out there calling Obama's number one supporters effing retards. So now there's going to be a meeting. There's going to be a retard summit at the White House, much like the beer summit between Obama and Gates and that cop in Cambridge."

Rush Limbaugh's point on political correctness totally missed the mark. Let's list the ways in which he failed:

1. He attempts to agree with Emanuel by saying he also thinks that supporters of Obama are retarded. But, Emanuel in the first place only said that the 'strategy' of the democrats was retarded, not that they themselves were.

2. Aside from splitting that hair, Rush Limbaugh then (inappropriately) does the same thing Emanuel does by using the word "retard" in a derogatory manner towards democrats. He also calls them "kooks" and "looney tunes". He says, "I'm not going to apologize for it, I'm just quoting Emanuel." Let's imagine for one moment that Rush Limbaugh said, "The final solution is to kill all Jews," and then he said, "I'm not going to apologize for it. I'm just quoting Adolph Hitler." The fact he is quoting Emanuel does not change the fact that he is agreeing and confirming what he said, not to mention restating it with the same intention to deride.

3. Rush goes a step further by saying, "There's going to be a retard summit at the White House." Here, he is neither quoting Emanuel nor making a point about political correctness; he's simply being inflammatory.

But, that's enough about Rush Limbaugh. Talking about him is akin to talking about the lint in your navel; he serves no purpose, adds nothing to political dialogue, and is best left out of the conversation. The only reason he gets any spotlight at all is that some conservatives still continue to take what he says seriously and thus elevate him to his current stature. He was the keynote speaker last year at CPAC, which is ridiculous. Can anyone take politics seriously anymore?

No, the real target of this is former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, because she committed what I believe is the most grievous sin: vanity.

On Palin's other hand: "Avoid saying 'retard'; keep Bump-It in place; mention Reagan undeservedly."

After first criticizing Emanuel for saying the word "retarded" and demanding he be fired, Palin was given the opportunity to also comment on Limbaugh's use of the word. And she did on Chris Wallace. First, she emphasized that her motivation for attacking Emanuel's use of the word in the first place was not her idea. This seems the classic setup to hedging her bets on what Limbaugh said:

Palin: "I am not politically-correct. I am not one to be a word police.... the special needs community reached out to me and said 'Can you kind of highlight the problem we have in the White House with both the President and chief-of-staff being so insensitive to the special needs community', and I said 'I'm here. Send me. I will do so."

Then, there is the following exchange between her and Wallace:

WALLACE: Should Rush Limbaugh apologize?

PALIN: They [liberals] are kooks, so I agree with Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh was using satire to bring attention to what the politically correct...

WALLACE: ... he used the 'R' word.

PALIN: .... [he was] using satire. Name-calling by anyone -- I teach this to my children, you teach it to your children and your grandchildren, too. Name-calling by anyone, it's just unnecessary.

WALLACE: You know what some people are going to say, Governor, and have said. They say: 'Look, when it's your political adversary --Rahm Emanuel -- she's going to call him out, indecent, apologize, but when it's a political friend like Rush Limbaugh, oh, it's satire.

PALIN: I didn't hear Rush Limbaugh calling a group of people whom he did not agree with effing retards, and we did know that Rahm Emanuel -- it's been reported -- did say that. There's a big difference there.

There are so many factual inaccuracies in her above dialogue that it's enough to make my head spin, especially since her supporters will use so much of this to further boost her reputation as a straight shootin' MAVERICK!

Palin's explanation is clear evidence of her double standard on the situation. Plainly, she doesn't want to criticize Limbaugh or call for his firing because he's a conservative, Republican supporter with a great deal of influence. She DOES NOT want to lose him if she runs for president in 2012 (which she seems to indicate in the same interview that she will).

Of course, she explains this away first by saying she agrees with Rush Limbaugh, that "liberals are kooks". Now, let's pull something again from later in her stream-of-consciousness nonsense babble:
"Name-calling by anyone, it's just unnecessary."

YOU ARE CONTRADICTING YOURSELF WITHIN 10 SECOND BLURBS OF WHAT YOU SAY! I... I... AGHHHHH HOW ARE YOU SO POPULAR?!

Alright, calm down Griffiths. We still have a lot to talk about here.

Immediately after that, she explains that he was using "satire" to bring attention to... well she never finishes that point. She simply says he was "using satire". Let's get something clear here, Limbaugh is no more a political satirist than Ann Coulter or Michael Moore or Keith Olbermann. These people are all political commentators, which is a very different vocation. If Rush Limbaugh were using satire, it would follow that in what he says, there's an underlying wink of an eye, an indication that the point he's conveying is contrary to the negative example he is presenting. Limbaugh, if he were using satire, which I don't believe he's intelligent enough to do, would find a wittier way to say "retard is just a word". He instead is provocative, not satirical. He simply carries on what Emanuel said with no wink of an eye, just a quick jab at the left meant to incite.

Sarah Palin doesn't know what the fuck satire is. She wouldn't know satire if satire came up and shat on her face, which it often does, and STILL she does not understand it.

Finally, she ends this blurb by just straight up multi-lying: "I didn't hear Rush Limbaugh calling a group of people whom he did not agree with effing retards, and we did know that Rahm Emanuel -- it's been reported -- did say that. There's a big difference there."

Ok, no, no, and no.

WRONG #1: Rush Limbaugh did call liberals, who he does not agree with, retards.
WRONG #2: Rahm Emanuel never called people "fucking retards", he said that their strategy was "fucking retarded."
WRONG #3: There is NOT a big difference there. Both Limbaugh and Emanuel used the word retard to deride people they disagreed with and it was disrespectful on both accounts.

Conclusion? Sarah Palin's grasp of reason is "fucking retarded". Even if it's not, she is obviously so desperate to politically maneuver herself into the presidency in 2012 that she's willing to defend Rush Limbaugh, the scum of the conservative political movement, as a means to keep him in her corner. That is not only pitiful, it just doesn't make any sense from a political standpoint. How did Obama win in 2008? He courted the independents and shied away from his reputation as being a huge leftist. Palin is going the opposite route by courting the Limbaugh crowd. If only she made a bit of sense when she spoke, this strategy may actually work, but it doesn't. Furthermore, the fact she has a down-syndrome baby does not give her the leeway to be the authority on who can and cannot say "retard" and in what context.

She's disingenous, full of garbage, fluff; the worst kind of person. Stay away from Sarah Palin.

Short Story: Looking For Koreans and Chinese - First Draft

2010-02-02T23:40:00.000-08:00

I just finished the first draft of this, finally. I've been struggling with this one for a few weeks.
It feels fresh, but it feels like a good start. Share your comments, pretty please. I feel like I'm writing into the void on this goddamn blog.

----

Looking For Koreans and Chinese | Timothy Griffiths

This story takes place in 1952, right after my only rotation through Korea had ended. I had come home ready to take the G.I. Bill and get myself an education, but first I had to deal with my mother. My parents weren’t the most pleasant people, and while that sounds like an unfortunate thing to say about people who raised you, and are now dead and gone many years ago, believe me, it’s true.

At nineteen years old, six months before I was drafted, I had developed a real enthusiasm for jazz. I used to go to the neighborhood clubs at least three times a week to catch the regulars as well as the guys just passing through. I became friends with a piano player named Moe who invited me to the afternoon rehearsals. I sat in and he showed me a few tricks behind the keys. I couldn’t play for shit, but I could draw and to Moe, that counted for something. So I started sketching up his posters, flyers, signs; He used to say, kid, you ought to go to art school and make somethin’ of that talent, but I always just thought he was fucking with me and we usually laughed it off together. No one went to art school in 1950s Akron, Ohio.

After a while, he got so interested in my art that he came over to the house to see some large-scale things I had been working on. He said that he was getting a one-album deal with Columbia and he wanted me to do the artwork. We sat in the living room and spun records and we looked through my collection, the multi-varied sleeves of all different concepts and styles, coming up with ideas. Of course, I was convinced they’d get someone real, a professional artist, to do his album. The guy had too much talent to risk it on a kid with a sketching hobby, but it was fun to talk about.

At 5:00, just as Moe was leaving, my mother came home from my Aunt Carol’s, smelling like nail polish and gin. She and Moe met at the door and practically ran into each other, but they both managed to keep their composure. Moe, in particular, was shy, but could be very charming. He was a performer after all.

He tipped his hat at her and said ‘scuse me miss, I was just leaving. She nodded and slipped inside, setting down her purse at the kitchen table, at a loss for breath. She shut the door behind her.

“So, how do you know that young man?” she asked me.

“He’s a jazz piano player. I’m going to do his album art.”

“Ah, Jazz. A jazz piano player. And what color is that man?” she asked. She reached in her purse and pulled a tube of lip balm out and she started to gloss her lower lip. I remained silent. She refocused her gaze on me. “What color is that man?” she asked again.

“Isn’t it obvious? He’s black, mom.”

“Did he touch anything?”

“He touched everything, mom. He touched everything, okay?”

“Tell me where he sat,” she said and I knew exactly what to tell her. I pointed my finger down the hall and into the common room. In my proudest voice I told her, “Well, Mother, I sat on the floor by the turntable and he sat right in your chair. Your favorite chair! I hope none of his pigment rubbed off on it.”

“Humph! I see; he was in my chair. My favorite chair. Well, Christopher,” she said, reaching under the kitchen sink and removing a can of Lysol, “Aren’t you welcoming to people? Aren’t you just a great host?” Then she marched in the living room, shook the can, and deployed a long mist over the chair, wiping it until it was clean and glossy. “In the future, try to ask me first before you welcome blacks into our home. I only hope nothing is missing, or we’ll have to have a further discussion about this.”

My father, on the other hand, had too many incidences of general ignorance to recall just one. His miserable nature could be summed up in a piece of advice he gave me one time: “There are three types of people we don’t trust, Christopher: Jews, Blacks, and Catholics.” He made my mother look like a paragon of racial tolerance, the Coretta Scott King of Akron. That’s why I didn’t care so much when I got the letter in the mail, giving me a time and a place to report for duty, an office to visit in Cleveland, a form to fill out.

The two years following that were spent overseas. I put the drawing on hold while I was in the war. In gun battles, I spent about half the time almost messing my pants from fear, waiting for the word that things were clear or that it was time to retreat. And was I guilty of killing anyone? Good question. I once ate breakfast five yards from a North Korean soldier that had been flattened by a tank and our whole platoon made jokes about it. We chuckled when we found dried up balls of udon tucked into the shirt pockets of the bloated dead. ‘Last Supper’, we called it. That seems close enough. I did look down the scope many times, hesitating to pull the trigger, and other times I fired blindly, closing my eyes as the rifle pushed against my shoulder. There were degrees by which we lost our collective humanity. Then there were the soldiers that lost their lives instead and none of us knew which was worse. But, killings? I don’t remember any of those.

I can’t say I was a good soldier by any means, but I kept my mouth shut and I was more respectful than the guys with good marksmanship, the cutthroats that put notches in their riflebutts. I was no jarhead, but I did what I was told and I was punctual. My superiors recommended me for officer’s school and the pay seemed pretty good, but I didn’t care. After two years, I was ready to go home to Ohio. With all the time I had to think about my situation, I realized Moe had never been fucking with me and I was interested in taking his advice, seeing if I was really worth my salt at art. On my way home, I wrapped my hand around a pencil to draw the ocean from the ship’s deck, until storms on the Pacific forced us inside for the remainder of the trip. I was out of practice, seasick, and I spent days in my cot, staring at the metal walls until my eyes dried out. I was thinking about my mother and how I had been sorry for how I talked to her, even if she did deserve what I said. I didn’t know if, when I got home, we’d be able to move beyond it or if I’d have to apologize to continue a relationship with her. While I was overseas, I had received a postcard from her saying that she and my Dad had officially separated and that he had moved to Kentucky to be closer to his side of the family, but it didn’t matter since I never had any desire to reconcile with him. Aside from when we’d get in fights, physical or otherwise, we didn’t share any sort of passionate relationship and time had made me forget whatever fleeting feeling I had for him, like an old scar that blends in with the rest of your worn skin.

With the money I saved in the service, I planned on getting my own place, even though my mother protested it in letters she sent me, probably worried about how corruptible I would be. My plans, which were hardly the stuff of a bohemian lifestyle (a degree in industrial design), were always discouraged under the guise of concern for my wellbeing, my monetary conditioning, the influence of drugs and the counterculture. Of course, when you’re entrenched in the institution of the army for two years, away at wartime, you miss the curve on American culture to a certain degree and I would’ve had a lot of catching up to do to live like a real artist. Nevertheless, she urged to me to learn a more marketable trade.

At the train station, she asked me if I brought her anything from the West Coast, which I had. It was a paisley patterned umbrella, which she loved immediately. She said I was too thin and said we should get lunch, though it was 3:30 PM and I wasn’t hungry at all. It was plainly obvious she wanted to remedy me in some way and to be polite I let her do it as we pantomimed the relationship of a generic mother and son.

The streets of the city were stacked with balloon vendors and old men wearing business suits. It was summer and the businesses had their doors and windows open and a layer of soot was collecting on the barber’s poles and the telephone lines. The street was a boiling river of black cars and the rumble of nearby music indicated a carnival nearby. We said nothing to each other and I just wanted to listen to all this America around me. She took my elbow and began to cry. I thought you would be dead, she told me. I thought you would be injured in some way, but you don’t have a scratch on you, do you? No, I said, not really. I just got some minor bumps and bruises along the way. It was no more or less than the majority of the soldiers received, more uncomfortable than anything. She asked again if she could feed me and she held out her hand to lead me into a fancy café with a burgundy awning called Lelli’s. The waiters wore bowties and red aprons and sweat was beading on their foreheads, sloped under the weight of their thickly gelled hair. The only available table was outside and I had trouble lighting my cigarettes in the warm wind. The bread and butter plates seemed to float on the tablecloths, or maybe I just felt distracted as my mother droned on about all she had been doing while I was gone; so distracted that when she finally asked me a question, I was caught off guard and I had to ask her to repeat it.

“I was asking what you thought of Korea, as a country,” she said. She squeezed a lemon wedge into her water and took a sip and there was a pause before I could respond to her in earnest.

“Well,” I said, “It’s obviously not the greatest place in the world right now, but the boys are doing an alright job holding the thirty-eighth parallel. I hear that some boys are still well above the forty-fifth now, actually. We’ve pushed China out of the scene and to me, that seems to be just the point, you know; make it a costly endeavor for them. That’s why I think we, or they rather, should keep going.” She nodded her head and her eyes drifted down. She leaned her hand on her elbow, clearing her throat. “But, then again, it’s been explained to me by the higher ups that it isn’t our place to get involved to that extent. We’re just supposed to enforce peace.”

“We don’t get much over here,” she replied. “You’ll have to forgive me for not knowing what to say.”

“Get much of what?” I asked. “News on the war?”

As she dipped a knife into a block of butter, she said she had been to the hairdresser the week before.

“Do you like it?” she asked, modeling her hairstyle for me.

“It’s still very long. You must be growing it out.”

“Only so she has something to work with. Anyway, I got talking with Eileen while I was there, you remember her? Eileen Thompson?”

“Yes, I remember. She lived on the next block, towards the cul-de-sac, right?”

“I said to Eileen that you were on your way home from Korea and she said, ‘My goodness, it’s hot in those South Pacific islands, isn’t it?’ I’d say that’s been the attitude of a lot of people over here. It’s sort of shut out of the paper, which I don’t read anyway, and people don’t seem to understand it so they just put it aside. Our boys are still over there dying. You ask me, we have a right to know what they’re dying for.”

We stopped our conversation as a waiter arrived and set our plates down in front of us. I had ordered a steak and she had gotten some pasta with chicken, but she claimed she wasn’t hungry, so the mound of food stayed untouched in front of her as I sliced into my meat. I had wanted to respond to what she said about people not understanding Korea, but then I realized it would just sound bitter. I wasn’t interested in the public discourse. And if what she said was true, that it wasn’t even getting proper press coverage, what did people have to talk about or understand anyway? I was intelligent and wary enough to understand that it was unpopular for us to be over there, but at the time, as much as I wasn’t a soldier, I had believed in what we were doing. I still believed in it.

At the end of the meal, a black busboy cleared the plates. My mother stared at me and I stared back. Then we both backed down on our stares. It was like we were actors in an overly choreographed Shakespeare play. She wiped her mouth with her napkin and began to fold it into a shape on the table. I stared across the street at the park where giant Uncle Sam impersonators on stilts handed out candies to children. The middle area was fenced off for what looked like a fireworks display. I had been given all that time on the ship back to think about how I was going to rebuke her when the time came to do so, but now, after two years, she had begun to look like an old lady with her careful motions, her little purple hat, and the grey that seeped into her roots. I spent my time in the last parts of the war worried about how to be a good son and also hold the moral authority and then on my way home, I had lost my nerve, somewhere on the train ride between San Francisco and Cleveland. What did she care how I lived my life now that I was an adult? What business was it of hers who I spent my time with, what I thought about the war, or what I thought about black people? Our past together seemed like a moot point.

“Coffee today?” asked the waiter and we both ordered pecan pie. I wasn’t in a hurry to get going anywhere. I wanted to watch the parade of cars going by. I never got tired of comparing models.

“You know, your friend,” she said, “What’s his name again?”

“I have lots of friends mother,” I told her.

“Well, you don’t have to be coy. You know the one I mean.”

Stop, I told myself. See what she has to say first.

“The black man,” I said, exhaling smoke. “I haven’t kept in touch with him.”

“His name was Moe, right?”

“Yep.”

“Was it Moe Templeton? Maurice Templeton? Is Moe short for Maurice?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, totally oblivious to why she was so curious about his name. “I think it was Moe Templeton, yeah.”

“One of his friends stopped by.”

Indeed, this was some very interesting news. One of Moe’s friends had stopped by my mother’s house. And why? Unsure as I was of her motives, this was pretty engaging, so I sat up straight in my chair and stubbed out the butt of my cigarette.

“I don’t remember his name,” she continued, “But the young man asked if you were home. I told him where you were.”

“When was this?” I interrupted.

“Almost a year ago now. I explained to the young man where you were and then he asked if he could leave something for you. Said it was from Moe. Well, I asked him, why didn’t Moe bring it himself? I had remembered that you two were pretty good friends, if that’s what you want to call it, so I was a little curious why he didn’t come. Then, this short little nigger, in the saddest voice – ‘Well,’ he sighed,” and she sighed as she continued, “’Moe just ain’t with us anymore, ma’am.’ And I asked him how he meant that, to make sure.”

She went on to explain what the boy had told her, that Moe had been arrested for public drunkenness after the police broke up an unlicensed club. He couldn’t stand up straight and he had scabs all over his face, so they dragged him into the police station by his feet and threw him in the drunk tank, leaving him there overnight. In the morning, they found him turned over, the wooden bench on top of him. ‘The poor boy’ she said, had somehow managed to fall and break his own neck, bust up his head. By the time they found him in the morning he had either bled to death or the combination of the alcohol and the concussion killed him. She said the boy had left a large envelope with her and that she hadn’t opened it, but she didn’t have to tell me anyway. They were concept sketches we had been handing back and forth for the album covers, when and if the time came to do something. Of course, he being dead, I thought, no one would need those anymore, not even me. I wasn’t sure what his friend was doing dropping them off for me and I still don’t know who it was, but that had to take guts to go up to an imposing white lady like my mother, in my neighborhood, and knock on her door.

In those two years I had been gone, nothing seemed like it could touch me. I got over the fear of bullets, the fear of starvation, of dehydration, of getting lost, the loud explosions in the night, the indecision of going left or right or straight, the steps to take to ensure we could sleep without risk of an ambush. We mostly worried about staying fit and not sleeping on our feet. After a while, the thoughts of home had drifted away to the point where had my mind been the sun, the jazz club would’ve been a distant comet hurling towards the edge of the galaxy. I steadied my chin as she related this news, the rush coming back to me, the ringing of ambient piano, moving basslines, clinking glassware behind the bar. The sound rose in my head so much so that I could even smell the stale liquor of the club, feel the tacky texture of the wooden counters on my fingers, but my eyelids went slack and my eyes, they were only staring at the salt and pepper shakers. Then the bus boy came by again to remove them. I hadn’t said a word back I thought would incite her. I mostly tried to imagine where I would go next, because it couldn’t be back to her house. I nodded. I pretended to grieve.

“Were you two that close, really?” she asked.

“No,” I said, and it was the truth. “We really lived in different worlds. I think you’d agree.”

“There was that time,” she said, “When you were so proud of yourself that you had let him in the house. You were young still.”

“Not that young.”

“Young enough. Under my roof, anyway. If your father could see you now in that uniform,” she said, “see how you’re doing, how you look; He’d always wanted to enlist in WWII, but he’s very nearsighted. Year by year, it gets worse. He’ll be blind one day.”

Great, I thought.

She paid the check and I buttoned my blazer back up, reaching up and straightening my pins. She led me out again and I walked at a sluggish pace behind her. I felt like a moping fifteen year old again and that day was humid; it seemed as though the sidewalk would swallow me like quicksand. The train ride, the ship sailing, the transport from place to place and now back home, had caught up with me, and besides being aggravated with her and sad about Moe, more than anything I was tired and unable to deal with an argument. I just kept my mouth shut as she continued on about the weather, her friends, the things my father had left behind that he still needed to come pick up or have shipped.

As we rounded the corner and passed the park, the sound of bullets erupted around us and a single deafening pop caught me right in the ear, vibrations against the ground, bullets striking the pavement and the curb. Who had been planning this ambush and how had they timed it so aptly for the worst day I’d had in two years? As I was waiting to see the flash of gunfire, a haze of smoke, to finally feel a bullet, I looked around for Koreans, Chinese, but all I could see were the white faces of civilians and children. When I didn’t see the Asians I’d been trained to look for, I knew I needed cover. I went down on my stomach and smacked my chin on the sidewalk. I bit my tongue and tasted a little blood. Staring at the homogenized pavement and stone, the long shadows of people standing about, staring, or walking by and pretending not to notice me, became apparent, like I was in a garden full of statues. I started to feel ashamed. At first, I could only look at that pavement up close, at the many different stones it took to make the ground and yet, there it was, the only thing keeping me from sinking into the Earth. I rubbed at the gash on my chin and came up to my knees. I brushed dirt off of my uniform. “Firecrackers,” I said to myself. “Of course.” A smartass college kid shouted at me from across the street, ‘Hit the deck soldier!” and emphasized it with laughter as he slid his arm around the waist of a girl.

I looked up for my mother, expecting her to be right above me, but she was not there. Looking around, I caught site of her peeking out from the entryway of an alley, pretending not to look at me. And the other people going by, they also pretended not to look at me.

“Mom,” I said, “Let’s go.” I walked over to urge her by the elbow. “You’re embarrassing me, Christopher,” she said. “What on Earth were you doing?” I tried to explain to her that in the army when you hear bullets and you’re unprepared, you make yourself as small as possible, but I knew she wouldn’t understand that concept. Sure, she’d nod. Sure, we could go home, but I’d never feel welcome in that house. In my memory, it was now a relic, a museum of a life I lived before I was a soldier and now the home of an old single lady, my mother. She went for my chin with a handkerchief, trying to wipe the blood away, but I turned away towards the blinding sun, glowing bright orange at the end of the street.

You get as old as I am and memory doesn’t serve you so well anymore. The kids are gone and I’ve got this three-bedroom house to myself. Upkeep is impossible and I’m tired all the time. I watch the History Channel. I know it’s a cliché, but I watch M*A*S*H. I’ve got arthritis in my knuckles that causes them to swell up all red and big. Holding a pencil these days is a pain. But as I said, mostly it’s the memory that goes and with that goes inspiration, attention to detail, remembering the texture of something you’re trying to get down on paper; even little things like leaving the coffee burner on are a struggle. I can’t remember what I said to my mother, what street I turned down as I waved her off. I don’t remember if she called out after me. I just remember showing up at a hotel desk on a poorly lit street. The clerk I spoke with was very friendly to me, even though I didn’t have enough to pay for the room.

“Veteran?” he asked. I didn’t want any sympathy, but I told him I was. “Thankless job you guys got over there,” he said. “That’s good enough. I got you down in the book and I never forget faces. You get your money from where you need to tomorrow and you pay me in the afternoon. We’re mostly vacant anyway. It’s summer; everyone is out in the countryside. Cuyahoga Falls, what not…”

I remember hanging up my uniform in the closet and reclining on the bed, the most comfortable one I’d been in since I took R&R in Tokyo three-and-a-half months before. I lay there in my boxers, my white t-shirt, a gold chain draped around my neck. I remember flicking on the radio and scanning the dial. I remember thinking how damn hot it was in that box of a room. I remember thinking that, like my father, I had to pick up my things from the house and get as far away from Ohio as I could.

I remember distinctly thinking about the sketches. It was mostly of one in particular that I had done of Moe’s piano. What I remembered most about it was that it was shaking every time that he played, pounding it with his hands like a blind man fighting off an enormous thief. The guy was a power player like a young Ahmad Jamal with more dexterity and range. Even when he was strong, you could sense the finesse involved. I drew that piano as it was rocking back and forth, just a splintered upright in a dingy bar, but it was the motion I drew, the grain of the wood, his hands just barely framed in the shot. Then I was going to stylize his name down the side with the title of the album, but it wasn’t done; it was just a sketch. I needed more time.

I had a lot of work to do.

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Oscar Nomination Predictions!

2010-02-01T08:25:00.000-08:00

Some of these are just straight up guesswork, but I tried to throw some wild cards and curveballs in there. It seems Oscar always has a few surprises on nomination day, but this also seems like a very populist year. I really am expecting The Blind Side to show up in Best Picture, but I also feel that The Last Station has a lot of momentum. After seeing The White Ribbon I wish it would get more noms than foreign film, so I put it down for cinematography, which I think is how they might honor it. I mean, just look at this:

The shot is so expertly divided and crafted, the subtext so thick; to those familiar with the movie, it gives such an eloquent look at the power structure of a German town in that place and time, each indelible character carefully choreographed and shot, some in shadow and some in bright white. The eye to detail is just astonishing. My favorite is the schoolteacher in the top left corner and the children all subtly staring down towards the camera.

Best Picture:

Avatar

The Hurt Locker

Precious

Up In The Air

Inglourious Basterds

An Education

Invictus

Nine

The Last Station

Best Direction:

Kathryn Bigelow

James Cameron

James Reitman

Quentin Tarantino

Clint Eastwood

Best Actor:

Jeff Bridges

George Clooney

Colin Firth

Morgan Freeman

Tobey Maguire

Best Actress:

Sandra Bullock

Helen Mirren

Carey Mulligan

Gabourey Sidibe

Meryl Streep

Best Supporting Actor:

Christoph Waltz

Woody Harrelson

Christopher Plummer

Stanley Tucci

Matt Damon

Best Supporting Actress:

Mo'Nique

Penelope Cruz

Vera Farmiga

Anna Kendrick

Julianne Moore

Original Screenplay:

Inglourious Basterds

The Hurt Locker

A Serious Man

500 Days of Summer

Best Adapted Screenplay:

Up In The Air

An Education

Precious

Invictus

The Last Station

Costume Design:

Bright Star

Inglourious Basterds

Sherlock Holmes

The Young Victoria

The Last Station

Animated:

Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs

Coraline

The Princess and the Frog

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Cinematography:

Inglourious Basterds

Nine

Bright Star

The White Ribbon

The Hurt Locker

Art Direction:

Nine

Inglourious Basterds

Avatar

Where The Wild Things Are

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

Editing:

Avatar

The Hurt Locker

Up In the Air

Inglourious Basterds

District 9

Visual Effects:

Avatar

District 9

Star Trek

Make Up:

District 9

Star Trek

Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus

Score:

Avatar

The Informant

A Single Man

The Princess and the Frog

Best Song:

The Weary Kind

Cinema Italiano

Winter

Sound Mixing:

Avatar

District 9

Star Trek

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

The Hurt Locker

Best Sound Effects:

Avatar

The Hurt Locker

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Star Trek

CBS' Super Bowl of Conservatism

2010-01-30T12:29:00.000-08:00

It's clear as crystal to me that the majority of the mainstream media is not-so-subtly being crafted with the hands of Jesus. This story, however, is particularly disturbing because of the double standard it's promoting on the most watched TV event of the year, worldwide. Because of this story, I now feel like I live in Uganda.

As you watch the Super Bowl next sunday, you're going to notice a lot of ads with girls in bikinis, probably a crass Bud Light ad featuring a guy saying he'll let his girlfriend fall to a grisly death to save his beer, a bunch of assholes tackling each other in the gayest fashion possible and slapping each other's asses, an ad or two for eHarmony or Match.com, ads for pills to battle erectile dysfunction featuring naked old straight couples relaxing in separate bathtubs, a completely made up story about Tim Tebow's mother being told by doctors to abort her baby, and the teams will cap it off by thanking God for every touchdown they score. What you WON'T see is a harmless ad for a gay dating site called ManCrunch (what the fuck is up with that name for a dating site? Manhunt meets... potato chips?) because CBS has deemed it too racy. Too racy?? What about Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake's little tittyshow a few years back? What about Prince, the paragon of sexuality, playing Super Bowl halftime and holding his guitar like a big, white, curly penis? What about Jessica Simpson's fake Baptist tits emblazoned with the Doritos logo?!

In the ad, two guys sitting on the couch, watching football, both reach for the same snackbowl, link hands, and then suck each other off while the third guy fingers their buttholes... oh wait, I'm just being told that none of that happens. They simply make out for less than ten seconds. Damn, and I was already getting half an erection thanks to Cialis.

A douchebag and his tranny girlfriend.

Listen, I'm not going to sit here and belabor the point for too long, but this ad is obviously "inappropriate" for CBS viewers because there's two men kissing in it and any time two men kiss, the baby Jesus cries and God takes out his wrath on Haiti (too soon?).

So, what do we do? Here's my suggestion for an organized protest. Everyone still wants to watch the Super Bowl and go to parties, right? Well, the moment the Tim Tebow anti-choice ad (produced by Focus on the Family) comes on TV, I want you to CHANGE THE CHANNEL IMMEDIATELY or turn off your TV. I want an absolutely enormous ratings dive during the ad. Not to mention, none of us should be subjected to that kind of false and hateful bullshit while we're trying to watch a football game. It's insane, it's inappropriate, and it's totally and completely prejudiced against homosexuals and women.

As an addendum to this protest, I recommend for all of you to send complaints and requests to remove the anti-choice ad to CBS.

Now, I'm off to go fuck my boyfriend while I read Leviticus aloud and self-flagellate.

Poem: "Public"

2010-01-27T17:03:00.000-08:00

Public

From early on in your twenties,

You look back on those times as punishment

And annually, you place an exceeding amount of blame

On those who put you there

In that inferno, the grey walls

as stifling as thick sheets of coal,

in which you wrapped your body

until you were mummified.

Smith and the others praised the ones who

Worked within their limitations

And the function of he and the other teachers

Was not to teach everyone to be

The replacements for the bygone geniuses

Of yesteryear and if you asked them,

They’d be hard-pressed to tell you that,

In their small and isolated community,

Any one of the children was the next Stephen Hawking

Or the next Edward R. Murrow

Or even the next Stephen King, master of horror.

(Although now, you’d shudder to think

that you had ever once considered him a so-called

‘master’. That anyone still does is beyond amazing to you.)

Only you could urge yourself to produce

What you fantasized about: Contribution,

The great novel of our time, by Timothy M. Griffiths.

And post-war Britain represented the epoch of culture

And their accents drifted in your consciousness as the voice you wrote

And even now you prefer Stilton over any domestic blue cheese

Because its name has been ingrained into your notion of

Culture, food, consumption, contribution

Culture, food, consumption, contribution,

the perpetual motion machine that functions as a

siphon on your entry-level bank account.

Anyway, proper linguistics went unlearned;

You went through a stretch from ages

Eighteen through twenty-two where you didn’t read

A single book, let alone a book of substance,

And you constantly wish you could blame someone but yourself

For this failing, this setback.

You wonder how anyone made it through their

Public education with any sense or confidence at all

And then you realized that the measure

Of any good artist was density in action

And so you made yourself as dense as you possibly could.

Yeah, that’s it.

Density.

But then you look back at all those soiled

Memories of your past,

The refuse of your new learning

As you come to this new revelation: “Density,”

You say, your new word, your new hallmark

Of criticism.

It will be quite an achievement if anyone allows your

Knowledge to bleed into the higher learning

Of new pupils one day, as you were once

taught by amateurs who struggled

against an overbearing sun, that slowly petrified

Their movements in the air

and they are now on the way to some future grave

and you don't have a shred of pity for them.

Finally, COMPLIANCE.

You hear there is a good early-bird special

At the diner around the corner and that

At church services, you could really meet a nice girl

And you two could talk about tangibility.

But, you might ask her where she grew up

And she might say, “The Bronx”

And then what will you tell her about?

Tying the right lure onto a line to catch freshwater trout?

Raymond Carver & Gordon Lish

2010-01-27T10:38:00.000-08:00

Bicycles, Muscles, Cigarettes

An article in the latest New Yorker elaborates on the relationship between Raymond Carver and his editor Gordon Lish, the man who some would say is greatly responsible for the beloved aesthetic of Carver's work. Interesting stuff. I haven't read the stuff that's been reedited by Tess Gallagher, but I don't know... I'm skeptical. Additives to any masterpiece (like the Lucas CGI in Star Wars re-releases, etc.) can be risky. Anyway, what's your favorite Carver story? Mine is probably "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love", but I have soft spots for "Fat" and "Nobody Said Anything".

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Timothy Griffiths ‎(Reposted since the previous link died.) Just watch the intro. The Simpsons has jumped the shark. This is all Banksy. Ham-fisted, politically obtuse, darkly humorous, and fabulously inventive. APPLAUSE!

Timothy Griffiths The calculator of my philosophical musings desperately needs an equal button.

Timothy Griffiths A well-scripted moment in an otherwise lackluster narrative (Such is life!):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hni0yeCMm6A

Timothy Griffiths ‎"THIS, is cool?"http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/210218/go-with-the-status-quo

Timothy Griffiths I don't know why politicians won't make the connection between their harmful policies and rhetoric and the violence, suicide, and depression within the gay community. Paladino doesn't want to "hurt homosexual people", but he also doesn't think they should be equal. Paradox.

Timothy Griffiths Twenty. D. Energizers.

These Discussions Should Be On My Blog, NOT On Facebook

Timothy Griffiths I suppose this is because religious people are probably indifferent about religious knowledge, particularly where Christianity is concerned; The practice, faith, etc. is more emphasized.NPR: Survey: Atheists, Agnostics Know More About Religion Than Religious

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Raymond Carver & Gordon Lish

Timothy Griffiths A well-scripted moment in an otherwise lackluster narrative (Such is life!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hni0yeCMm6A

Timothy Griffiths ‎"THIS, is cool?"

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/210218/go-with-the-status-quo

Timothy Griffiths I suppose this is because religious people are probably indifferent about religious knowledge, particularly where Christianity is concerned; The practice, faith, etc. is more emphasized.

NPR: Survey: Atheists, Agnostics Know More About Religion Than Religious