this blog will not save your life

when la becomes miami

2006-06-27T16:39:00.000-07:00

crap, it's fucking 95 degrees here. humidity is 24%, which doesn't sound like much, but for california, it's a lot. very sticky these past few days w/ the odd bolt of lightning thrown in.

i took this picture a few minutes ago. this is the clearest it's been since saturday morning.

belligerent ghouls

2006-06-26T11:25:00.000-07:00

went to the smiths/morrissey convention at the henry ford in hollywood last night. it was all right. not bad. some cute girls. one girl was wearing a tight skirt + she had the biggest, roundest, hottest ass i've seen in a while. okay, sorry. i just had to write that out.

i've never understood wearing a band tee to a show/convention/whatever of the band you're seeing. i mean, isn't it a given that you're into them? but it was just a sea of smiths/morrissey tees wherever you looked. i was rocking my red circa '70s miles davis funk tee. stuck out like a sore thumb. well, that + the fact that i was, like, one of the only four black guys there. there were some real hipster douches there, though. couple of karen o look-alikes. i didn't actually think people really copied her look. thought that was just something journalists exaggerated. but what else do you expect in h-wood? anyway, when we arrived there, my brother said, "uh oh, we're not dressed cool enough," and i said, "speak for yrself, bitch-- it doesn't get any more goddamn cooler than miles."
"good point."

of course, i wound up hanging w/ these girls who didn't have any cigarettes. so we all took turns bumming off others, then sharing between the three of us (my brother doesn't smoke). one of the girls was all, "you don't toss salads or anything, do you?" and i was like, "yeah, sure," + then she freaked + wouldn't let me drag. so i had to lie + say, "oh, i'm only kidding." not only do i toss salads, but there were some salads i saw last night i'd like to have tossed.

i had eyeball-sex w/ a couple of girls. all of them were hot, but they were w/ their boyfriends. one in particular stood out. i was in the back, watching the cover band, and this dude w/ his girlfriend walks by me. she's holding his hand, walking behind him a little bit. i'm looking at her because she's pretty cute, she meets my gaze, looks away, then looks back at me and eyeballs my ass hard for a few good moments before she was gone. there are casual glances, there are absentminded gazes, there are curious looks, and then there's that look + there was no mistaking it.

so it was cool.

choadfork media

2006-06-22T18:42:00.000-07:00

unsurprisingly, i'm no fan of pitchfork media. to put it succinctly, they're wrong. so, yawn, is it any wonder i find their list of 100 greatest videos sadly lacking? now, i could easily be missing it, but i swear that i did not see what is possibly the best music video ever: don fucking henley's boys of summer. if i glossed over it, please let me know. because as i see it, this list has zero credibility w/ out that video. i won't even go into the scores of other videos these sons of whores didn't include, but how can you have a list of the 100 greatest videos w/ out don fucking henley?

ARE THEY OUT OF THEIR MINDS?

miles davis quintet, 1964, playing so what

2006-06-21T22:59:00.000-07:00

definitely one of the best renditions of this tune. herbie hancock doesn't look a day older than 13. i love it. absolutely in the top 3 greatest bands ever, and the other two feature miles + coltrane and miles + bird.

wait, wait-- here it comes. the inevitable din of the blogosphere:

NOT AS GOOD AS CLAP YR HANDS SAY YEAH, THOUGH, MAN. THOSE GUYS ROKKKKK, LIKE, FERRRREAL. NO SLEEP TILL WILLIAMSBURG!

dep II

2006-06-21T22:52:00.000-07:00

dillinger playing sugar coated sour live. it's pretty much a no-brainer why i think these guys are the best band working today.

the dillinger escape plan playing nin's "wish"

2006-06-21T22:43:00.000-07:00

fuckin a.

more propagandhi live

2006-06-21T22:17:00.000-07:00

this time the boys are rocking back to the motor league + haille sellasse, up your ass. as a former zine distro dude, i gotta say, "fuck off! who cares!? about yr stupid scenes, yr shitty zines + strawmen you build up to burn," is just too goddamn hilarious + spot-on. i love "glenn's" lament about dave mustaine becoming a born-again at the end. mustaine was much cooler when he was a junkie.

propagandhi live

2006-06-21T22:08:00.000-07:00

playing a speculative fiction in arizona (or as they would say it, "arizoner"). props to "glenn" + todd for rocking megadeth + dio tees, respectively.

i hope brookers NEVER fixes the gap in her teeth

2006-06-20T12:51:00.000-07:00

this is a brooker's newscast. it's actually pretty funny. i usually think the same shit when i watch the news. the myspace, bird flu, and weather bits were epsecially spot-on. the subtext of all news broadcasts is death. we're all going to die. i think a similar current runs through most, if not all, political discourse. we're all going to die if something isn't done about so-and-so, etc. by the way, birth causes cancer.

"WE'RE ON STORMWATCH! AN UPPER-LEVEL LOW WILL SLAM INTO THE WEST COAST TONIGHT AND WE WILL ALL DROWN AND BE HAILED AND LIGHTNINGED TO DEATH. ARE YOU AND YOUR FAMILY AT RISK? TONIGHT AT 11:00."

"hey! ya got the time?"

2006-06-19T17:00:00.000-07:00

today is gena rowlands' birthday. i have no idea how old she is, though. this image is from a woman under the influence, captured + uploaded by someone at the reverse shot site. you should go there + read an essay on a woman under the influence.

related: reverse shot is one of the few decent film sites out there. they're spot-on in eviscerating that fucking blowhard asshole armond "kill all nihilists" white. and they haven't gulped down the sparkling kool-aid offered by the burgeoning cult ov bujalski. however, they seem to have some kind of bone to pick w/ boston u's ray carney, which i don't get since carney is one of the few who knows his shit, sees through the pablum, and refuses to pull any punches about what's what. not to mention his tireless championing of cassavetes' work. and, you know, that whole tracking-down-and-finding-that-rare-cut-of-shadows thing. i definitely do not agree w/ everything carney says, but so what? (for example: i couldn't disagree w/ him more when it comes to bujalski.) he relishes differences of opinion. what i like about him is that he actually has arguments for why one film is better than another, as opposed to, "well, it's just my taste, blah blah." having said that, though, he doesn't seem interested in fighting against the system and tearing it down. he knows that revolutions just replace one system w/ another + before you know it people will be revolting against what was once the fringe. personally, i think it's great that there are popcorn movies + the last thing in the world i'd want is a cinema full of jim jarmusches. but that doesn't mean that i'm going to go netflix aquamarine or whatever. i'm reasonably certain that movie sucks.

public image ltd. - death disco

2006-06-19T15:06:00.000-07:00

public image limited: the most underrated band of the past 30 years? quite possibly. death disco/swan lake is an incredible song. creepy, anguished, heartbroken, angry, etc. and you can dance to it.

this is how you play live

2006-06-18T18:19:00.000-07:00

metallica playing master of puppets during the same tour. again, amazing. of particular note is hetfield who has probably never been in finer form. his rhythm + voice are phenomenal. there's a real palpable anger, bordering on rage, during these performances. the death of cliff burton brought out a welter of emotion in the band + they emblazoned it on their collective sleeve. they were a goddamn punishing machine during this tour. "incendiary" doesn't quite cut it.

metallica playing blackened

2006-06-18T18:06:00.000-07:00

this is during the damaged justice tour, '89. amazing. real shame what they've become. i saw them in '98 + it was a decent show. they played a lot of old shit, like motorbreath + fight fire w/ fire. they opened w/ breadfan + played puppets in its entirety (as opposed to stopping at the interlude). i've been to a lot of shows + i've seen my fair share of metal + death metal bands play, but goddamn, none of them come close to metallica in the late '80s. i'd say the only thing better, musicianship + performance-wise, would be the jazz bands i've seen.

totally prefer this to the studio version. one, because the energy + ferocity is out of control. two, because you can actually hear newsted's bass.

lesley ann warren = sweet milf

2006-06-12T16:20:00.000-07:00

is me + you + everyone we know the worst movie ever made? quite possibly. well, i have yet to see marie antoinette, so the jury is still out on just what the worst piece of shit film ever made is, but i'd still say me + you is pretty close, if not the reigning champ. funny ha ha is up there as well. there's just something about mild-mannered middle-class post-collegiate types that makes me wanna go all klaus kinski and erupt into a volcanic, heaving rage. i wish my problems boiled down to being bored about my plethora of choices in life.

i watched alan rudolph's choose me on saturday night w/ the parents. i'm not sure what i think of it. it was an old favorite of johnny's back in the day when he was a z channel devotee. i have to say, he actually has some semblance of good taste when it comes to films. perchance i can get in there + introduce him to some jarmusch or herzog or dare i say it? cassavetes. i know he liked xan cassavetes' z channel documentary, but that's because he was such a fan of the channel. perhaps i will ease him into things w/ tom noonan's the wife. he likes wallace shawn, so that might be an easy angle to work. he told me he watched eraserhead on z. oh snap, and he named my brother after alex delarge-- aint that somethin'? i have no cool name story like that. anyway, choose me is highly stylized, yet i felt it was more honest than a movie like funny ha ha, which seems like a press release take on human nature, written + directed by someone terrified of offending anyone.

technocratic liberation

2006-06-08T15:38:00.003-07:00

Now Congress faces a legislative decision. Will we reinstate net neutrality and keep the Internet free? Or will we let it die at the hands of network owners itching to become content gatekeepers? The implications of permanently losing network neutrality could not be more serious. The current legislation, backed by companies such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, would allow the firms to create different tiers of online service. They would be able to sell access to the express lane to deep-pocketed corporations and relegate everyone else to the digital equivalent of a winding dirt road. Worse still, these gatekeepers would determine who gets premium treatment and who doesn't.

Their idea is to stand between the content provider and the consumer, demanding a toll to guarantee quality delivery. It's what Timothy Wu, an Internet policy expert at Columbia University, calls "the Tony Soprano business model": By extorting protection money from every Web site -- from the smallest blogger to Google -- network owners would earn huge profits. Meanwhile, they could slow or even block the Web sites and services of their competitors or those who refuse to pay up. They'd like Congress to "trust them" to behave.

Without net neutrality, the Internet would start to look like cable TV. A handful of massive companies would control access and distribution of content, deciding what you get to see and how much it costs. Major industries such as health care, finance, retailing and gambling would face huge tariffs for fast, secure Internet use -- all subject to discriminatory and exclusive dealmaking with telephone and cable giants.

Am I a horrible person for kind of wanting this to happen? So the internets will suck (even moreso than it already does)—so what? Then we'll have to, like, go outside or something. I look at this blog, I look at my MySpace page, I look at all the gossip blogs I go to, etc. and I feel tired. T I R E D. For the past ten years I've spent a great deal of my life on the internet and I am beat. I dream of a world w/ no blogs, no MySpace, no metafilter, forums, movie review sites, blah blah blah. Do you know how many times I've just tried to publish this post? I can't even get my one huge gripe about the internet on the internet. Fucking Blogger sucks a big one. It's all so meta/anti-meta/whatever it makes me wanna go all Tyler Durden and start picking fights. But it's hard. The internet is like the TV: it sucks but if it's there, you can't help yrself. Perhaps if it sucks too much I'll be permenantly dissuaded from using it.

Fuck the internet; don't save it.

metallica play "last caress" + "so what" on the MTV Euro awards

2006-06-07T20:25:00.000-07:00

Say what you want about Metallica, but you have to give 'em props for saying, "I've even fucked a schoolgirl's twat" live on MTV.

C R E E P I N G D E A T H

cliff motherfucking burton owns you

2006-06-05T15:33:00.000-07:00

After 20 goddamn years, Metallica finally plays "Orion" in concert. It's only, like, in the top 3 songs of their fucking career. God, what is up w/ their guitar tone? It's so watered-down. They used to have the best tone back in the day. I hope Rick Rubin is knocking that half-assed shit out of them in the studio.

EDIT: DENIED! Dude, what's up w/ that? I just watched the shit, like, three minutes ago. Man, they are some quick bastards.

Oh well, if it was a vid of them 20 years ago w/ Cliff, then it'd be something to mourn. As it is now, it's just another mediocre performance of a classic fucking tune by contemporary Metallica.

the gathering: sand + mercury

2006-06-05T14:56:00.000-07:00

I always thought it'd be near impossible to pull this song off live, but they managed to do it. Fuck. Amazing.

strange machines

2006-06-05T14:40:00.000-07:00

The Gathering is one of the best bands of the past 20 years. It's criminal they're not well-known. Here's a video of them playing "Strange Machines" at the Dynamo festival way back in the day. One of the best riffs ever in all of metal is introduced at 02:17 into the clip.

blow hard, suck hard

2006-06-03T00:59:00.000-07:00

Here's a big, boring asshole (i.e., blogger) on why he didn't become an even bigger, more boring asshole (i.e., film critic).

Fascinatin', really.

how soon is now?

2006-06-01T01:02:00.000-07:00

Call me crazy, but I kind of prefer the edited version of this song. I just like how the choruses are back to back at the end.

Also, doesn't it make you sad to see the footage of Marr showing Morrissey chords on the guitar? Why can't those assholes just admit they were the best things that ever happened to each other and get on w/ it?

more faith no

2006-05-22T18:32:00.000-07:00

This time they're playing "We Care a Lot" live. Also, they throw in NKOTB's "The Right Stuff" in the middle and tack on that old Nestle's white chocolate commercial from the '80s. Remember that shit? The one that goes, "Sweet dreams you can't resist/N-E-S-T-L-E-S"?

God, that band was awesome.

!!!

2006-05-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

Dude, Faith no Motherfucking MORE on Yo! MTV Raps! Does it get any cooler than this? Yes: Mike Patton's pajamas!

tater tots are gross on the way back up

2006-05-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

So I totally fell off the wagon the other night and got shitfaced out of my mind. Polished off a half a bottle of Crown in like 45 mins. Way to go, right? At least it made me numb for about an hour. I don't remember much, except there was a lot of rolling around on the floor and groaning and lots of gaps in time. I think i went to the bathroom and passed out on the shitter, too. Then I puked my brains out for about 10 minutes. Is getting that drunk by yrself a problem?

the hardest job in the world, totally

2006-05-15T11:41:00.000-07:00

This is the most brilliant, pointed, merciless dis on writers, writing, publishing, etc. I've ever seen. So funny cuz it's true.

happy mudder's day

2006-05-14T09:06:00.000-07:00

feeling bad is the new feel good

2006-05-09T21:55:00.000-07:00

I'm really glad United 93 was made because I had, like, totally forgotten about that whole "9/11 thing." Before I had heard about the movie I was like, "9 what? 9/11? You mean September 11, 1973, when Chile's democratically-elected president, Salvadore Allende, was ousted in a military coup, usurped by the military dictator, Augusto Pinochet, under whom thousands of Chileans 'disappeared'? All this, by the way, instigated and aided by the U.S. government? You mean that 9/11?"

Beat.

"Oh, oh, ohhhhhhhhh, September 11, 2001. Yeah, that whole plane thing. Right, right, totally forgot about that! Thx United 93. Also, thx to the sloven hordes of movie reviewers who, across the fucking board, shamelessly fellated United 93, aka, The Greatest Fucking Movie Ever Made About the Greatest Tragedy Ever to Befall the Greatest Race of Human Beings the World Has Ever Seen. The Day the Earth Stood Still, Part II."

Yay freedom of speech. Yay film criticism.

example #467 of left-wing douchebaggery

2006-05-02T14:15:00.000-07:00

Politically speaking, I'm an anarcho-syndicalist. I'm a content and joyous atheist, a vegan, and shit, I don't even own a car because of that whole "being oil's bitch n' polluting the environment" thing (besides, I pollute enough just by smoking). However, this doesn't mean I always get along with liberals. In fact, quite often I find myself downright annoyed with people on the left. For whatever reason, people in this country are scared shitless to criticize theism. Criticizing Islam is all the rage amonst right-wingers, but these same right-wingers make nary a peep about Christianity. Yeah, yeah, yeah "Muslim terrorists," blah blah blah. They miss the point: religion is not the problem—thuggery is.

When people want to discredit atheism, they often cite Stalin, claiming that he committed genocide because he was atheist. This is nice, but there is no atheist doctrine that says, "Kill thousands." And the argument that atheists cannot be moral because there is no God from which they derive morality is equally flimsy as the Bible says nothing about abortion, yet scores of Christians are "pro-life" because their religon supposedly dictates that they be such (forget all that stuff about Jehovah, aka, Jealous, killing the entire human race save for one man and his family and a zoo; I dunno, how do you get "pro-life" out of that?). And when people want to discredit Islam they go on and on about jihad and so forth, but I could just as easily say the same thing about Judeo-Christianity. And so? There are moderate Muslims who interpret jihad figuratively, just as there are moderate Christians who interpret Jesus' talk of dividing families figuratively. The difference with these religons and with atheism is that there is no atheist book that says "kill," simply because there is no atheist book, period. Atheism does not dictate morality. That is not the point of atheism. My morality is derived from empathy. I don't want to hurt anyone because I know what it's like to get hurt. It's as simple as it. I don't need Jealous, Allah, Odin, etc. to tell me this.

Stalin committed genocide because he was a fascist dictator. Not because he was atheist. Not because he was communist. Not because of this and not because of that. It's because he didn't care. People were merely pawns to him and if they got in the way, they were "talen care of." Are you going to say that Pinochet committed genocide because he's Catholic and a capitalist? It goes both ways, doesn't it?

If we are talking about strict knowledge, I am an agnostic atheist. Agnostic because I do not know with certainty that "God" exists or does not exist (cue the solipsist who says that you cannot know with certainty that anything, other than the self, exists). First, define "God." You put 50 Christians in a room, ask them to define "God," and I'm pretty sure you'll get at least 45 different definitions. So we need to start there. What is God? Then, if by some divine intervention (muahaha) we reach a consensus on what/who God is, how can we know that this God exists? Well, you can't. You can't know either way, hence the agnosticism. (The positive atheist will claim that, indeed, you can know for certainty that God does not exist. But I'll leave that to the positive atheists.) This is where faith comes in. And this is why I'm an atheist: I lack that faith. I just don't have it. Thus, I am an agnostic atheist. And no, atheism is not just another "belief." Lacking a belief in the existence of Thor, the God of Thunder, is just another belief? So, like, you believe in Thor, the God of Thunder, in some way, then? Yeah, didn't think so. (And can you see how sloppy and ridiculous that line of reasoning is?) Somone who has sex is sexual; someone who does not is asexual. Asexuality is the deficiency of sex. One does not have sex. It is not another form of sex, it is the absence of sexuality. Atheism is the deficiency of belief. I do not have belief. It is not another belief. Why is this so hard to understand? However, I'm not sure this is analgous since sex is a tangible thing, whereas faith is not. But still, I hope the point is made.

All right, now that that is out of the way, onto the douchebaggery. I present Melinda Barton at the Raw Story:

The religious nutballs on the extreme right have kept us rational lefties so busy that we've neglected an important although onerous duty -- cleaning the atheist whackjobs out of our own attic, the extreme left. (Of course, extremisms of the religious or atheistic nature are only a small part of the sum total of extremism. Every form of thought has its own whackjobs of varying stripes.)

Why face off with the atheist whackjobs? Because extremism is extremism is extremism. No rational movement dedicated to intellectual courage and honesty should maintain a relationship with those for whom intellectual laziness, dishonesty, and cowardice are a way of life. Doing what must be done to insure the integrity of the left will require identifying our extremists, countering their mythologies, and acknowledging the dangers they pose to a truly liberal society.

First, what is an atheist whackjob? The term secular for the purposes of this article will refer to those who disbelieve all religious and spiritual claims, not to those who merely support a separation of church and state. Although all secular (by this definition) extremists are atheists, not all atheists are atheist extremists.

Blah blah blah. (Oh, you can check out Barton's blog here where she regurgitates the "atheism is a belief" turd.) The article isn't anything you haven't read before from conservatives. There is little point in debating this article since the comments it engendered have done a sufficient job. Also, the always entertaining and insightful PZ Myers offers a juicy takedown of Barton's pukery. Personally, I just haven't the patience to dissect this piece of shit and point out the horridly putrid parts of it.

The left is grasping at straws. Increasingly I've noticed liberals trying to buy that ever crucial religious ticket. We frantically bend over backward to let any old fuckface voice his opinion. Well, not everyone's opinion matters. You know, some people just talk out of their ass. So what if you're a "person of faith"? I'm sorry, but you're not oppressed. You're not the minority. You're not a martyr and you're not put-upon. You're part of a privileged majority. And you're going to complain about a fringe minority in an already minor sect of society? Atheists are what? 5% of American society? And you're going to complain about a fraction of that? Jesus fucking Christ.

I know the Raw Story is trying really hard to be "fair and balanced." And I'm sure the editors are patting themselves on the back for stirring up controversy. Good for them. Brilliant. But that's boring. Paris Hilton is controversial—so? Controversy is easy. It would have been much more interesting if the Raw Story put out an article from a thoughtful theist perspective. I'm positive such a thing exists. Unfortunately, the Raw Story seems to think that this is the best theism has to offer. Funny, that.

Now, if you'll excuse me, as a proper atheist, there are women I have to coerce into getting abortions, flags that have to be burned, crucifixes that have to be dumped into toilets, wars to start, and genocides to get underway. In the immortal words of Prince Humperdinck, "I'm swamped."

thoughts whilst watching goodfellas

2006-04-30T18:46:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I'm watching a film, I get come up with these dialogues. Here's one that came to me last night in the throes of Goodfellas:

"Yo Gino, where's Louie?"
"Man, I dunno, go ask Joey."
"Yo Joey, where's Louie?"
"Quit bustin' mah balls! Go ask Jimmy."
"Yo Jimmy, where's Louie?"
"What do I look like? His mutta? Go ask Paulie!"
"Yo Paulie, where's Louie?"
"I dunno, ya prick, go ask Carlos."
"Yo Carlos, where's Louie?"
"QUE?"

blah blah

2006-04-28T09:48:00.000-07:00

Man, that shit about Tarantino making the Hendrix biopic is just that—shit.

Still, I think I should play Jimi.

"me nan's bf tells her he's CUNNI-lingual"

2006-04-26T12:46:00.000-07:00

OMG, Ali G and the man hisself, Noam C. Too funny. Too goddamned funny.

By the way, Chomsky is on MySpace. I'm one of his friends! It's too cool.

dayamn

2006-04-25T10:59:00.000-07:00

Oooooh

Quentin Tarantino has reportedly signed on to direct the long-awaited Jimi Hendrix biopic. The movie maker is huge fan of the script of the film, according to producers at Dragonslayer Films, and will team up with Hendrix's brother Leon to tell the story of the guitar great's life.

Tarantino will have full access to Hendrix's music and likeness when he starts shooting is scheduled to begin later this year in Seattle, Washington; New York, Toronto, Canada; and London.

Senior executive producer Elle Von Lear has access to interviews and live footage of the rock legend, which will be incorporated in the film.

Damn. This could be amazing. Well, I hope it's true for starters. Rock biopics can be really good or really horrible, but I think Tarantino could do something exceptional. Personally, I think I should play Jimi and here are my reasons:

1. I'm an awesome guitar player and can play most of his songs
2. I look like him, but I'd have to lose like 20-30lbs cuz Jimi was a fucking rail
3. I know everything there is to know about him
4. Fucking A
5. It's just a no-brainer
6. C'mon, how many other black guys can play guitar as well?
7. Prince is too old and Andre 3000 can't play guitar!

what happened to a.m. homes?

2006-04-23T23:22:00.000-07:00

A.M. Homes' new novel has an extremely ambitious title -- "This Book Will Save Your Life" -- and an extremely ambitious goal: to transform this middle-aged, isolated, fabulously wealthy former workaholic into a man with a sense of identity and meaning in his life, all in a matter of weeks.

"He wants to be heroic, larger than life -- rescue people from burning buildings, leap over rooftops," Homes writes. "And he wants people to notice him ... How does a middle-aged Joe become anything, much less a superhero?"

Ugh, this sounds horrible. Maybe Michiko is right about this one. And, shit, it's already been optioned as a movie. Not surprising, since this basically sounds like an even schlockier version of that foul Kevin Kline turd, Life as a House. Remember that one? Goodness.

no reason

2006-04-23T22:19:00.000-07:00

"If we are not careful criticism may become a mere excuse for taking revenge on books whose smell we dislike by erecting our temperamental antipathies into pseudo-moral judgments."

C.S. Lewis via Ben Yagoda, on Michiko Kakutani. I think this quote could easily apply to most critics, irrespective of field, but particularly to a critic like Armond White, whose tiresome moralism seeps through in all of his reviews. Most criticism is steeped in the critic's morality, which is shame because I couldn't give two shits about someone's morals, least of all a critic's. I don't care to interpret a protaganist through a moral filter. I don't care whether a character is "likable" or whatever. What does that even mean? Do you think that Armond White is a "likable" person? I'd be cruious to know what the people in his life would have to say to that. Is Michiko Kakutani a likable person? Dale Peck? Is any critic more "with it" than the artist he loves to single out? Who is a critic to pass moral judgments?

OMG THE PUMPKINS REFORM

2006-04-21T09:38:00.000-07:00

Well, not really.

In early February, onetime SMASHING PUMPKINS bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur as well as an undisclosed source "close to the situation" confirmed to MTV News that PUMPKINS bandleader Billy Corgan has been working on material that will, at some point, surface in the form of a new SMASHING PUMPKINS album. "Everyone knows Billy doesn't need too many people to make a PUMPKINS record, other than Jimmy [Chamberlin, longtime PUMPKINS drummer] — who he has [on board]," Auf Der Maur said at the time. A spokesperson for Azoff Management also confirmed that Corgan and Chamberlin had signed on with the firm as SMASHING PUMPKINS, and that the two have been writing new music.

Auf Der Maur said she wasn't not sure whether Corgan had reached out to guitarist James Iha or bassist D'Arcy Wretzky to complete the band's original lineup, but she said she'd told Corgan that she'd be happy to pitch in if he needed her; Auf Der Maur replaced Wretzky in 1999 and worked with the group until it disbanded in 2000.

So, Corgan and Chamberlin, huh? Grasping for straws, are we?

Is Billy Corgan the biggest douche ever in the history of popular music? Quite Possibly. Melissa Auf Der Maur doesn't need that fucker.

nerds, sex, laptops, (thoughts of) groupies

2006-04-19T12:44:00.000-07:00

Almost finished podcast last night but collapsed circa 1:30, woke up this morning later (much later) than expected, somehow slept through a scheduled phone call (rectified, thankfully), received several crazed voicemails, people freaking out, called them back and placated them, one email account cleared (more or less) with responses to all nice people, one more ridiculous backlog to go. In other words, things are more or less back to normal, but there’s still far too much on the plate. Which means…

And so it goes in the crazy life of a podcasting litblogger. Rockstars, look out.

j'accuse: snob

2006-04-17T11:56:00.000-07:00

Who is this chic, beautiful fucking man you see before you? It is none other than Uwe Boll (no, bitch, you bowl). Who is Uwe "toilet" Boll? Only the greatest filmmaker in the history of the medium. What films, nay, meisterworks, has Uwe made? Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne, House of the Dead, Heart of America, German Fried Movie, and the upcoming In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, to name but a few. Oh, I know what you're thinking, But Aaron, aren't these video game adaptations? To this I yelp, AND? While you're listening to NPR, waitin' for Garrison fucking Keillor and Meeeee-chele Norris to tell you what to like, me and the kids will be renting Alone in the Dark for the 67th time, marveling at its inner workings, trying to navigate its intertextual mechanics, and quietly soothing ourselves with the knowledge that Uwe will, in time, be recognized as the god that he is.

"But I'm too good to watch a video game adaptation," you puke. Oh yeah, you fucking snob scum? I suppose you hate comic books, too, am I right? Please. Ignore what the media has to say and watch Uwe's films and decide for yourself. You can think for yourself, right? Watch Alone in the Dark and tell me that Tara Reid phoned in her performance—you can't! Nothin' doin', baby. Nothin' doin'. Her performance is on a par with any Woody Allen slut you can shake a stick at. Uwe (no, after you) brings the fire out in his actors. Um, I'm sorry, but Sir Ben Kingsley stars in BloodRayne and Don fucking Logan doesn't just work with any director. You dig? Stephen Dorff, Christian Slater? Are you kidding me? Only two of the finest actors of the past 57 years.

The matrix of emotion on Tara Reid's face in this scene parallels anything Laurence Olivier or Kate Hepburn ever pulled outta their tookuses in their paltry, limelit careers. Her glasses, clipboard, and pen all signify her status as a powerful, successful woman who pulled herself up by the boot straps and put herself through MIT. It would behoove the editors over at Salon to embrace Ms Reid's portrayal of Aline Cedrac as a role model for the up-and-coming, power-hungry liberals that serve as its readership.

Here we have a still from Boll's upcoming Cassavetean effort, Postal, based on the game of the same name. Postal stars Gary Coleman and Osama bin Laden. You only wish I was making this up, you sniveling artsy-fartsy bitchface, but Boll is here, Boll is real—fucking deal with it.

I really just don't want to hear your smug, self-righteous, pretentious reasons for why a film like In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale would be beneath you. It hasn't even come out yet! Just see the film before you judge it, okay? But if its Herzogian scope is too much for you, then get your irons out of the fire and go munch on cupcakes and drink cristal with the rest of the arthouse horde. Just because the critics pan Uwe doesn't uwe have to as well. I mean, if you don't stand for something, you're bound to believe anything!

That is all.

(This post goes out to my friend Lisa who needs some humor that's not at her expense.)

the armond white reader; or, example #467 of a professional writer with nothing to say

2006-04-13T17:01:00.000-07:00

If you've never read an Armond White movie review, consider yourself extremely lucky. Armond White is, more or less, the Bill O'Reilly of film criticism. He is an enraged bully, a bitter, bitter, bitter man who seethes with rage and disdain for basically anyone under the age of 35 (we're all smug, self-righteous hipsters, don't you know). He is one of the many cry babies who've sprouted up since the death of film criticism's most overrated film critic: Pauline Kael. Kael was a horrid writer with horrid opinions and knew basically nothing about art. (Read Easy Riders and Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind if you want example after example of this woman's staggering idiocy.) He rails against an evil cabal of nihilist atheist scum, who continually foist their Godless, baby-killing malevolence down his pious, humble, God-fearing throat. It's a good schtick, this tortured theistic martyr thing he's got going on. It appeals to people's disgust toward that whole Evil Liberal Thing that has permeated so much of our culture. You know, those smug intellectualz and the God-hating artistes they champion. White is basically a highbrow Michael Medved. White swears by the three Ss: smug, smirking, and self-righteous. White is literally incapable of writing a fucking movie review without these three words. He's a goddamned broken record. The man writes his own satire. I find it utterly faaaahbulous (darlink) that he seems entirely unable to see that it is he who comes off as the smug, self-righteous, moralizing asshole. But that's the thing with guys like Armond White and Bill O'Reilly: everybody else is always the problem.

But if you've never read a White review, allow me to type up the compendium. Herein is every White review rolled into one spicy pastiche.

Some Evil Movie
Directed by Some Sickening Nihilst Hipster

Some Evil Movie is pretentious, smug, and self-rghteous. Some Sickening Nihilst Hipster is a smirking, smug, smug, smug, smirking nihilist God-hater. Smug, smug, smug. Smirk! Pretentious, self-righteous, smug, smirking, self-pretentious, and smug. Smirk. Nihilist hipsters rejoice! God is dead! Evil nihilist! Nihilists and dingos ate your baby!

Pretension, smirks galore, and total smugness drips from
Some Evil Movie. Some Sickening Nihilist Hipster is smug, smirks, evil, evil, evil, FROTH, argh, self-righteous! Smirking, smugging, selfing, righteousing, eviling, and hating God. The nihilist hipsters, who hate God and country, are smirking, smirking SMIRKING their way to the bank. Some Sickening Nihilst Hipster is, surprisingly, self-righteous. Smirk. Smug. Mugs. Gums. Sum G. Ugs with an M. Self-righteous. Pretentious. Hip. Think you're hip? You hipster! Smug one at that.

Some Evil Movie is a bad, smug, self-righteous movie. It's pretentious, too. I'm not even going to explain why. What else do you need to know? It's pretentious! Snob. (Smirk).

That is all.
-Armond W.

perceptions

2006-04-11T19:06:00.000-07:00

Over the years, the inability of patients and others to believe that I am a doctor has left me utterly demoralized. Their incredulity persists even now that I am a senior resident, working in one of the world's busiest hospital emergency rooms. How can it be that with all the years of experience I have, all the procedures I've performed and all the people I've interacted with in emergency situations, I still get what I call "the look"? It's too predictable. I walk in the room and introduce myself, then wait for the patient—whether he or she is black, white or Asian—to steal glances at the ID card that is attached to my scrubs or white coat. (I've thought of having it changed to read something like: It's true. I'm a real doctor. Perhaps you've seen a black one on TV?)

Link.

This reminds me of a riddle I read in the book Blink (which I will paraphrase):

A man and his son are in a serious car accident. The man is dead on arrival, but the son lives. The ambulance takes him to the ER, where the examining doctor, who upon seeing the boy, gasps and says: "This child is my son." Who is the doctor?

yarrrrrr, pix

2006-04-10T17:57:00.000-07:00

more fireworks

2006-04-10T17:26:00.002-07:00

portrait of the artist as a very young little shit

2006-04-10T17:26:00.001-07:00

taken at the getty

2006-04-10T17:25:00.002-07:00

afternoon oil

2006-04-10T17:25:00.001-07:00

pretty dagger

2006-04-10T17:25:00.000-07:00

stucco sux

2006-04-10T17:24:00.001-07:00

a really profound picture of shopping carts, signifying rampant consumerism and how it's all eating us alive blah blah blah

2006-04-10T17:24:00.000-07:00

central californian farm

2006-04-10T17:21:00.001-07:00

iron tree

2006-04-10T17:21:00.000-07:00

lucy with a snail

2006-04-10T17:20:00.002-07:00

lucy

2006-04-10T17:20:00.001-07:00

summer

2006-04-10T17:20:00.000-07:00

bathroom, hearst-style

2006-04-10T17:19:00.000-07:00

'nother hearst pic

2006-04-10T17:17:00.000-07:00

shitty pic of teresa

2006-04-10T17:15:00.000-07:00

art show shit

2006-04-10T17:14:00.000-07:00

there's like this feather thing right in the middle of the pic

2006-04-10T17:13:00.000-07:00

yeah yeah

2006-04-10T17:12:00.000-07:00

parking lot shit

2006-04-10T17:11:00.001-07:00

what sound looks like

2006-04-10T17:11:00.000-07:00

mexican glass angels

2006-04-10T17:10:00.000-07:00

skynyrd played the OC fair once. it was super duper right-wing.

2006-04-10T17:09:00.002-07:00

sunglasses in front of the lenz

2006-04-10T17:09:00.001-07:00

fireworks

2006-04-10T17:09:00.000-07:00

hearst castle

2006-04-10T17:08:00.000-07:00

taken, like, a really long time ago

2006-04-10T17:00:00.001-07:00

pilot butte

2006-04-10T17:00:00.000-07:00

trample

2006-04-10T16:59:00.000-07:00

intersection in mission viejo

2006-04-10T16:58:00.001-07:00

dramatic shit

2006-04-10T16:58:00.000-07:00

not too far from where i live. to the left is the verizon wireless amphitheatre, which used to be irvine meadows. saw metallica there back in '98.

2006-04-10T16:56:00.002-07:00

portland

2006-04-10T16:56:00.001-07:00

wintry tree

2006-04-10T16:56:00.000-07:00

iron branch

2006-04-10T16:53:00.000-07:00

an airplane picture

honestly, who needs porn?

2006-04-07T12:26:00.000-07:00

Dear Erika Christensen:

You make my crotch ache.

pretension

2006-04-06T19:27:00.000-07:00

Art has always been a natural expression of people's concept of the divine. Painting, plays, music - it's always been so. Movies combine those forms of expression - sight, sound, music, beauty.

From here.

As an artist and an atheist (alliteration!), I find this whole topic fascinating. It's something you hear a lot, that art is a way to communicate the "divine" or is a way of "touching the face of God" or whatever. "Spirituality" is another word that gets used quite a bit. What do these words even mean? "Divine," "spiritual," etc. Do the people who use these words even know what they mean, or do they just say them because it makes them look good? Some definitions of the word "spiritual" sound like how I feel when I have sex or play music, but those emotions have nothing to do with "spirituality." They're chemical reactions in the brain, a result of external stimuli. And what's wrong with that? What is wrong with finding meaning in the corporeal? What is wrong with the physical? Why are still so hung up on the body and its image? Why assign "higher" meaning to things? Is sex itself not good enough? Is music itself not good enough? Is life itself not good enough? If you believe in god or consider yourself "spiritual," are you reading my words, thinking, This guy's life is empty and meaningless? If so, why? Do you think I'm immoral because I lack belief in god?

In a way, "spirituality" is the ultimate in pretension—assigning life all of these properties that it just doesn't have. One of the things I would like to get across with my art is that "spirituality" is not necessary and that art is not intrinsically "spiritual" and none the worse for it.

plz pray 4 me, k thx

2006-04-06T19:06:00.000-07:00

So, prayer does nothing.

It was supposed to be good news, like the kind in the Bible. After three years, $2.4 million, and 1.7 million prayers, the biggest and best study ever was supposed to show that the prayers of faraway strangers help patients recover after heart surgery. But things didn't go as ordained. Patients who knowingly received prayers developed more post-surgery complications than did patients who unknowingly received prayers—and patients who were prayed for did no better than patients who weren't prayed for. In fact, patients who received prayers without their knowledge ended up with more major complications than did patients who received no prayers at all.

I could've saved these people a lot of time and money and told them this years ago. But nobody listens to Aaron.

When I was in junior high, I had this friend Vanessa who always used to tell me she would pray for me. "I'm gonna pray for you, Aaron, I'm gonna pray!" I would encourage her, saying, "Knock yourself out. In a year, nothing will have changed." A year came, nothing was different. Another year, same shit. Still an atheist. So it's been just over 10 years and still, I'm a total fucking atheist. Her prayers went unanswered. Why? Because god doesn't exist.

truth is

2006-04-02T23:36:00.000-07:00

Is it bad that I really, really want some smack right now? I really want to get stupid-close-to-dying high. I don't want to feel anything. At all. Maybe admitting this will help.

kids

2006-04-01T22:06:00.000-08:00

Harold Hunter, that kid who shook his cock in Kids, is dead.

Kids will always be a special movie to me cuz it was the only movie that was even remotely close to depicting the kind of shit me and my friends experienced.

like bacon stuck to tile

2006-03-29T13:17:00.000-08:00

Watch David Letterman rag on Harmony Korine. And watch Harmony laugh.

signs

2006-03-27T21:10:00.000-08:00

Clue Chick talks body language:

I usually start with a handshake, unless we've been talking online a lot, in which case, I may start with a hug. Neither of these should be taken as particularly indicative of anything, though; pay more attention to how I say goodbye at the end of the meeting.

A hug is a pretty good indicator that someone likes you, however it's not definitive. Like Clue Chick says, better to go on what the other person does at the end of the date.

I met Teresa about a month after we started e-mailing and talking to each other on the phone (via MySpace). She flew up to Portland from the Bay Area and I met her at the airport. I walked right up to her, asked, "Are you Teresa?" and, without saying a word, she stood up, put her arms around me, gave me a really long super sexual hug, complete with rubbing the back of my head, and said, "It's so good to meet you." I was pretty taken aback by this. I've done lots of sweet hugging in my life, but shit, it was like we fucked in the middle of PDX. Also, we were definitely interested in each other, but weren't sure what was going to happen once/if we met. She was a lot less certain about it than I was and kept vacillating about how she felt and what she wanted, saying, "There's a good chance we could meet and totally not be attracted to each other." Which, of course, is very true and is a huge possibility when it comes to meeting people via the internets. She would say she just wanted to be friends one moment and then say she liked me the next, "But I don't know, we have to meet first." After a few weeks of this I just decided not to expect anything and I definitely wasn't expecting her to be so affectionate so suddenly once we were physically together. But she was. Don't get me wrong, it was really nice, but it just threw me. Never, ever go into anything with expectations.

But yeah, during that hug, I thought, Wow, we're so going to have sex. And we did. But that's another entry. (Actually, it's its own separate blog.)

If you touch me and I smile or blush, you're good.

If you touch me and I give you a pinched smile, or don't seem to respond at all, stop touching me, because I don't like it.

If you touch me and I move away, pay your bill and leave, because I'm about to.

If I touch you on the shoulder or arm, I like you and I'm trying to send you that signal.

If I touch you on the hand or knee, I'm ready to take you home.

My rule is never to touch someone first. I don't think I've ever just touched someone. That's bizarre to me. I always let the woman make this move.

Touching is weird, though, and you have to take the person into consideration. Are they just an affectionate person in general? If so, don't get your hopes up. I've hung out with a lot of women who will touch my hand or shoulder or something, but I see them touching other people in this way as well, so that's a pretty good sign that there's no physical attraction there. It's best to observe how someone is with others and to listen to what they say. If you're on a date or something and the other person has made it known that they're not typically an affectionate person, or reserve their affection for "special" people, but are affectionate with you, that's a good sign they're interested.

If you tell a really lame joke and I laugh, it's probably a good sign, but I laugh easily, so maybe not. If you tell a good joke and I don't laugh, though, it's a bad sign.

I get, "You're really funny" a lot, but it's like that scene in Igby Goes Down where Sookie keeps telling Igby "You're funny," but never actually laughs. I have a really sarcastic and random sense of humor and not everyone gets it (or finds it funny). It's a generalization, but I tend to get along with people from the east coast easily because of this. Sarcasm doesn't fly so much in the pacific northwest or even in northern California. This was one of the reasons Rachel and I got along so well: she's a sarcastic bastard.

If my cell phone rings and I ignore it, I'm not expecting an important call and I think it's rude to take phone calls when i'm on a date. If I take the call without explaining that it's unavoidable, I'm bored and I'm looking forward to ending our date. If I make a call, it's not going anywhere.

This can be slightly tricky. I was on a date with this woman named Stephanie and she answered her cell once during the date. But it was from a friend we were going to be meeting later at a club, so she kind of had to take it, you know? It just depends on who it was and the circumstance. If someone answers their cell and yaps it up for several minutes, yeah, the date is an official failure.

But perhaps Stephanie was trying to give me a sign she wasn't interested. See, after we eat she invites me back to her place. Which you'd think would mean something, right? So we go to her apartment and she offers to fix me a drink. Again, you think there's some kind of subtext there. She shows me her apartment, shows me all her books, then she says, "Want to watch a movie?" So I say sure. We start to watch The Yes Men and we get to talking about previous relationships. She tells me she used to be married to a guy from Puerto Rico or some shit and says, "Yeah, I kind of have a thing for dark guys." Right, and I'm sitting on her couch and she's sitting next to me, her body is kind of pointed toward me, she's got one knee pulled up to her chest, the other foot is on the table, so her legs are kind of spread and I'm just thinking, Uh huh. I joke: "So that's why you wanted to go on a date with me." And she pauses for a minute and says, very seriously, "Oh, no. We're not going to have sex or anything. I'm not attracted to you. I mean, nothing personal, I'm just—" And I'm just like, Uhhh, okay? And then she goes: "Oh, fuck. I'm sorry. That was really fucking bitchy. I'm sorry. No. I—fuck, I know I've, like—okay, I asked you to come back here and I've done all these things that probably totally make it seem like I want to have sex—" and then she abruptly stops. I'm just sitting there, thinking: ? And she says, "It's really weird now, huh?" and I go, "Little bit." And she keeps apologizing and after a few really awkwardly silent moments I say, "Hey, you know what? I think I'm gonna go."
"No. Don't go. I'm sorry."
"No, it's cool. Really. It's just—you know, yeah, it's a little weird."
"No, I'm sorry. Come to the Fez, you said you'd come dance with me."
"Yeah—I don't know. I think—"
"What?"
"I don't know." I chuckle nervously. "Uh, there was just some, like, real miscommunication going on."
"Yeah. I'm sorry."
"Yeah. Cause, wow," I laugh, trying to relieve the tension. "So, yeah, I think I'm going to go now."
She sighs. "Okay. I'm sorry."
"No, it's cool. Have fun at the Fez."
"Okay. You should still come. Really."
I just kind of shrug. At this point I'm really close to the door and I just really, really want to leave. The whole thing is pretty embarrassing. I make my unceremonious exit into the cold, rainy night and am decidedly flummoxed.

The thing is, I honestly did not like Stephanie in that way, yet the whole thing was pretty humiliating. I mean, I had been hanging out with indie/DIY/crust punk zinester kids and really just wanted someone to go to a club and dance to some M.I.A. with. And even if I brushed the whole misunderstanding off and went with her to meet her friends at the Fez, I know that at some point she'd tell her friends about The Huge Misunderstanding and I don't want to be That Guy Who Was Set Straight. Nobody wants to be That Guy. That Guy is almost as bad as The Old Guy at the Club. Plus, Stephanie is like 5 years older than I am and I would've been That Young Guy Who Got Told. Fuck. Forget it. So many other people to chillax with.

When we're saying goodbye, if I hug you, you'll definitely get another date. If I shake your hand, I have to think about it, but probably not. If I avoid shaking your hand by gathering up my stuff, we're not going to see each other again.

Again, it's hard to tell. I've been on lots of dates, faux-dates, "hang outs," etc. where I was given a hug. I've hung out with girls who've touched my hand, my shoulder, my face, my leg, etc. and it never resulted in anything substantial. Perhaps I missed dozens of opportunities and perhaps I was at the receiving end of really mixed signals. I'm no one to offer advice and this entry is only a smattering of suggestions by illustration of personal experience. One thing I've learned is to let the woman take the lead. If presented with ambiguities, I'll error on the side of caution. Don't assume much, if anything. I used to think a whole mess of shit before I went on my dating spree last year, but those convictions were turned on their heads. Maybe I was just too much of a dolt to pick on the physical cues. Who is ever certain about these things?

the kids are all right

2006-03-27T19:11:00.000-08:00

LOS ANGELES - Tens of thousands of students walked out of school in California and other states Monday, waving flags and chanting slogans in a second week of protests against legislation to crack down on illegal immigrants.

Personally, I just don't care if people come to this country illegally. Let's be real: this is a racially-charged issue. It's not solely about race, but race does have something to do with it. Certain people just do not want to see their communities heavily populated with Mexicans. And it's not just right-wing conservatives, either. Mexicans place an emphasis on working hard and not so much on receiving a college education, an attitude that confounds both conservatives and liberals. For all their supposed differences, conservatives and liberals do not disagree so much when it comes to attitudes toward success and ambition. In fact, when you really examine it, the whole DIY/indie subculture is just good ol' fashioned go-it-yourself-conquer-the-last-frontier entrepreneurialism that any aspiring businessman would be proud of.

But hey, as long as people are lazy and can't pick up after themselves, they'll be a need for janitors. And as long as liberal celebrities can't be bothered to take care of their kids, they'll be a need for Juana, Lupe, Rocio, etc. to be the nanny. And as long as people need their fast food and precious lattes, they'll be a need for hard-working bottom dwellers. You know it, I know it.

So welcome these people. Who else is going to take care of you?

postsecret

2006-03-25T22:05:00.000-08:00

This postcard could've been something I wrote to Rachel.

streetlight

2006-03-24T01:11:00.000-08:00

I have trouble sleeping. Well, at night I do. During the day I can fall asleep anywhere at the drop of a hat. I used to fall asleep at my old job all the time. I think this is why my boss was reluctant to give me manuscripts to proofread. Sit me in front of a computer and I'm out. But at night I feel really awake. I got into this rhythm of falling asleep around 7:00 pm and waking up around 9:00 and staying up till sunrise. If I ever live with someone again, it could never be with someone who's out by 11:00. That's how Lucy was and it bothered me. Going to bed at 11:00 is like wearing sweats: it's giving up.

That said, I dislike sleeping in and will rarely sleep past 10:00 am.

"self-improvement is masturbation"

2006-03-20T13:29:00.000-08:00

I'm glad I don't have a way to contact any of my old dealers because I want to get high out of my fucking mind right now.

I really want to go out tonight and meet someone to have meaningless, degrading sex with.

snakes on a motherfucking PLANE, BITCH

2006-03-17T12:48:00.000-08:00

Click the shit. CLICK IT!

Update: Well, looks like this bad boy's been taken down. Lame, but it was guaranteed to happen. Instead, you can head on over to the Snakes on a Blog blog and bone up on yr snakey Sam Jackson sweetness.

political placement

2006-03-15T22:02:00.000-08:00

According to the Political Compass, I am:

Economic Left/Right: -7.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.26

Here's the compass:

Which means:

Both an economic dimension and a social dimension are important factors for a proper political analysis. By adding the social dimension you can show that Stalin was an authoritarian leftist (ie the state is more important than the individual) and that Gandhi, believing in the supreme value of each individual, is a liberal leftist. While the former involves state-imposed arbitary collectivism in the extreme top left, on the extreme bottom left is voluntary collectivism at regional level, with no state involved. Hundreds of such anarchist communities exisited in Spain during the civil war period

You can also put Pinochet, who was prepared to sanction mass killing for the sake of the free market, on the far right as well as in a hardcore authoritarian position. On the non-socialist side you can distinguish someone like Milton Friedman, who is anti-state for fiscal rather than social reasons, from Hitler, who wanted to make the state stronger, even if he wiped out half of humanity in the process.
The chart also makes clear that, despite popular perceptions, the opposite of fascism is not communism but anarchism (ie liberal socialism), and that the opposite of communism ( i.e. an entirely state-planned economy) is neo-liberalism (i.e. extreme deregulated economy).

So, on this chart, I would be below and to the left of the Dalai Lama.

fucking bored out of my mind

2006-03-15T20:21:00.000-08:00

-- Name: Aaron
-- Birthdate: 2/13/1981
-- Birthplace: Orange, California
-- Current Location: Irvine, California
-- Eye Color: Brown
-- Hair Color: Brown
-- Height: 5'9
-- Weight: I'm guessing 160, but I think the scale got lost in the move.
-- Righty or Lefty: I write left-handed, but play guitar right-handed. I use a knife with my left hand, but use scissors with my right.

Describe...

-- Your heritage: Black, Mexican, and Native American.
-- The shoes you wore today: Adidas Adi Speed.
-- Your hair: Short. It used to be long. When it's long it's wavy/curly. I dislike having hair and prefer having a shaved head.
-- Your eyes: Numerous people tell me they're "intense." I've also been told I "see right through people." When I'm really mad at someone, I don't say anything to them, but stare a hole through them.
-- Your weakness: Sex.
-- Your fears: I'll die without having done anything.
-- Your perfect pizza: Eddie's Flat Iron Pizza in Portland makes a really good cheeseless pizza with pineapple, garlic, olives, and mushrooms. Extreme Pizza here in OC makes a decent vegan pizza with soy cheese. So either of those.
-- Goal you'd like to achieve: Record an album and make a film.

Tell...

-- Your most overused phrase on AIM: "hahaha"
-- Your thoughts first waking up: Fuck, I'm horny. Wait, actually, it's, Fuck, I gotta pee, directly followed by, Fuck, I'm horny.
-- Your best physical feature: Hands, eyes, lips, skin (in no particular order).
-- Your bedtime: Betwixt 2:00 and 5:00 am.
-- Your greatest accomplishment: So many.
-- Your most missed memory: It was this one time when I was feeding Tina's daughter. She wasn't really in the mood to eat her lukewarm slop and kept smearing it all over her face, so I just began to smear it all over her cheeks and forehead with her and she started going hysterical with giggles and Tina was all, "Ugh, you guys!" That was fun.

You prefer...

-- Pepsi or Coke: Coke.
-- McDonald's or Burger King: Totally McDonald's. That McRib is so awesome and so totally vegan, mmmmm.
-- Single or group dates: Single.
-- Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea: Tea sucks.
-- Chocolate or vanilla: Both.
-- Cappuccino or coffee: Coffee is rubbish.

Do you...?

-- Smoke: Kamel Red Lights.
-- Weed: Not since I was 16.
-- Cuss: Heavens, no!
-- Sing well: I guess? I can only "sing" along to Leonard Cohen.
-- Have a crush(es): I guess.
-- Who are they: Yr mom.
-- Do you think you've been in love: Yes.
-- Want to go to college: No.
-- Like high school: No.
-- Want to get married: I don't know.
-- Type w/ your fingers on the right keys: No.
-- Believe in yourself: No.
-- Get motion sickness: No.
-- Think you're attractive: Yes.
-- Think you're a health freak: No.
-- Get along with your parents: Comfortable indifference.
-- Like thunderstorms: Yes.
-- Play an instrument: Guitar, bass, piano. I used to play the clarinet, but the clarinet is gay.

Have you ever...

-- Played a game that required removal of clothing?: Why when you can just fuck?
-- If so, was it mixed company: See above.
-- Been trashed or extremely intoxicated: Sure. One time I can remember: downed about 20-30 shots of vodka, straight up, in about 30 mins. Still not sure how I lived through that. Another time I remember: smoking hella bowls and started tripping balls. Called my dealer and asked him WTF he sold me and he said, "Oh. Fuck. I think I sold you guys that dimebag laced with Angel Dust." It was cool.
-- Been caught "doing something": No, I'm too much of a paranoiac to get caught. I'm super stealthy.
-- Been called a tease: Ha.
-- Gotten beaten up: Yes.
-- Shoplifted: No.
-- If so, did you get caught: Actually, when I was in junior high, this douche kicked me and my friend John out of a Tower Records by accusing us of trying to jack a fucking Jodeci tape. I would've been pissed if I could stop from laughing at the thought of stealing a Jodeci tape. I guess that douchebag didn't notice the fucking Black Flag hat I was wearing.
-- Changed who you were to fit in: No.

The future...

-- Age you hope to be married: I don't know.
-- Numbers and Names of Children: I think it'd be cool to have a daughter named Elle.
-- Describe your Dream Wedding: Just her and me and a justice of the peace and a witness. Either in the middle of a desert or on a beach in central America, during a thunderstorm.
-- How do you want to die: In a plane crash or suicide.
-- Where you want to go to college: If I cared, Juilliard. That'd be my first choice. Next choices: Berklee or Boston University.
-- What do you want to be when you grow up: I'm an artist.
-- What country would you most like to visit: Antarctica and Chile. Fortunately, they're pretty close.
-- Opposite sex (or the same?): Opposite.
-- Best eye color? Honestly, it doesn't matter. I like all colors. It's really about shades. Blue eyes can be boring, but icy, piercing blue eyes are beautiful. Brown eyes are almost always hypnotic. I love girls with brown eyes. Violet-blue eyes are amazing. I knew a girl in high school named Jessica who had violet-blue eyes. Teresa has really icy blue eyes. Dark green eyes don't do much for me, but really pale, bright green eyes are beautiful.
-- Best hair color? Again, it doesn't matter. It's about shades. Naturally red hair on women can be really amazing or ghastly. Orange-ish red hair is frightening, but really vibrant red hair is beautiful. Tina has super-vibrant red hair. I've never seen red hair like hers before. It looks dyed, it's so perfect. And she has really pale, bright green eyes. I love dark hair and dark eyes on girls. Natural blonde hair is pretty, of course. Fake blonde hair is a huge turn-off. But I admit I have a fetish for dyed black hair.
-- Short or long hair?: Either. I like it when a girl has really short hair because it brings it out her face. Plus, only really beautiful women can pull off having really short hair. But my favorite length of hair on a woman is chin-length.
-- Best height: It doesn't matter. Women seem much more hung up on height than guys are. Most of the women I've been with are shorter than I am, but I've had a few GFs who were taller and it didn't bother me at all. As long as they're cool with it, I am.
-- Best weight: It's about proportion. I like a little junk in the trunk, but I've been with really thin women, too. Lucy was super thin when I met her, like 98lbs at 5'4. Rachel was really thin, too, but the girl ate like she was on death row. Teresa is pretty thin. But I've also been with women who were fat (I don't mean "average" or a "few extra"—I mean fat). So, it really depends. On proportion and how comfortable she is with her body.
-- Best articles of clothing: You can never go wrong with a tight pair of jeans.
-- Best first date location: It's really about mood and chemistry as opposed to location.
-- Best first kiss location: See above.
-- Number of girls I have kissed in my life: 25, maybe?
-- Number of girls you have made out with: 23 or 24.
-- Number of girlfriends you've had: Somewhere around 20.
-- Number of boys I have kissed: Zero.
-- Number of boys you have made out with: Zero.
-- Number of boyfriends you've had: Zero.
-- Number of drugs taken illegally: Not sure. 4, I think. I don't remember much about those years.
-- Number of people I could trust with my life: I don't know.
-- Number of CDs that I own: Shitload.
-- Number of piercings: Zero.
-- Number of tattoos: Zero.
-- Number of scars on my body: A lot.
-- Number of things in my past that I regret: I regret a lot of things. I think anyone who says otherwise is lying.

like a burning guitar

2006-03-14T21:23:00.000-08:00

My favorite band in the world, The Arctic Monkeys, were on SNL this past weekend and, wow, they're even gayer on TV. The singer/guitarist had his axe hiked up to his chin and sported that sweet Liam Gallagher shaggy bowlcut circa '97.

Remember that whole rockism thing bloggurz were bloggin' 'bout not too long ago? From the Wikipedia entry on the theory:

The fundamental tenet of rockism is that some forms of popular music, and some musical artists, are more authentic than others. More specifically, authentic popular music fits the rock and roll paradigm; it is made using the basic rock instrumentation of guitars, bass guitars and drums, and fits the structures of a rock and roll song. Rockism is suspicious of the use of technology, from synthesizers to Pro Tools-style computer-based production systems. Rockism places value on the idea of the composer and performer as auteur; authentic music is composed as a sincere form of self-expression, and usually performed by those who composed it. This is as opposed to the notion of manufactured "pop" music, created in assembly line fashion by teams of hired producers and technicians and performed by pop stars who have little input into the creative process, designed to appeal to a mass market and make profits rather than express authentic sentiments.

Lots of people take issue with rockism and accuse it of being a primitivist ideology and even racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. I reject the entire premise because it's predicated on the notion that there's a difference between pop and rock. There isn't. Rock is just as contrived and manufactured as pop is.

I won't name names for obvious reasons, but I know some of the members of a well-known rock band. One of those The Bands that are all the rage these days. They're not insanely huge, but they make enough money to buy their moms and dads houses, which is precisely why they started the band. See, the band was formed from the ashes of other bands the members were involved in. None of the guys' previous bands were going anywhere and eventually those bands folded. The guys, all friends from childhood, decided to get together and form a new band, but before they even got together for their first practice, they got in touch with a manager. Well, before even that, they constructed a new image for themselves as a bland, vaguley indifferent group of dudes with bedhead, fros, super tight jeans, blazers, and Chuck Taylors. Then they got in touch with a manager. The manager liked their look and the description of the band and agreed to manage them. Then, without having written one fucking song, they landed a record deal. Amazing, huh? The guys know what's up and knew exactly what to say and do to get their foot in the door. So they wrote some shitty ass music, just like The Arctic Monkeys, and voila. Now they make enough money to buy their parents new homes.

Fame is easy if you play the game. Talent has little to do with it. It's like when people come to Hollywood with artistic aspirations—I just want to pat them on the head. So cute.

the internets have officially jumped the shark

2006-03-13T08:51:00.000-08:00

Tried other friend or dating sites only to be disappointed? You know the drill. You go on the site, you see a HOT picture, you talk and then.... You meet in person. Turns out that "HOT picture" was a glamor shots photo from 6 years ago and besides it was just a head shot anyways.

Yeah, it's happened to us. That's why we created PodDater.
PodDater is a new way to find a friend or a date. You make a video profile, add it to your profile, share it with others and you download video profiles to your iPod.

PodDater!? Okay, I've met people via the internet and whatever, but this is a little much. Instead of shilling for Corporation You in a video and uploading it to a site so other narcissists can rapidly skip onto the next profile, why not just, uh, you know, go outside? I know it's fucking hard meeting people in "real life," but try it. Quit being so fucking afraid of rejection and just go up to someone and say something honest. Yes, you'll get shot down, but so what? Happens to the best of us. You don't always get it your way, tragically.

empty house

2006-03-10T16:01:00.000-08:00

Grandmother's funeral was this morning. It was okay, I guess. I was one of the pallbearers.

My grandfather died on a Monday and was buried on a Friday, too. But it was really hot that day. It was in the late summer. It's very wintry out today.

Saw my cousin Josh. Hadn't seen him since I was little. His father, uncle Robert, gave a speech at the cemetery. It was about Josh's brother Jeremy and how he's going to Iraq in the summer. Uncle Robert talked about how, to most people, what Jeremy is doing is considered heroic. And then uncle Robert said that his mother was his hero and his voice started to crack, which was hard to listen to because uncle Robert is a very stoic man, a veteran, of whom some of my earliest memories are him lugging trash bags of shell casings into my grandparents' backyard. Once, he pulled a gun on my cousin's husband, who happens to be a pedophile scumbag, but one of my aunts talked uncle Robert out of killing him.

Grandmother was Catholic, so there was a mass at the church. Pretty weird for an atheist like me. Lots of sitting and standing. Fortunately there were other Catholics at the service, so I just followed their lead.

I found out that grandmother played piano and sang! I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe she's dead. She took care of us and then we took care of her and now she's gone and what're we going to do?

the fetal position

2006-03-06T16:53:00.000-08:00

Grandmother died today. Around 4:00 this morning. Just saw her last night. Her skin was really cold. She was asleep and could hardly breathe. She hadn't eaten anything for about two weeks and stopped eliminating on Friday. She would've been 94 on the 12th. I guess I was close with her. Or as close as anyone can be in this family. No one's really close in this family. I'm glad my cousin and aunt still totally hate each other and found the joy in telling each other to fuck off last night while grandmother lay in her deathbed. That was just amazing.

She was the last of my grandparents. My gradfather died about ten years ago. I don't know who my father's parents were. I know my father's mother was named Helen and I have no idea who my paternal grandfather was (my father was raised by his grandparents, both of whom died when he was a teenager).

All kinds of things died with my grandmother. There are so many secrets in this family and no one is interested in telling them. For example, my grandfather probably had another family before he met my grandmother. Or while he was with her. Oh, and my grandparents didn't even marry till 1983—two years after I was born. I just found that one out the other day. The aforementioned aunt is a huge lez and her marriage to her husband was a joint sham (he was queer, too; he's dead now) to placate both of their families. Which explains why my cousins are so fucked up. Which also explains why I have vague memories of him in drag. And on and on.

I feel numb about it, thank god. Grandmother was crisp till a few weeks ago, when she suddenly stopped eating, seemed to lose recognition, and just slept every day, all day. I visited at least three times a week and she was either sleeping or awake, but not really there. She was always fierce, even now. She was mad up until the very end. But this time she didn't recognize anyone. Before, she'd have these spells where she'd call out for papi or something, but then she'd snap right back to reality and grill me about work. "Are you working? You had better find another job or Lucy's going to leave you!" One time when she was in the hospital, this nurse came in to give her her meds and he was this Asian dude who had broken English and he looked at grandmother's chin hairs and said, "Ooooh, you got goatee! Like troll!" And me and grandmother started laughing so hard, I thought that son of a bitch was gonna kill her.

But even last night when my aunt tried to give her some morphine, grandmother fought her. Tensed up and yelled. Just wanted to be left alone. She was mad. She knew she was dying and she was mad. Mad and alone.

Grandmother always tried to keep the peace between everyone in the family. And now that she's gone it's probably going to get worse. And everyone's just going to die angry.

huh

2006-03-05T17:58:00.000-08:00

The other night I'm talking with this girl named Chrissy on AIM. She wants to send me some new pictures so I say cool. She sends them and I say, "Cool, thanks." Okay, me and Chrissy aren't together or anything. As far as I know she doesn't like me. So I don't understand what happens next. She says, "I'm sorry for sending the pix. I knew I shouldn't have sent them." I ask her why she's saying that and she says never mind. I ask her what's wrong and she says she's going to go. I ask her to wait and tell me what's the matter, but she just repeats that she's going to go. So I say okay and tell her I'll talk to her later. But she doesn't sign out. I'm not really in the mood to play this game with her; I wish she would just say it. I know she's mad at me because I didn't compliment her, not her pictures per se, but her. So our chat window just sits there for like ten minutes until it starts blinking. Again, she's saying that she's sorry for sending the pictures and I tell her she shouldn't be sorry about that. Then she mocks me by typing "'cool, thx.'" I laugh and type, "You're really annoyed with me, aren't you?" She says that she is and then says, "Just kidding." I tell her that I doubt she's kidding and this is where it gets ugly. She tells me that she is annoyed with me, that I'm a "total asshole" and that I always go out of my way to be one. She tells me that the reason I'm single again is because no one can deal with how big an asshole I am. She tells me that she's a nice person and that she's always there for me, but that I'm always just a dick to her. I don't know what to say, so I say nothing, which just bothers her more. I mean, what do you say to something like that? There's not much you can say that'll ameliorate the problem at that point. I understand she's really mad at me and I know I can be a really, really difficult person to know. She tells me that she wishes I would just say one nice thing about her. I tell her, "Chrissy, you always think I'm bullshitting you whenever I say something nice, so it's difficult for me to say anything nice to you now." She disputes this, but I counter by pointing out that she said exactly that just the other night. She tells me to say something nice to her, but now I feel that it will be completely fake since she is telling me to. She doesn't say anything for a while and then this huge block of text appears, wherein she says that when she first met me she liked me a lot and that she was "totally infatuated" with me because I was "mysterious," but also "genuine." But now I'm just a "total asshole" who's "impossible to figure out." She tells me that she's a good person, which she is. She tells me she deserves a lot better, which she does.

The point: anyone who says that women always go for assholes obviously knows jack shit about women.

crisp

2006-03-05T10:48:00.000-08:00

I spent Saturday maxin' n' chillaxin' in Chinatown with my brother. Goddamn, those motherfuckers are out of control with the party snaps. Shit's funny when you're 10, not 27. "5 boxes for a $1," bro said (or is it 6 boxes?). It's cool, but I was saving up for cigs. Anyway, my brother worked my ass like a dog, walking all over Chinatown looking for some goddamned mug he saw in some dingy-ass shop months ago. Surprisingly, he didn't find the mug. And man it was colder than shit outside! When did LA turn into Portland for crissake? (It's supposed to rain most of the week, which means everything is going to flood and we're all going to die.)

Anyway, it was cool. MILFs were out in full force. But you know what sucks? Even though I was amongst all of these hot women I couldn't stop thinking about Rachel. She's never been to LA and I wanted to show her around the city. Even after we broke up she wanted to come to California to visit me and so I got into the habit of thinking of all the places I'd take her to. I just wished I was there with her and not my brother, which made me feel like shit. But I'm sure he probably would've rather been with whoever his latest crush is than with his little bro. I hate that I can't get over her. I hate that I listen to Aaliyah's "At Your Best" for hours on end and cry my eyes out. I know it's pathetic! I mean, my feelings for her haven't changed at all. I lived with Lucy for two-and-a-half years and I was over her in like a month. (She met, and moved in, with a guy who is now her husband about 4 minutes after we broke up. I guess neither of us really meant that much to each other.) I mean, when a relationship ends, I move on. I don't pine for the other person, no matter what happened. But I think about Rachel every day. I guess it's because I have no idea what happened to us. Everything was amazing and then, literally, over night she says she can't be in a relationship with anyone. I had just moved in with her and then she says that to me. And it wasn't like I moved to a different part of the city or whatever—I moved across the motherfucking country. Clearly, that's a lot of pressure to put on a relationship, but honestly, she was the one who asked me to move in with her. If it had been a situation where I kept nagging her about living together, then I could definitely understand why she would feel pressured and uncertain about living with me.

You know what fucks with my head, though? About two weeks after I came back to California we were talking on the phone and her roommate was in the process of moving out of their apartment. I guess her roommate felt weird about a guy living with them and told Rachel about it, but didn't try to make it a big deal (even though the roommate knew that I was moving in about a month before I left Portland and told Rachel she was cool with it). Anyway, Rachel says that if the roommate had moved out before or during the time I was there, things would've turned out differently. But is that the only reason why she wanted me to leave? Who was the asshole who said "don't sweat the small stuff"? The small stuff will kill you.

On a funnier note (because all of that heartbreak/"what if?" stuff is fucking hilarious, but not as funny as what I'm about to lay down on your ass), brother and I went to see Chappelle's Block party at the Huntington Beach Mall. Goddamn, that shit was crisp. Chappelle was in prime form and the music was out of control. My only complaint is that there wasn't enough footage of the show. I wanted to see more footage of Jill Scott and Erykah Badu, but maybe there'll be some more shit on the DVD. And why no footage of Erykah backstage? I mean, there were little clips, but nothing substantial. Goddamn, that woman is hot. I'm convinced Dead Prez played "Turn Off the Radio" for Kanye. At least I hope they did. Fucking Kanye.

Random joke from the movie:

"How many white people does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None. Cuz they'll get a nigger to do it for them."

Random picture of a zeppelin in ascension on the way down to HB via the 405, which I dubbed the flying roach:

Random picture of my shoes:

norepinephrine plus

2006-03-03T02:17:00.000-08:00

Clue Chick ruminates on her status as a slut:

I was recently talking to a friend of mine about the realization that, you know what? I'm pretty slutty. I haven't had any particular hangups about the concept of slut, or sluttiness for quite some time. A lot of the women I spend time with happily identify as sluts, or as having been slutty in the past, and that's something they're quite comfortable with.

For a long time, I was a "good girl" by almost anyone's definition of the term, and for some of that time, that was important to me, that I be good, by some external, socially accepted metric, even if I rejected that metric when applied to other people.

And goes on:

I had a man, recently, after a play date with me, tell me that it was fun, but he didn't really like sluts, so it was only a one-time thing. This, as you might imagine, left me flabbergasted. I make no bones about being a slut, or being easy; after all, I post it on the internet, specifically with the intent of practicing my sluttish arts of fucking and sucking. So, to him, apparently, a slut is good once. Needless to say, this pissed me off.

What's the male equivalent of a slut? That certainly would apply to him, no? One of the things that drives me crazy in the gender politics of casual sex, is the double standard: a woman who engages in casual sex is dirty, or bad, but a man who does the same is a stud, admirable.

Do you go out with a slut, or do you keep her at home? She's good for a lay, but not for a date, where people might see you with her, perhaps?

I'm totally a slut. I'm obsessed with sex. I love it. I love women. I love love. I need it. I'm a needy person. I admit it. It's all I care about. I think about sex all the time. Even as a child. I started masturbating at the age of 5. I lost my virginity when I was 14 and I've been addicted ever since. I remember the night I lost my virginity very vividly. It was a Tuesday, sometime in late August. It was around 9:00 at night. Her name was Cris and she was older. We were in this park and she said she had to go to the bathroom, so we walked over to the women's restroom and I waited outside. It was dark at this point and no one else was around and Cris walks out of the bathroom with her pants around her ankles and tells me to follow her. I do and she unzips my pants and take out my cock and she lifts herself up onto the sink and slips my cock inside her. It was like a bolt of lightning had erupted from my crotch and spread throughout my body. I knew sex would feel good, but I couldn't believe it felt this good.

Falling in love and having sex is better than the greatest high ever and I say this as someone who was (is?) a total druggie. After all, orgasms are "akin to a shot of heroin."

I love kissing. I love the feel of a girl's lips pressed into mine. I love the smell of her skin. I like to stare into someone's eyes when I kiss them. I love that kind of closeness and vulnerability. It's almost impossible to be anything other than what you are in that moment. Sex with someone you just met can be really intense because there's a (false?) sense of intimacy with someone you don't know. It's easy to be vulnerable with someone who doesn't know you. But it can be empty. I like being used. I like being controlled. But what do those words mean? People can only use me because I let them. So who's in control, really?

I love going down on girls. I love it when girls sit on my face! I think about it constantly. It's my favorite thing in the world, next to making out. I love the smell and taste of a girl's pussy. I love kissing her thighs and slowly working my way up. I love to kiss a girl's pussy. Slowly at first, rubbing my lips against hers, then taking her vulva into my mouth and sucking. I have a huge tight jeans fetish and it drives me crazy with lust to smell a girl's crotch through her pants. I love ripping her pants and underwear off and smearing my face all over crotch. I mean, I come all the time just from going down on girls, which is kind of a drag, but that's the great thing about being young: it takes mere seconds to get hard again, especially when you have sopping wet pussy in your face.

I want to die every time I slip my cock inside a girl. It's boring, but my favorite positions are when a girl straddles me or when I'm on top. I've never fucked in a position I didn't like, even the ones that hurt, but I need to look in someone's eyes. I hooked up with this girl named Teresa last May. She is really beautiful: 5'8, thin, light brown hair, and really expressive, pale blue eyes. She would always turn her head away when I'd look at her. "Don't look at me like that," she'd say. "Like what?" I'd ask. "Like that," she'd say. All right. So I would keep looking at her. She would pout and say, "Aaaaaron." One night in bed she told me I was the only person to look in her eyes when having sex with her. I didn't know what to say. I mean, what did other people do when they fucked her? People are afraid you'll see something. I love sex precisely because I can't hide. I get tired of hiding. I get tired of everything, really, except fucking. It seems that the more sex I have the more insatiable I become.

I admit I have a problem. I guess most people would probably say that I do, but I'm not sure. Despite my sluttiness, I'm really not one to cheat. I mean, I've cheated before, but that was when I was a teenager and I'm not sure that stuff counts. And despite my sluttiness, I care about everyone I have sex with. It's impossible for me just to fuck someone and not talk to them or see them again. There's too much dopamine and vasopressin pumping through me for that. Unfortunately, though, that kind of shit happens. Even if you want to remain in contact with someone, it's difficult. You're not sure if they're just using you or what. Everyone is too interested in playing it cool. Or maybe they just don't care about you; perhaps you're just another body. This can be intense and fun too, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't leave me feeling empty.

I love slutty women. I would never hook up with a woman I knew was open about her sexuality and then try to get rid of her after having sex with her. That's pathetic. It's hypocritical and deficient in basic self-awareness, not to mention it lacks class and style. Last year I went on a "date" with this woman named Jamie. The "date" was okay. Not bad, but no "spark" as it were. She was nice to spend some time with, but I was really thrown for a loop when she told me that, not only was she a virgin, but she had never even kissed anyone before. Pardon the pun, but come again? I played it cool but inside I was dying from ghastly guffaws. 24 years old and never even kissed anyone before? A real head-scratcher, that one. I know a lot of guys are into that whole virgin thing, but I think I would gouge my eyes out if I ever had to have sex with another virgin. Why would I want to be with someone who has little to no idea about what the fuck they want? All the hemming and hawing and giggling would drive me into the arms of the bathroom for a hearty jerk. I want a bitch who will take charge. Which brings me back to the beginning of this paragraph: I love sluts. I love bitchy women. I love women who know what they want and don't give a fuck. I love women who are emotional and passionate and crazy and aren't afraid to start shit. In other words, I like bitches. I'm totally attracted to women who "don't know when to keep their mouths shut." That's what I loved about Tina and Rachel and Teresa. They just said whatever came to mind and didn't give a good motherfuck. "Aaron, you got something in your teeth," "Aaron, I want your dick inside me," "Aaron, you're an asshole," "I fucking HATE that bitch, Aaron! I don't care if she can hear me," "Aaron, I'll fucking kill you if you ever leave me," etc. I hate phoniness. Rachel always used to say, "How can you be with me? I'm such a bitch," to which I'd reply: "I know. That's what I love about you."

If you're hooking up with a guy who can't deal with who you are, fuck him. Why waste your time? If you're with a guy who can't deal with your sexuality in any real way, you're with an extremely small, insecure man who's swallowed every load fed to him about women and sex. Sex and love are beautiful. It is the greatest thing we upright animals have to give. It is the stuff of the cosmos. Certain people hate sex because sex is inextricably linked to women. We live in a society where teams of men are praised for clobbering the shit out of each other over an oval ball, but is plunged into an abyssal moral crisis at the briefest flash of a woman's nipple. The message is boringly clear: aggression and violence and competitiveness is virile and good; sex is vulnerable and feminine and bad. But being bad feels pretty amazing, doesn't it?

let us dig up rock n' roll and pound it into dust

2006-03-01T22:31:00.000-08:00

Have I mentioned that I fucking hate The Arctic Monkeys? "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor" is the worst song in recorded music history. It's the sound of someone putting a shotgun to your ear and farting before pulling the trigger. It's everything that is inexcusably wrong with Western culture. It is big, dumb, absurd, simple, lumbering, rehashed, safe, and completely devoid of objective substance. It is what put Bush in the White House. It is what fuels Bill O'Reilly's popularity. It is the same sort of nebulous blandness that has carried a wholly unremarkable, yet simple-minded and didactic filmmaker like Steven Spielberg into the dubious annals of "cinematic greatness." It is what propelled Ashlee Simpson's career into the limelight. It is that nameless, shapeless force. It is not malevolence, but assuring and lukewarm. It is popular and sycophantic. It is mediocrity.

The first time I heard the song's opening riff I thought it was a Third Eye Blind b-side or perhaps a Stone Temple Pilots number I had blessedly managed to avoid in the band's heyday. Sadly, no. It's a "new" song by a horrid new band that no one will give two shits about exactly one year from now. Remember Jet? Not really? They were that shit band that more or less stole Iggy Pop's most mundane riffs and put 'em in a shit single that everyone lapped up. I used to think it couldn't get any worse than Jet and, Jesus MOTHERFUCKING Christ, was I ever wrong. The Arctic Monkeys, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Bloc Party, The Like (like, the dumbest fucking band name ever, 4 realz), The Yeah Hot, The Yo Clap Unaboriginals, The Hot Shins, The Shills, The Sucka Yucka Low-Fi Monosyllabic Hunky Spunky Rock Explosion (With or Without Parenthetical Aside [Hello, McSweeneys]), The The The The The The Period, The Ohs, The Fucking Yeah Hot, The Sahara Hot Ligers, The Grandma's Broken Coccyxes, etc. are The Nickelbacks, Creeds, and Chicagos for The Cobra Snake set. That whole "three fucking chords, we're so like fucking like punk, man, shhhhhhit!" thing is like a paper cut on my scrotum. The whole thing just makes me wanna go all Tyler Durden. The quaint irony of all this safe rehashing of rock and roll's most tried n' true power chords is that if the first wave of rock and rollers like Chuck Berry or Little Richard just rode on the coattails of everyone who came before them, well, there'd be no fucking rock n' roll. Rock n' roll was interesting and exciting because it took things from the past and turned them into something new. Just like the blues and jazz and hip hop and electronica.

You can play three chords on yer crusty Strat and snarl into a microphone, wow, fucking swell, champ. So can Corky's kid sister. That's the easy part. The question is: do you have the set to say and do something new, live in the moment, and face the goddamned consequences? Good on you that you wanna be popular and "just get the music fucking out there, man." Yes, yes. Yawn, yawn. You and everyone else. Instead of pumping your fist into the air and rocking the fuck out on yer cool Jaguar, why don't you just stand there and stare the audience down for five minutes straight? Why don't you just be quiet for a moment instead of constantly being hot and entertaining? Why don't you aim a little lower? Fuck, why don't you fall flat on your face and fail? Failure is interesting. It's painful and it teaches you something about life. It's dangerous. And isn't rock n' roll supposed to be dangerous? Or are you all talk?

sleepless

2006-03-01T03:46:00.000-08:00

I didn't sleep much last night. Maybe an hour or so. It rained all night and for whatever reason the rain excites me. It was a warm sub-tropical storm with decent winds and fat rain drops.

One thing I miss about the northeast is the weather. It's so different from how it is here in L.A. I mean, I was only in the northeast during the dead of summer, so I don't know jack shit the seasonal changes, but the summers there are intense in a different way than the summers here are. Here, heat is dry and scorching and you don't sweat so much as burn; there, it's not really hot so much as it is humid and suffocating. As soon as I stepped off the plane in Jersey it was as if I walked into a trucker's asscrack.

Surprisingly, though, I liked the humidity. I liked how the haze washed out the landscape and coated everything in a sweaty opacity. In L.A. the sun is severe and omnipresent, but in the northeast it's only hinted at; sometimes it pierces through the humid milky coating.

But, god, I had some good sex in that heat.

One day Rachel and I drove to Albany, NY so she could visit her mother. However, Rachel hadn't told her mother that I had basically moved in with her, so I couldn't really stay over at her mother's. I told her I was fine with staying behind, but Rachel didn't want me to have to hang around the apartment by myself so she offered to get me a room in Albany, not too far from her mother's. I agreed, but only if I could split the cost with her. So we left Northampton and drove about an hour or so to Albany. Right around the Massachusetts/New York border we were deluged by a really beautiful summer thunderstorm. Above us the sky was dark and it was raining so hard visibility was reduced to shit, but in the distance the sky was clearing and the sun was setting. A slow, blinding, hypnotic arc of golden sunlight flooded the atmosphere. As always, Rachel and I were silent. It was one of those moments you can't plan, that presents itself suddenly and quietly, and sears itself into your consciousness. I remember that day so vividly. It was Friday, July 15th. I was wearing corduroy pants, a black t-shirt, and my black Converse. Rachel was wearing a white tank top, shorts, and flip flops. She was bringing her cats to her mother's because they kept peeing all over the apartment and they were in their cages in the backseat, yowling and fouling—the car reeked of shit.

We got to Albany and eventually found the motel. A shitty haven for serial killers if there ever was one. Fortunately, there was only one pick-up truck in the entire parking lot, so I figured my odds of being killed were slim. The room was crap. Rachel asked me if I was sure this was okay. I said yeah, I'll be fine. She kept saying she was sorry for having to leave me. I kept telling her it was all right. I walked her to her car and we kissed and hugged and she told me she'd be there at 11:00 the next morning. I said okay. Then she kissed me again. Then she walked to her car and turned around. She stared at me for a moment before walking toward me and kissing me again. She said okay. I said okay. Then she walked back to her car and got in and started it and looked at me and pulled out. I watched her drive away before walking back to my room.

I tried to turn the TV on, but the bitch wasn't havin' it. I freaked out a little at the thought of having to lie in bed all night listening to the deafening silence of a seedy-ass motel situation. I mean, I've done a decent amount of traveling and I've stayed in some shitty motels, but this place was out of control. It was even creepier than the Motel 6 I stayed in in Kansas, Central California (most people tend to think of L.A. or San Francisco when they hear the word California, but California is a dynamic state and the central valley is mostly farmland, more akin to the midwest than to points west) with significant blood stains on the sheets. I mean, someone was probably dismembered in that bed and I didn't realize the blood stains until the next morning, after I had slobbered all over the sheets and pillow. Yeah, this Albany motel was more fucked than that. I could write an essay on the toilet alone. Anyway, eventually I realized that the TV doubled as a radio—something I wasn't aware even existed!—and I had to switch it from the radio setting to the TV setting. So, awesome, I could finally watch TV and veg out and forget about my immediate circumstances. But not quite. The TV doesn't like changing channels. Oh, it'll change, but only for about 34 seconds, then it will stick to one channel for three hours before giving you another window of opportunity to see what else is on. For part of the night I watched what seemd to be a Talk Soup marathon on E!. Then the TV felt like working but decided it hated me when I landed on The Weather Channel. So I spent the rest of the night watching Overnight Outlook.

I ventured outside to have a smoke and to wrassle me up a cold, canned beverage from the soda machine but was robbed when the infernal monstrosity gave me a goddamned iced tea instead of a Coke. I hate tea. But it was really humid out, so I drank it. The storms had ended and the sky had cleared out. It was still really humid, but not really hazy. I stared at the moon and dragged away on my cig.

I went back inside and a swarm of flies trailed me. I sat on my bed and watched TV and tried to ignore them, but the beasts began harassing me by nosediving onto my head and face! These were fat, stupid flies with a loud, insufferable buzz, more akin to a chainsaw than the soothing whir of your typical west coast housefly. These bitches were east coast, and needed to be dealt with as such. It was easy killing them: they would kamikaze themselves into a wall or unto ceiling, momentarily concussing themselves, whereupon I would seize the moment and crush them with my shoe. Turds.

I finally fell asleep around 3:30-4:00. But woke up a few hours later, to watch the sunrise.

I masturbated so many times that night, thinking about Rachel and all of the crazed, sweaty sex we had had that week. The sex between us was so intense and so possessive. We would fuck for hours; literally, until she physically couldn't any longer. After we broke up she told me that it was "too much." She said we are like soul mates, but that being in a romantic relationship was too much and that we are too alike. I understand that now. I understood it then, too, but I didn't want to accept it. Rachel and I understand each other in a way that is terrifying. We just see right through each other. We all play games. Every relationship is a game that we play to some extent, but Rachel and I couldn't really play each other. I always knew when she was trying to control me or make me feel insecure or whatever and I always let her do it. I let her because it's fun. Honestly, it makes me feel wanted when someone tries to control me. She only could because I let her. We were completely obsessed with each other. She would've done anything for me and I gave up everything to be with her. That's so much to deal with in your early 20s. I knew it would end badly, but I did it anyway. I'm too impulsive. And I would do it again.

I miss her. I miss talking with her for hours. I miss being around her for hours and not having to say a word. I miss her sitting on my lap and locking her arms around my neck. I miss the way she'd smile at me when we'd wake up in the morning. I miss holding her when she cries. I miss spooning her and running my fingers through her hair. I miss the soft plump of her lips; the glimmer in her blue eyes. I miss her New York accent pronouncing itself whenever she'd get excited or angry. I miss the glow of the afternoon sunlight in her hair. I miss the way she would always touch me, even when we fought. She never let me feel like she didn't love me, no matter what happened. I miss the feel of her dew-scented skin. I miss running my hands over the soft blonde hairs on her legs; her breath on my face. I need her love.

baby daddy

2006-02-26T19:17:00.000-08:00

Dear Rachel Nichols:

We would have beautiful children together.

Just something to think about.

your favorite music sucks

2006-02-22T12:40:00.000-08:00

The Test Icicles have supposedly broken up.

Awesome! (If it's true, that is.) One shitty band down, so many more to go.

Others who should give it the fuck up:

The Arctic Monkeys (UGH!)
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (NO!)
Of Montreal
Wilco
U2
The Strokes
Coldplay
The Like
Sufjan Stevens
Franz fucking Ferdinand
The Killers
Kanye
Death Cab
Beck

There's your definitive list of horrid, overrated, bullshit music. Rock and roll is dead. Stop beating the goddamned horse. Copying other bands is not risky or cool, it's safe and boring. But I guess this is why tasteless bloggers and music journalists like this kind of tepid shit.

all i ask is that you at least try not to be a trendy douche

2006-02-21T18:15:00.000-08:00

I was listening to Morning Becomes Eclectic yesterday morn' and a song that sounded suspiciously like a cross between Alanis Morissette and Britney Spears was played. Strange, since KCRW usually plays good music (save for when they play The Arctic Monkeys, who are inexcusable). So I checked out the playlist and the song in question was the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs song, "Gold Lions." It's good to see that the band went from mediocre crap to full-on commercial pop rock horseshit.

Also, Sufjan Stevens is fucking rubbish. And just say NO to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Worst fucking band since The Talking Heads.