Last One

For reals this time:

1. The Complete Poems, Anne Sexton
2. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
3. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
4. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
5. Sideways, Rex Pickett
6. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
7. Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory
8. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
9. The Sonnets, William Shakespeare
10. To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
11. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Yiyun Li
13. interpreter of maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
14. The Neverending Story, Michael Ende
15. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
16. Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
17. Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
18. The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman
19. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
20. the namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
21. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
22. seven types of ambiguity, Eliot Perlman
23. Unhooked Generation, Jillian Straus
24. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins
25. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
26. This Book Will Save Your Life, A. M. Homes
27. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
28. Youth in Revolt, C.D. Payne
29. jPod, Douglas Coupland
30. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rainer Maria Rilke
31. History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
32. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
33. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, John Lee Anderson
34. No Acting Please, Eric Morris
35. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Marcel Proust
36. Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, William J. Mann
37. The 9/11 Commission Report, Various
38. The Aeneid, Virgil
39. Istanbul: Memories of a City, Orhan Pamuk
40. No Logo, Naomi Klein
41. Jimmy Stewart, Marc Eliot
42. An Illustrated Short History of Progress, Ronald Wright
43. Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie
44. Collected Poems 1909-1962, T.S. Eliot
45. Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller
46. Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman
47. Understanding Me, Marshall McLuhan

So, 47 books on the year. Not bad, I suppose.

TickTickTick

He asked me innocently then what had brought me to his home - and without a minute's hesitation I told him an astounding lie, a lie which was later to prove a great truth. I told him I was only pretending to sell the encyclopedia in order to meet people and write about them. That interested him enormously, even more than the encyclopedia. He wanted to know what I would write about him, if I could say. It's taken me twenty years to answer that question, but here it is. If you would still like to know, John Doe of the City of Bayonne, this is it...I owe you a great deal because after that lie I told you I left your house and I tore up the prospectus furnished me by the Encyclopaedia Britannica and I threw it in the gutter. I said to myself I will never again go to people under false pretenses even if it is to give them the Holy Bible. I will never again sell anything, even if I have to starve. I am going home now and I will sit down and really write about people. And if anybody knocks at my door to sell me something I will invite him in and say "why are you doing this?" And if he says it is because he has to make a living I will offer him what money I have and beg him once again to think what he is doing. I want to prevent as many men as possible from pretending that they have to do this or that because they must earn a living. It is not true. One can starve to death - it is much better. Every man who voluntarily starves to death jams another cog in the automatic process. I would rather see a man take a gun and kill his neighbor, in order to get the food he needs, than keep up the automatic process by pretending that he has to earn a living. That's what I want to say, Mr. John Doe.

1. The Complete Poems, Anne Sexton
2. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
3. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
4. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
5. Sideways, Rex Pickett
6. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
7. Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory
8. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
9. The Sonnets, William Shakespeare
10. To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
11. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Yiyun Li
13. interpreter of maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
14. The Neverending Story, Michael Ende
15. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
16. Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
17. Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
18. The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman
19. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
20. the namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
21. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
22. seven types of ambiguity, Eliot Perlman
23. Unhooked Generation, Jillian Straus
24. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins
25. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
26. This Book Will Save Your Life, A. M. Homes
27. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
28. Youth in Revolt, C.D. Payne
29. jPod, Douglas Coupland
30. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rainer Maria Rilke
31. History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
32. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
33. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, John Lee Anderson
34. No Acting Please, Eric Morris
35. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Marcel Proust
36. Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, William J. Mann
37. The 9/11 Commission Report, Various
38. The Aeneid, Virgil
39. Istanbul: Memories of a City, Orhan Pamuk
40. No Logo, Naomi Klein
41. Jimmy Stewart, Marc Eliot
42. An Illustrated Short History of Progress, Ronald Wright
43. Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie
44. Collected Poems 1909-1962, T.S. Eliot
45. Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller
46. Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman

I had actually considered getting a Klosterman book - this one specifically - quite some time ago, but eventually decided not to because he seemed to just be a bitter dude who could really use a hug. My opinion hasn't really changed, but after having been exposed to a bit more of his writing via the pieces he does for the various men's magazines, I've revised that to a bitter dude who could really use a hug, but who is at least entertaining, which is probably more than you can say about most people. That could also be why he gets to write for a living and I don't, but I'm gonna chalk that up to cake instead, just because I can.

Pie > cake.

Hollow Man

I have been passed over and ignored so many times that I begin to wonder if they are right, if there is something in me whose existence I deny that is lacking, if I myself do not deserve to be. I am so tired of being asked what I want. Isn't it obvious that no-one knows what they want, that wants are transitory and self-destructive, that wanting and not getting is the very definition of the human experience? It is the lack of wanting that makes me question myself, a lack of a desire for anything other than a good screw and a warm bed. I disappear, I wrap myself in her, subordinate myself to her, and in the night I turn away from her, turning my back on the emptiness I see reflected in her eyes.

Oooo

Look, it's a new template!

Tall Tales

When I was younger I was a liar. I was always desperate to stay out of trouble, and lying got me out of it. No-one ever expected the soft little kid with the 90 average to lie, and I used that to my fullest advantage. It became a game, finding out how much I could get away with; how little work I could get away with doing, how many deadlines I could extend or escape entirely. I lied to teachers, I lied to friends, I lied to myself. I lied about stupid things, I lied about important things that were actually stupid things but I was too young to know it at the time. The content was insignificant; what mattered was the reaction, the sympathy, the approval.

The first time a teacher confronted me with my lying was in my final year of high school. I had missed the first rehearsal for the school play; I hadn't seen it on the schedule. I told the teacher-director that another teacher had kept me for punishment of some infraction or another. She was new to the school, had never taught me and was unfamiliar with me. She spoke to the teacher I had named as my tormentor, and the truth emerged. Other teachers were involved, culminating in a meeting involving her, my advisor and myself. They asked why. Here was my moment, my Waterloo. I told them I had been under a lot of pressure, that I felt my life was out of control, that I didn't know why I had said it. I told them my parents were breaking up. I started to cry.

The best lies have a kernel of truth at their heart. That's one of the first things you figure out. I suppose the worst thing of all was that I had done it without thinking, that nothing was sacred in my quest to wriggle away from trouble. The tears I shed were tears of anger, of fear, of humiliation - and, yes, on some level, for the dissolution of a marriage which had happened years earlier but which had never been explained to me.

The subject was dropped. They never brought it up again.

Everyone lies to teachers, though. Everyone hates their teachers, even the grade-grubbing ass-kissers. They hate teachers most of all, for forcing such indignity upon them, for making them so reviled and tormented by their younger peers. How quickly teachers forget the special brand of contempt the young reserve for their teachers, how they struggle to befriend their squalling, backstabbing, broods who want nothing more than to escape the ignorant grasp of authority. "You don't understand me," they rage, and they are correct; there is no understanding institutionalized contrariness.

I lied to friends, not realizing that people talk to one another, that friends are friends with other people and that nothing said remains in a vacuum. Was it a sign of their friendship that they never confronted me, or a sign of their contempt? I never asked.

Sometimes I wonder about the people I involved in my lies. If I saw them again, could I apologize? And what would be more demeaning, the apology or the revelation that there was no reason to apologize; that my presumption all those years ago, that I myself was so insignificant that I had had no effect whatsoever upon them in their vulnerable, formative years?

I have never been good with apologies.

One Last Gasp

1. The Complete Poems, Anne Sexton
2. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
3. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
4. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
5. Sideways, Rex Pickett
6. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
7. Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory
8. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
9. The Sonnets, William Shakespeare
10. To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
11. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Yiyun Li
13. interpreter of maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
14. The Neverending Story, Michael Ende
15. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
16. Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
17. Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
18. The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman
19. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
20. the namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
21. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
22. seven types of ambiguity, Eliot Perlman
23. Unhooked Generation, Jillian Straus
24. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins
25. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
26. This Book Will Save Your Life, A. M. Homes
27. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
28. Youth in Revolt, C.D. Payne
29. jPod, Douglas Coupland
30. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rainer Maria Rilke
31. History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
32. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
33. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, John Lee Anderson
34. No Acting Please, Eric Morris
35. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Marcel Proust
36. Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, William J. Mann
37. The 9/11 Commission Report, Various
38. The Aeneid, Virgil
39. Istanbul: Memories of a City, Orhan Pamuk
40. No Logo, Naomi Klein
41. Jimmy Stewart, Marc Eliot
42. An Illustrated Short History of Progress, Ronald Wright
43. Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie
44. Collected Poems 1909-1962, T.S. Eliot
45. Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller

Capricorn is so good that there's an outside chance I might finish it before the new year, but I also need to start working on monologues, which will cut into reading time.

She

A self-fulfilling prophecy;
an enigmatic mystery.
You hold her close
but are no closer
to the thoughts that whirl within.

And would you change that, if you could?
Skin her alive
tear her apart
make her yours
make her pay
sweet Cupid's price.

Would you change her, if you could?
Stop this chase
this endless rag
this danse macabre.

O, listen close and you will hear
the tale of ages in her glance
Silly ditties and jingle jangles
you are hers
but she is not yours.
She is not yours,
and that's the way you like it
for who can tire of that
which they never have?

You are afraid
and hold her tighter in the night
she puts the truth to the lie
that you are.

Ring Ring

Whispered conversations
in the dark
endless silences
saying everything that needs to be said
yet nothing.
Words I want to say
that neither you nor I
are ready for,
but I want
I want
I want
A heartbeat
pounding in my mind.
A sham,
a flimflam.

I want

to hope.

Words,
waiting to be launched,
to set sail
for the promised land
on a puff of exhaled breath;
on a wire.

Charlie Brown, of all the Charlie Browns in the World you're the Charlie Browniest.

Click!

Ugh

I wanted to tell you what you mean to me
but all I could think of were bedtime stories
You know
like the one about the kid
who fell under the steamroller
which turned out to be his mother
and then he became a Christmas tree.

Don't judge me
I had a weird childhood.

I sit in branded cafes surrounded by dweebs
Who the heck uses the word "dweeb" these days?
It's so 1984
I love Big Brother!

Man
There were these kids the other day
and one of them was saying how
he was on this trip to New York
and one of the kids told the teacher he was getting a handjob
from his girlfriend
(which he totally wasn't. Just so you know.)
so all the guys had to sit on one side
of the bus
and the girls on the other side
and all I could think was,

DIEDIEDIEFUCKINGDIE

True story.

I want to call but I'm afraid
Afraid of needing
of smothering
of myself.

Oh man
then the other day
I was walking down the street
and it started to rain
and it made me think of you
so I hid in a doorway
but that made me think of you too
so I ran away from my memories
and got soaked.

That's not a metaphor for anything,
I really did get wet.

Sweet

Your Christmas is Most Like: A Charlie Brown Christmas

Each year, you really get into the spirit of Christmas. Which is much more important to you than nifty presents.

What Movie Is Your Christmas Most Like?

Afternoons and Coffeespoons

1. The Complete Poems, Anne Sexton
2. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
3. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
4. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
5. Sideways, Rex Pickett
6. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
7. Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory
8. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
9. The Sonnets, William Shakespeare
10. To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
11. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Yiyun Li
13. interpreter of maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
14. The Neverending Story, Michael Ende
15. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
16. Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
17. Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
18. The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman
19. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
20. the namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
21. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
22. seven types of ambiguity, Eliot Perlman
23. Unhooked Generation, Jillian Straus
24. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins
25. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
26. This Book Will Save Your Life, A. M. Homes
27. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
28. Youth in Revolt, C.D. Payne
29. jPod, Douglas Coupland
30. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rainer Maria Rilke
31. History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
32. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
33. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, John Lee Anderson
34. No Acting Please, Eric Morris
35. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Marcel Proust
36. Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, William J. Mann
37. The 9/11 Commission Report, Various
38. The Aeneid, Virgil
39. Istanbul: Memories of a City, Orhan Pamuk
40. No Logo, Naomi Klein
41. Jimmy Stewart, Marc Eliot
42. An Illustrated Short History of Progress, Ronald Wright
43. Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie
44. Collected Poems 1909-1962, T.S. Eliot

So this is the new Blogger, hunh? Looks the same to me.

Speaking of Harry Potter

Watching Goblet of Fire right now, and boy, it is a bad movie. I tried watching it a week or two ago and turned it off in irritation, because it was just too different from the book. As is the case with most adaptations, it's understandable that plot elements would be cut; what's unacceptable is the changing of motivations and intentions and the addition or extension of scenes which were not written. I mean, if you're already strapped for time fitting in plot lines and characters (Ludo Bagman has been cut entirely, as has Dobby and the whole house elf sub-plot), why are you wasting time adding in shit that wasn't originally written and isn't as good?

There's deeper limitation, however, and it's the first time I'd noticed it in these movies - the casting is simply too weak. Now that the kids have to actually demonstrate some sort of depth to their characters, their lack of ability/training is really starting to show. Even the adults cast as the teachers seem to be getting a bit tired, squeaking out moments here and there, but otherwise slogging their way through another paycheck.

I wonder, as I watch this, how many of the actors have actually read the books. This might sound like an odd thing to think about; one might assume that the first thing any actor in an adaption would do is read the source material, but actors and directors frequently go into productions without having done so, whether out of indifference or a desire to approach the material without bias.

Speaking of reading books:

1. The Complete Poems, Anne Sexton
2. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
3. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
4. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
5. Sideways, Rex Pickett
6. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
7. Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory
8. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
9. The Sonnets, William Shakespeare
10. To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
11. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Yiyun Li
13. interpreter of maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
14. The Neverending Story, Michael Ende
15. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
16. Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
17. Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
18. The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman
19. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
20. the namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
21. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
22. seven types of ambiguity, Eliot Perlman
23. Unhooked Generation, Jillian Straus
24. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins
25. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
26. This Book Will Save Your Life, A. M. Homes
27. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
28. Youth in Revolt, C.D. Payne
29. jPod, Douglas Coupland
30. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rainer Maria Rilke
31. History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
32. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
33. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, John Lee Anderson
34. No Acting Please, Eric Morris
35. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Marcel Proust
36. Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, William J. Mann
37. The 9/11 Commission Report, Various
38. The Aeneid, Virgil
39. Istanbul: Memories of a City, Orhan Pamuk
40. No Logo, Naomi Klein
41. Jimmy Stewart, Marc Eliot
42. An Illustrated Short History of Progress, Ronald Wright
43. Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie

The way Mr. Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen who had been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose to her except Mr. Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first, and so he got her. He got all of her, except the innermost box and the kiss. He never knew about the box, and in time he gave up trying for the kiss.

Is it just me, or is that a pretty darn accurate description of marriage?

Just Had to Point This Out

There's a story over here about "Nuspelynh". The article itself is pretty basic, but what interests me is the last sentence. See, a week or so ago I spent some time editing a friend's essays, burying myself in the relatively arcane minutiae of copy-editing (for which my Bible, of course, is Elements of Style. Hence, upon reading the Wired article, my uncontrollable spasm of laughter upon reading the final sentences:

"For example, Nuspelynh's founder spells father fadhxr... or as a homonym for "foddar." But I pronounce it with a clear theta sound, because I'm not fucking Fran Dreischer."

Man! Where were the editors on that one!

God, I'm a nerd.

Harry Potter and the Crappy Title

Seriously, is George Lucas giving J.K. Rowling ideas for book titles (it's "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", if you didn't know)? And speaking of books:

1. The Complete Poems, Anne Sexton
2. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
3. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
4. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
5. Sideways, Rex Pickett
6. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
7. Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory
8. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
9. The Sonnets, William Shakespeare
10. To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
11. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Yiyun Li
13. interpreter of maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
14. The Neverending Story, Michael Ende
15. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
16. Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
17. Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
18. The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman
19. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
20. the namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
21. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
22. seven types of ambiguity, Eliot Perlman
23. Unhooked Generation, Jillian Straus
24. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins
25. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
26. This Book Will Save Your Life, A. M. Homes
27. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
28. Youth in Revolt, C.D. Payne
29. jPod, Douglas Coupland
30. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rainer Maria Rilke
31. History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
32. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
33. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, John Lee Anderson
34. No Acting Please, Eric Morris
35. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Marcel Proust
36. Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, William J. Mann
37. The 9/11 Commission Report, Various
38. The Aeneid, Virgil
39. Istanbul: Memories of a City, Orhan Pamuk
40. No Logo, Naomi Klein
41. Jimmy Stewart, Marc Eliot
42. An Illustrated Short History of Progress, Ronald Wright

I'm not too sure why he got it, but my dad passed it on to me, so I feel somewhat obligated to read it. It's decently short, somewhere around 190 pages, and made effectively shorter by the illustrations (the inclusion of which I find somewhat odd and unnecessary, but whatever), so it'll be done with quickly, I'm sure.

Getting back to Harry Potter, I had a brief discussion with a friend a bit ago about how while I didn't necessarily know the exact contents of the last book (obviously), I felt fairly confident that almost anyone could predict the general events which would be contained therein. Here, then - since I love proving how fucking brilliant I am and, should I get any right, can totally point back to this post as evidence of said brilliance when the book comes out - are my predictions for the last Harry Potter (yes, there might be spoilers for anyone who hasn't read Half Blood Prince):

1) Snape will be revealed to have been working against Voldemort from the start. This is a no-brainer. My guess is that the revelation (and Harry's acceptance of it) will only come simultaneously with Snape's death, which I personally detest, but it's the way basic storytelling tends to work, just as you knew from partway through book one that at some time in the series Dumbledore had to die or be otherwise incapacitated. Personally, I like to think that Snape will play a key role in Voldemort's defeat, but that could just be because Alan Rickman's portrayal of him is fucking awesome. Honestly, though: in all the Harry Potter books, which character has developed the most, which character have we learned the most about motivations and history, aside from Harry himself? Snape. Is this happenstance? If it is, J.K. Rowling has fooled a lot of people into thinking she's a decent writer.

2) Voldemort's physical body will be destroyed. However, he will not necessarily be finished, "for once and for all," if you will. I just find it difficult to believe that Rowling will be able to wrap up the destruction of the current avatar and the remaining horcruxes, of which there are at least 3-4, without a 1000+ page book (which I suppose is possible), or some appallingly bad storytelling (also possible). I also find it difficult to believe Rowling will be able to resist writing more Harry Potter books in the future - hence the possibility that the location of one or more horcruxes will remain unknown. I certainly wish she wouldn't, but authors rarely are able to quit while they're ahead when they write a popular series.

3) Ron and Hermione hook up. Or at least profess their feelings for each other. God, take longer.

4) One of Ron or Hermione die. This could just be my personal preference expressing itself (and is the prediction which I feel the least confident about, because it isn't necessarily dictated by traditional story telling plotlines, nor is it required from a character perspective), but I just don't see Harry having the fortitude to stand up to Voldemort without some further emotional impetus. It's a bit difficult to say whose death would have more impact; Ron being the Sam Gamgee sort of (homo-erotic, if you're inclined to read it that way) man-love and support, and Hermione being the one who, you know, actually knows things. Killing a girl would also be pretty intense, and the level of violence has certainly elevated with each book.

5) Draco redeems himself. Plain and simple: he's a bitch. He doesn't belong with the Death Eaters. Somewhere in there he'll lose his nerve and stand up to mommy (somewhat paradoxical, I know).

That's about all I can think of for now. Write faster, Ms. Rowling! My reputation as a genius depends on it.

Viral, Like the Clap (Not Like the Clapper)

For anyone wondering what "viral" marketing might mean, I refer you to this website, a blog supposedly started by a guy trying to get a PSP for Christmas which was turned out to be run by a marketing company that had been hired by Sony. As the internet goes, it's a pretty old story - old enough that the original site is now no more, and the only reminders of its existence are the numerous posts on various forums and news sites and The Consumerist's archived copy, which is what the link points to.

The two videos are must-watch, although I'd say the site is really summed up by the post title, "don't just wear it – pwn it!!1!" There, encapsulated in a single sentence, is almost every single horrible internet cliche that marketing pricks could dig up. It's difficult to say which is sadder: the fact that people made this website thinking that it would work, or the fact that some other asshole paid them to do it.

Well Played, God, Well Played

In the early sixties, MCA came under federal investigation for its business practices and possible relationship to organized crime...When Fricano, the lead interrogator of the grand jury, zeroed in on the blanket waiver that Reagan helped engineer for MCA as president of the Screen Actors Guild, the actor's memory failed. 'I think I have already told you I don't recall that,' said Reagan...Later on, grand juror Ruth Ragle said, of Reagan's testimony: 'The only thing he knew was his name.'"

And they say there's no such thing as karma.

One of the things Naomi Klein touches on in No Logo that I found particularly interesting is what I like to think of as the evolution of branding. Branding started out as an attempt by producers to humanize their Industrial Revolution, mass produced goods from each other; hence the first mascots were Aunt Jemima- and Uncle Ben-types: comforting faces on anonymous products. As time went by, however, this was insufficient; there was too much of a disconnect between the brand an the product being sold. Whether through happenstance or design, some companies realized that by making the concept of the brand more ephemeral, less tied to a specific product and more connected to a spirit or an ideal, not only could the sales of a single product be increased, but any number of unrelated products could also be sold. Aunt Jemima sells syrup; to expect her to sell a car would be folly. Adidas sells shoes - or does it? In reality, Adidas sells athleticism - the ideal, active lifestyle, which you can participate in, if you only have the right shoes. And the right apparel. And the right cologne. And the right soap. And so forth.

Adidas, of course, patterns itself on Nike, one of the pioneers of this sort of branding. But in Nike's rise to brand pre-eminence, it also spawned the next evolution of branding. Nike's rise is synonymous with the rise of Michael Jordan, and it is here that things get interesting. In order to link the shoes with raw athleticism, Nike needed an icon, needed someone they could elevate, who would, by association, elevate them. Jordan filled that niche. Clearly, he could not have if he hadn't performed athletically, but if not for Nike he would not be one of the most recognizable people in the world today. But in creating his image, Nike also gave birth to a completely new concept: the individual as brand.

Why is this interesting to me? Because it explains trends in popular entertainment today, though Klein doesn't extend it that far - possibly because in 2000, this trend hadn't quite become fully apparent, and also possibly because she didn't really care. Why does Paris Hilton get to act in movies and then record an album? Why do rappers appear in movies? Because their brands give them the ability to move between mediums with relatively little dropoff. Public figures maintain a persona, a persona which can be thought of as their brand ideal; much as Nike stands for athleticism and Disney stands for family-friendly Americana, DMX stands for street autheticity and Paris stands for...well, I'll leave that alone. Whether or not the individuals actually came from those circumstances is immaterial; what matters is what they can convince their audience they stand for; in short, how successfully they can create their brand image.

On its own, this is not so important; one would assume that the number of individuals who could actually brand themselves would be relatively few - Jordan and Tiger are really the only two who come to mind aside from fashion designers, though they're probably a bit ahead of the game in terms of understanding the relationship between branding and the individual, because of their intensely personal relationship with the labels they create/design for. But couple the branding of the individual with the growing consolidation among media companies and suddenly you have a problem. See, consolidation means synergy, one of those annoying buzz-words that suits probably parroted up and down boardrooms a few years ago (I'm assuming they've moved on, as those people are wont to; the latest one I had heard as of a year or two ago was "viral," which is probably still used).

So, what's synergy? Picture, if you will, a young woman beginning a career in the performing arts. She signs on with Disney to be a Mouseketeer. Disney then puts her in an "indie" movie produced by Miramax (owned by Disney), a movie which gets a heavy advertising push on ABC (owned by Disney); preferential ad rates and times, guaranteed slots on the daytime and evening talk shows on the network and so forth. Since our fictional girl is a Mouseketeer, let's assume she can sing; ok, so she gets to sing a song on the sountrack, produced by Hollywood Records (Disney-owned again). After the movie comes out and assuming it does decently at the box office - or maybe even if it doesn't - Disney then puts her in The Lion King, on Broadway, for a one month run. She is, after all, a movie star who can sing. But now she's more than that - she's a triple threat. Yet the push behind her, the "evidence" of her ability, the creation of her brand all comes from one company, not a multitude of specialized observers recognizing her talent in each of their areas of expertise, independent of each other. And bibbity-bobbity-boo, there you have it; the Disney mill has just churned out another pop starlet.

Why is entertainment increasingly homogenous? Because of this. Why do all the young performers seem interchangable? Because they are. Gone are the days when Nicholson, Hoffman, Pacino and De Niro all vied with each other, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Could you imagine Nicholson in The Godfather? Hoffman in Taxi Driver? Pacino in Cuckoo's Nest? De Niro in The Graduate? Of course not. But could you imagine Jake Gyllenhaal in Spiderman? Kirsten Dunst in Lost in Translation? Tobey Maguire in Lord of the Rings? Elijah Wood in Brokeback Mountain? I bet you could. And therein lies Hollywood's problem: too many films with interchangable characters, interchangable actors and interchangable scripts.

Maybe I'm being overly harsh; Golden Age Hollywood was no different, and possibly even worse in its cookie-cutter approach to movie-making. But I can't shake the impression that stars in the Golden Age found ways to differentiate themselves, tangible and otherwise. Think of the raw sex appeal of Gable, the urbaneness of Grant, the physical and verbal tics of Stewart, the pride of Katharine Hepburn and the grace of Audrey. Where did they go? And will we ever see their likes again? Can we ever see their likes again?

Last Book?

1. The Complete Poems, Anne Sexton
2. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
3. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
4. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
5. Sideways, Rex Pickett
6. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
7. Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory
8. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
9. The Sonnets, William Shakespeare
10. To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
11. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Yiyun Li
13. interpreter of maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
14. The Neverending Story, Michael Ende
15. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
16. Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
17. Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
18. The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman
19. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
20. the namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
21. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
22. seven types of ambiguity, Eliot Perlman
23. Unhooked Generation, Jillian Straus
24. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins
25. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
26. This Book Will Save Your Life, A. M. Homes
27. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
28. Youth in Revolt, C.D. Payne
29. jPod, Douglas Coupland
30. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rainer Maria Rilke
31. History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
32. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
33. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, John Lee Anderson
34. No Acting Please, Eric Morris
35. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Marcel Proust
36. Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, William J. Mann
37. The 9/11 Commission Report, Various
38. The Aeneid, Virgil
39. Istanbul: Memories of a City, Orhan Pamuk
40. No Logo, Naomi Klein
41. Jimmy Stewart, Marc Eliot

Alas, it appears that I shall fall well short of 50 on the year. Oh well. There's always next year, I suppose.

As I had been expecting, No Logo was fantastic in the analysis department and somewhat lacking in the active department. I think it's partially deliberate on Klein's part, but partially symptomatic of any kind of cultural analysis. The problem is not the writer; rather, it's the nature of the game itself. Writers identify power structures and the rules they operate under, but power structures are not fixed, nor are they monolithic. An analysis may be brilliant, but once the rules of the game change, the utility of that analysis also falls. Time and time again this has happened, ever since people have been writing about culture and economics.

Klein's brainflash is the identification of brand politics (which, to be honest, I'm not even 100% sure if she's the first one to observe, though the hoopla around her book certainly indicates she was one of, if not the first), and its repercussions, both on the industries themselves and on us, the consumers. The superbrands are companies which have attempted to divest themselves of physical manifestations, the selling of "things", and instead package a lifestyle, a lifestyle summed up in one of their products. This is why Adidas can sell a cologne, Virgin can operate an airline company and Roots (a Canadian clothing label) can open a resort. Expertise can be bought in the blink of an eye; what cannot be instantly created is brand cachet, the identification of specific values and beliefs with a certain brand. Klein believes that this strength is also the weakness of the brands, that using the limitless value of a brand against its creators provides the economic leverage for change.

It's a nice thought, but looking back on her book now it seems (as all such statements inevitably seem) quite naive. Yes, there has been change. Yes, there have been times when companies have backed down, or been forced to change policies quite publicly. But does anyone honestly think that sweatshops have been eliminated? Klein is quick to point out that one of the problems with anticorporate activism is that there are few alternatives; a backlash against Shell meant that a contract went to Chevron instead, but Chevron was guilty of many of the same practices - Shell just happened to be the company that came up on the radar first. Small towns campaign against Walmart, but freely allow other big box retailers to move in, even though their effects are exactly the same as a Walmart moving in, just in other lines of retail. Klein also notes that the debate was shifted quickly by producers from, "Why are we using sweatshops," to "What defines a sweatshop, and what are the minimum requirements that we can get away with?" In a move typical of big business, "sweatshop free" has gone from a legitimate moral issue to just another marketing tool, another way to differentiate your product (American Apparel, anyone?).

It's clear that what's really needed is a paradigm shift in society, an elimination of the hold which brands retain on the consciousness of people, and yet such a statement is far more naive than Klein's belief in a grassroots, sustainable development movement. People simply don't care. They don't care that their entire value system is force-fed to them by others, they don't ask themselves why, they don't ask themselves who really benefits. They just want to live, they want someone to tell them what to do, where to do it and how long to do it. Hell, I'd like that sometimes. We all would, wouldn't we?

Wouldn't we?

...And Then There Was Nothing

It's been quiet of late. Nothing really interesting is going on. Things are in motion, but I can only do so much without headshots. Have a session on the 28th, and then I assume it'll take at least a week or so for me to choose which shot(s) to use, and then at least another week to get some printed up.

Meeting with a voice teacher tomorrow. Was at Toronto's Reference Library, where they have a surprisingly decent number of scores in a reference area. Stopped by TheaterBooks to pick up some plays for monologues. Something else to work on; I've neglected my monologues for several years now, to the point where I couldn't confidently go to an audition where they asked for a monologue.

Been reading No Logo. It's excellent. I appreciate the lack of shrillness in its tone; Klein explicitly says that the title of the book is not meant as a manifesto or pamphleteer-type slogan, and that the book itself is simply an exploration of the phenomenon of corporate branding and its results. As far as that goes, there's a number of fascinating observations about the shift in industry from selling things to selling brands (and hence, by extension, the lifestyle that corresponds to a given brand). A question, though: is it possible to buy a brand without necessarily subscribing to the brand lifestyle? Or is it assumed that any purchase is subconsciously motivated by knowledge of the brand, given the ubiquitous advertising that the world's super-brands engage in?

Along these lines, I've been looking for stores in the Toronto area which might be selling clothes done by local designers. Do such stores exist? I have no idea. One wonders if there might be a market for that sort of thing. I did, however, recently get some new ideas for making my own shirts. Well, painting my own stencils onto plain t-shirts, which amounts to more or less the same thing.

Reading it also reminds me that I meant to pick up some Marshall McLuhan. Unfortunately (though only unfortunate in the sense that I can only read one book at a time), today I cracked and bought the new-ish Jimmy Stewart biography, so that'll probably be the next book I read.

Snippets of phrases have been flitting in and out of my head over the past few weeks, but any time I sit down to try to get any of them typed out they invariably seem trite and inane. I suppose that never stopped me before.

Currently listening to some Sonic Youth, Velvet Underground and Gang of Four. I'm a little upset that I never listened to any of this stuff before. Earlier today I was snooping through the punk section at an HMV, and I noticed they had no Dead Kennedys. Not only did they have no Dead Kennedys cds in stock, there wasn't even the little band placeholder. It was as if that store was completely unaware of the band's existence. It made me sad, and a little angry, like an emo potato.

If that t-shirt wasn't black, I would consider getting it.

A Rose By Any Other Name?

Your Expression Number is 4

Practical and down to earth - everything in your life is organized. You are a great writer and teacher. You never forget a detail. Very patient, you have the ability to cultivate talents in difficult fields. You also tend to have an artistic side. You'd make a great architect or classical musician. You face your responsibilities with a positive attitude - and you always get things done. You are serious, sincere, honest, and faithful. Sometimes your strong sense of responsibility leads to frustration. You also tend to develop strong likes and dislikes, which border on dogmatism. At you're worst, you can be a dominant disciplinarian.

What's Your Expression Number?

The answer itself isn't so weird, what's weird is that it fits me ok and yet the only criteria they asked for was my name.

I do believe that names and words have power, but I'm not sure that I'm ready to concede that the name a person has actually has an effect on their personality. It just seems a bit too flip, too easy. Then again, haven't studies shown that certain names are perceived differently from others (the one I seem to be recalling is that names with forward sounding vowels - Brad, Mike and so forth - were associated with more attractive men than those with tones produced in the back of the throat, such as John)? One would assume that any such biases would be cultural/societal in nature though, especially since there are many tones and letter pronunciations which are not replicated in every other language.

This, then, begs the question: can you change your personality by simply changing your name? Logically, if one's name has any sort of effect on your actual personality (or, perhaps more importantly), how others perceive your personality, then perhaps you could. The issue, however, would seem to not simply be a superficial changing of one's name externally, but changing your very identity, the name that comes to mind when you think of yourself. In that sense, I suppose changing your name could very well lead to a distinct change of personality. What kind of person would I be if I had been named Hannibal? Or Kermit? Or Jeeves?

Wow, I guess that's one more thing to thank/blame my parents for.

Butterfly in the Sky...

1. The Complete Poems, Anne Sexton
2. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
3. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
4. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
5. Sideways, Rex Pickett
6. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
7. Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory
8. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
9. The Sonnets, William Shakespeare
10. To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
11. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Yiyun Li
13. interpreter of maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
14. The Neverending Story, Michael Ende
15. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
16. Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
17. Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
18. The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman
19. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
20. the namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
21. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
22. seven types of ambiguity, Eliot Perlman
23. Unhooked Generation, Jillian Straus
24. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins
25. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
26. This Book Will Save Your Life, A. M. Homes
27. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
28. Youth in Revolt, C.D. Payne
29. jPod, Douglas Coupland
30. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rainer Maria Rilke
31. History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
32. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
33. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, John Lee Anderson
34. No Acting Please, Eric Morris
35. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Marcel Proust
36. Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, William J. Mann
37. The 9/11 Commission Report, Various
38. The Aeneid, Virgil
39. Istanbul: Memories of a City, Orhan Pamuk

From the looks of it I'm going to be pretty hard pressed to hit 50 for the year. I did re-read a few fluffy books (couple of crappy Star Wars ones, a Roald Dahl book and the first two Winnie-the-Pooh books), but since those were re-reads I choose not to count them for my list.

Shattered

Alas, I am no longer a "nyactor".

A couple weeks ago I walked into the International Student Services department at the New School and was informed that I had missed a deadline to apply for my OPT (Optional Practical Training, a year-long extension to a student visa for, well, optional practical training). Thus, since my visa had technically expired when my program ended (late August), I had to get out of the country as soon as possible.

This seemed fine; I figured I'd pop out to clear out my student visa, so it wasn't like I was trying to stay in the country illegally, and then come back, sort out my stuff in New York and move back up to Canada.

Not so, said US Immigration.

It turns out that after having been in the US so long, US Immigration wants to be certain that I am established in Canada before they'll allow me across the border again. This (apparently) means that the next time I try to cross the border (in several months, at the very least, I assume), I need to bring all manner of documentation with me, from bank statements showing a decent amount of money to bills, rental contract/deeds associated with a domicile, and whatever else those capricious immigration officers feel like asking me for.

After I got over my initial upset-ness at being barred from New York (I've decided in the past week that I fucking hate the suburban lifestyle), I realized it's really not all that bad. If I couldn't get any kind of visa after the year the OPT would have lasted (and it looks like I can't), and couldn't really put down roots in New York, then the year spent there would have been wasted (in terms of my career in the long-term) and I would have been looking at moving back up here in a year anyways. Auditioning will continue up here, minus the headache of having to deal with visa issues whenever I do manage to get cast in something. Canadian Equity will actually let me join, as opposed to the American original. The corporate world also beckons, but I'm not quite finished with acting yet. I don't suppose I'll ever be. The only really unfortunate things are that the vast majority of my stuff remains in New York (being mailed out slowly but surely, thanks to my awesome roommates) and that I'll be missing filming the last (possibly the last ever) 3 episodes of the season for my tv show.

I'm somewhat at a loss as to what to do with this. I don't mind continuing to write stuff here, but it seems somewhat ludicrous to have the address "nyactor" when said actor is not, in fact, in "ny". However, I don't know if blogger would let me move my archived stuff to another one, and I'd really rather not have to go clicking all over the internets to find some silly little fluff I wrote in 2005. Something to think on, I suppose. I certainly have lots of time to do that these days.

I close this with an amusing/interesting horoscope of mine for today:

You are a hard-worker, but there is such a thing as working too hard! Although you might want to push in one direction right now and force things to happen, try to resist this impulse. There are some things that you cannot change through sheer force of will. Other people and elements might need to come into the picture before there can be a real breakthrough. Be patient and trust that events are flowing forward at their own pace.

First Steps

Watched Little Manhattan while doing laundry today. It's a cute movie, about an 11 year old taking his first steps into the world of romance. There's a bit in the movie where the kid has a little inner monologue about love that I found interesting, as he states his belief that love is about grand gestures; banners flown over stadiums, words on jumbotrons, letters spelled in the sky and such.

I found that interesting because when I was younger, I used to believe the same thing. Love was monumental, it was monolithic, it was this massive, angst-ridden undertaking. I used to dream up scenarios where I could prove my love to people I had crushes on (I was an intensely shy kid, given to fantasizing and day dreaming in idle moments. Well, I guess I still am that kid deep inside). It goes without saying that I never really spoke to any of my childhood/teenage crushes. Not in any sense that would have forwarded my romantic desires, at least.

As I grow older, I find myself coming to believe quite the opposite. Love isn't grand gestures at all; grand gestures invariably cost money, so all they prove is financial wherewithal - something which people may use as criteria for selecting partners, but which (one would like to believe) has nothing to do with that amorphous phenomenon we call love. It is, in fact, in the little things where love is found. It's in how you come to know exactly how she likes her tea made, how you can recognize that faraway look in her eyes or the distant sound in her replies when she's thinking of something else and not listening to what you're saying, it's in the way her presence comforts you without any words needing to be said.

Perhaps people will say that there's nothing in that that is eternal, that is lasting. And you know what? Maybe there isn't. Maybe love doesn't last forever. But you know what else? Maybe that's ok. Why the obsession with "till death do we part", anyways? Is it because people want to believe in it, want to believe in something greater than themselves, want to believe that love is more than just a evolutionary, socialized extension of the sex drive? Maybe saying, "I love you" in the heat of passion, in the heat of a moment is, in fact, the truest expression of it, greater than any calculated gift, a supernova of emotion that's very preciousness derives from the fact that it does not, can not last. I don't know.

Oh, and before people go thinking I'm just a cheap bastard, I'm fine with spending money; it's just that when I spend money, I want it to mean something aside from a dollar sign. Price tags on presents have never been a concern of mine; if it's within my budget and it's what I want to get, the best gift that I can think of, I'll get it. What's important is the selection process; I actually (this is somewhat embarassing) tend to keep lists about potential presents to get people. I hate getting "normal" gifts for people; if I'm going to get something for someone, I want them to know it came from me the minute they open it, I want it to mean something. Hence, the list; as the year goes by, usually I'll see at least a couple things that will trigger thoughts of a person, or we'll have a conversation where they happen to mention something they really like (or even something embarassing or amusing about themselves - these are gold). That's when I write it down, as (being a Bear of Very Little Brain) when the pressure's on and a birthday or other gift-giving holiday approaches, I can never think of any of these things.

Neurotic? Probably. Worth it? Totally.

Tidbits

A week or so ago I caught The Last King of Scotland, which is - I hesitate to say good, as it isn't, really. Forest Whitaker is awesome and James McAvoy isn't bad, but the movie as a whole left so much unsaid that it was somewhat frustrating.

I do find it interesting that the user comment on IMDB mentions that McAvoy's character is, "highly unlikable...for the most part comes across as a flighty, over-educated twit with foggy ideas on good deeds and uncontrollable hormones that lead him to hounding after every marginally attractive married woman he comes across," because to my mind, part of the point of the doctor is that you are not meant to sympathize with him. There are shades of metaphor in the character of the doctor (Nicholas Garrigan), a Scotsman who becomes Idi Amin's personal physician, and, if the events in the movie are even partially accurate, one of his most trusted confidantes and advisors. Much like the countries of the West, Garrigan is an enabler; he sees what he can get out of Amin, and blinds himself to the paranoid, homocidal reality. Garrigan is a mirror for us all, a reminder that we are responsible for some of the most rephrensible acts the world has seen, and not just in some mealy-mouthed intellectual, "We are all inter-connected" bullshit way.

Before the movie played there was a trailer for a film version of The History Boys, based on the play of the same name and boasting most (if not all) of the same actors. Anyways, there's a bit in the trailer when a teacher is talking to a kid about reading, and how the joy of reading is when you read something written years, decades or centuries before your time, something you yourself had thought, and it was like a hand from the past, reaching out to you to comfort you.

Personally, I had always taken the replication of thoughts in a much more negative way, as a sign that there was no such thing as an original thought, and, basically, people are stupid and unable to move beyond the same questions, generation after generation. And really, it's sort of the same thing, it's just a nicer way of looking at it.

Over the past few months I've had a number of people tell me I was shading quite negative/cynical in my attitude. I'm not really sure if they're right or not. But when enough people tell you they think something, it probably behooves you to engage in a bit of self-examination. The other response, I suppose, is to find new friends, but I don't really see how that would help if those people were right in the first place. Unless the new friends you got turned out to be emo-goths, and then you could be like, "Dude - I am too negative."

I've also been having some visa issues as of late. Seems I missed a deadline and such for extending the visa I was on. People are scrambling, things are being talked about and it will either work out and I'll be able to stay or it won't and I won't. In some ways, I see this as a good thing; it's a problem I would have had to deal with eventually, so might as well get it out of the way now. As an odd aside, though, I wonder how exactly people go to LA (or wherever) from Canada and magically get cast in things; what sorts of visas do these people acquire? Because they obviously can't have one going down in the first place, frequently they just sort of show up and start auditioning. This, in itself, might be questionable - one of the interesting asides from the Katharine Hepburn book I read was how so many movie stars in the Golden Age were reputed to have had horrible first screen tests, at least partially (or perhaps mostly) because the studios figured the general populace would be more accepting of "underdog" actors who were at first denied their shot at stardom by ignorant executives. However, I can't shake the impression that somehow, some way, people show up, audition, get cast and then get visas, presto change-o and such.

Blah for visas and immigrant law. Blah.

When Is a War Movie Not a War Movie?

Caught Flags of Our Fathers the other day. It's definitely among the most, "Hmmm" war movies I've ever seen (and infinitely better than The Thin Red Line, which tried to be a "Hmmm" war movie and ended up being a "Wow, this is boring" war movie).

One of the trailers was for the Dreamgirls movie. I'm not that familiar with the musical, but I have heard/seen a recording of Jennifer Holliday doing "And I Am Telling You". Like most people tied into the movie scene, I had heard that they'd been having problems casting that role in the film, eventually deciding on some chick from American Idol. At the end of the trailer a clip of her singing the song plays.

It wasn't bad. It was ok. It sounded pretty. That's sort of the problem.

Lyrically, "And I Am Telling You" is not a pretty song. It does not express pretty sentiments. It is not a sad song, it is not a happy song, per se, though there are moments of both emotions and many more in its 4 minutes. But the one thing it is not is fucking pretty. And there is, or should be no room in art for people who only want to look and sound pretty all the time. This is why ingenue roles, when badly written and performed, are boring: because pretty people, people whose every action and move are calculated to always present themselves as pretty, are boring. There can't be anything interesting going on because every fiber of their being is focused on being pretty; there's no room for the dirty and beautiful little details that make people neat.

Anyways, Flags. It's an interesting movie. Enough has been said of the fact that there are no blacks in Eastwood's depiction of Iwo Jima. Well, there is this one shot of them on the boat which feels somewhat random, but you don't really see any in the combat sequences. In his defense, black Marine units at Iwo Jima were apparently relegated to support duty, and the movie focuses most specifically on one platoon, the one which raised the second (and photographically immortalized) flag over Mount Suribachi. Personally, I don't think it matters.

More than anything else, Flags is about myth making. I suppose, from a certain point of view, that means it's about deceit, and it is. Even the picture itself, arguably the most iconic war photograph ever, is a lie; the first flag to be raised had a picture taken of its raising, but the film was exposed and ruined when the camera was dropped as the group the photographer was with was attacked. The picture that survives today was of a second flag being raised, one to replace the first flag, and it was the men from that raising that were hailed as the "Heroes of Iwo Jima".

Well, the ones that survived the next 20 some odd days of the battle, that is, which turned out to be three.

Ostensibly, Ryan Phillipe is the emotional lead of the movie, but it's the Native American character, Adam Beach, who's really the most interesting, I think. Beach returns against his will to a country that hails him as a hero yet discriminates against him; everyone calls him "Chief", senators make insulting remarks about his heritage and so forth. It is as fascinating as it is real and saddening, the dichotomy: you are called a hero, but you are never allowed to forget that you are subhuman, that you are and always will be, less than white. Even the other two soldiers are called heroes, but only insofar and for as long as it benefits the government and society. Like all heroes, like all icons, they are used, they are exploited, and eventually they are discarded to make their own way through the rest of their lives.

Perhaps that is inevitable, perhaps that is the way of things. Is this a result of the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately, instant gratification-seeking climate that exists in the world? Or is it unique to soldiers, is it because they remind us of things and actions that no person should have to do and remember?

There are numerous instances of savage violence that are depicted and alluded to in the movie. But Eastwood isn't trying to demonize the Japanese; early on it is explicitly said that there is no black and white in war, that no-one wins and all those terrible, terrible cliches. But, like all cliches, they're true. I wonder how other audience members reacted; the film cuts together the Marines advancing towards the Japanese guns slowly emerging ahead, behind and above, eventually opening up when the Marines are most exposed - which is exactly what happened. Viscerally, your first impulse is to side with the Americans, those good old boys being ambushed by the cowardly Japanese. But what if the Marines were, say, British colonials? And the people preparing to ambush them were members of the Revolutionary Army (ring any bells?)? What then? What if it was the Japanese landing on Hawaii, what if the American Navy had been battered and worn down, what if 22,000 American troops were told losing Hawaii meant an invasion of the continental United States, and they were facing the largest amphibious operation ever, 30,000 marines landing in a day and 40,000 more in the days to come?

What then? Would those same stealthily emerging guns be seen as the guns of defiance, of American ingenuity and honor in the face of a no-win situation, a modern day Thermopylae? And do people watching the movie think that? Or do they think, "Those scummy Japs, they don't even have the guts to get into a fair fight."

I wonder...and I sort of feel sad for the ones who think the latter.

All in all, I'm probably going to pick up the book. I'm also really looking forward to Eastwood's next movie, Letters From Iwo Jima, which will focus on the Japanese side of the battle and is intended to be the bookend to Flags.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees?

So, this was actually posted on YouTube some time ago, but I don't think I ever linked it. It's one of the more recent movies we dubbed on my tv show.



Big cannibal ladies are scary!

Less Than Three?

So I have this love/hate relationship with internet slang and acronyms; on the one hand, I understand a lot of them, which plays into my elitist side. On the other hand, it's probably more than a little pathetic that I know so many, and I definitely don't like them creeping into everyday use. The other day I was in Capone's, and I happened to notice, scrawled on the bathroom wall in big ole letters, "O RLY?" (google that if you're interested and the reference makes no sense). Then, today, I come across this video/song:



Oddly enough, it took me like 2 minutes of the song before I figured out the whole less than three thing and what it referred to. I guess that could be a good thing.

On a completely unrelated note, it's one of those really windy/cloudy days when you can see the clouds sweeping across the skies, like a cheesy Scooby Doo background while the gang runs in place, and it looks really neat. I just thought I'd say that.

Booksbooksbooksbooksbooksbooksbooks

1. The Complete Poems, Anne Sexton
2. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
3. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
4. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
5. Sideways, Rex Pickett
6. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
7. Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory
8. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
9. The Sonnets, William Shakespeare
10. To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
11. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Yiyun Li
13. interpreter of maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
14. The Neverending Story, Michael Ende
15. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
16. Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
17. Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
18. The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman
19. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
20. the namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
21. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
22. seven types of ambiguity, Eliot Perlman
23. Unhooked Generation, Jillian Straus
24. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins
25. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
26. This Book Will Save Your Life, A. M. Homes
27. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
28. Youth in Revolt, C.D. Payne
29. jPod, Douglas Coupland
30. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rainer Maria Rilke
31. History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
32. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
33. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, John Lee Anderson
34. No Acting Please, Eric Morris
35. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Marcel Proust
36. Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, William J. Mann
37. The 9/11 Commission Report, Various

Does it really belong on a book list? Perhaps not. What with all the hullaballoo after the Mike Wallace-Bill Clinton interview, though, I figured it behooved me to read the report. Interestingly enough, while trying to find it I saw another book which claimed to "debunk" the report; apparently that author's contention is that there are a number of factual inaccuracies and inconsistencies which point towards some sort of government coverup of that day's events. Like most rational people, I tend to be somewhat leery of conspiracy theories and the images that said theories conjure up of overweight, sweaty men sitting in basements tapping away on their keyboards in an effort to disseminate the truth to the ignorant intarweb.

Well, them and Mel Gibson. Which, I guess, is sort of the same thing. Kinda. If you squint a little.

The previously promised thoughts are, unforunately, on hold; I don't seem to be able to string them together coherently. Perhaps another time.

Wow

So I'm kinda crushing on Fiona Apple, though to be honest I'm not quite sure if it's her or who she makes me think of. I've never heard the original Costello song, which I'm gonna start poking around for - I wonder how it originally sounded. Speaking of covers, I just noticed the I'm Your Man soundtrack is on iTunes - time to download the Antony cover of "If It Be Your Will".

I have other thoughts - honest. I'll just put them in the next post where they belong.

WHAT. THE. CRAP.

What the hell is that doing in my house? Who the hell buys that? Honestly.

And yes, that's rhetorical. I know exactly who bought that. Suffice to say, we are not close. In fact, we're the opposite of close. We're...far away?

Whatever.








On a funner note, while I'm here and while I'm uploading pictures, check out this one of the ghosts painted on my wall by a visiting fairy:


Ghosts are rad.

Sunday Morning News Crawl

Starting with this story, about the difficulty of black women attempting to meet and form relationships with black men. It's more of an observation about the article, really, which I think is somewhat retarded to begin with. Note this stat:

According to the 2000 census, black men enter interracial marriages at a higher rate -- 9.7 percent -- than any other race and sex except Asian women. That's twice the rate of black women.

So to be clear here, Asian women make up the highest percentage of mixed-race couple partners, followed by black men. The woman who is the focus of the article goes on to say that

She sees the breach between black men and women as a vestige of slavery. The legacy, she says, has created an "unhealthy independence" among black women and a level of irresponsibility among black men."

Ok. So what's the excuse for Asian women? Now that I look at it, there's an odd disconnect in the statistics quoted: Asian women enter into the most interracial relationships, yet black men and women are quoted as the "most uncoupled demographic in the United States."

Never mind, I just figured it out - the difference between Asian men entering into mixed-race couples and black women doing so must be greater than said difference between Asian women and black men - hence there are relatively more Asian men available for a given number of Asian women than there are black women for black men. This would seem to point to the simplest solution for people; quit limiting yourself by race. But who am I to judge another's quest for romantic happiness?

In the world, Dick Cheney's back to reminding America that the world is a scary place. Thankfully we have GWB and the Republicans protecting America, fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here, compared to the thoughts of some Democrats that we should "cut and run". How's that going again? Oh, right. Worse than ever ("Last month, 776 U.S. troops were wounded in action in Iraq, the highest number since the military assault to retake the insurgent-held city of Fallujah in November 2004, according to Defense Department data. It was the fourth-highest monthly total since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.").

A thought: if you added up all the dead and wounded from Iraq, how do the numbers compare to the WTC attacks? You know how Cheney is always saying another attack is coming, another attack is coming, another attack is coming? I have news for you, Mr. Cheney: the war your administration has prosecuted amounts to another attack; you just shipped America's youth out of the country so we wouldn't have to see the awful truth. You've done a better job than any terrorist ever could, for not only have you killed and maimed thousands, you've killed and maimed thousands of America's youth, its next generation. Dulce et decorum est, indeed.

Moving back towards the business side of politics, take a glance at this story mentioning 52% of Wall Street's political donations this cycle have gone to Democrats, a flip of the normal donation relationship. Now, companies tend to donate more to one side for 2 reasons: they're reasonably sure that side is going to win, or they believe that side will deliver the legislation they prefer. That's why in the past decade or two, Republicans have gotten the lion's share of their funding; their corporate tax-cutting platforms dovetail nicely with the largely ephemeral profits that Wall Street companies make. Every industry is the same, with periodic realignments as different platforms come to dominate the two parties; for example, KBR (or its parent company) was one of the largest contributors to Lyndon B. Johnson's career, back when the Democrats ruled the south, 30 short years ago. So which is this: is it just a one-off bet, or could this be the start of a realignment in American politics? I'm guessing it's the former, but time will tell, I suppose.

If It Ain't Broke...?

So, I finally got around to watching the Burton Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Prior to Big Fish, I'd never really been a Burton fan. I always thought his stuff was ok, but nothing all that special (aside from Beetlejuice, which is awesome even with Winona). Big Fish changed all of that, because there finally seemed to be an emotional core to the movie, a "point", if you will. Big Fish, ultimately, is about fathers and sons; it is Tim Burton's letter to his father, who died shortly before or during the shooting of the movie.

I believe Big Fish is, in fact, based on a book (hey, it is - this one). And I wonder if Burton took the same license with it that he took with Charlie. I find it interesting that Burton chose to layer the same emotional core onto the story of Willy Wonka - to give him a backstory, and to ultimately make the story as much about Willy as it is about Charlie. I wonder if all of his subsequent films will contain the same element - I can picture Sweeney Todd bemoaning the fact that his father never understood him as he slits a customer's throat.

In any event, I didn't realize what Burton was doing, and so sitting through the movie was somewhat frustrating. Many parts are truer to the book than the earlier film version, but in other parts there were definite deviations (at least, I think - I'm also filled with a strong desire to read it again, to see what was accurate and what wasn't). This leads me to my biggest beef, one I've had with countless adaptations, one I will probably have as long as there are adaptations and the reason why it took me a fair bit of time to warm up to the movie.

I hate it when adaptations stray from their source material.

Perhaps, I suppose, I shouldn't. They are, after all, adaptations. Inherent in the word is the sense of adapting, of changes deemed necessary in the move from one medium to another. And yet, there is a large part of me (perhaps the literary snob) that says, "Hey Mr. Film Director, if you think you can write a better story, go write it and leave that nice one alone." (typically I word that much more aggressively, with several expletives) This is why I find it intensely difficult to sit through parts of LotR, something I can rant about for several hours.

Yes, I am that much of a pathetic fantasy nerd. What can I say, I had a very sheltered childhood and books were important to me.

Regardless.

There are some times when I have found changes acceptable. The book Sideways, for example, is wildly different from the movie, but I found myself not minding - perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I watched the movie before I read the book. For the most part, though, they tend to irritate me. And it has nothing to do with the typical, "Movies are never as good as books," comment/observation. The reason why movies tend not to be as good as books is because in a book, the author can spell things out that need to be and leave things unsaid that don't need to be. In movies (especially Hollywood productions), directors and writers write to the lowest common denominator, saying, in essence, "YOU ARE TOO DUMB TO GET THIS IN A NUANCED WAY, SO I WILL HAVE THE CHARACTER SPEAK IT OUT LOUD."

Yes, that's exactly what they say, and they say it all in caps. How rude.

Anyways, back to Charlie. So Tim Burton's decided to give us all a backstory on Willy Wonka, to explain why he became so obsessed with candy and eventually leading to a reconciliation with his father. This is nice and all, but of course, it isn't in the book. And why did Burton feel the need to fill it in? Why did he have to create a "why"? Why does there always have to be a why? Is it societal? Is it so ingrained in us to seek prior causes (perhaps in search of someone to blame for problems) that even in our art, in our stories, there must be a why? There's a sequence in the movie (again, don't think it's in the book but it might be, and even if it isn't, no matter) where Mike Teevee says, "Why does nothing in this factory make sense?" and before anyone else can say anything, Charlie says, "It's candy. It doesn't have to make sense."

Why does Tim Burton's candy have to make sense?

Forsooth!

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

You Don't Have To Tell Me Twice

Never Date a Cancer

Clingy, emotional, and very private - it's hard to escape a Cancer's clutches. And while Cancer will want to know everything about you, they're anything but open in return. Instead try dating: Leo, Sagittarius, Gemini, or Aquarius

What Sign Shouldn't You Date?

Yeah...you know the whole bromide about how you always go for people who are like your opposite sex parent (wow, what a clumsy way of saying that...what I mean is, girls go for guys like their fathers, guys for girls like their mothers)? My mom's a cancer. FUCK THAT.

In the figurative sense, of course.

Echoes From Someone Else's Life

No doubt Hep loved his children; the warmhearted letters he wrote them throughout his life attest to that. And he wasn't always so serious or driven...But none of the Hepburn offspring could ever remember him saying that they'd made him proud. He demanded the moon and never seemed satisfied even when it was delivered. Once his daughter Marion asked him why that was. "I expect you to do well," he replied. "That's the norm."...As they entered their teens, what continued to motivate the Hepburn children's fierce desire to please was the plain and simple emotion of fear. Fear of their father's disapproval, of the sting of his hand.

The Age That Was Golden

1. The Complete Poems, Anne Sexton
2. On the Road, Jack Kerouac
3. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
4. Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami
5. Sideways, Rex Pickett
6. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
7. Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory
8. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
9. The Sonnets, William Shakespeare
10. To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
11. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Yiyun Li
13. interpreter of maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri
14. The Neverending Story, Michael Ende
15. Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
16. Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
17. Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
18. The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman
19. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
20. the namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri
21. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
22. seven types of ambiguity, Eliot Perlman
23. Unhooked Generation, Jillian Straus
24. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins
25. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
26. This Book Will Save Your Life, A. M. Homes
27. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
28. Youth in Revolt, C.D. Payne
29. jPod, Douglas Coupland
30. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rainer Maria Rilke
31. History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
32. Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
33. Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, John Lee Anderson
34. No Acting Please, Eric Morris
35. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower, Marcel Proust
36. Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, William J. Mann

Huzzah, back to the world of biography. I saw a review of this new Katharine Hepburn biography, and decided it was time to find out some more about good ole Kate. From what I gather, most of the previous attempts have been either hagiographies written while she was alive (and thus, subject to her control as to how she wished to be portrayed) or flagrant attempts to attack or diminish her (as if such a thing would be possible - after all, in the end one's work speaks for itself). I also spotted a Jimmy Stewart book, but it seemed to fall into the former of the two categories, so I decided to pass for now.

Plus, the Hepburn book has an awesome cover. Now, I'll be the first to admit I'd never found Katharine Hepburn all that attractive - Grace Kelly all the way for me. But in that picture? Yow.

Well, Now I Feel Like an Ass

So no sooner do I make my previous post than I notice this story about a multi-product label line which attempts to both turn a profit for the retailers that develop and sell its products and contribute to AIDS relief in Africa. Of course, Bono is involved. Looks like I might be stepping into a GAP for the first time in a couple years, come October 13th.

Some might see this as a simple image improver for the companies involved. It's interesting to read the comments from Bobby Shriver (yes, another relative of the Kennedys):

“Gap in the beginning couldn’t understand how they were going to make money,” Mr. Shriver said. “They wanted to do a T-shirt and give us all the money. But, we want them to make money. We don’t want anyone to be thinking, ‘I’m not making money on this thing,’ because then we failed. We want people buying houses in the Hamptons based on this because, if that happens, this thing is sustainable.”

It is sustainability that is the key and that makes Red worth supporting. It isn't some little one-off knick-knack that you buy to wear and show off how "socially conscious" you are (like what this became); it's an attempt to create an ongoing stream of revenue from a relatively (barring private donations, which certainly do add up) untapped source.

There are those who might argue that the efforts of Red are just that; a means for Western, insulated consumers to demonstrate a social conscience and soothe their guilty consciences - "Oh, I'm not at fault, I buy Red, I do everything I can!" This is possibly true. It is also true that newborn children don't deserve to come into the world afflicted with a disease (well, virus/syndrome - I don't know what the difference is, but I'm sure there is one and that it's somewhat of a technical, medical nature) they did nothing to earn, and can do nothing to change. Given that terrible alternative, I think I can deal with looking like a sellout dweeb.

Since I'm on a news kick, check out this story about British soldiers debunking the US government's contention that Iran is feeding the Iraqi insurgency arms and equipment. Hey, wow - yet another "known known" being postulated by the US government which there's no physical evidence for (anyone else remember Cheney making all those comments about how they knew there were Iraq-Al Quaida links? Or the ones about all the WMD they had? Or the one about the insurgency being in it's "final throes"?) Granted, I wouldn't trust the Iraqi border guards as far as I could throw them, and I'm sure it's a massive amount of desert out there, but you'd think the Brits would at least find some trace, if something was going on out there.

One last thing, since - again, given the tenor of my previous post - I find this amazing. Pretty much in my lifetime, look what's happened. If the IRA as a cohesive military force can be eliminated and then brought into a legitimate political process, then maybe there really is hope for the other war-torn areas of the world.

I Am Boring

So, there's an interesting (possibly only to me) article on Slate about how Trojan came to dominate the condom industry, becoming a brand with the recognition value of Kleenex. What interested me the most was this passage:

Youngs Rubber, meanwhile, sued a company making Trojan knockoffs, a legal maneuver designed to underscore its commitment to quality. More important, the company lobbied state and local governments to enact laws restricting the sale of condoms to pharmacies alone. Since Trojans had become the preference of pharmacists, the brand was guaranteed a virtual monopoly in markets where these laws were passed.

One of the best teachers I had at New School was a gentleman by the name of Jim Nolt, a poli sci professor whose focus was on the effect that business has on politics. And here, it would seem is a textbook example of the things he tried to research and point out; legislation or policy created because of lobbyists, (and, probably) graft and bribery.

Pro-free marketers might point out that maybe it was a good thing for condoms to be sold in pharmacies, which is the only reason why legislators would have agreed with the viewpoint of Youngs Rubber; that the free market fulfilled a social need and created a social good while simultaneously fulfilling their own agenda of creating profit. The problem lies in the second part of that statement; corporations exist simply to make a profit. If they can make a profit and create a social good, they will do so. If they can make a bigger profit by creating a social evil, they will also do so, provided that the negative cost (from bad publicity or whatnot) is outweighed by the monetary reward. So you can't depend on corporations to fill the needs of society; they are ultimately beholden only to their shareholders.

It makes you wonder...is there any form of effective government? Communism is crap, and capitalist democracies are crap, so what's left - anarchy? And yet I have a difficult time subscribing to the ideal of anarchy espoused by people like Banksy and Alan Moore, who see people as inherently nice, fluffy and happy. I think anarchists are essentially romantics; like Rousseau, they believe in the idea of the noble savage, that people are fundamentally good and would be good to each other if there were no external constraints. I'm not so sure. This is also not to say that they (well, Alan Moore, at least) believe in some sort of magical, violence-free revolution; rather, there is a distinction to be drawn between the chaos that results directly after the fall of government and the utopian anarchic state. There is, of course, no map or timeline for this process, as there rarely is in utopian visions; it's just something they assume will happen because, again, people are fundamentally good.

I don't know, I wish I could believe that but I don't think I can at the moment. Perhaps that speaks more about where I am in my life right now than to any higher truth.

Mrowp

You Are Romanticism

You are likely to see the world as it should be, not as it is. You prefer to celebrate the great things people do... not the horrors they're capable of. For you, there is nothing more inspiring than a great hero. You believe that great art reflects the artist's imagination and true ideals.

What Art Movement Are You?

Supposed to be doing an interview with Jimbo and Aladdin with the New Jersey - I think it's Monitor, it's some Jersey paper - tonight. Actually, speaking of Aladdin and interviews there's one with him up over here, though he/they refer to me as "John Cho". Oh snap, the dude from Harold and Kumar is on Uncle Morty's? It MUST be good!

Riiight.

Yaaaaay Fall!

You Belong in Fall

Intelligent, introspective, and quite expressive at times... You appreciate the changes in color, climate, and mood that fall brings Whether you're carving wacky pumpkins or taking long drives, autumn is a favorite time of year for you

What Season Are You?

My Mom is Crazy

So, for some odd reason, I wake up at 8:20 this morning. It must have been my Spidey sense, because 10 minutes later, lo and behold, my phone rings.

"Hello?"
"Hi, it's mom."
"Hi mom."
"I was just wondering - do you have enough money?"
"Uh - yeah."
"Ok, because if you need money, you know all you have to do is ask."
"Yeah mom."
"So when are you coming back?"
"Um...I'm not?"
"So what are you going to do?"
"I'm extending my visa."
"Well, when will you know if that will work?"
"...in a few months? But there's no reason why it shouldn't be extended."
"Well...ok. But if it doesn't work out, then you should just come home. And no need to get a condo or anything, I don't know what dad is talking about, you can just come home."
(let me interject here for a moment - I don't know what dad is talking about either, he hasn't mentioned a word of moving back to Canada and into a condo, other than a discussion relatively similar to the one above, about my visa status and whether or not I would be deported anytime in the near future. It's been discussed that if I came home, he would basically set me up with one, but as the former has not happened and hopefully will not happen, the latter is somewhat of a moot point to my mind)
"Uh - ok."
"Well, I just wanted to say that."
"........ok."
Bye, etc.

Sigh.

I have, however, realized what's the cause of my mom's sudden uptick in crazality: she's got empty nest syndrome, as my younger brother just moved to Scotland for college (yes, I know - Scotland? How's that for a head scratcher. The way I look at it, each the sons has moved further and further out for college, for whatever reason. My older brother went to a college about 45 minutes away. I first went to one 3 hours away. My younger brother chose to cross the Atlantic. It's like each of us was trying to get away, but each subsequent brother saw that the distance travelled hadn't quite been far enough, so they had to go a bit further. If there was a 4th brother, he'd probably go to school in Japan or China or something. Terrible, isn't it?) Anyways, now my mom is all alone in that rather large house, which is somewhat sad but also simply part of the inevitability of life. Or - come to think of it, maybe it isn't in her mind, with the whole three-generations-of-Asians-under-one-roof thing. Still, it's not my responsibility to make her happy - or is it? Asians (again, those tricksey Asians) would probably vehemently disagree with me. Oh well, guess I'm a bad son. She probably should have figured that out when I first failed out of college and refused to become a lawyer.