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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Justin Projects' LiveJournal:

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    Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
    6:07 pm
    The Larynx Mutiny




    The first time I saw the anti-smoking PSA featuring this woman I was fascinated.  Her voice was amazing, and I found myself immediately imagining what it would be like to hear her sing.  Some time later, I saw some other PSA, with an older gentleman singing in a country band, with the same apparatus.  His voice was magnificently alien, but I couldn’t shake the image of a seductive diva singing in the drone of a robot.  To wit…"The Larynx Mutiny".

    You’re beautiful
    with the red painted on your lips
    and so dutiful
    I light your cigarette’s tip
    You suck it back
    inhaling seductively
    There goes a whole pack
    in the course of an evening

    And you just want to feel alive
    like those ladies on the signs
    you remember from when you were a child
    But now the larynx mutiny
    has made you a monstrosity
    and you can’t even bear to leave the house

    Sweet Maria sing for me
    like a kitchen appliance malfunctioning
    They took your throat and replaced it with a ring
    to save the life you were forfeiting

    With every breath
    we draw closer to death
    but some hastening
    lingers in the air
    You can’t compare
    to sick children or famine waifs
    but a cautionary tale
    you remain all the same

    And for one fitful final time
    you just want to feel alive
    like you did when you were young
    But the doctors and their surgeries
    have ruined all your revelry
    but that’s what got you here in the first place

    Sweet Maria speak to me
    in the burring of a bumblebee
    You think you’re ugly but you’re not to me
    Survival is really quite lovely

    It’s bittersweet
    the choices that we make
    are statistically
    the chances that we take
    Realistically
    the odds are against us all
    but foolishly
    we try to exert control

    And you don’t want to die alone
    in some moldy nursing home
    like those relatives you never saw
    But now a vain society
    leaves you abandoned and lonely
    and there’s not anyone for them to call

    Sweet Maria speak to me
    speak to me…

    …and a shrill, grim tone pours from the EKG

    (1 given fuck | give a fuck?)

    Monday, June 29th, 2009
    1:33 pm
    50 is the new 27

    This article.

    The ruling could give Sotomayor's critics fresh ammunition two weeks before her Senate confirmation hearing. Conservatives say it shows she is a judicial activist who lets her own feelings color her decisions. On the other hand, liberal allies say her stance in the case demonstrates her restraint and unwillingness to go beyond established precedents.

    My problem with all politicians: they all let " [their] own feelings color [their] decisions”.  This is why liberals adore public welfare (it alleviates their rich guilt) and conservatives damn abortion (they love babies, more babies, more money, more workforce), for two good examples.  Trumpeting morality, enforcing it through policy, this is not a function of logic, it is an emotional impulse.

    The race issue abides.  At this point, I see racism as another wedge, another finger in the leaky dam.  When will people realize race is simply an analogue for class, and class is basically a caste within a capitalist system?  These are hard realizations, and ones most people won’t allow themselves, or others.  But these conclusions are simple.

    One of the best songs I ever wrote…

    Spades )

    Did y'all hear Michael Jackson died?

    (give a fuck?)

    Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009
    4:06 pm
    Heroes Convention 2009
    The Details... )

    Overall I had a pretty good time.  It was strange being on my own for the most part, and despite an impressive roster of guests, attendance seemed lighter than last year.  Also, the Small Press, Indie Island and Artist Alley sections of the show comprised more space than the Exhibitors, taking up just over half of the hall.  I can’t decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing, or just a thing.  Regardless, it was a fine way to blow a weekend and a wad of cash, and waste some time.  Hopefully, come next year, I’ll have some copies of Art the Amoeba and Oh, Heavens! to trade.  We’ll see…

    Here’s the list of loot:

    Trades (all either $5, ½ off, or BOGO)
    Appleseed: Book One – Masamune Shirow
    Cerebus – Dave Sim
    Easy Way – Christopher E. Long/Andy Kuhn
    Fanboy – Mark Evanier/Sergio Aragones/various
    Flaming Carrot Comics – Bob Burden
    The Groo Jamboree – Sergio Aragones
    Jack Staff: Soldiers – Paul Grist
    Mister Blank: Exhaustive Collection – Christopher J. Hicks
    Nevada – Steve Gerber/Phil Winslade
    Stray Bullets vol. 1 – David Lapham
    Stray Bullets vol. 2 – David Lapham
    Stray Toasters – Bill Sienkiewicz
    Superpatriot: Liberty & Justice – Tom & Mary Bierbaum/Keith Giffen/Dave Johnson
    Marvel Essentials: Tales of the Zombie – various
    Trasition: Phase 7 #010 & #011 – Alec Longstreth

    Singles (all from $0.10 – 1.00)
    1963 Book Two: The Fury
    1963 Book Five: Horus, Lord of Light
    Teen Titans Spotlight on Aqualad (early Erik Larsen art!  Sienkiewicz cover!)
    Iceman #1-4
    The Thing #2
    Miracleman #2-6, 9 (ok, ok, these were $5 a pop, but that’s a steal)
    Nightcrawler #1-4
    Power & Glory #1 and 3 (I already had 2 and 4)
    The Awesome Slapstick #1-3 (no 4, DAMN IT, but I’ve wanted this book for a while)
    Sludge #2-9 (more Gerber!  I was on the hunt for plenty o’ Gerber)
    Wildstar: Sky Zero #1-4, Born to Be Wild #1

    Minicomics, Zines, etc.
    Cosmic Adventures: A Mini-comic for Coloring! #1 – Justin Gammon
    The Dvorak Zine – Alec Longstreth
    Phase 7 #005, 006, 012-014 – Alec Longstreth
    Weirdotoys – Justin Gammon
     

    (5 given fucks | give a fuck?)

    Thursday, June 18th, 2009
    8:07 pm
    The Sick Gets Around

    All this smoke makes me sick
    and the sick gets around
    All the laughter and crying
    the tears of a clown
    All the lives that are lost
    are the losses to gain
    All the stories to tell
    are too much to explain
    The brain and the body
    the spirit and mind
    at war with each other
    for now and all time
    We’re all problems
    problems to be solved
    We are the worlds
    we revolve around

    All the schlock makes me wretch
    and the wretch makes a sound
    as it falls through the air
    and it smacks on the ground
    The pains and the joys
    and the lines in between
    are fragile fine threaded
    and must be dry cleaned
    The songs that will stick
    and the songs that will slide
    are just burdens to bear
    that I cannot abide
    We’re all sins
    sins to be absolved
    We are the worlds
    we revolve around

    The word is a virus
    it is meaningless
    with no host to invade
    or symptom to inflict
    The victims are targets
    of lore and progress
    Their mouths flap like sails
    caught in windy edicts
    And at their successes
    the rest of us fail
    The powers that be
    must always prevail
    We’re all problems
    problems to be solved
    We are the worlds
    they revolve around
    In coexistence
    codependence abounds
    We are the worlds
    and we’re stopping
    right now

    (give a fuck?)

    Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
    3:04 pm
    A Tree Falls in the Woods...

    I remember once reading a statement about comics that was astonishingly obvious: they are a solitary experience.  People don’t gather ‘round a book like they do a movie or a television, or even at a show.  Reading, as it is, leaves you on your own.

    But, recently I have considered that all art, music, film, entertainment, whatever word you care to summon, are all solitary, personal experiences.  I’ve been listening to a lot of stuff on headphones lately, and I suppose this newfound obsession has spurred these ideas.  Because when I listen to a record like that, I’m sure I get something out of it nobody else does.  Even if someone agrees with me about a record’s value or quality, even if we discuss the particulars and still find ourselves in harmony, I don’t think it necessarily means it’s a “shared experience”.  I’m not sure there is such a thing.  It strikes me more often than not that by filtering through our senses, reality gets mutated into perception, and therefore distorted.  By that rationale, it could even be argued that “reality” by definition does not exist, except on a case-by-case basis, on an individual scale.

    Anyway, it’s weird shit.  I think I’ll go draw now.
     

    (1 given fuck | give a fuck?)

    Friday, May 29th, 2009
    3:51 pm
    Random Thought on a Gorgeous Day

    If reality is perception, and perception is individual, I see no clear-cut winner in the title bout of Science v. Religion.  While I do find it utterly laughable for someone to say, “I believe human beings co-existed with dinosaurs…that’s just what I believe…” I don’t see a fundamental difference between that and a fervent confidence in the accuracy of carbon dating.  Scientific knowledge is simply mankind imposing its vision on nature, and therefore just as steeped in faith.  The bases are different, but the similarities are there.

    (3 given fucks | give a fuck?)

    Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
    7:27 pm
    Iggy Pop - Préliminaires

    Familiarity breeds boredom, and boredom breeds contempt.  This is a short explanation as to why many acts with career longevity find themselves labeled by audiences and critics as tired or obsolete.  What’s rarely considered is our part in this perception.  An artist’s work is always vital, not only practically, as a living, but also existentially, as a learning experience, a chance to grow.  These insights can be lost on the outsider, the casual listener, or the hardcore fan.  Instances of such mutiny are well documented within the strata of popular music, from folk acolytes denouncing Bob Dylan’s “going electric” in ‘65 to David Bowie’s unfairly panned dance material of the early 80s.  Inevitably, any singer or band that exhibits the audacity to continue to make records and follow their muse will be met with some skepticism or hostility.  Trite as it may be, that’s how it is.

    Granted, such charges are not always without merit.  An extended back catalogue certainly encompasses some variation of quality.  Case in point: one James “Iggy Pop” Osterberg.  Depending on where you start counting and what, the Ig has upwards of 20 records under his belt, both solo and with his original cohorts the Stooges.  With a discography that extensive, they can’t all be gold.  Especially spotty are Iggy’s solo albums.  After a strong start with Bowie-helmed masterpieces The Idiot and Lust for Life, Pop briefly courted what was called “new wave” on New Values, which felt more like a bona fide Iggy Pop album than its two predecessors.  The 80s found Pop searching from record to record for a comfortable identity, leading him through a host of collaborators and a series of records that is best described as schizophrenic.  A brush or two with chart success gave Pop some semblance of financial security, but never afforded him the stylistic foundation he needed to thrive.  The 90s saw Pop mostly returning to the Stooges formula – loud, repetitive, instinctive, vulgar – which still didn’t offer an even keel of album-to-album consistency.  Even studio reunions with his old Detroit compatriots Ron and Scott Asheton couldn’t yield Pop anything other than another notch on his belt.  Albums boasted gems in scattered tracks, but nothing ever matched the record spanning cohesion of unabashed masterpieces like Funhouse or Lust for Life.

    Strangely, it wasn’t music Pop needed to reinvigorate his artistic qi.  It was literature.  Approached to create music for a film about French novelist Michel Houellebecq, Pop instead opted to make a full album as a companion piece to Houellebecq’s book La Possibilité d'une île (The Possibility of an Island).  Pop had read the novel with great fervor, discovering curious parallels between the book’s protagonist and himself.  It is this understanding that informs Pop’s newest offering, Préliminaires.  Iggy Pop is often regarded as a drug crazed wild man, and in his younger years he consciously fostered this image with outlandish and aberrant behavior, both off and on the stage.  But to anyone who cared to look or listen with a little more attention, or caught an off interview with the guy, it was obvious that beneath all the savagery and bluster there was a keen, restless intellect.  Although applied with caution and subtlety to his work, it was there to be discerned.  Iggy Pop was, and is, and will always remain, a rogue scholar.

    Préliminaires is his definitive statement as closet intellectual.  On the surface, the album’s somber, finely nuanced ambience will likely drive away those fans that prefer him bloody and smeared in peanut butter.  But to the rest of the world, the new album is a stunning revelation that Pop’s meditations run far deeper than girls, money and drugs.  Préliminaires is a world-weary study of fame and mortality, the inhumanity of humanity, and life’s oft overlooked simple pleasures.  It opens with a French jazz standard, "Les feuilles mortes" (“Autumn Leaves”), sung in its original language (reportedly because the rights to the English version were too expensive).  Nevertheless, Pop’s sinewy baritone drawls the song out with such effect the language barrier is sidestepped, and the point is made: this is not business as usual.  In one track Pop has proved himself as much more than punk rock’s answer to James Brown.

    The true irony is that Iggy’s softest album is also his most defiant.  While press for the album pegged it as an exercise in New Orleans jazz ala Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton, this is an impetus, not a result.  This is fusion at its best, incorporating jazz (“King of the Dogs”), rock (“Nice to Be Dead), spoken word (“A Machine for Loving”) and electronica (“Party Time”) seamlessly, usually mixing touches of each into an exotic sonic blend.  The music comprises every mood from whimsical to bleak, dropping them gently like fresh linen, rendering the transitions imperceptible.  Sequencing is paramount, opening with "Les feuilles mortes" and reprising it at the end, and repeating "Je sais que tu sais" later on as “She’s a Business”, minus the French monologue.    The circular nature of the listening experience, whether intentional or not, is an appropriate metaphor for the themes addressed.

    For all its musical adventurousness, the lyrics are what truly set Préliminaires apart, both as another Iggy Pop album and an album in general.  While there are flashes of Iggy’s trademark vulgarity, in the same breath he will turn from such pedestrian concerns to bare profundity.  His work as a lyricist hasn’t been this consistent or brilliant since his early solo work.  Delivered in a well aged, robust croon over the international miasma of the accompaniment, the closest analogue Pop’s ever crafted to this is The Idiot (Avenue B, Pop’s other “jazz album” from 1999, is basically Préliminaires retarded cousin, and is to be avoided).

    This is heady stuff, likely to draw cries of lame or sell out from certain contingents of the fan community.  Those craving the thrash and bash of the Stooges should just spin Raw Power again.  But for those of us interested in something new and just as essential, who long for a relevant peek into the psyche of one of rock’s true legends, we need look no further than Préliminaires.

    (give a fuck?)

    Wednesday, May 13th, 2009
    11:33 pm
    All Weapons are Phallic

    A brief flirtation with civilization
    goes sour in the hour of its manifestation
    Society, sobriety, lust and temptation
    mix into the fix that is self-realization

    All weapons are phallic
    Human arrogance galactic
    Let our folly be didactic
    lest we collapse

    A quick demonstration of defenestration
    is killing the thrills in these dark proclamations
    Economy, monogamy, health and gestation
    are crawling up the walls of all of our aspirations

    Overstatements of zany derangement
    are the sum and substance of supposed salvation
    Propriety, variety, spice, supplication
    belie the zealous cries of lurid accusation 

    All weapons are phallic
    Past and future so romantic
    Politicians go pedantic
    on the attack

    Anthemic exclamation
    lousy explanations
    and greater expectations
    suggest a lapse
    in the synapses

    A brief flirtation with civilization
    goes sour in the hour of its obliteration
    Looting then refuting the stark ramifications
    imbues the clever ruse that is self-preservation

    All weapons are phallic
     

    (give a fuck?)

    Sunday, May 10th, 2009
    11:04 pm
    Love for Headphones

    The Zombies – “The Way I Feel Inside”
    Billie Holiday – “Love Me or Leave Me”
    Counting Crows – “Monkey”
    OutKast – “Happy Valentine’s Day”
    Otis Redding – “I Can’t Turn You Loose”
    Ronnie Milsap – “Stranger in My House”
    Johnny & June Carter Cash – “It Ain’t Me, Babe”
    David Bowie – “Modern Love”
    Dead Kennedys – “Your Emotions”
    Buzzcocks – “Ever Fallen in Love?”
    Weezer – “Good Life”
    Fiona Apple – “Get Gone”
    Gang of Four – “Anthrax”
    R.E.M. – “Star Me Kitten”
    Iggy Pop – “Fall in Love with Me”
    Ben Folds Five – “Mess”
    Velvet Underground – “Oh! Sweet Nuthin’”
    Magnetic Fields – “The Book of Love”

    (give a fuck?)

    Saturday, May 9th, 2009
    6:16 pm
    Blame Expectation

    This is probably an incredibly bad sign, but I am almost sick with excitement to hear Iggy Pop’s new album Préliminaires.  It’s allegedly New Orleans jazz-tinged, heavy on the crooning, replete with a track sung in French (the record’s impetus lie in a book by French novelist Michel Houellebecq).

    Granted, 1999’s Avenue B was similarly labeled as having jazz inflections, and it was a pretty lame record.  But it was bogged down with all those lackluster spoken word bits (for Iggy’s best spoken word, Zombie Birdhouse is a slice of delectable lunacy, and the final tracks on both American Caesar and Beat ‘Em Up are hilariously brilliant).  This new one holds a lot more promise for me, especially upon reading this article.


    LiveJournal is behaving like a total cocksucker at the moment...
     

    (give a fuck?)

    Thursday, May 7th, 2009
    2:28 pm
    Your Sincerity is Embarrassing

    I don’t know where it came from, but I had a startling realization of late, concerning the whole prevalence of sexuality in the mainstream, how it’s come to define so much of our lives when it really is something quite minimal.  It’s one of those ideas I’ve always had, lurking just beneath the surface of understanding, dodging the hooks of logic like a clever fish.

    “Coming out” is an institution; pride parades a regular phenomenon.  These very public spectacles highlight an immensely private side of life.  That’s part of what perturbs me about it all.  But I’ve realized that by “coming out”, by admitting your own sexuality in such a ritualized vis-à-vis institutionalized way, it’s in fact validating that there’s something “wrong” to it.  It’s like repentance.  It’s confessing to a crime.  It’s absolution of some deep-seated guilt.  The blame can point exponentially, but at the core, pride, coming out, etc., are nothing more than counters to shame, or even exercises in it.

    Also, I don’t like that it’s so easy for everyone to think they know what “gay” means.  I don’t even know what it means and I’m supposed to be it!  It’s a useless signifier, purporting to a culture that doesn’t exist.  There’s no culture in sex or love; these things transcend politics and society.  There is no sense in either.  So why are we trying so hard?  I suppose it gets down to Western civilization and its obsessive impulse to compartmentalize everything, but even that I can’t buy wholesale.  There are plenty of Western cultures that are very open about all types of sexual desire (I’m thinking mostly South American here).  It’s a facet of their lives they don’t flaunt or revel in, but it’s not condemned outright.  It is what it is, and it’s let be.

    Some things I don’t want to understand.  Some I don’t need to understand.  That may be ignorant, but then what is enlightenment if not exalted ignorance?

    Another thing that’s irritated me lately is the ubiquitous usage of the word “socialism” by people who didn’t even know what the word meant nine months ago (and likely still don’t).  This buzzword du jour has worn out its welcome like an obnoxious houseguest, and I wish all these idiot pundit wannabes would find a new catchphrase to latch on to (Glenn Beck suggests "fascist").  It’s hilarious to me that people who throw words like “commie” and “socialist” around like epithets don’t think twice about gift registries or baby showers being capitalist analogues to either system.  Next time you want to denigrate someone as a socialist, think long and hard about that cute little onesie you’re giving to your friend’s new baby, you COMMIE PIG.

    I’m tired of everything being turned into a political statement.  I’m tired of people who force their politics into any conversation, for lack of better reasoning.  These are people that are totally incapable of independent thought.  When the mind comes to its own conclusions, it transmutes stale ideas into originality.  Do you absolutely need your partisan handbook before you open your mouth?  What’s worse, how many of these retards posit themselves as intelligent, or insightful?  Nine times out of ten they’re victims of a romanticized past with no basis in history or reality, or a rose tinted vision of the future best left to the plot of a bad sci-fi novel.  If you’ve never actually seen something, or experienced it, there is a good chance that it isn’t real.

    Reality is perception, and perception is individual, therefore reality is individual.  That sounds schizophrenic, but then again, I don’t necessarily subscribe to those standards.  Fuck your psychology.

    (1 given fuck | give a fuck?)

    Thursday, April 30th, 2009
    12:49 pm
    Andy the Doorbum - Art is Shit

    Charlotte is notorious for cannibalization.  Not in the literal, humans-eating-humans, Alive sense of the word; figuratively speaking.  Architecturally, politically, culturally, this town has a strange appetite for the past, gobbling it up and shitting it out in forms unrecognizable.  It’s this cannibal factor that makes our local music scene seem bland and atrophied when graded against the national curve.  It’s what allows the button downs to function so comfortably, offering them the pastel tones and the hard lines and the granite countertops they find ever so welcoming.

    Certainly this isn’t absolute.  There are pockets of resistance to be found, usually in the late hours of the evening, in a smoky bar or on an intimate patio or in some fanatic’s living room.  Just beneath the surface of all this city’s blasé window dressing, there is a glorious DIY veneer, dirty, vital and beautiful.

    This aspect of the Queen City is typified in the music of Andy The Doorbum Fenstermaker.  Familiar as the guy who takes our money at the World Famous Milestone Club, Fenstermaker performs skewed and hilarious dirges of brazen lyrical fortitude.  With the aid of friends, The Doorbum cut a record throughout ’05 and 6, titled The Mt. Holly Sessions - a remarkable achievement in its own right - and embarked on tours both local and global.

    Now Andy’s back, offering an unabashed masterpiece in his latest recording, Art is Shit.  By any estimation this is an epic, comprising 25 tracks in just over an hour.  The songs range from fractions of a minute (“Burn Barrel”, “Dutch Response 1568”) cycling through tunes of a minute or three (“Join the Great Majority”, “Love Song for Cigarettes”, “Albert”) upwards to arrangements of four and five (“Catching the Moon in a Mason Jar”, “Faith Heal’t”).  Across this spectrum Andy cuts a wide stylistic swath, armed with his trusty acoustic guitar and his busker gruff voice, supplemented with drums, keys, samples and even a xylophone, melding elements into a cohesive whole most musicians ruin entire careers in pursuit of.

    It’s definitely acquired taste, and sure to offend the delicate sensibilities of most radio listeners, but to the punks and hipsters and rock n’ roll niggers of this banker burg, Andy could qualify as our very own leper messiah.  Although his language is at times coarse and his voice abrasive, that’s all part of the fun, and if you pay close enough attention there is no shortage to the nuggets of wisdom contained herein.  “Passion’s not enough to save the world,” Andy declares on his opener, “so fuck it, do you wanna buy some drugs instead?”  This is an affirmation.  This is a mission statement.  Andy’s strength lays in exposing not only the hypocrisy of a society that rejects his ilk, but the contradictions that litter his own life as well.  This is paramount to the joke Fenstermaker plays on his listeners: he makes punchlines of us all, but by including himself he becomes the most relatable, approachable, likeable freak at the ball.

    To dissect the record track-by-track is a futile disservice to its brilliance.  While no pretentious “concept album” any further than it is a really fucking good record, the thing functions best as an inseparable whole.  In this attention deficit world, filled with IPods set to random and glib quotes substituting for insight, it’s too easy to fall into that trap of capsulation.  No, The Doorbum is something of a gold standard in his timelessness.  This could easily be music made by a 19th century coal miner or something.  It truly is a relic of a time unknown, possibly nonexistent.  It is a bizarre curiosity from a junk shop, an odd relic in the attic of a dead relative, something to be treasured and absorbed on a front porch or a dark bedroom or that aforementioned smoky bar.  Passion might not be enough to save the world, but music like this is enough to save your life.

    (2 given fucks | give a fuck?)

    Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
    4:25 pm
    The Makers

    It’s the love that makes the hate
    the peace that makes the war
    It’s the money that makes the State
    The rich that make the poor

    Give them back their voice
    You don’t deserve it
    You leave them no other choice
    Your will won’t permit

    It’s the dreams that make the Gods
    the law that makes the crime
    It’s the land that makes the Lord
    The Sun that makes the time
    It’s the words that make the song
    and the right that makes the wrong
    It’s the darkness that makes the dawn
    the King that makes the Pawn

    Give them back their homes
    You won’t preserve them
    You leave them picking bones
    You seek new service
    Give them back their souls
    You don’t understand
    It’s the part that makes the whole
    The hand that makes a fist

    It’s the con that makes control
    the suggestion makes the gist
    It’s the shadow that makes the wall
    The tongue that makes the kiss

    Give them back their pride
    You’ve still got plenty
    You leave them to take sides
    The till is empty

    It’s the ring that makes the bond
    the foot that makes the step
    It’s the weak that make the strong
    the balance makes the check
    It’s the blood that makes the meat
    the heart that makes the beat
    It’s beauty that makes the flaw
    the gun that makes the draw

    Give them back their minds
    and be noble in this
    It’s the glory that makes the prime
    The end that makes genesis

    (give a fuck?)

    Friday, April 3rd, 2009
    2:47 pm
    The Black Nurse

    I go to the bank to deposit my tips from the last two days.  I’m in a hurry because I have to deliver the rent check afterward, then go to work.  I walk into the bank clutching a handful of worn, fuzzy bills.  As I count them a final time a particularly weathered five tears in half.  I grouse to myself and note how many people are waiting in line.  I notice multiple tellers, however, which is of some comfort.  I pull a deposit slip from a kiosk and fill it out.

    I make my way into line; I’m five deep.  One of the tellers is designated for commercial transactions, so anyone with a business account gets in a special line and she gives them priority.  That still leaves four tellers.  I size up the other bank goers: an old, part-Native American guy with a cane; a white thirtysomething guy about my age and social distinction; a pair of black guys who seem to be friends, they look like landscapers; another black guy, this one a city worker in a traffic vest; an old black lady in a church dress; an older, plump white man who sweats in the air conditioning.  As the line continues back, the farther back the people are, the less significantly they feature in my memory.  I am, of course, concerned with who and what is ahead of me, because I am a selfish prick like everybody else.

    Other people file in and join the line, lengthening it quickly.  This pleases me, because suddenly I go from end to middle in the span of minutes.  But then another upset: one of the tellers takes a break.  Plus the old man w/ cane is up next, and old people take a long time to do anything, especially where money is involved.

    Then she walks in, straight from the mouth of Robin Harris.  Short and portly, but with one of those exaggerated voluptuous figures.  I know lots of guys probably want to fuck her because she has a round, fat ass.  She walks with that I’m-a-woman-with-a-job-so-fuck-you strut, which is only exasperated by her obvious attitude (no doubt originating from her I’m-fat-and-you’d-still-fuck-me overconfidence).  She’s wearing nurse scrubs with cute little cartoons on it, colored like a nursery in soft pastels, and she has one of those sassy, short haircuts that five years ago would have had some shade of purple streaked through it.  My eye is on her immediately, because instead of taking her rightful place at the back of the line, she walks along the length of people behind the ribbon, curling her lip and sucking her teeth.  One hand is pushed back on her limp wrist against her pudgy hip, shifting back and forth with every lazy, foot-dragging step.  Her purse dangles from her fingertips.  In her other hand she has whatever papers she needs for the bank.

    I gaze all this from my peripheral vision, all while minding the queue, to allow as little distance to gather between the person ahead and myself.  I also notice that one teller out of the remaining four isn’t taking any customers.  She’s just counting.  This slows things up considerably.  The Black Nurse has made her way around the line, as if she were going to the commercial teller, but instead walks up to the landscapers, greeting them quietly.  They talk and nod and talk.  The man w/ cane is still doing his business when the thirtysomething finishes, so the black landscapers are up next.  Luckily they go as a pair to the next available teller.  Then, instead of the city worker, who should be next, the Black Nurse walks right up to a teller before being called, and starts cashing a check.  The city worker says nothing.  The teller says nothing.  I say nothing.

    The teller who had been counting stops and calls the city worker.  The commercial teller, having an empty line, calls me.  The wait hasn’t been nearly as excruciating as I had anticipated, so I am satisfied with the service.  But as the teller processes my transaction, I can’t help but look over at the Black Nurse next to me, noting at closer inspection her tragic and stereotypical manner.  It makes me think about all the times I was glad I wasn’t black, because I would hate people like her for reflecting poorly on me.  It reminds me that I shouldn’t have thoughts like that, because I’m white, and it’s probably racist.  I consider how my beef with the “gay community” as it were is essentially the same, but that’s still no validation of racism, because the two just don’t equate.  In a surge these thoughts flood my mind, sudden and simultaneous.

    But what strikes me most as I watch this trifling, obnoxious human being carry on is the cowardice of everyone else in line.  Were the blacks letting her go because she was black, and if so, why?  Were the whites letting her go because they were as wracked with white guilt as I seem to be, or were they just terrified she’d whip out her gat and bust a cap in they ass if they said something?  I think about how every one of them are assholes for not at all protesting behavior that wouldn’t be tolerated in an elementary school, let alone society at large.  What’s worse, I’m just as big a pussy as any of them, and I totally know it.  I’m pissed, lucid, and something still prevents me from saying something, anything.  No, I’m the biggest pussy, because I'm aware of it.

    This makes me even madder.  She finishes her transaction before mine, and I watch her walk out.  You’re as big a pussy as anybody, you won’t say nothing to her.  You won’t say anything.  You’re just gonna stand here like everybody else, motherfucker...  If I see her in the parking lot, I’m going to…  Yeah, right, ‘in the parking lot’, just another out for your bitch ass, just another excuse.  You ain’t doin’ shit!  She laughs and talks loudly at her teller as she slides away, imposing the conversation on all the people she’s flatly disregarded, as if she were covertly bragging over her victory.

    I grab my receipt from the teller, thank her, and make sprightly for the door.  My ride waits outside, and I have the rent check to deliver.  But there’s also the slim margin that the Black Nurse is still in the parking lot, and if she’s still there, I can still say something.  I can still glean some small scrap of personal satisfaction here.  I can have some redemption.

    I hit the door, and there she is, walking up to the passenger side of a car, just one space down from my ride.  She is looking down at something, a phone or keys.  I feel a small frog struggling in my throat, and the acidic tickle of adrenaline just under my stomach.  You’re not going to do nothing, you pussy.

    “Excuse me,” she scarcely looks up at me as I address her in passing, “how did you get to go to the front of the line like that?”  She looks down to the ground as if my question is a nuisance, shifts and mumbles, “Oh I know them guys they patients of mine.”  The frog struggles in my throat.  The tips of my fingers tingle.  “Oh,” I return, “so I guess that entitles you to go ahead of the other twelve people that were already waiting…?”  I say this in a very friendly tone, not too obviously facetious, but just pointed enough that she raises her head, her large mouth poised to respond.  I don’t give her the opportunity.  My legs tremble as I walk past her, “That’s all right, I know.  You’re time’s more valuable than everyone else’s,” again with an even, non-threatening keel that belies the adrenal rush I’m experiencing.  Now her expression is equal parts shock and anger.  Her lips pull back off her wide teeth, like two fat grubs curling around a stick of yellowed wood.  In her eyes are the sparks of an irate tantrum.  I stop at my car, and I open the door.

    “You have a good day, Ms. Queen of Everything!” I shout as I get in the car.  A torrent of bullshit spills from her maw and I slam the door.  Michele shoots me an emphatic expression of WTF?  I recount the basic story to her loudly so the Black Nurse can hear it too, drowning out her unjustifiable tirade.  As we drive away I watch her wave a hand indignantly in the air, her head sliding back and forth on her neck, her mouth flying with expletives I’d never hear.

    This is my community service for the day.

    (2 given fucks | give a fuck?)

    Saturday, March 28th, 2009
    7:30 pm
    I Can't Stand the Rain

    This brings a whole new dimension to “Holiday in Cambodia”.

    That 1 Guy at the Double Door (what a weird venue for that show)…or Yard Work at the Milestone benefit?

    I really don’t have the money for either, but this rain’s got me restless.

    (1 given fuck | give a fuck?)

    Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
    6:48 pm
    Comedian’s Request for an Epitaph

    Sir, please write kind words for me
    pretty and flowering
    like a garden in the spring
    Don’t demystify the mystery
    we all rely within
    If seeing is believing
    is blindness then a sin?

    Sir, kindly fuss over me
    attentive and eavesdropping
    like a mother meddling
    Don’t crucify the constructs
    we’re all living in
    If faith is so receiving
    why does rejection win?

    Win or lose
    love or hate
    support or berate
    Purposely
    arbitrarily
    automatic or deliberate
    To every side a story
    to every action an RE:
    Reality or fantasy
    to every lie a history

    Sir, please, write kind words for me
    silly and ridiculous
    full of jocularity
    Don’t revive the revelry
    we’re all dying for
    If the answer is a question
    what are you asking for?

    For, against
    loose or tense
    obscure or apparent
    Viciously
    surreptitiously
    timidly or daring
    To every side a story
    to every action an RE:
    Triumphant or tragic -
    “In Even Grief, Hilarity”
     

    (give a fuck?)

    Sunday, March 15th, 2009
    8:03 pm
    Let Your Weary Feet Be Your Anchor

    I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Keseyian notions of institutionalized oppression, systems of control with no real master or figurehead.  It seems too convenient to blame the government or the rich or the educational system or our families for these problems.  Problems are what make us human, after all, but everyone is after this state of permanence, where everything is expected, every situation handled expertly, with a minimum of fuss.  Entire industries have sprung up to service this impulse, which has been greatly exasperated by the acceleration of our media charged society.  Power struggles have become fetishized; birthing various sexual subcultures, all defended under the pretenses of personal liberty.  But at their core, when we engage in acts of bondage or domination, for example, we are in fact validating our own self-made prisons, upgrading the psychic facility like we would their physical counterpart.  The dom just as subjugated as the sub, all bent on some release that forever lingers out of reach.

    It’s very difficult to pinpoint the origin of our fucked up, postmodern condition.  We purport to these ideals of enlightenment, peace, progress, but we’re not so far removed from the slavering beasts that perpetrated witch trials, holocausts, inquisitions, et al.  Politics package the sides in grab-n-go bundles, philosophy on the run, no thinking involved.  Why bother?  It’s all at our fingertips for one low monthly fee.

    We are in serious jeopardy.  And not just the usual suspects, the obvious villains, like recession and climate change.  We are overrunning the Earth, and we raise our kids to be the same dumb, multiple choice consumer droids that we are.  We keep the rich rich and the poor poor.  We cut monies allotted to public education to beautify opulent, privileged neighborhoods where kids go to private schools.  But even they are victims of their own aberrant drives and vapid ambitions.  What is there to have that is of any true value?  Everything has a price, and if the spirit exists, surely it too can be bought and sold.

    Individuality is a marketing tool, the prow on a black ship navigating the cosmos, waiting to puncture other planets on its unwieldy tip.  Such a sexual metaphor.  But once we’ve fucked the world we will do our very best to fuck the cosmos, and it will shrug and we shall fall away like so much dust from a derelict mantle.  And the corpse of our ship will drift and wither and erode under duress of the void-winds, never sure of whom its captain ever was.

    Captain, if you are there, hear the mutiny at your cabin door. 
     

    (give a fuck?)

    Saturday, March 7th, 2009
    10:28 pm
    A Diatribe to End All: Assessing Watchmen

    “It was all sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

    -The Monarch, paraphrasing MacBeth

    This quote is from an episode of The Venture Brothers [1].  In it, Monarch is describing a failed effort to void his bowels.  This quote resonated the entire time I watched Zack Snyder’s Watchmen film.  The more I considered it, the more I came to realize its relevance.  With Watchmen, Snyder has digested the source material, absorbed every possible bit of nutrition, and left a steaming pile for his audience to step in [2].

    I read comic books.  I have those obvious biases.  But I can, believe it or not, divorce myself from my fierce devotion to the great work of Alan Moore.  Hence, I shall articulate my hatreds of this movie in two streams of consciousness: strictly as a motion picture, and as relating to the book from which it allegedly sprang [3].

    Superhero movies are - like the comic book genre that inspire them – quite insular.  They operate on a long defined set of conventions, a common vernacular, their own spectacular iconography.  In translating these four-color wonders to the silver screen, a lot of the magic is lost.  It becomes familiar (i.e. palatable).  The movies must continuously vie to outdo their predecessors, heaping action upon action, stunt upon stunt, assailing the imagination, rendering it comatose.  This betrays a central idiom of any form of art/entertainment: audience participation [4].  Movies must be accessible to the lowest common denominator.  Therefore they are often polished to a crass sheen.  For some stories, this is a serviceable treatment.  In some characters there is no depth.

    The characters in Watchmen have no depth.  The Comedian and Rorschach are simplistic, antagonistic right wing caricatures [5].  Ozymandias is the dandy liberal villain, blatantly arrogant, plainly evil [6].  Silk Spectre is the token female lead to a T, never finding consistency nor variance in her personality, resulting in a presence akin to a mannequin [7].  Only Doctor Manhattan, in his superhuman alienation and Nite Owl, caged by a denial of his own design, only these two roles even begin to hint at something memorable or worthwhile under all the cacophony [8].

    Without convincing, compelling characters to drive the proceedings, that thrust is left to the plot, of which there is little.  What could be a marvelous take on the murder mystery is obliterated before the opening credits have even rolled, as the Comedian’s murder is recounted through a brutal, egregious fight scene.  From the outset it is plain that whoever did the deed is at the very least the physical equal of Edward Blake [9].  Following this blunder the aforementioned credits present a compressed, alternate history of the US, using touchstones from the lives of first generation heroes the Minutemen to lend the film’s present day points of reference.  These are scarcely followed up in the film, leaving the entire exercise largely a waste of time [10].  In a movie that’s nearly three hours long, a director should have better things to do than hide Easter eggs.

    And that’s the central failure in Watchmen: its gross, overdone nature.  While there are moments taken verbatim from the graphic novel, they stand in stark contrast to the filmmakers’ additions and revisions [11].  This creates a sizeable gap that is never bridged.  It also buffs the peaks and valleys necessary to an effective drama down to an even plain.  At its core Watchmen is a drama, not an action blockbuster, and being approached as the latter undoes the movie’s grand potential.

    The gratuitous nature of the sex and violence only exacerbate the hackneyed story [12].  Coupled with stilted acting, the picture is dropped in league with so many other also-rans.  The Comedian’s attempted rape of Silk Spectre I, for example, is so overwrought that the characters’ later relationship is unfathomable.  Similarly, the catharsis of Walter Kovacs’ psychological transformation into Rorschach is eclipsed by the grisly murder that inspires it.  So many profundities are lost in the application of the Hollywood formula.  This attempt to relate to the general moviegoer will be likely met with ambivalence, simultaneously irritating the book’s ardent fans.  Zack Snyder has pleased no one but himself, and his studio masters [13].

    Were the film played as a straight action flick full of bluster and bravado, it may have been easier to watch.  But given the proclamations of the ubiquitous press junket, “Based on the Most Critically Acclaimed Graphic Novel of All Time”, “From the Visionary Director of 300”, etc., clearly we are meant to expect more than a Mel Gibson-meets-Wachowski Brothers grotesquerie of this caliber.  Fortunately  I did not, but I certainly didn’t expect it to be as bad as it actually is.

     

    From here on, it gets even dorkier... )

    (give a fuck?)

    Saturday, February 14th, 2009
    1:20 pm
    If You Want Change, Pay with Cash
    Terri Schiavo.  Thomas Beattie.  Nanya Suleman.  A common thread runs through these names.  Stars of tabloid journalism, masquerading as news proper, sensational and reactionary.

    This Suleman character I've been hearing about, but I've blissfully ignored the entire debacle despite my morbid curiosity.  It's come up more and more in conversation, so I looked her up, and it's really quite sick.  The woman talks of being Christian, and how she couldn't bring herself to let those precious little embryos die.  That's not God's plan, is it Ms. Suleman?  Well, neither was your "pregnancy".

    It is unfathomable that more people do not recognize the irreversible damage of overpopulation.  Most of humanity's most pressing concerns - famine, climate change, unemployment, et al - are directly related to the number of people crawling around on the hide of this poor, imperiled planet.  Mother Earth could really use a flea bath.

    I find people having an excessive number of children to be completely reprehensible.  It's selfish, shortsighted and stupid.  It's just as bad as smoking, if you ask me.  I don't begrudge folks the chance to reproduce, but seriously?  How transparently narcissistic does parenthood have to get before we say enough is enough?

    In other news, I was bemused by our very own county commissioner Bill James' recent comments in Creative Loafing concerning the criminality of homosexuality.  I don't have a problem with him using the word "trannies", and I don't even question his logic that gay sex is a criminal act (oral and anal sex are, in North Carolina, classified as a "crime against nature", after all).  What I take issue with is his posing as this morally upstanding, sanctimonious crusader.  Because I can look at the guy and tell he is a total sleazeball.  And in keeping with his status as scumbag politician, there is no doubt in my mind that the guy has had his fair share of back alley hummers (likely from trannies, but James would probably never know).  The pendulum swings both ways, commish.  If fags are crooks for sucking dick, then you're just as guilty for dipping your wick, no matter whose mouth it is.

    It seems the older I get the more unreasonable the world around me becomes.  I thought, I was told, that with age a certain reserve, a wise comfort sets in, but I find myself more intolerant, more baffled, each and every day.  My reactions may be increasingly muted, but within the same storms rage.

    (give a fuck?)

    Sunday, February 8th, 2009
    2:55 pm
    Had a birthday celebration last night.  It was nice to get out in the mild, clear weather and stumble around the neighborhood in a reasonably drunken stupor.  I've been out of practice in the drinking game, so when shots started showing up I got a little nervous.  I handled my intoxication with a reserved aplomb, I thought.  We went and watched Quay do the sketch comedy at the Graduate, then parlayed to my house to socialize on the porch.  First porch party of the season, a rousing success.

    I'm supposed to move in with Ryan, but we're having trouble finding a place that suits us both.  I really love my house, so naturally I'm having second, third, fourth and fifth thoughts.  There's not enough room at my place for Ryan's stuff, and he doesn't care to live with roommates (truth be told I wouldn't, either, as a couple).  The whole thing is too much stress at a bad time, and too much money diverted away from immediate needs like art supplies.

    I showed off the first 12 pages of my comic Art the Amoeba last night, which I plan to shop to publishers once the first one is in the can.  Reactions were uniformly positive, but these are my friends, so I am inclined to doubt their objectivity.  Still, it's the best work I think I've done, and I'm pretty happy with it.  It's fairly different from anything else coming out, so that's an advantage.  Then again it might be too weird to find an audience.  I don't know.  I'm just going to do the fucking thing and send it off and what happens happens.  All I can do is my best.  If that's not enough, then what is?

    I guess I could be nice and show some of  you guys what I'm talking about, eh?  I usually just show this stuff to my comic buddies to get feedback, but I can toss you other pals o' mine a sop, I s'pose.  Here's the cover, plus the first five pages of Art the Amoeba #1.Have a look, won't you? )

    (1 given fuck | give a fuck?)

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