On Beatles Fans

Something about Beatles fans has always really annoyed me. It’s like they know some secret of life that eludes me. Even worse, the secret is supposed to be so obvious, that when I obviously don’t enjoy their music, they all just look at me like dude what the fuck is wrong with you.

Growing up the Beatles were aggravating, all their happy lyrics and the way they turned complicated issues into simple pictorial statements really rubbed me the wrong. There were like a ray of light trying to pierce an abyss, except imagine the sun has a submarine and is submerging itself in order to chase away the blues. Such is the way Beatles fans feel to me, ya know like you have to be happy or something is wrong with you. Which, granted, something is wrong with me, but The Beatles simplicity, their lack of emotional depth or complications, that they could just ya know write songs that simple really annoyed me and brings me no satisfaction. Everytime they came on the jukebox I always felt that slight dread, the day Revoltion 9’s grating radio feedback would become part of my everyday listening habits, when the stupid refrain from The Taxman would cease to annoy and the simple energy of the song would take over. I dreaded the moment that The Beatles became good to me when the icy waters of my soul would have to give in to their chimes and I would float away like a bird on pyschdelic jetsome.

Now we could argue that all great bands are built on such reputations. A lot of people don’t like Bob Dylan… I love him, but his last few albums have totally sucked. But unfortunately somewhere in the repetitive nature of broadcast, in the groups dynamics that keep us all in one uniform culture, we are repeatably exposed to other’s taste, but where Dylan might actually elicit a thought, The Stones might capture the alienation of racial or sexual minorities, The Beatles are always upholding a (yes I really am going to use this term) a status qou. They are the music of a generation that interpreted the sixities counter-culture as a break before suburbia, now mind you their values are better than many, they are after all anti-war and all that and when Paul McCartney goes out on a limb supporting the Dali Lama or whatever he seems quite sincere as much that Yoko and John had something to day, but I just really don’t like their music. So I’ve devised the following game for everyone to play.

Think of a moment before you liked band X. Now hold that feeling in your memory and repeat it. Now repeat after me, “I hate ____________.” Just say it, right now in front of the monitor. Do this everyday till you really build up a resistance to band X. Now look in the mirror everyday and remember that you have just defeated a part of the capitalist machine. Good luck Warrior =)

On a similar note, it would be interesting to get people who intrinisically dislike a certian music together in a room. i.e. a photo of people who hate The Beatles, a photo of people who hate The Rolling Stones, etc.

Mystery

About 7 years ago I nearly date raped a girl. I remember crying on the phone trying to apologize. At the time I had a kinda uppity attitude about the thing, I thought well I’m not like other guys, I’m sensitive, I’m in touch with women. I understand them. I must be ya know like close to the perfect guy. Except of course very few of them wanted me.

When I first began sleeping with guys about a year ago I was amazed. I completely couldn’t understand their desire, it was alien remote from another world. Like their pyschologies, I couldn’t quite get them, they didn’t get me I didn’t get them. I was stranded between the genders, remote from women by experience, alienated from men by socializing. I was locked in myself, there was no external person only closed in interests and relations via the material world (i.e. intellectual pursuits, video games, magic the gathering etc). The former still being my main way of relating to people. But what struck me was the respect, the way they didn’t seem to be looking down on me, the sex wasn’t sleazy, I wasn’t dominated, I was a queen with her subjects, in control of the situation, my suitors trying to please me.

What occurs to me now is that ironically because my heterosexuality isn’t formed around giving pleasure, but rather on identification, it actually somehow is worse than the typical heterosexuality, it drives me to desperation, to push the boundaries of what to others would be friends. It was my own assurded belief that I was the better suitor that made the worse.

Two Dreams

Last night I dreamed of my sister. I was at a kathoey beauty pagneat with this african-american guy from a different dream of a house. Afterwards we get on a bus & go to this stadium. We meet these two white guys he sells pot to. He leaves and the guys are nice. They want to smoke some pot. I go outside. The kathoey bus has arrived, it is snowing, the parking lot is covered in white sheets. My sister is in one of the windows, we sit on the trunk of a car and talk.

I have to many dreams to count. I am a secret agent in an office building. Multiple die, but we keep going back in time to restage the dream to a suitable conclusion. My sister works in the building. She goes into the bathroom or something (a small one toilet addendum to an account’s cramped officed of laptops). An assassin comes in to kill her, I manage to get in the way. Later we walk over the dust fields of mars.

The Renaissance

The greatest periods in human histoty have involved the mass importation of ethnic knowledge from abroad. The Renaissance was essentialy the importation of Roman and Greek and especially Asian knowledge and ways of thinking & governing. Asians today are spending their lives accumulating new forms of knowing some detrimental to their ethnicity others cut off from ethnicity by colonialism just learning to reformulate their selves.

The past is rich and deep, it is full of ethnicities worth assuming and models of society and government far more well thought than many today, but because we sit at the top of the heap, we assume the past is inferior. The Western now is full of hubris, we think we are the most tolerant, the most open, the most humane etc, but It was the periods where the present had humility to the past that gave the present its most advanced and complicated forms and its greatest openess to its own potentiality.

Masas

I’ve known two Masas so far. Both of them remind me of each other. Masa two works at my school as a Japanese teacher, he’s polite, but a little ugly. He has a girlfriend back in Japan. Masa one is a DJ who seems to be becoming increasingly more popular. Both like talking to me, Masa Two has a certian downtrodden aspect to him, as if he’s eternally about to give up and die. Masa one looks like he’s about to take over the world. I like both Masas in my own way, One is a winner and you just wanna know him, Two is homely and kind, he writes down your name in his notebook so he can remember, he teaches at 4 different schools. One runs a successful clothing shop, Two dreams of teaching in Australia. What is the difference between these two? Genetics? Environment? I would like to think the former.
You see, I believe Masa Two was the result of alien abductions. At night I imagine him waking up in terror dreaming of being abducted, saucer weather. I know this because I was abducted, I remember white hands on my bed post, helplessness as I levitated off my Memphis bed, my trickle of Pavement and Bob Dylan records on the floor, Masa Two shows the signs of a brain swap, he’s not the person he thinks he should be. I don’t know what’s wrong with Masa Two, but if Masa One had been abducted, I imagine his 6 year old self touring the UFO perhaps glimpsing the cosmos for a second out a holographic wall. These things occur to me because neither Masa is fullfilled, but the fullfilled are rarely done with the world. No their lot keeps trying, and maybe Masa Two will find that alien in Sydney, kick his ass, play with his guts.
As of late I’ve been entertaining violent fantasises. These went away from awhile but chalk dust and meat are contributing factors to my rage. Despite this, I am nicer to my students than I ever have been, this is because I’m becoming a woman. I didn’t know this until today when one of my students (a young woman with a kathoey friend) stopped at the end of class and sat around, and then just as I was leaving she said, “good bye girl” and then to clarify she said, “I think you’re a girl”. Judging from the pictures of me in class, she might be right:

I know… it’s a beautiful process. =)

moving on to wordpress

I have decided to just update my wordpress account from now on with concerns of my life:
http://dignifieddevil.wordpress.com

I feel like continuing to post in a private forum just isn’t for me, it’s a kinda opening up to the world… or at least google’s search cache.

-
A

Live Journal is go

Thanks to wordpress’ new import feature all my LJ posts are on this blog. password protected ones have no password, just leave it empty and press enter.

I am ontology

“In its inauthentic tranquility, Dasein compares itself with everything and thereby drifts along towards an alienation in which its ownmost potentiality-for-Being is hidden from it. Dasein engages in a downward plunge in which it becomes closed off from its authenticity and possibility. Dasein, as fallen, is characterized by idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity which involves a levelling down of all possibilities of Being. In idle talk, the “they” closes off the hidden meaning and ground of what is talked about. In curiosity, Dasein is constantly uprooting itself and concerned with the constant possibility of distraction. As ambiguous, the “they” acts as though it “knows everything,” yet, at bottom, this understanding is superficial in that nothing is genuinely understood.”
from http://mythosandlogos.com/heidegger.html

Today I was considering settling down, just accepting myself in relations to other as some type of loser-ee waistrel, and then I read this. Thanks summary of Heiddeger for the existential viewpoint.

-
Andrew

Waterparks of the Ancients Act 2

Water Parks of the Ancients Act 2

Act 2

ok, here goes…

*the room goes dark…have only a dim red light, curtain rise, showing a altar on the center stage, a boy starting walking from the back, cut through the audience, then on to the stage..he stops at the altar, light a candle and silently pray*

SAINT FOX: Howdy little lamb, what storm brings you here?

(This is Matt’s input from the previous thread that didn’t come up…so I’ll re-post it and we can go on from here:)

(an owl in the roof speaks down)

owl: you might want to speak louder, i see many like you here whispering to the wall only to get no reply.. Maybe there out. maybe there busy at a themed dinner party that you weren’t invited to. they abandoned you. but dont be frightened just remember i only speak in code…
Who may I ask are you calling for?

Lamb: (In such grief, shaking voice) My fellow farm animals….I’ve come to pray, to cry, to morn with the deepest sorrow of me heart. Oh thee shall remain, forever in my mind. For that, I am the lamb of God, I dedicate my pray to thy soul.
*cries and moan* As you said, He might never hear me, he might exist not but a name, but I dwell on the only savior of our souls. I dwell on hope. And with hope, I feel his embrace. With hope, I live on.

Saint Fox: Well, I hear you, but then I ain’t exactly God’s favourite saint. He’s none too happy with me setting up a bar at the back of his church, but with all the lost souls that come to cry on deaf ears I figured it’s the least I could do. What’ll ya’ll have to drink?

Lamb: *sobs* vodka lemonade, please. *sobs*

[Enters holding Icarus' hand]
Matilda: Oh my god! I had no idea that you could get married in the Water Park of the ancients! This so cool!!!

Lamb: *staring at the new arrivals, still sobbing*

Owl: all sheep go to heaven. drink it, drink it!! [head jerks violently]

Saint Fox: You too, owl baby. A riddle in a shot of tequila, with the lime wearing a disguise, as usual? All sheep go to heaven, after they roll a seven. But we’ve only got one dice.
Candles are on the house, pilgrims, light up, you never know what they’ll show you.

Matilda: [turns to icarus] I think they want to finish their scene. Let’s go out to the wave pool with Pol Pot’s grave in the middle of it again. I wanna a ride swan boat out to Phu Quoc Island.

Heimda: [A lion roars again, this time with a woman scream of terror]

Icarus: No wait Matilda. We came here to get married. And that’s what we will do. Is there a priest in the house?

Lamb: (scream with rage) Do you not have respect?! how could one be so cruel to put on joyful event in the presence of my deeply devoted sorrow?! (sobs and then drink up) another vodka shot please…

Saint Fox: Lamb baby! Whoever said marriage was a joyful event? Would you begrudge these pretty pilgrims the chance to promise to suffer each others’ pain forevermore? Here’s your vodka, listen to what it’s telling you, and perhaps it’ll listen to you…

Lamb:point taken. amen to that *drinks up thw whole shot quickly*

Matilda: Ahh madness and suffering such are the things the Hmong and the Khmer have so desperately tried to bid ado, but love is forged in madness and suffering its cause, hence to suffer is to love.

Lamb: (to Iccarus) does she always talk shit all the time like this? or is it just a pre-marrage kidda thing?

Icarus: (to lamb) don’t fuffle over mad menstration. you’ve never had a blood bomb go over between your legs. i havn’t either. but i’ve seen enough of them blood bombs. boom boom boom. its nasty stuff. trust lamb dude.

Heimda: [Blood flowing out through a slit beneath the door, the room where Heimda and lion were making music. The previous loud noise and scream from the inside has gone silent.]

Matilda: Maybe we should go check on them?

Saint Fox: You better be ready for what you’ll see. Y’never know what’s what in this place; here we got the blood of life licking the altar’s feet, but what we got outside? I got masks, you might wanna put them on, cos everything you see here’s sure as hell already wearing one.
Now excuse me, I better check if the blood wants a drink.

Matilda: [takes mask walks off in the blood]

[The door flings open, almost hit Matilda as she jumped away in time. Standing at the door is a figure of half a lion joined together with half a naked female body, back to back. Thick red blood dripping from every body part.]

Heimda: We have become one [the two eerie voices come out overlapping as the right side figure speaks] and strangely I recall this sacred union. From now on, we will refer to ourselves as Heimdilion. Our blood can quench your thirst. Feast, you may, as my left half here has already done to me so.

Lamb: *traumatized by it all* omg this is madness!! you all are crazy!!!!! *got himself another shot and drank it quickly*

Matilda: [tries a little blood]

Lamb:*screams*

Matilda: Hemdilion will you see me and Icarus through our vows? We do so need family even if mutated and spouting miracolous cure alls. Perhaps a flower lion? or maybe some centaurs for the groom?

Icarus: I’ve always had a thing for Centaurs in fish nets. … but sine there arn’tany around do you mind doing the cermony Hemdilion?

Heimdilion: Foreseeing a new union to come, I warn you of all possible consequences for it is such a heavy burden. Now, if your physical and mental condition are prepared, you shall make a vow before me and my other half, before this crystal coloured Absolut and before all living and non-living things in this hall.

Speak loud and clear in unison. Are you the progenitor A, and you the progenitor B, ready to become one?

Icarus/ Matilda: (unison) yes.

Saint Fox: Then I anoint you with creme de menthe and a little lamb’s tears.
Now drink y’all of this holy liquor.

Lamb: I OBJECT!!!!
*wipes the tears and speak loudly with drunk shaking voice* I thought i would keep this for Act 3, but fuck it. *pulls out a M16 machine gun* EVERYBODY STANDS STILL, OR I’LL FUCKING BLOW YOUR HEAD OFF!!!!!!

Matilda: It’s over Lamb. I don’t love you anymore. It ended when you killed our griffins and left pure Heimeda with nothing more than a lion for a pet and gash for my sex.

Icarus: What?! Wait a second? You slept the the lamb? you slept with a fuckin woolly? When were you going to tell me this? And where the fuck does a lamb buy a M16?

Saint Fox: it’s a metaphor, sweet-wings, and a hypocritical one at that. It’s supposed to be a clichéd shorthand for “innocent”, but that ain’t quite our vodka-stained lamb, is it now?

Heimdilion: [gaze coldly at the matter] This is a blatant foolish act! [run towards the lamb and bite his hand off to free the M16 from his holding.

[a high speed drives Heimdillion too far frontward. The joined body instantly flies out the stained glass window into the black pitch darkness outside and falls into the ground below. A twisted carcass is clearly displayed as everyone runs out to witness the sudden death of Heimdilion. The lamb's hand with the M16 is still clenched tightly in its mouth.]

Lamb: WTF!

Icarus: Well, that was a quick death.

Saint Fox: Damn, did she have to go and-
[half her face shatters into colourful glass shards]

Matilda: [Goes out to dead body] Oh Heimda Boedine, born in a submarine, craddled in astronaut’s helms. That you had to die defending the rights of this gender that I paid 70,000 USD to join, is such sweet irony. Nature has defered to the machine, but I will always remember the good times Heimda, remember when our mother died beneath the coke and vivienne westwood and her rigor mortis’d body held us in check one last hug before we gnawed our way free of her bosom and into the streets to pilfer for food? remember when we rode griffins from the mountains around shenzen and were shot down over iraq? We became concubines in Saddam Hussein’s household? Remember how he stroked our hair and told us stories of this water park of the ancients? Beneath all those paintings of blood, thunder, and sinew his pipe in hand he would tell us of a place where hmong and khmer can slip and slide as one. Such beauties don’t exist in our world, torn asounder by violence and tourism, but gentle Heimalion… or not so gentle Heimdlion our life was short our happiness brief, but perhaps for a second our peppers called out in the darkness..

Lamb:…..*do the cross* Amen.

End

Mach-20 by Laurie Anderson Fragment

This has been sitting in my drafts file for awhile. Made some minor revisions and decided to publish it because it’s 4 a.m. and I have nothing else to do. WordPress doesn’t let me embed you so you can watch Mach-2o here.

Laurie was able to take an idea like information and turn it into a sperm whale race by adopting the conventions of the research paper and folding it into a storybook. Her pieces like Mach-20 aren’t brilliant for their literal conceptual meaning, but the way they shift the topography of our ideas. By simply folding metaphors, changing the track of her thought, and wandering inspiridely through her thinking, she reintroduces wonder into a stale intellectual environment. But it brings me back to Greil Marcus’ Mystery Train, one of Randy Newman’s greater charms according to Marcus is that Newman’s inventive and self-conscious, Laurie Anderson on the other hand is inventive with consciousness. Mach-20 employs a kinda metaphorical thinking similar to the lyrical output of Bob Dylan and Stephen Malkmus, but she is able to move these totemic ideas into constellations that collapse in wonder.  Anyway, she caught a little euraka moment, but even better she manages to share the process of coming to that thought with us.