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[27 May 2012|08:07pm] ( Movies 2k12 ) +1

[20 May 2012|02:10pm] ( Movies 2k12 ) +1

Movies 2k12 [02 May 2012|02:47pm] ( Movies 2k12 ) +1

[24 Feb 2012|10:10pm] ( Movies 2k12 ) +1

Movies 2k12 [21 Jan 2012|02:32pm] [ mood | idle ] I did this last year in public on my blogger over here, but I'm thinking I'll just keep it here now until the final results are in. I need to figure out better ways to use my blogger blog for poetry promotion etc. ( Movies 2k12 ) +1

THE MANAGEMENT THANKS YOU [03 Jun 2007|08:48pm] Alright peeps. It had to happen eventually and I'm getting fussy about the public nature blogging about personal lives anyway so I'm splitting from the scene. By which I mean splitting as in dividing. My attentions. Public "Im in ur feedz. Postin bout muh akdemick pursoots." cultural critic, socio-politically bewildered, artsy-fartsy, and/or informal text analysis-y posts will henceforth be located at the other cluck1000. Since that's where everybody else is and I already had to get an acount long ago to leave not-anonymous comments anyhow. Add that shit to ur feedz! Or don't. But do change ur links! Because this one will probably fade back from whence it came (i.e. locked entries, in seeeeecret). But regardless, that's what's up. 3 = x +1

Get Enthused! [02 Jun 2007|11:44pm] I just made a grilled cheese sammie! I'm going to go [do illicit drugs]! With [quallity folks]! I spent four of today's hours sitting in [someone else]'s chair in [someone else]'s living room writing a paper about [unpretentious avant garde optimism]! Life is good! Wish you were here! Byeee! 2 = x +1

Go Insane! [02 Jun 2007|02:33am] I'm downloading Lindsey Buckingham's entire solo catalogue. I don't care what the Fleetwood Mac haters say, he is vastly underappreciated. 2 = x +1

Struggled to See Past My Nose [31 May 2007|11:59pm] CLAUDIA RANKINE DON'T LET ME BE LONELY Fifteen minutes later the doorbell rings. You explain to the ambulance attendant that you had a momentary lapse of happily. The noun, happiness, is a static state of some Platonic ideal you know better than to pursue. Your modifying process had happily or unhappily experienced a momentary pause. This kind of thing happens, perhaps is still happening. He shrugs and in turn explains that you need to come quietly or he will have to restrain you. If he is founrced to restrain you he will have to report that he is forced to restrain you. It is this simple: Resistance will only make matters more difficult. Any resistance will only make matters worse. By law, I will have to restrain you. His tone suggests that you should try to understand the difficulty in which he finds himself. This is further disorienting. Iam fine! Can't you see that! You climb into the ambulance unassisted. (7) The strange thing is that before they take her to the hospital, the ambulance stops at the police station. At the station the sergeant is or is not interested but he does ask, What the hell do you think you were doing? The girl loves him for asking. She loves him for keeping her thinking in the present even as her actions desolve into our past. In all our dreams his question is the question that stays. (36) TOM PETTY SQUARE ONE Had to find some higher ground. Had some fear to get around. You can't say what you don't know. Later on won't work no more. Last time through I hid my tracks so well I could not get back. Yeah my way was hard to find. Can't sell your soul for piece of mind. Square one, my slate is clear, rest your head on me, my dear. It took a world of trouble, took a world of tears, it took a long time to get back here A year ago there were sirens, long and longer desperations, and there the high heels that rubbed scars into the knuckles of my feet when I walked home on Friday and the hospital scrubs I stole on Sunday all balled up in something like a giant ashtray. And all of that turning into smoldering feathers in the drizzle of afterwards. Some of you were absolutely invaluable. Some of you still are. Regardless of whatever is or is not between us now, one at a time you saved parts of my life for me and held onto them until I got my strength back. Tonight I'm full of food I made and my calves are sore from flights of stairs all over town. I'm too tired to feel content and too acquisitive, too hungry, too impatient to throw in the towel and hit the hay. But I'll live. There's really just nothing to say but okay and thanks and love and nothing and honest. +1

Macro Abel [31 May 2007|02:22pm] I just discovered Micro Politics. I'm lightheaded. My scalp is buzzy and I'm dizzy inside my ears. I seriously feel like if I stood up all the blood would rush out of my head and purple-black neon-edged electric fog would roll into my eyesight from both sides. This is every argument I've ever had with anyone ever, every idea I've ever ascribed to. I'm nauseous. +1

Food Baby [26 May 2007|10:20pm] When you're full of saag paneer the actual sound of saying saag paneer is the noise you make. Kinda the only noise you're capable of making. With your tongue lolling out of your mouth. +1

"It's a Question of Living" [25 May 2007|03:27pm] I feel like the Dogme directors differ from so many other artists--intellectual (as opposed to narrative) filmmakers and experimental writers, especially--is that these films, these stories, aren't about people who want to believe in something but don't, and are instead about people who do believe in so much but wish they didn't. People who recognize the heart-wrenching irreconcilability of idealism. It's what I get from things like Claudia Rankine's Don't Let Me Be Lonely, of Fellini's La Strada, Wong Kar Wai's 2046, John Ford's Man Who Shot Liberty Valence, W.G. Sebald, Margaret Atwood, Hemingway...blah blah all my favorites. It's not the difficulty of having to choose between lessers of evils, but a resignation and an acceptance, ultimately a sadness, that fills up the empty spaces left by all the things and people and homes and experiences we aren't able to love only because our time is finite. We just have so many choices to make and the fight or the flight in each one of them just wears so much on our engagement, on our hope. It seems so easy to settle, but that passivity is an illusion. Not only is it an option, it's an option none of us needs to choose. 1 = x +1

Rules and Manifestos ("That's the Trick: No One Is Starving") [25 May 2007|10:26am] LARS VON TRIER I could try to insist on a symbolic power. I could lay down the rule that during this talk you have to address me as King Lars. I could threaten to leave the room if you disobeyed. But that would do nothing to change the fact that in an interview, the same rules apply as in cinema. No matter what happens during the filming process, the power is in the hands of the editor. You have the scissors in your hands so you have absolute power. BOB DYLAN (from To Ramona): There's no one to beat you, no one to defeat you 'cept the thoughts of yourself feeling bad. I've heard you say many times that you're better than no one and no one is better than you. If you really believe that, you know you have nothing to win and nothing to lose. FEDERICO FELLINI I am a liar but an honest one. I have invented myself entirely. LIL WAYNE I'm a go getter man, know what I mean? I mean you gotta really live and think and breathe and act a certain way when you feel you're the best.  I mean, honestly. For one second everybody out there be watchin you, just think for a second, think to yourself--I mean like right know--think to yourself 'I'm the best.' Whatever you do. Even if it's nothin. 'I'm the best at nothin.'  Just think it and then try to live like that for a moment.  That's hard. And I do it. And if you tell me I'm the best? If you agree with me?  Then I really do it. And that's real. +1

Radiohead [22 May 2007|10:44am] Last night Kelly said when she listens to Radiohead she envisions herself being chased over open terrain by zombies. I said I think of myself walking around campus hungover when it's really sunny out. 1 = x +1

Good Tired [21 May 2007|08:55pm] Remember how last summer I worked the copy room from nine till one and then biked to the firm to work from three till five and I went to bed every night before ten? God, it's too good. Even better now that from 1:00-3:50 it's a film studies class. And there's driving to other states or getting beer for lunch on the sidewalk with Ellen or having people over to my apartment or writing writing writing or Anthony's plants or fussing with my air conditioning. Summer is good. School is good. Being busy is good. There's something a little sad underneath it but I don't have the time or energy to piece it together. There are some of you I miss, I think, even though what I miss isn't something that is real in the world anymore; I've been having a lot of beautiful, wistful, liquid dreams about ghosts, people who've changed each other over time. That's just always a little blue for me, I guess: the marked loss of passing time and the things you can't revisit. You put the face of your past on your future until you've got a better one for it to wear. I don't have anything to say really, no time to dwell. I'm exhausted. The decent, thick kind. LOUIS ARAGON PARIS PEASANT I feel the ground tremble beneath me and suddenly I feel like a sailor aboard a ruined castle. Everything signifies havoc. Everything is crumbling under my gaze. The sense of uselessness is squatting beside me on the first step. He is dressed like me, but with an added touch of nobility. He does not carry a handkerchief. The infinite is reflected in his face and he holds extended between his hands a blue accordion which he never plays and upon which one can read: PESSIMISM. Standing on one leg, the other foot cupped in his hand, a bit theatrical, a bit common, clay pipe, cap tilted over one eye and singing I do believe: Ah if only you knew the details of the life of Burgundy snails...at the top of the steps, in the dust and the cigarette ends, why if it isn't that charming boy: the Sense of the useless. 1 = x +1

Idiots [21 May 2007|03:39pm] "the film is about a group of middle-class malcotents who decide to provoke society at large by behaving like idiots" 4 = x +1

1895-1995 [21 May 2007|02:53pm] Lars Von Trier: I remember calling Thomas [Vinterberg] and asking him if he wanted to start a new wave with me. [Laughs] And that's how it started. Dogme Uncut: For the first time anyone can make a film.  But the more accessible the medium, the more important the avante garde. Marco Abel: There is a fitting reason for the military connotations. Avant Garde, right? Coming from the term front guard. Like, I mean, you have to have soldiers to start a war. Me: Oh. Gurl. 4 = x +1

Tussin [17 May 2007|07:11pm] Morning: Email: From: Me Subject: Re: house Date: May 17, 2007 5:21:29 PM CDT To: Anthony As far as I can tell, nothing's gone awry. [...] Nursed my birthday hangover by tending the grounds. Got tangled up in the hose. Ended up watering myself before the plants. Ridiculousness all around. So, yeah. All in all, it was a really wonderful birthday. I saw almost everyone I wanted to see who lives in Lincoln. And they all bought me drinks. I already have plans to get a beer and a meal with the ones who couldn't make it out. As for the folks who're scattered to the four winds: Josh is home in June; I got a text from Zoe about listening to Nas in Africa and wanting to read more, learn more, change the globe that genuinely made my heart feel like it was swelling up; Kelly's back tomorrow; and Emily leaves Italy tonight (which is, for her, tomorrow morning). Which will do wonders for my summer ennui, most pertinently via the road trip I'm taking to transport Emily from Nebraska to Iowa. Life friends and high speeds pretty much cure all that ails me. +1

Is It Possible That All This Magic Went Unnoticed [13 May 2007|03:06am] REGINA SPEKTOR SUMMER IN THE CITY summer in the city i'm so lonely lonely lonely i been hallucinatin you babe at the backs of other women and i tap on their shoulder and they turn around smilin but there's no recognition in their eyes oh summer in the city means cleavage cleavage cleavage don't get me wrong babe in general i'm doin quite fine just when it's summer in the city and you're long gone from this city i start to miss you baby sometimes when it's summer in the city and you're so long gone from this city and i start to miss you baby sometimes ooh and i started missin you baby sometimes ooh and i start to miss you baby sometimes 1 = x +1

Wam My Grades! [11 May 2007|07:32pm] First I screamed. Then I clapped and kicked the air. Then I couldn't stop laughing. I want to split in two so I can pick myself up and spin my around the room! And take me to Meet the Robinsons and hold hands in the theater and buy me ice cream and woo me back to my place after. Like, holy shit. I failed 239 last semester fer chrissakes! And I have never ever ever gotten straight As. Like, ever. Like, in my life. Like...oh man. Seriously. Bitch, I'm back on my grizzy. 8 = x +1

Ruh Roh [10 May 2007|04:00am] (More from Hum) after all it is music          song-spiraled                and the landscape detained          across a field          into a night                                                   inwhich we learn only the pornography of sight                its ocular target                                                                            see see see I just realized there's kind of a big conflict between all the raging I do about the difference between images and writing and my whole...uh...being all about literary analysis/creative writing and film studies/art history. As in like maybe I have big fat egg on my big fat face about how pictures and words should keep the bloodlines pure by not intermarrying. Dammit. If I am late to meet Anthony tomorrow because this realization is keeping me up at night I will eat my hat with a side of picture books. (Also. On that note. Summer schmool: I dropped my blacks in American politics class so I could take Marco Abel's European Cinemas class. Starts on the 21st. Three hours a day Monday through Friday. All Marco all the time. Not to mention the other film class I'm taking after that one. Next fall I'm kind of looking forward to getting out of Andrews (by which I mean I'm only registered for three classes in the English building) and back into art history. I also realized that, while I've taken two three-hundred level film studies courses, I have not taken the most primary requisite for the minor and will have to big fat revisit that one much like my belated forray into the required intro comp course a year ago. God that was gross. One of these days I should get around to declaring an emphasis and some minors. Before I graduate. Carravaggio, I'm sorry it's been so long.) 3 = x +1

Outside a Pickle [09 May 2007|07:09pm] ANN LAUTERBACH, UNTITLED WITH MOON What she sees are reinforcements from the dream wherein the cat comes out from under a flimsy wall attached to its mother. Better to lie down on the floor and watch the canopy sway, the logics of cloud tinker with light. Tomorrow all stories will be abridged. The old men will talk of creatures bedazzled by dawn, the trick of dawn, things unknown to anyone, feuds and love confided by uncle to girl when he feels the urge to tell. Desire will return, bounding or lancing down from the scant universe, causing burns and antennae, blisters of air. The pilgrims will move on into the funnel cooled on the water by the moon's breath. There is only one way down to the river, at least from here. Lately I feel like Regina Spektor, Amy Winehouse or Chan Marshall, like my cigarettes all have white filters and when I smudge them onto the sidewalk with sharp boots my mouth will be imprinted around them, like I flex my biceps in the mirror in the morning and make sun tea without anyone knowing, like I paint my toenails on the roof of my building and have no one to flirt with. Like I've been spending the first week of summer being flippant with older men and spending most of my evenings in or alone. There's a lot of sun and breeze and I hate being indoors and my calves feel like bicycle tires that don't need any air. I spend more time trying to fall asleep than I spend actually sleeping. My legs always feel like going and I feel like a little kid. Like a little kid who gets away with murder. A real pistol. Like all the ways grownups have been describing me for as long as I can remember. A real pistol. Flip, scrappy, sassy, sharp, smart (as in 'you've got a real smart mouth'), cute (as in 'don't get cute with me'), crude, curt, squirrely, snotty, tacky, brassy, brash, rash, blunt. Impervious to. Oblivious of. Could really use a couple laps around the block. Some people look for their own reflection in their relationships. And we have to to an extent, to know we're connected. I've worked hard to keep my self-evaluation separate, it's a bad habit to pick up and an easy habit it keep. But even though very rarely does anybody in my peer group change my mind about anything, let alone myself, I didn't spend time with anybody my own age until I was six and the older the habit, the harder it is to kill: I wind up looking up at people--up to people--just to feel familiarity, to feel capability, to feel belonging. I feel out of my depth with people my own age. I don't want their assessments and I don't want to give them mine, I don't know how to pass the time together with them and I get confused and flustered. It's not so much that I like being the baby of the family, that I want to be fawned over at the grown up table, but it's that I feel most myself in the role of the young gun, shooting off my mouth, shooting from my hip, wearing bravado and naiveté with the obvious swagger of spurs and holsters, bandanas and jaunty hats. 2 = x +1

Never Forget [08 May 2007|12:57pm] +1

N. S. [08 May 2007|02:06am] Also: happy twenty-first birthday to Neil, one of my best friends for life and the only mister distinguished enough to share the month of May with me. Not only does he hold my unofficial record for best verbal sparring partner, this kid's got one of the solidest heads on his shoulders of anyone I've ever known, he always has and I'd wager he always will. There're some friends that are just a part of you in that when they're happy you're happy and you keep in touch on and off but always because you're invested in them. And it's kinda like family, but it's more like limbs. 1 = x +1

MjB [08 May 2007|01:49am] So far I've read more than 47 books in 2k7 (it was 47 last time I counted) and about half were books of poetry and this was one of my favorites. Anthony pointed me in its direction at the dizzying height of my non-stop-sonnet-rock-block/Creeley/MattHart/Cinephrastics/Stein/MaureenOwen/prose-poem fever-dream to assist me in getting my shit straight writing-wise. It helped. Several copies of it are available, used, for less than $3 on Amazon. If ya know what I'm sayin'. Lotsa folks've been all about "recommend me some books" lately on the ol' livejournal flist so I thought I'd put this one out there for errbody. +1

Don't Worry Bout Mine, Ima Grind Till I Get It [05 May 2007|03:34pm] I am luckier (and more capable) than I look: So it's summer you guys! I turned my paper in and I turned it in onnnnn tiiiiime (it wound up being just shy of 3000 words). This was my best semester of all time, performance wise--as far as actually going to my classes, doing my assignments, and turning things in on time. I always learn a lot, but I read more and wrote more and improved faster because of it. And so far I've gotten As in both classes that have grades posted. I don't have a lot to say really I guess. I'm just happy. Proud of myself. Corny as that may be. I done good and I gotta remind myself of that since I'm pretty stubborn about not taking anybody else's word on the matter. Things are lining up for me. I'm lining things up for myself. Anyway, here's a song, it sounds exactly how I feel: Sky's the Limit (it's like if Meat Loaf, Lil Wayne, Manheim Steamroller, Fleetwood Mac's Tusk and maybe The Moldy Peaches or your ringtone had a kid). 3 = x +1

Jeez Louise [04 May 2007|09:20am] Not nearly breakfast in bed: 1520 words; 6ish/8 pages; T-minus 02:42:50 Why am I crossing my toes?? Is that something I do? 4 = x +1

Send Smokes! [03 May 2007|08:04pm] Rush hour: 800 words; 3/8 pages; T-Minus 15:56:12 hours Why is it so hard for me to commit to the knowledge that what is below My Best is only Failure if it's Nothing At All? This is how to choke on your own idealism. Believe me, I'm a real pro. Okay, no! No choking! Listen here, you: this is doable! As in this task is one you are able to do. Because you are awesome and full of delicious food and are going to go buy cigarettes and coffee and a frosted cookie the size of your head while listening to the We Takin' Over remix on repeat in your fancy headphones. 1 = x +1

Make or Break [03 May 2007|12:15am] Research Paper as Slow, Flesh-Eating Death: 0 pages; 0 words; T-Minus 32:44:03. Fuck. Will somebody please makeout with me if I don't fail this class again?? 3 = x +1

P.S. [02 May 2007|07:27pm] This is what we've become. A world where comic strips alter scientific discourse. Totally terrifying and/or totally badass!/? 1 = x +1

This Is Why I'm German (You Ain't Cuz You Not) [02 May 2007|07:24pm] LUTZ KOEPNICK FRAMING ATTENTION: WINDOWS ON MODERN GERMAN CULTURE THE CRISIS OF THE IMAGE Turn-of-the-century German aesthetic culture is often described as one primarily haunted by a crisis of the word, of signification. In poetic, dramatic, and novelistic work...we witness a profound unease about the relationship between signs and referents, a desire to strip language entirely off its ordinary referential functions, to emphasize the pictorial and visual valence of written or spoken words, or to develop new structures of linguistic expressions able to name the innermost essence of individual things. What is clear is that language, for these poets, seemed to have lost its ability to order and contain the world; language was experienced as being on the loose, no longer capable of safely linking intentions and meanings, mind and matter, perceptions and reality. Wull shucks. When life hands you real lemons rotting on the page, right? Sigh. Oh also? Ol' Luttzy there was talking about the 19th century fin du cycle there, btw. Kablooie! +1

2do2day [02 May 2007|12:40pm] 1. Get new student ID (I lost mine :( I'm afraid they'll find out about...yknow...my grades? And take away my free honors printing). 2. Take out cardboard/glass/plastic recycling. 3. Pick up German cinema books at Love library (return animated film books). 7. Study club (caffinate!) Runs I Can Do During Work 4. Take absurd amount of canned goods to drop bin @ Capitol (most of these are from John or my roommates from Courtyards. Or my mom pawning off weird stuff on me in spite of good intentions). 5. Pay parking ticket. 6. Drop off early liscence registration at DMV (I can get my big kid liscence next Monday GAH!!!) Optional for Today 8. Email Anthony (at some point). 9. Laundry/parents'. +1

On: Ink, Desire & Vertigo; Being Alive [02 May 2007|01:11am] My second tattoo turned one year old the other day. It means so much more to me now even than when I got it. I've learned so much about all the things I never thought I'd have to learn and all the things I thought I knew then but didn't understand around them and through them. J'en sors means I get out of it. And I do. I have, I did, I will, always; I know that now, solidly like a white ceramic cup, empty of everything spilled. It's freedom and it's fleeting, it's what moves and keeps moving, that certainty. The sad of endings and the ecstasy of unstoppable beginnings, it's the seamless bleed between that greys everything. It's the hardest and the loveliest thing. LOUIS ARAGON: PARIS PEASANT (PG 127) It is at that moment that I dream and that I see in the air the absurd specter of my destiny. This spectre is boredom, an exquisitely beautiful young man who yawns and walks around with a butterfly net to catch goldfish. He reads out aloud the wording on posters and signs. He knows the newspapers by heart. He tells stories that nobody laughes at. He passes a hand of shadows over his eyes. Isn't that so? say the French when they are absolutely at the end of their tether. But he goes farther, punctuating his words with a terrible explitive: What's the good? He cannot see a knob on an electric dial without turning it, a house without visiting it, a threshold without crossing it, a book without buying it. What's the good? all without curiosity or pleasure but simply because one has to do something, after all, and because here we are all the same after all. And what was this ALL which swells up in the voice that pronounces it? [simple design of the word 'Nothing' in a box] Nothing, really, worth gnawing the fingers about, however cross at having been fooled. Listen to the song of boredom to a well-known tune, the well-known song to a tune of boredom: What's the What's the What's the good What's the good What's the good What's the What's the What's the good What's the What's the good good good Ad libitum: Wha Wha Wha--Wha Wha What's the good. Boredom watches the people pass by in the street. He goes into a cafe: he gets out of it. He goes into a girl's place: he gets out of it. He disrupts a life: he gets out of it. He might very well kill: he gets out of it. He might kill himself after killing time: (PG 175) Who is there? who is calling me? Darling. I am not mutinous, I hasten to you. Here are my lips. So steals away. And then afterwards. Me of course, not difficult. Damned, damned. Let me collapse, beat me, break me in. I am your creature, your victory, better still my defeat. That's all finished. You demand that I speak, me then. But what you want, what you love, this sonorous serpent, is a phrase in which the words enamoured of your whole self should be happily modulated and weighty as a kiss. What matter the iron filings lavished upon these scales and the desperate sense assumed by every word in making the leap from heart to lips, what matter what I say if the sloughed sounds, transformed into agile hands, touch your lightly-clad body at last? Forbid me nothing any longer: look, I surrender. My whole thought process is yours to command, sun. Come down upon me from the hills. The air is redolent of a certain childish charm that you beget, it is almost as though your fingers were roaming in my hair. Am I really alone, in this grotto of rock salt, where miners carry their torches behind the darkness's transparent pendants, and go past pulling their snowy trucks. Am I alone, under these carefully pruned trees where in an azure heat the mules turn bucket-wheels, from habit; am I alone in this delivery van decorated with a faithful reproduction of the already outmoded sign of a lingerie shop. Am I alone at the brink of this man-made canyon in a garden to the southwest, where one can hear the clear laughter of women encrusted with emeralds. Am I alone no matter where, under any artificial lighting, heedless of what retains me, beyond the little isochronous oscillations of my love, but strong in this love which reverberates within what serves as the bedrock of delirium, strong in the lynchings of kisses, in the summary justice of my eyes, the heart well and truly hanged, while the carelessly tied-up horses trail their tethering ropes as they graze, shying at the shadows, following the barberry hedges, and shaking their bicoloured manes. Am I alone in any abyss whose splendours have just a moment since been veiled, above the heartsickness, the wrench of having to take leave suddenly of a happy company, above the fleeting perversities, and other white skylarks already skimming the ground in a desire for rain and for omens in which a whole cloud of sweat was smoking. Alone from the bleedings and the sighs. Alone from the little urban bridges and the suburban solutions. Alone from the squalls, the bouquets of violets, the wasted evenings. Alone on my own sharp point, where in the winking lights of an unmasked ball a man lost in a brand-new and deserted district of a town seething with excitement, one divine summer night, lingers to piece together with the tip of his malacca cane the fragments, scattered at the foot of a wall, of a nostalgic postcard negligently torn up by an ungloved hand on which beside the rings there glittered the sharp bite, recently inflicted, of a tooth you do not know. More alone than stones, more alone than mussels in the dark, more alone than an empty pyrogen at midday on the table of a cafe terrace. More alone than everything. More alone than what is alone in an ermine coat, than what is alone on a ring of crystal, than what is alone in the heart of a buried city. So I can continue, then, along this path which turns around the island's western slope and then immediately gives birth, on the right, to the narrower path leading to the Belvedere. My steps are firm. The purpose that induces me to pursue an exploration which has suddenly become inexplicably compromised can scarcely result from chance alone. I have my reasons. Well you can keep your reasons. Call it what you like, but it's my best and worst, my barest. 1 = x +1

Back in Baby's Arms [27 Apr 2007|05:27pm] My laptop is finally home! It's been almost two months now and I can't tell you how much I've missed it! It's pretty much Summer, all my classes are over and I have a paper due in a week but besides that I'm carefree as a clam! The weather's wonderful and I'm not sick anymore really and my body's already getting happier with me from biking and eating better and smoking less and just hooray Spring! And no obligations! I just ate 10 ounces of romaine lettuce! 2 = x +1

Reality vs. Realism (or Oh. Fuck.) [26 Apr 2007|12:46pm] Shit, man! God! Ugh. My brains... :( Okay. So. Okay. So, so, objects food rooms, and, uh, I've eaten meat four times since February but so far as I can help it, it ain't gonna happen again. And I may also have to abstain fron the intake of "the image" from now on too. And become a monk. Seriously. Fuck man, I'm glad I don't have tv but lately I can't stop read the news either and I never read the news and it's fucking me up. Sometimes I just want to go to the woods, have a good cry, and live deliberately. Until I realize the real crying would start when I realized there were no books or movies in the woods. And that makes me kinda want to cry too? But also not because...whaddaya gunna do? What else is there? Man. Super sigh. I mean...jeez! Artifice artifice artifice you break my heart! You keep it beating! What am I subsisting on!? Die fetten jahre sind vorbei, indeed: The fat years are so over. And goddamn it, it is no one's fault. Seriously. So cut that shit out. Bleh. Final papers. Germany. Cartoons. Writing. I've been absorbed. Ouch. 2 = x +1

Head Broken [22 Apr 2007|08:53am] I'm no longer certain as to the origin of hangovers. Or? My head's all hurty. Good thing it was worth it. Also I woke up at 6:45. Wtf. 2 = x +1

"Never Trust an Author Who Cannot Play a Saw" [21 Apr 2007|07:29pm] CHUCK JONES from the forward to STEFAN KANFER'S SERIOUS BUISINESS: THE ART AND COMMERCE OF ANIMATION IN AMERICA FROM BETTY BOOP TO TOY STORY: All artistry, all drama, and of course, all comedy is serious indeed and, we find, controlled by two prime factors: the love you have for what you hope to accomplish and your willingness to invest the maximum effort to achieve that purpose--and in the end, only the love should show. +1

And She Cooks, Too! [21 Apr 2007|06:35pm] From the Culinary Institute of Pretend Fanciness--where I dangerously sautee or fry or steam--I'm not entirely sure which--in my underwear (over an open flame no less!) and play Mozart from my iPod through my living room speakers--this meal cost $4, took 27 minutes to make and requires the utilization of but one utensil! Additionally it's got four different kinds of vegetables, five fruits, non-tummy-upsetting-b/c-yogurt-digests-itself dairy and then whatever the hell rice and cashews and peanuts are. I am so not done with my research paper. More on this after dinner probably. +1

Hard Learned [21 Apr 2007|04:16pm] No matter day it is in the week or in life, no day is a good day to start a research paper that is due two days from that day. You'd think in the first twenty one years of my life I would have learned this before this and the last semester. I did not. I think it's in the ol' brain file now though, finally. I wish I were as much of a quick study about practicality as I am at texts and theories and abstractions. My intake of the external is lightyears ahead of me but my output and/or demonstration of the internal is in the dark ages. Sometimes (most times) I wish I could have Einstein over to watch movies and do each others' hair and make funfetti cupcakes and talk about matter and what matters and being squirrely and endearingly eccentric so he could reassure me about being a genius and having a learning disability. Oh, Albert! 5 = x +1

Murphy Lee Would be Pleased [21 Apr 2007|01:41am] Hadn't gone hardcore shopping in a while. Kinda ODed on groceries. I don't remember buying all this stuff. Pomegranate blueberry something? I mean awesome, but like grocery store k-hole. You know what's silly and cool though? Organic vegetarian tv dinners. I'm pretty sure those didn't exist ten years ago and if they did, the 24-hour supermarket didn't carry any. I love capitalism. 4 = x +1

:( [20 Apr 2007|07:35pm] It is cartoon season and I am sad. None of my friends-to-watch-cartoons-with live in Lincoln anymore. 5 = x +1

ZPH [19 Apr 2007|11:12pm] I love Zoë because of her text messages: because not only is she delighted by Murphy Lee owning vegetarian resturaunts, but she knows me well enough to know that I'd be delighted too; because she needs to tell someone how much she loves Lil Wayne making car noises and I'm lucky enough to be on the receiving end of it. This entry is for Zoë, who just sent me "fuck this finals shit, i just want to get my grown man on." Zoë? You my brother from another mother. And since I have been leaving my phone off like a ho, I just wanted to let you know I loves you. Real talk. +1

It wasn't just about getting out of Queensboro, it was about making sure I represented things right. [19 Apr 2007|08:15pm] Nas: The Stop Smiling Interview by Alex Abramovich, Iss. 30 SS: Do you think political rap, and political rap crews, have been driven underground? Has the music gotten less political? Nas: Yeah, because it became about how to survive. The politics of the streets are what we care about. The politics of the American government don't seem to have anything to do with poor communities. We don't feel their help, their love, or even their acknowledgment of our existence. It's about survival and this new thing we created--this multibilion-dollar genre of music. We don't need the outside, so we just talk about our own survival. SS:But one of the things you seem to be saying on this new album is that hip-hop culture is super-materialistic, that everyone's out for themselves. That it's a lot like the way American culture, as a whole, is becoming. Nas: The problem is, we don't realize the power of words. One rapper from wherever talks about the hardships of growing up, and the record might be so hard, so hot, that the fans--the listeners--think it's telling you how you should live, or that your music should be an imitation. That's not why I made records. But when I did, and saw what was happening, it was too late to explain, "Yo, I'm just expressing myself, not telling nobody to live no kind of way. The way I got it is the way I got it. You may not be able to get it the way I got it. There might be an easier way for you." So when someone starts talking about bling and ice, and using bling and ice to express themselves, you can't tell who the real dudes are--and it makes all of us look like crazy, materialistic pigs. Some people think life is all about material things, and that's all their record is about because they don't know anything else. We get the blame for being overly materialistic. I come from the Eighties. The American dream was the shit Scarface died for, and it was everything no one in America had: Porsches, Ferraris, big mansions in Miami. That was drug dealer shit. There was a time when the drug game bought you all of those things. And when that era died, what was left is what the rappers like myself picked up and kept moving on with. We talk about the experiences of those before us, what it was like, how insane it is that guy who can't read is born wanting to wear Gucci. And he earns on the streets without school. And learns class, sophistication and counting money without school. That is amazing to young brothers. Because it shows you their genius. When you saw them go down--whether they were shot, killed or put in jail--you realize then that they'd had a decision to make. They could have said yes to that life or no to that life. But whether they did or didn't, what they were after was something everyone is after: the money and the women. Hopefully, they take care of their children. When we spit it on these records, it comes off as braggadocio. So now we have thousands of rappers picking that up, saying the same shit they heard somebody good say, and it fucks it all up. +1

Reporting Live From the Front [19 Apr 2007|12:24am] You do not even know how much I wish I wasn't sleeping with books. Ben Marcus, The Age of Wire and String THE STYLE OF SPACE The distinctive way space opposes us, useful because it frames and highlights the material our hands would make. Space being mobile and persons being static, the spatial style is more energetic, animated, and even pictorial. True spaces, clusters not falsified by our occupation, are as rare as true words and cannot be acquired through the routine channel of desire, nor may accidents deliver them for use. Words have as little individuality as people--there are moments when any of them will do, provided the parts allow for thrusting enunciation. The proper use of space is to find out the things we have not said, and how our hands might make sure they stay that way Tomorrow I predict a) sadface b) frownface c) poet brawls d) soul tired e) bronchitis f) fruscs or other mouth products, transcribed or recited orally, resulting in the combustion of members, persons, cloth or representational life g) more coughing. I took that photo with my foot. +1

Nightmare Season [18 Apr 2007|09:35am] Last night I had a dream that the reason I've always had trouble sleeping is that there's a slowly expanding hole in the middle of my mattress that I fill up at night, in my half-sleep insomnia delirium, with magazines and pages of books that I tear out from between their covers. In the dream I finally remembered all of this while I was actually awake and tore back my blankets, my fitted sheets, my mattress pad, and scooped out every last piece of paper, terrified, disgusted with myself, horrified. It was the most frightening part of a dream I can remember ever having. So so so fucked up. It was like in Mullholland Drive when they go around the dumpster, or Lost Highway with the terrible "I'm in your house, call me" guy. I'm still shaking even though my room's full of sun and colored glass bottles and Thomas O'Brien pillows. Lately it's like I'm Dumbo and it's that surrealistic musical number with all the boozey pink elephants made of bubbles and stuff. Except instead of elephants it's books and paper. Here's a picture of me in my apartment--ask Ellen if you don't believe me, she stopped by last night and can tell you--this was the state of affairs: I really do adore spring n all, but shoot man, April is pretty dang cruel. +1

See Also [17 Apr 2007|06:55pm] So about that whole "throwing myself into a black film genre research paper so I won't have to think about myself or my writing?" I totally lied. I can't stop thinking about myself and my writing. The bibliography for my chapbook is already a million times huger than for my research paper. And I have yet to start either my chapbook or my research paper. Finals are awful and I think I'm coming down with something gross in my lungs and energy-having processors. Awful. +1

BOOZE COUNTDOWN [16 Apr 2007|10:47pm] Days Till I Hand Over The Crown As Downtown's Fave Underage Darling: 30 Batten down the hatches, Lincoln. You ain't seen nuthin yet. +1

Clouds of NonUnderstanding [15 Apr 2007|12:11pm] No amount of book-style illusion will alter the origin of plants. (BEN MARCUS, THE AGE OF WIRE AND STRING) I have two professors who insist I abandon brevity, but for opposite reasons. One for the sake of precision, one to allow room for ambiguity; away from and towards contradictions, respectively. It's never been a matter of finding a voice, I can imitate anything so long as I can understand it's execution, how it functions--the physical tangible how of it. And once I pick up someone's patterns I know exactly what we will or won't agree on. But patterns and connections and algebra...they're everywhere, infinite like information. I can find whatever I want wherever I want to find it but I don't want to keep finding. I want to make. And I just feel like sometimes I'm just this jar full of other speaking and I open my mouth or my hands and that's all that comes out. It's more like there's too many voices, I've found too many and they're all wonderful but I can't sort through them all. Like having a shoebox full of keys but just being locked out of one door. Good as it may be, expert as I am at mimicry, I sometimes just want ownership. Controlled possession. Just the one key, thanks. I don't want to be a vessel or a box or a blank open page or a hot high wire or a tincan telephone or a goddamn radio of any kind or a suitcase or a compartment or a stupid awful amplifier. I've had it up to here with instruments and containers and walls; I'm so full of them I think it's all I'm made of anymore. I want to find one thing that isn't a collage so I can know it's possible. I don't care about truth or meaning right now, I just want something saying "mine" and not saying it on a loop or a broadcast or a struck chord. Just the sound itself. (I'm irritated with final projects. I'm throwing myself into a black film genre research paper so I won't have to think about myself or my writing because I am not black or a filmmaker and because I don't get all hot and bothered about research and analysis. Which is probably why I'm best at it. I want a dog and a new tattoo.) 1 = x +1

I'm Known fo' Breakin Pockets, I Can Walk It Like I Talk It [14 Apr 2007|12:47pm] Last Night = Brawl @ the Poet's Cafe + "The Shit of the Grape" Tonight = Sheldon @ 7:00 + Wamp Wamp The Future = Laurus, Age of Wire & String, chapbook draft, blaxploitation, chapbook + ten pages between poetry and prose, German films research paper; Summer + 21st bday. Pwnd. 1 = x +1

I'm Hot Cuz I'm Fly [12 Apr 2007|12:49am] This is what I'm about (from my unsurprisingly overdue Spicer response): When Spicer says that “it is not as difficult as the poet makes it” he’s being critical of me the reader, but he’s also being self-depricating. In so many of his lines he’s being a sassy obstinate jerk for rubbing our noses in harsh realities, in human shortcomings, in bullshit inevitabilities we’d rather ignore. But you keep reading because his point is made in irony, in the almost religious optimism of his own hypocricy. It’s Fellini writing a book (called Fellini on Fellini no less) to tell us “any talk [an artist] does outside of his work means nothing. It is a lot of stupidities.” It’s Cocteau’s mausoleum where there’s a statue of him with the inscription “je reste avec vous” and a tape loop of his own voice requesting that we “only pretend to weep, since poets only pretend to die.” Everything that inspires me or motivates me or gets me excited comes from right here. It's why I'll read anything but almost never finish books, it's why I fall in love at the drop of a hat but don't have boyfriends, it's why have a tattoo to remind me about impermanance and it's why I keep the friends I keep and it's why I love Lil Wayne and cartoons and Lincoln and preposterous hairstyles and my apartment and walking instead of driving my car and being in school even though I'm a rotten student. Whatever I commit to, I commit to because of this. It's why I do or don't do things, it's why I care too much or not at all. It's why I stay up late and wake up early. Man, seriously. Makeout party. +1

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