Overheard on Twitter

Fantasy Island had that crap right: "careful what you wish for" is the ultimate frame for the Revenge Movie that is this life.

[micro-blogging is like blog-bonsai. and twitter is off the chain if you know the right people.]

2009 Hints for Living

1. Sure there's no god, but there actually are demons. Night demons, day demons, dog-demons, rake-demons. Visible or invisible, looking like The Thing or a phone or a kid. Demons.
2. Sure there are demons, but there are definitely not any faeries. This can be particularly hard to swallow in Eugene, where it seems like there are lavender scarves and jingling bells everywhere. But those aren't faeries, they're just graduates of some kind of outdoor leadership school who decided that "enchantment" is the only viable compliment to their newfound capacity for "survival." (This is reason #671 to leave town. There are still 800+ reasons to stay.)
   
3. Life is not like a blog. It's not a steady, collaborative, dialogical medium that rewards honest effort. Au contraire, life is more like a message board, on which you need to post 100 times before a new set of topics/features is revealed to you, and you're starting from scratch again. What are the new features, you ask? Demons.
   
4. Sure, the personal is the political or whatever, but personhood ain't reducible to politics. We can recklessly conflate our bodies and our lives with causes, but we cannot evaporate into these causes. Doing so just tangles up "me" with "the struggle" in pretentious and ineffective ways, such that you cannot separate your, say, libertarianism from your stocking fetish. And then you're not helping anybody or "taking your desire for reality because you believe in the reality of desires." [special note - French theory, let alone the anarchic whatevering of the Situationist International, is of no help whatsoever when it comes to boxing gate-demons]
   
5. Your friends (probably) don't secretly hate you. They (probably) want you to ask them to use their laundry machine or whatever. They (probably) aren't looking at you and thinking, "this guy looks like a bag of balloons and his entire being is smoldering beneath a foul, acrid, pus-like silence." You should try to convince them to cook for you or go to the movies. You shouldn't let them think you somehow are benefiting from being alone.
   
6. There is no such thing as 'being alone.' It's not that hell is other people or whatever. Purgatory (read: earth) is the place where you feel too sick or too embarrassed to seek out the people who can help, thus trading good company (friends) for bad company (raft-demons, turntable-demons).
   
7. Don't sit in a dive bar reading a book. You look like an asshole.
   

marxist nerd adult comedy here

from an email list i won't name because i don't know who would or wouldn't want their identity revealed. and Human Subjects is the order of the day, people.

>From Engels: "Hungary, Poland and Russia are the only countries in Europe where invasion is impossible in winter."

Wow. If only Hitler had read some more Engels!

-(Poster 1).

^^^
(Poster 2): Actually, I'm kind of glad he didn't (smile).

PrismShift: Inventory 2

MI-5 or Spooks, title depending on which side of the drink you're on. This is your slick, techno-laced representation of the 9/12 Anglo-American alliance. Quality acting and the writing fine. The show has also withstood quite a few major cast changes without "jumping the shark"or otherwise plummeting into the crap-realm. Certainly I don't like spies as much as I like cops or private eyes. But I certainly do like spies. (And wonky research spies, in particular. And government bureaucrats. And every other imaginable genre of "functionary.") Can you hear the laptop-based-drum-sequenced blips, yet? So what if, in addition to its being "good," the show is like 24 for fans of the Crystal Method?

1. Bowie in Berlin. Where in the hell did my $0.99 copy of Station to Station go? Is it wrong of me to consider the I. Pop/D. Bowie work of this period to be "of a feather" with Lou Reed's contemporaneous Berlin?
2. Grave Error and Death Bed (John Marshall Tanner novels) by Stephen Greenleaf. This series is another reshuffling of the CA private eye vibe, unfolding the San Francisco of them 1970s. Greenleaf/Tanner's politics certainly don't suck, but more importantly these are very sharp, deadpan stories. They help me to feel like a) I'm not alone in the universe, and b) someone hears my screams.
3. The bleeping Neil Halstead album that completely has bleeping captivated me. Surprising to hear me fixate on acoustic-y wish-wash? i know, i know. esp in this cntxt:

   One night while in the studio with Neil Halstead a friend questioned him as to what kind of music he played. Neil's extremely thick beard turned into a smile as he said "Nylon Rock" before laughing and turning back to his beer. I don't think that description offered any clarity to the asker, but to me it seemed perfect: a self effacing term to help him deal with the fact that he, a former shoegazer, was making a solo record and his main weapon was simply a nylon string guitar and a couple of shakers.

4. DC Vs. Mortal Combat Video Game that I have never played, will prolly never play. But I take great solace in knowing that somebody out there is getting to simulate my fantasy of a death bout between Raiden and whoever-the-crap. 2008, people!
   

   The series loves gruesome combat, but pines for the mainstream adulation. When games were less bloody, that was an easy balance to strike. Gouts of gore plus catchphrases ("Finish him!") and the allure of shocking hidden fatalities added up to massive sales and popularity. Now that those elements are commonplace, how to recapture the attention of old?
   
   Throw Batman into the mix, obviously. Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe mixes up the stable of MK fighters with heroes (Superman, Wonder Woman) and villains (the Joker, Catwoman) from DC's comic-book pantheon.

5. quality time with uncle. and uncle's pronouncements on behalf of the Democratic party.
   
6. Cards play-by-play and, more embarassingly, the solo ryan spew.
7. Gone Baby Gone is le non-crap, so far as adaptations of Lehane novels go. Not so good as Mystic River, tho.
8. The film criticism of Bruce Bennett for the NY Sun.
9. The Shop Around the Corner by Ernest Lubisch. It's a lovely film to watch with a loved one, so I watched it (and A Holiday Affair) with my loved one on the morning of the dur-befur-yursturdur...Cripes, I love it, even though it was used as the script-skeleton for, shucks, You've Got Mail.
   

For Crying Out Loud, Eff All Holidays!

When are we gonna get another alb outta Testface? I dunno, but we're getting serious prose in the interim. I mean, this has gotta be the equivalent of Truman Capote's A Christmas Memory for the David Yow generation.

Making Somethings With Nothings - Sunday Addition

I'll tell you what, I'm glad to hear that Bar Obama and Wil Clinton are planning on a luncheon this week - you? Is Barry going to hire James Carville at some point? How involved are HRC/WJC willing to get? And does BHO stand to gain from a dose of the Clintons in specific geographic locations?

(ps - is the above photo fake? did Senator Barack Obama and former Governor Bill Clinton have some "casual embrace" moment that I missed somehow?)