Thursday, April 30, 2009

Andrea Gibson

If you aren't moved by this woman, dig a hole because you are already dead.





Monday, April 27, 2009

2005 Words!


Well, my writing slump has been kicked in the ass. I have written 2005 words today for a novella that I plan on writing for the Malahat Review Novella Contest. For the next month or so this project will take most of my time. I plan on getting around 2000 words a day, and if I do this I'll have the first draft done in 10 days. I could probably do better then that because I have a bit of it written already, I just need to get it all in. Maybe tomorrow I'll drop by Revel and email what I have done already to me and edit on my home computer.
The Malahat Review is a Canadian magazine, and they offer annual writing contests for novellas or long poems. Since I don't think I'm that good of a poet as of yet, I'm going to send them a novella. If I finish this, it will be my longest work of fiction, coming between 10,000 to 20,000 words. I'll be hooking up a little progress counter on my blog. And on this post I will make a link to the Malahat Review Novella Contest Website for any of my readers, and I know a couple of you are writers, who would be interested in this.
And since I know a lot of writers, if any of you want to send me anything on writing contests that would be great. Here's the link for the contest, and I hope that people read into this.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Update on University and Spiritual Journey

My Exam is finished. I am officially a free man. I even got my Ginsberg essay back. I got an 85, which I feel a bit disappointed about because that was a damn fine essay.
As many of you may know, I have been looking into the Western Mystery Tradition as I like to call it, which has lead me to develop an interest in the Kabbalah, or Qabbalah, or Cabala. However you spell it, I have recently been in contact with the guys who run the Chasing Hermes podcast. One of them, Jason, has dropped by and said hello. I emailed him earlier, because I had the Naos dream. His theory is that Naos represents a higher order of my being and thus might be more interesting then stuff that one usually sees in lucid dreams. He also made the comment that he would really like read what the "Kabbalistic" literature I come up with, but warned me that I should avoid getting to preachy. I agree with him frankly, because preachy writers can be annoying, unless it's Robert A. Heinlein because then I can giggle about all the polyamory. He he, Heinlein you dirty old bastard. Anyways, I don't think that will be to much of a problem. I already have plans for religiously themed novels, and I hope they can turn out something like Dostoevsky's work. He writes what is basically religious-themed works, but it's still pretty cool.
Amyways, I'm looking into the Western Mystery Tradition very seriously now. I'm reading a book on Kabbalah by a guy called Gareth Knight. He seems to be alright, but I'm still a student of this and have yet to put it into practice. What I have got is that meditation is very important and that the Western Mystery Tradition emphasises living in this current world, as compared to the Eastern Mystery Tradition, which doesn't care so much for this world. I know a guy who can teach me meditation, but he comes from the Eastern school. It may be the same thing basically. I also had a lecture David Lynch made about how meditation has helped him with his movie that seemed interesting. I hope to apply these very soon. Now that I don't have an exam to worry about I probably will. I will also be looking into lucid dreaming and astral projection, since it seems like fun and might give me a few ideas for stories or poems.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Naos Dream


I forgot about this for awhile, but I feel I need to bring this up. Last night I dreamed I meet Naos, but my life was different. My family all lived in the same room, and slept in the same bed but not because we were poor but because everyone did it. I also had a Tarot deck based on Hindu Mythology and a Rama action figure. Then I meet Naos. I rescused him from a riot, because he was tied up to something. I think he was being sold as a slave. I ended bringing Naos back to my room and we talked about Tarot. I can't remember much else.
This is the first time I meet Naos in a dream. This is interesting, since I was liseaning to a podcast on astral projection, and dreams are the first step. I was thinking, wouldn't it be cool if I could meet Naos and Helen and other fictional characters in my dreams or in Astral Planes. I wonder if I'll dream about Naos again? This could prove very interesting. Can I meet the characters I make in my dreams? If any nice friendly astral travellers are reading this I would appreciate advice on this.

I miss University

I miss University. I know that I was lonely, stressed and the room smelt funny but I had freedom. Living with your parents tends to lessen the affect of freedom, since know I have to think about how my decisions affect my family. Also, my allowance is down to $20.00 every two weeks. I accsidently brought this up, and my dad stared at me funny so I may not even get the 20 anymore. I need to get a job, which I don't feel that good with. I have very poor work experience. The only thing going for me is that I'm a student, and I need a job.
Anyways, back to University...I really have nothing else to say. I just miss the relative freedom of University. As well as the regularlly scheduled meals. I'm still getting the basic three squares at home, but at University it ran on a clock. Every night at 5 I had dinner and I knew what I was eating, except on Wednesday when I had to eat at 5:30 and even then I had a vague idea of what it was.
I got all this way because I was just at Univesity getting all my stuff out of there. I know am out of University. I just have to get my exam done and that's it. I'm gone for 4 months. I'm a bit sad about that.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Concerning Billy Childish

I have never been this interested in an artist my father has not perviously heard off. This musical artist is one Billy Childish, who I discovered in my reaserch into Remodernism. He's one of the guys who wrote the Stuckist Manifestos, and has painted, written novels and poems, and plays really good garage rock style music. The next album I buy off of Itunes if going to be a Billy Childish album, and if I get two I'm throwing "Frank's Wild Years" in there. It's a Tom Waits album, probubly my favorite Tom Waits album. My dad has it on vinyl.
Anyways, to fix my Billy Chilldish fix I searched Youtube for videos of him in concert. In responce I have put up these two videos of Billy Childish, live in concert. He's British.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Mostly About Kabbalah

Something appears to be up with this computer. I think I am approching the time when I need to change my virus protection. Who's idea was it for computers to have viruses anyways?
Most of my time since I got the letter about Remodernism has been concerned with writing outlines for my English exam. I am going to have to answer three out of the six questions I have been given and I am writing outlines to give me an idea of what happened. So far I've planned out most of them or have an idea of what I'm going to do with half of them. After that I will be looking for a summer job, so I have money to go to Revel and buy books. My parents have me on 20 dollars every two weeks, which is a bit less then what I used to have. 20 dollars per week. Apparently Allen Ginsberg had 15 dollars a month when he was at University. He also was obsessed with Neal Cassady, who wasn't interested in Allen in that way though apparently they did have sex. I feel like a kindred spirit to Ginsberg in many ways, and I'm hoping to learn from his mistakes so I don't make them. It's very easy for me to fall head over heals in love with someone, it has happened before. So far I haven't been overwhelmingly obsessed with someone.
I'm starting to wonder how much of my life I should put down in my fiction. For awhile I thought this may be a bad idea, but I think that it would be a nice place to start. I don't want to be one of those writers who just rewrites his own life into fiction. I think I can do that, but most of my story ideas are leaning towards historical-occult fiction with various esoteric Judeo-Christian overtones. I'm thinking about looking into this sort of thing, I've been toying with studying Kabbalah for a long time now, ever since I read Promethea, and will be doing it in the fall since I am defenetly taking the Kaballah course. I'm probubly one of the few people who didn't get into Kabbalah through Madonna these days. To be honest, if your going to get into Kabbalah then it would probubly best to get into it from a comic book written by a British man who hasen't shaved since the Thatcher administration, studies the Western esoteric tradition and once saw a fictional character he invented in a bar then a pop singer from the 80s with a coffee table book about sex or something like that. Or you should at least learn it from an old Jewish guy. Also, selling Kabbalah water for $2000 dollars is probubly the stupidist thing I've heard off since, well bottled water. Water should be free and should not have anything to do with ancient mystic paths unless it is a metaphor for something, like rebirth or something.
Basically, what I know about Kabbalah is that it is supposed to be an "operating program for the human soul." Besides the Promethea comic book, most of what I know is from a podcast on the know defunct, Out There. Out There is a pretty good podcast if you want an introduction into the world of occultism, conspiracy theories, fringe science and weird stuff like that. Some of the episodes freaked me out, such as the one about 9/11 truth and another on 2012, but others such as Kabbalah and the episode on James Shelby Downard that proved to be very interesting. It's really something of a crap shoot on the affect, but either way alot of the stuff I hear on this will probubly worm it's way into my writing. I'd like to do a conspiracy novel based on the writings of James Shelby Downard at some point, but were talking about Kabbalah. Basically, it's very complex, has a cool tree thing and will give it's practitioner the gift of Prophecy, which is something that sounds pretty cool. If memory serves, then to practice Kaballah one must get involved with making humanity better while studying alot of ancient texts, specifically the Bible but you can use it on anyting according to the person who read it. I imagine that the Orthodox Jews would say, no you can only use the Bible, but I imagine that you could use the Bible as a sort of basic text and everything else can be a sort of spring off of that. It works too, because apparently people who study English Literature do much better if they're familiar with the Bible, because it's the basis of Western Literature. I can connect the Bible to all of the books I'm reading now for instance. The Brothers Karamazov, easy. Dostotevsky's work is fundamentally Christian. What's Bred In The Bone, deals a lot with Christianity's affect on the main character at the moment, and it also has an angel (The Lesser Zadkiel) and a daimon who's name I forget, who are working on said character's biography. Also, I wrote an essay recently about Allen Ginsberg that compared him to an ancient Hebrew Prophet, only with more homoeroticism. Not sure how Jews would take to most of this, but I'm sure they can admit that Christians are really just unclean slightly-pagan Jews, mainly since most Christians aren't going to kill the Jews for saying that and because it is basically true. I'm comfortable with being a bad pseudo-Jew myself, I may even work on becoming more Jewish one day.
Well, that is all for my musings today. I'm going to talk with a friend of mine now.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

I Am Remodernist

Better make this quick, since there is going to be an outage at 2:00 AM in California. As many of my readers may know I am looking into the art movement Remodernism, which is in protest against conceptual art and spritually bankrupt postmodernism. As I am a writer, and most Remodernists are painters this causes some problems, but thankfully Remodernist is a do-it-yourself movement. I imagine that if I am writing something then it should have a plot and get an emotional reaction and have something interesting to say about humanity and the world it inhabits.
Anyways, awhile ago I wrote an email to the folks down at Stuckism International, which is the head-quarters of the first Remodernist movement. They're British. Anyways, They gave me a reply today about getting involved in their movement. This just has contacts I should make, with some guys called Jesse Todd Dockery and Bill Lewis, who I will contact as soon as I can. They're involved in Remodernist literature or at least interested in it. I'll be sending them emails as soon as I can. I might even send them copies of my work, or at least tell them if they're interested I'll send over a few short stories or poems. I really hope that this could liberate my voice as a writer, because if I am to be a truelly great writer then I'll need my own voice, something that people will read and say "Oh, they're is Dylan C.G. Thomas. This is a Dylan C.G. Thomas book." I want my last name to be an adjective. Also, it is about time Postmodernism was taken down and we put up another major theory for a few decades. Remodernism seems as good a movement as any. Also, one of it's major proponents, Billy Childish, has a few novels and poems out. I'll have to get them and see if there any good.
In other news I am slowly getting my outlines for my English exam statred. I have finished one, and worked a bit on two today although I only got any meaningful detail done on one, mostly because I would like to write that one so I can complain about David Antin, who I think is a smug bastard who dosen't know what it really means to be a real wordsmith. If Remodernist painting is against conceptual art, then Remodernist literature is against David Antin, and John Cage to, because that whole "Writing Through the Cantos," thing I had to attempt to read was just a trick and one I am not amused by. So Ezra Pound is odviously seen through his art. So what? Art should have ego in it and if your so obsessed with the elimination of the ego then don't get involved in art.
Well, that's about it. Have a nice day.

Monday, April 13, 2009

What Happened After Easter


Well, I was in a bad mood when I mad that last picture. I'm going to need to blog like crazy to get it out of sight. It shouldn't be to hard either since I've got stuff to talk about. I saw West Side Story, which was alright. It wasn't that impressive and I was with a friend of mine who has been a professional actor so I did get to here everything that the people did wrong with it and now I have an image of what West Side Story would have looked like if my friend was directing or doing something and that is way more impressive then the one that I watched. Kind of looks like "Do the Right Thing," only without as many black people and swing and latin music instead of Public Enemy.

Also Easter turned out to be pretty good. I ate most of my weight in chocolate it seems and since I go to a pretty laid-back Church we watched "Chocolat" which was a pretty cool movie. I was really ticked off at the priest for not showing any backbone until the end and I may have called him a whore of the state in my mind, I hope I called him a whore of the state in my mind as laid back of a Church as I go to I don't think that would have gone over well. I also ended up watching "The Secret Life of Bees," with my family which was a very good feel good movie. I don't know how far Dakota Fanning's career can go after this because she's starting to loose that cute kid vibe. I'm not a movie expert, so I probably shouldn't go into to much detail on her future career. I also tried to watch a Russian movie called "Andrei Rublev," about an icon painter in Medieval Russia but I feel asleep because it was in Russian and black and white and I was to tired to deal with what appeared to be deep philosophical undertext, so I'll have to rent it another time. That's all I really feel like blogging about at the moment, so I hope this keeps you all informed.

Friday, April 10, 2009

What's So Good About Good Friday?

I'm honestly thinking that at some point I may stop being a Christian and it will largelly have to do with Easter. There is something horribly masochistic about a religion that commemorates the death of it's founder and GOD with his execution, says it is all for the best and then goes and calls the day after he was killed Good Friday. This is ugly, fatalistic and pretty messed up when you look at it.
I'm honestly doubting if I was ever really Christian. Thank God I live in this time period because I'd be killed if I brought this up anywere else, or at least ostriszed from society which may not be totally bad. But I don't think I'm a Christian, just because I can't wrap my head around this whole Crusifixtion thing. How can we celebrate what is essenstially the state and church sponsered murder of an innocent man as the redemption of mankind and still accept the concept of original sin, least aways create the concept of original sin.
So, I'm still looking for a new religion. In the end I may end up with syncretism. I just would like something to believe in that isn't a human personality or have a long history of lies and confusion. I hope this doesn't make me vulnerable to brainwashing cults.

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Elaboration on Short Rant

So as you may have read from yesterdays post, I'm worried I don't have enough experience to be a good writer at the moment. This is a problem as the themes that I plan on writing involve revolution, God and our relationship with God and various other Metaphysical concerns. I'm cool with it now, but I think I should go over it.
To deal with this I'm going to try writing short stories from my own experience. I'm going to write things about my friends and family and the life that goes on here. I'm still going to write my more fantastic material, but at the moment I'm going to try writing at least three people stories involving my home town. I think I got two of them, but I think they can easily evolve into science fiction mysteries, sort of like "Fringe," which I watched last night. God that's a great show. Maybe I could write four or five over the summer. That would be awesome, and maybe the two short stories about Naos and Helen and one with Jack Monsairty.
I'm just talking to a friend of mine, we'll call him George Ripley. He's a science guy and he was telling me that I'm ahead of my time because I'm autistic and don't drink coffee or alcohol or take drugs. As such he says I'm evolutional ahead of my time or something like that. I don't think I understand what he said or even if it's true, but it makes me feel a bit better about my place in the literary canon.

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Short Rant

My ultimate goal is to become an Artist. This will mainly involve writing, but I plan on seeing if I can work drawings in as well. At the moment I've put my novel on hold, and I'm thinking about writing short stories about my friends at home. So far I'm at a creative slump. I don't think University was helpful in unleashing my writing, so far it seems to have suppressed most of it and here I go again whining about how I haven't written as much as I feel I potentially can and now that I'm home I can't help but complain and complain about how I haven't reached my full potential as a writer. I'm 19 God-damn it, I need to live more then that. I want to be a writer so bad, I need to go out there and live I need to experience things. I need to know how to live, to find experience and take that back with me.
So, other then that things are going well for Dylan. I'm doing well and await my final English Exam. I'm also reading The Brothers Karamazov and a Kinky Friedmen novel. Boy are my readings varied.

Friday, April 03, 2009

Going Home

I'm going home today. I'm going to come back two more times for school, maybe more for the Changeling LARP. They've finally called me about it, and I hope I can get in on it.
Well, what can I say about my first term. It had it's ups and downs, but I'm a bit worried about were it is going. Mom is talking about it like it's work, which I don't think University should be. I think University should be more fun, because I'm learning all kinds of new things. I'm not even sure that I should think much about work after reading Pieper. I think I'm going to keep my copy of "Leisure, the Basis of Culture," since I think it has some good points. My religion books and the Plato Dialouges I'm going to give to the Campus Used Bookstore. I'm also keeping all the English books I got. Which would be "The Green Man," by Kingsley Amis, "Anglo-Saxon Attitudes," by Angus Wilson, "The Rebel Angels," by Robertson Davies, "Maus, Vol 1" by Art Spiegelmen, and "The In-between World of Vikram Lall," by M.G. Vassanji, because my mother would like that one. One thing I can say about University, by the time I'm out of here I'll have a much more varied library.
Now of course, there is the issue of finding a job. I'm not going to completely bang that idea, because I don't have much experience with jobs and as such can't be called to make any large judgements on them, and it would give me something to do and money. I don't really have much drive to be a working man however. I want to be a writer and that is all. I'm also starting to wonder if being a career writer is a goal. That isn't to say that I don't want a career as a writer, but I also don't want to have a career as anything else. It's a bit confusing, I know. I've been reading alot of Remodernist Manifestos recently. Remodernism is a theory of art that is against conceptual art because of it's spiritual bankruptcy. I've been studying this and am trying to figure out if this applies to my work, or how I can become a Remodernist. I've never been involved in an actual art movement before, and I think Remodernism has some good ideas. The problem is it seems to be mostly made up of painters, so if anyone is going to figure out what Remodernist Literature looks like it's going to have to be me.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Play It Again Sam

It's late and I'm not really sure what I'm going to be telling you guys about. I'm very confident about the Ginsberg essay, I have six days till first term is over, oh and apparently I have to take an English Proficiency Exam on...the 7th of April, which is...next tuesday. After that it's home and in all likelyhood a job of somekind. I'll have moved out of my dorm, back into my room and will be getting short stories written. This will be a summer of short stories, since I'm going to give Last Dance Revolution a rest until such a time as I can write it, probubly when I find a woman who returns my romantic interests.
Well, that honestly seems to be it. Other then that my toe started bleeding after a long walk. I have a bandaid on it now though, so it's alright. I'm a bit unnerved by this. Oh, and I may be making a speech on my life as a person of Autism in September. Maybe someone could film it and I could put it up here on my blog. I'd have youtube videos...of me.
That's all, good night everybody.

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Seven Days Till Summer


If there were any great legendary bloggers I'm sure that they would blog on a regular basis. Of course, if they were great bloggers, then they would simply great and only blog once a year but it would be such good writing nobody would care. But since blogging is more of a diary format for exhibitionists then it would probubly be more of writing close to every day, or at least banging out something on a regular basis.

Well, I suppose I can use the excuse that I have been busy not doing any school work. I am however, very close to finishing the Ginsberg essay. I have six pages out of the minimal ten, and I think I could easily get to that. Maybe even nine pages if I think of what else should go in here. At the moment I doubt if I'm writing mainly about poetic speaker, but I'm sure it could be read that way.

Also, my favorite home cafe has undergone changes. I wish I had before or after pictures to show you guys, but I never bothered to do that. I checked with the lady who owns this place, whom I will call Nora Dalloway, and she said it's alright if I show you how it looks from the back...

And here's how it looks from the front, with the owner Nora Dalloway.


Nora is the person with the blurry arms. Well, a friend just walked in, so I'm checking out.

Monday, March 23, 2009

I Found the Centre of Changeling Activity in Waterloo

Hey everyone. Special shout out to Shelia who disapeared for a long time and is back now. I thought she had gone, good thing I kept the link. Notice how I stole your idea for stealing pictures Shelia.
Well, I should be doing a tone of reading, but instead I'm back at Cafe 1842, which apparently is also the place were the Waterloo Changeling the Lost LAARP meets. What do you know? I've been meaning to get in on that, and I've been working through various characters. I've settled on a version of the Changeling character I had in a latter game, since he would work better here. I did some editing, and he's turned out to be something of a Dean Moriarty type character with some turn over from reading "The Savage Detectives," by Roberto Bolano, and I changed his surname from "Ryder" to "Faraday." So I'll be playing a Changeling car thief and poet with Amnesia, Nightmares and a lost girlfriend named Lucinda who he is desperatly searching for. He's probubly going to join the Spirng Court and write the occasional poem on other members. There's a bit about some Gorilla Warfare that took place before I came in that I'd like to write about, because that sounds fun. I might put it up for you guys.
So, while I've been sitting here I've been working out a plan for the week ahead, since I need to get alot done. As of yet it is incomplete, since I need to figure out how many pages of "The Inbetween World of Vikram Lall" to read per day. I'll have to check back at home. But today I'll have to do the following (at least).
  • Read "The Squatter" for English
  • Read the last bit of an essay in "Leisure."
  • Write a response on how affective I found the Essay Workshop
  • Work on my Ginsberg Essay

I'd say also read 25-50 pages of Vikram Lall too. So far it's alright I guess. To be honest these bildugsroman type books can be a bit annoying, since I'm reading about the guys childhood. Something about it reminds me of "Midnight's Children," only it's in Kenya and there's nothing involving various a thousand and one magic children. Both the main characters are Indians though, it's just that Vassanji's book is in Kenya. The British Empire would take Indians to India to work on railroads and put something between them and the native's spears. Or something like that. Anyways, I wouldn't call this one of the best novels I've read so far. I preferred Robertson Davies, maybe because I could feel more of an emotional connection with Davies and his mind set. Shame I can't meet him because he's dead.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Constantine's Sword Continued: The World and The Holocaust

We're discussing Maus in English, so I thought that this would be a good time to continue my thoughts about Constantine's Sword, this time dealing a bit with anti-semetism as I will be speaking about the Holocaust. For readers who are not familiar with the previous post, I am setting up a link to the first post here. I don't know if that post has much to do with this, but I figured it's related to the same topics, and I might as well add it.
So, the Holocaust and the Nazis have been popping up pretty often in my English course, which is why I'm writing this. This is a response to a question raised by my professor. I thought it would be a good idea to do this as a blog post. Maus is pretty directly about the Holocaust, since it's the memoirs of the author's father and his father's survival in Auschwitz, but imagery of World War Two and the Holocaust has been popping up in lots of places in our readings. We've seen it in the first three poems, which were there to deal with World War One, but we've seen reference to the Holocaust and the Nazis in Leonard Cohen, Sylvia Plath, Robertson Davies and probably a few others I've forgotten. Ironically, I also read Roberto Bolano's Nazi Literature of the Americas around this time, which while being a Spanish novel or anthology can apply to this. The question that my professor raised is, why does everything seem to lead back to the Holocaust?

I've been trying to understand this myself. It's not like people kill other people, heck this is probably going on right now. But why does this particular thing have so much affect on us. You could slap on a picture of a swastika to something and automatically that thing is tainted.
To be perfectly honest, I don't have any good idea why this is. In the absence of any rational exclamation, I will go on to non rational. My guess is that the Nazis made a giant psychic wound that we have no understanding of how they did it. They may not even have conciously known that they were doing it, except for a select few but those were all shot or activly trying to do this. Because of this hole in the fabric of the universe, our conciousness is trying to process all this information. Since the Nazis were at the right time and place in history to pull this off, they have been able to do this, and we are dealing with their psychic refugee. I really don't think something like this is out of the question. Some of the Nazis, especially Himmler were into weird magick-with-a-k stuff like this. I'm not saying this is there actual plan, but maybe I'm wrong about this more, and the fact I can apply something as heighnous as a gouging out the collective unconcious of mankind is just something that comes from this. Maybe that was what the Holocaust was, and since it got more press then other mass genocides it was given more precident.

Once, as a child, I had a fantasy world I would play in and fight various fictional enemies in. One of these were alien Nazis from another demension. I didn't really understand what the Nazis were for, at least not in the big picture. I knew that they were evil, and that was all that matters. This dosen't have to do with anything in this, but I thought it would be important to bring up. It may be important to note that they were also the opposite of my good-semi elvish species the Draan. I have recently decided that once I get around to creating the Draan language, Hebrew will be a major influence.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

I'm Still Alive Everyone

I'm running against my own body and sleep deprevasion. I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. I have to write six more pages in my Ginsberg essay that I don't know if I can write. I know what I'm writing about, I just can't get my thoughts in order. God, I'm so tired. That's what I've been for the past few days. Tired, I feel almost Beat in the Beat Generation sense. I even had a religious experience that I'll write about sometime soon I hope. I have to run by what I've written on Monday to four other English students and I have a test on Aristotle in philosophy. Aristotle god damn, he's the scientist! Plato will have been the Platonic form of cake compared to Aristotle. All this talk about rational thought is making me sick. I don't even believe that rational thought exists.
I'm so tired of all of this. I don't know how I'll get through the end of the year. I feel like I could collapse at anytime from mental exhaustion. I feel like I'm going through my days in a daze. I'm so frustrated that I can't finish what should be such a simple essay for me. It's Allen Ginsberg god damn it. I read Howl before I even came to University. He's my favorite poet. I should have had this finished days ago, but I'm not and it dosn't look like it's going to be finished tonight.
I finished Maus, which was good. I'm supposed to have that read for Monday. At least I've got something done, I also picked up a book on Howl and dropped off a resume for a job for summer. Were, my mom and I, are thinking that this summer I'm going to forgoe any classes. The job is as a dishwasher and shouldn't be to frustrating. The place seems to be a good environment. Small, quirky. I could write a few short stories about it, even a novel. I'll read some Lawrence and Davies and Pound.

Saturday, March 07, 2009

Who Reviews the Watchmen Review?

So, I just came back from the new Watchmen flick. I probubly should have seen this coming, another cheap rehash of an Alan Moore book.
Nah, I'm just kidding. The Watchmen movie is Awesome.
Well, I probubly should wait till the Awesomeness factor wears off so I can give an accurate review, but I'm a blogger so what does that matter. Most of these things have spelling mistakes anyway. Not only was it true to the spirit of Watchmen as is possible for the movie, it was also freaking awesome. The actors were good, and I especially liked the guy who played Rorschach. He did a very good job, and despite the fact Rorschach is a bit of a right-wing looney who spent way to much time looking into the abyss he is my favorite character.
Also, I want to make special refrence to the series of tableaus at the beginning of the movie. It did a really good job of mixing scenes from the Watchmen universe and the affect it hade on history. Scenes included Dr. Manhattan meeting with JFK, a shot of JFK being shot that pans out to the Comedian hiding behind a fence (not in the book, but possible), Andy Warhol showing his latest work "Nite Owl II" with Capote, and a reworking of that picture of the sailor kissing the nurse after WWII, only it's Silhouette who's doing the kissing and she's a woman. That must have caused some scuffle in the alternate history press. Best use of "The Times They Are A Changing," in a movie.
So, Watchmen. Good movie. Not the usual superhero movie, so parents don't take your kids. The characters are fetishists, sociopathic or largelly removed from the majority of the human race to the extent that they (he) is naked for most of the movie and moves of to Mars and builds a giant floating glass thing with his mind. Also, there is sex which is also a bit kinky considering that before hand the participants were in latex costumes. So, Watchmen good movie but it ain't Spiderman. It's much, much better in my opinion.

Hipsters and the Death of Cool

I'm back home. Thought I'd blog, since I haven't blogged since the thing on Constantine's Sword. I've got nothing else to say about that movie for now, but I figure I should get back to it at somepoint.

I read an article on the Adbusters website. It's about hipsters, who are apparently the closest thing my generation has to a counter-culture. Problem is, they are completely devoid of any of the aspects that pervious generations hade. There are no sparkling dynamos, no mad men dreaming of spiritual fulfillment, it's more of long partying, modern decadence and "alternative fashion." The article left me with feelings of apocalyptic dread, which usually happens after I read Adbusters.

Of course, now I must ask the question. Am I a hipster? I don't think I'm a hipster, but I'm living in a time when hipster has appropriated the term of cool. To be honest, I think the idea of cool is dead. Nothing is cool anymore, because everything is trying to be cool. Which brings me to the fact that apparently, advertisers are reading my blog to determine if I am cool, and remarket what they find. This is troublesome. I do not want my apperance to become that of coolness.

Thankfully, I have decided that I am going to do the reverse of coolness. I am going to get something that look's like a Monk's robe and walk around in that. If they're is anything that isn't cool, it's a monk. No offence to monks though, but you guys really don't match up to what is generally considered cool. Therefore you should take that as a compliment. Therefore, I am going to be a coolness aestetic. I will see if I can talk my mom into getting me a large monk's robe, which I will walk around in. Mind you, it won't be an actual monk's robe, just one that will look kind of like a monk's robe. I'm pretty sure wearing an actual Monk's robe consitutes pretending to be a priest. Are monk's priests? Well, I'm going to probubly end up wearing monkish robes.