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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Constantine's Sword: Thoughts

I kind of wonder what this movie has to say about my faith. I don't talk about my faith a lot, or my relationship with God. I admit we don't talk much, I don't know if that is a bad thing. The last time I can remember writing to God was when I wrote a poem about the fears I had about not being a good writer. I think that is a perfectly acceptable thing to ask God. You don't see many great Satanic novelists.

Anyways, I'm woolgathering. I just watched a movie called Constantine's Sword, which is largely about the history of Anti-Semitism in the Catholic Church, but also talked a lot about the life of James Carroll, who wrote the book on which this movie was based and is also the main character if you have those in documentaries, and Evangelism in America. The Evangelism ties nicely into the Anti-Semitism, because it talked a lot about Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ movie and a MegaChurch in Colorado Springs that was Evangelising to the Air Force. There was a scene where a pastor that acted kind of like some pop musician did some prayer service for a bunch of kids that had very militaristic overtones. This made me feel a bit uncomfortable.

Anyways, I've been thinking about my identity as a Christian. As much as I don't like to show it, I'm a Christian more then anything, but I feel at odds with mainstream Chirtianity. As far as I'm concerned, Chirstianity sold out to The Man and I feel a great deal of contempt for that, especially after watching this movie. The treatment of the Jews alone by the Church, and the fact that most Christian leaders have done little or nothing to apologize makes me want to tear the first cross from whatever wall or necklace it's on, and stamp it into the dust.

Anyway, know I bring up my issue. How does this movie affect me? I'm pretty sure that it does affect me, even though I could concievably hide behind my Mennonite sect. Odds are, while Mennonites are largelly free of starting any wars (at least none that I know off), they did stand by for wars and a couple may have been anti-semites. But to be honest, while I am a Christian, I don't think of myself as a pracitsing Mennonite.

Ah, I'm tired. It's late. I'm going to bed. I'll write more tomorrow.