Sunday, August 23, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
At my age, you are done growing up, you are just growing old
8/21/09: Been checking lots of comics out from the library lately. Persepolis 2 is exactly the same as the first. The Japanese are the best at everything but cultural stuff really gets in the way of me understanding the undertones that must exist concerning certain things, especially the insistence on 12 year old girl protagonists and the complete impotence of all parents (get it? impotence in the very people that by definition aren't. get it? get it?). I was disappointed by Sin City. I hadn't read it when the movie came out, because Rob told me that it was panel by panel, word for word (he was right). I actually liked the movie quite a bit. Im a softee for that kind of period worship, especially a period I like the cultural artifacts of (see my affection for American muscle cars, cowboy shirts, rockabilly) Its kind of like how you remember things in a more favorable light than it really was or how you like the music you liked in high school for life. Anyway, its funny that I just like things less as I get older, especially media, art, music, etc. Its the same exact story, but on the page it has been falling flat. All the female characters are EXACTLY the same, big breasted "dames", tormented by the way their beauty alienates them, blah, blah, blah. If you get a stereotype dead on the first time, Frank, you don't need to keep harping on it. Irregardless of my personal struggle to like things, Ive been at least appreciating the idea of a comic book, of how an author can make a narrative and get everything perfect in a way no director ever could. I guess that's why comics always seem so contrived, they are absent the serendipity that comes automatically with other art forms.
I got stood up tonight. By a girl that has stood me up before. A girl who kissed me last night (since when does somebody kiss me before i try to kiss them? what gives?) and made lots of plans. I don't know how to feel about it. Obviously someone as flaky and up and down as I am isn't going to be a good match for me. At the same time new things have been rarer and rarer as I get worse and worse at making my life move. Move life, MOVE!
The raddest fucking thing ever that we forget because we get distracted section: Suns/stars aren't special. No. Really. They aren't made up of different stuff than planets, comets, moon, etc. The reason they explode with the potential energy that hides in matter is simple gravity. The have so much mass that their own gravity causes enough pressure to start a nuclear reaction!!! The fuel that burns is just stuff. rocks. whatever. If the earth was a million times it size it would be a fireball. You're welcome.
I got stood up tonight. By a girl that has stood me up before. A girl who kissed me last night (since when does somebody kiss me before i try to kiss them? what gives?) and made lots of plans. I don't know how to feel about it. Obviously someone as flaky and up and down as I am isn't going to be a good match for me. At the same time new things have been rarer and rarer as I get worse and worse at making my life move. Move life, MOVE!
The raddest fucking thing ever that we forget because we get distracted section: Suns/stars aren't special. No. Really. They aren't made up of different stuff than planets, comets, moon, etc. The reason they explode with the potential energy that hides in matter is simple gravity. The have so much mass that their own gravity causes enough pressure to start a nuclear reaction!!! The fuel that burns is just stuff. rocks. whatever. If the earth was a million times it size it would be a fireball. You're welcome.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
In the war between....
8/18/09: my appitite and my hatred of my belly I am pretty sure from looking around that I know who is going to win and Im not sure if that means that I don't hate enough.
Chasing girls used to be fun. Lately its felt like alot of work and a big drag. Monogamy equals laziness?
I have a new pet peeve. I have been encountering toilet seats (especially padded ones, gross) that fall back down when you try to put them up. What am i supposed to do? I tried this awk thing where you hold it up with your knee, but the angle becomes almost straight down and it just doesn't feel right. And if I try to just go and be extra careful with the old aim that doesn't exactly do it either because there is bound to be splash back and a quick wipe just means the next user is sitting in evaporated urine instead of urine. Its a worrisome situation altogether.
How come no one who makes things with a video camera gets it? For whatever reason, while watching Weeds last week, the dvd player did this weird thing where it froze in place for a second, two episodes in a row, near the end of each episode during a slow close up shot. It happened in such a way that it seemed intentional and I got really excited because "they" really pulled it off and it really felt that Nancy's (that's her name, right?) life had really stopped cold and she finally was forced to think about the morality of her decisions, etc, whatever. It was a very simple cinematic maneuver that paid big dividends for the character acting going on. When I realized later (the dvd player did it again in a spot that didn't make sense) that it was fake, I got a little upset when I realized that when it comes to TV and movies, time is time. Makes no sense. Music has been awesome lately (perhaps because of the rise of the digital) about making songs that skip, stop, double start, stretch, and otherwise have fun with the idea that life might be linear, but experience certainly isn't. Even lowbrow stuff (see the outro drum machine part to the Helen Keller song on pop radio, or even some Kanye stuff) is in on the game but at its height, this kind of technique actually works with the content, enriching a song beyond the point of mere storytelling to actual art. All of this ground has already been broken for filmmakers decades ago, and it arguable an easier medium for it. Considering the sometime overuse of flashback, flash forward, start at the end storytelling (see biopic genre, all), etc, why is all time linear all the time? If audiences are sophisticated enough to appreciate "bullet time" and people frozen in air jump kicks, shouldn't they all be sophisticated enough to relate to "eye contact time" or the experiential time torture that is being stuck in traffic or that pump, pumP, puMP, pUMP, PUMP that a heart does as a cigarette gets into your bloodstream and everything seems to slow down just because you are going too fast all of a sudden.
The newest craze in economic land is this game where you ask a group of people to guess a number between 0 and 100. You are trying to guess 2/3rds of the average number guessed. If you take a second to think about, you might think its as neat of a question as I do. I can't say more without giving it away (sort of) but if you ask me about, Im into talking about it. Also of interest is that highly mathematical sample groups (chess masters, grad students in math, etc) end up with similar results as the population at large, which really shouldn't be so.
Our society treats animals really really badly. No. Really. Torture and confinement are pretty much the norm. Meat isn't nourishing anyone. It tastes good. Is culinary pleasure different in kind to to the pleasure humans find in violence? (no, you too. really. see gangsta rap, shark week, sports, youtube tasing videos, and on and on) Would it actually stand up in an ethical court? We kill for pleasure and so did M. Vick. It was just a different kind of pleasure. Mr. Vick obv isnt a good person. Google the worlds 'Baltimore Raven', 'Ray Lewis' and 'murder' and you might get an idea that maybe other football players aren't either. I promise I won't talk about this anymore because I am already sooooooooooooo over it.
Chasing girls used to be fun. Lately its felt like alot of work and a big drag. Monogamy equals laziness?
I have a new pet peeve. I have been encountering toilet seats (especially padded ones, gross) that fall back down when you try to put them up. What am i supposed to do? I tried this awk thing where you hold it up with your knee, but the angle becomes almost straight down and it just doesn't feel right. And if I try to just go and be extra careful with the old aim that doesn't exactly do it either because there is bound to be splash back and a quick wipe just means the next user is sitting in evaporated urine instead of urine. Its a worrisome situation altogether.
How come no one who makes things with a video camera gets it? For whatever reason, while watching Weeds last week, the dvd player did this weird thing where it froze in place for a second, two episodes in a row, near the end of each episode during a slow close up shot. It happened in such a way that it seemed intentional and I got really excited because "they" really pulled it off and it really felt that Nancy's (that's her name, right?) life had really stopped cold and she finally was forced to think about the morality of her decisions, etc, whatever. It was a very simple cinematic maneuver that paid big dividends for the character acting going on. When I realized later (the dvd player did it again in a spot that didn't make sense) that it was fake, I got a little upset when I realized that when it comes to TV and movies, time is time. Makes no sense. Music has been awesome lately (perhaps because of the rise of the digital) about making songs that skip, stop, double start, stretch, and otherwise have fun with the idea that life might be linear, but experience certainly isn't. Even lowbrow stuff (see the outro drum machine part to the Helen Keller song on pop radio, or even some Kanye stuff) is in on the game but at its height, this kind of technique actually works with the content, enriching a song beyond the point of mere storytelling to actual art. All of this ground has already been broken for filmmakers decades ago, and it arguable an easier medium for it. Considering the sometime overuse of flashback, flash forward, start at the end storytelling (see biopic genre, all), etc, why is all time linear all the time? If audiences are sophisticated enough to appreciate "bullet time" and people frozen in air jump kicks, shouldn't they all be sophisticated enough to relate to "eye contact time" or the experiential time torture that is being stuck in traffic or that pump, pumP, puMP, pUMP, PUMP that a heart does as a cigarette gets into your bloodstream and everything seems to slow down just because you are going too fast all of a sudden.
The newest craze in economic land is this game where you ask a group of people to guess a number between 0 and 100. You are trying to guess 2/3rds of the average number guessed. If you take a second to think about, you might think its as neat of a question as I do. I can't say more without giving it away (sort of) but if you ask me about, Im into talking about it. Also of interest is that highly mathematical sample groups (chess masters, grad students in math, etc) end up with similar results as the population at large, which really shouldn't be so.
Our society treats animals really really badly. No. Really. Torture and confinement are pretty much the norm. Meat isn't nourishing anyone. It tastes good. Is culinary pleasure different in kind to to the pleasure humans find in violence? (no, you too. really. see gangsta rap, shark week, sports, youtube tasing videos, and on and on) Would it actually stand up in an ethical court? We kill for pleasure and so did M. Vick. It was just a different kind of pleasure. Mr. Vick obv isnt a good person. Google the worlds 'Baltimore Raven', 'Ray Lewis' and 'murder' and you might get an idea that maybe other football players aren't either. I promise I won't talk about this anymore because I am already sooooooooooooo over it.
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