[U.R.M.]

Hiatus

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 02:21:00 +0000

This Blog is on hiatus until further notice…

Adios

Complete and Utter Failure: The Riparian…? (Ain't Got Not'in')

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 07:37:00 +0000

You may be asking yourself, "Hey, self, where the fuck are the entries for this Tuesday and Thursday?" Well, to answer your rather belligerent thoughts—so rude—uh… honestly, wish I had 'em for ya, guys. Not so much runnin' on empty as I'm runnin' in circles and unable to sort out one idea from the last and next, and haven't been able to sit down and decide on something to write. I do promise that means I have lots of ideas, I just have little organisation both externally and internally; additionally, I'm trying to focus a bit on improving certain aspects of my life I've neglected for æons, nigh on… two decades?

Still throwing junk up on my LiveJournal, so if you need a fill of my writing, go there for minor amounts of a substantial substitute. I could subject you, dear readers and friends, to another week of my old works—an option I definitely considered—but, I decided that was enough of that for now.

Fortunately, this is neither popular nor my means of living, so-o-o-o-o… yeah, what can I say more than "Sorry, see ya next week."

Proto-Poetry: Six Raw Deals

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 04:02:00 +0000

It's rather sad that it took me four days to realise I hadn't published this entry. Anyway, I used to use AIM as a sort of writing tool: when I threw up an Away Message, I'd write a short poem in it. It was good practice for shorter, swifter pieces, and it was generally an exercise in techniques and practices I favoured the most, as it all came off the cuff. it resulted it some pretty damn bad poetry, but it wasn't meant to be anything profoundly impressive, and there were a few gems that I have slash intend to develop into more sophisticated works. Here I present a small sampling from the 251 poem series, Away.

Away #41: Identity

I woke up this morning,
brushed my teeth and tied my hair back,
I reached for my wallet and couldn't find my identity,
even though there are three cards inside that tell me who I am.

I blinked away the sleep of the previous night,
I washed my face and squinted at the image in the mirror,
blue eyes and brown hair both belonging to a stranger to my eyes,
"What's my name, what does it mean, and why do I feel so empty?"

I threw my coat on and picked up one of my hats,
I slipped the deck of cards and keys into my pockets,
on my way out the door I fed the cat some tuna,
for the first time that sure sounded good.

I'm lost, I'm lost, I'm lost,
in the coiling grasp of the vicious snake that has me by the fangs,
I feel the venom pulsating in my blood and all I can say is,
all I can say is, all I can say is... "Okay."

Away #74: Chance

For every hidden door,
There is a key,
For every probable fuckup,
There is me.

Less and less,
I try each day,
To please everyone around,
I'm quiet still,
I hear no sound.

If I left,
Would you cry,
Or would you notice,
Or blink an eye?

Your smile seems plastic,
Your mood so elastic,
I want to know,
What you know,
But I don't know,
Where to go...

For every probable outcome,
There is the worst possibility,
I will find it each time the option arises,
Without a single fucking doubt.

Away #117: Dear

I'm not sayin' much these days,
Hearin' less from your end of town,
I'm not playin' many of the old school games,
Less and less I'm seein' familiar names,
Growin' older, growin' wiser,
Growin' up in ways nobody seems to notice,
Changin' with the times, changin' up my old rhymes,
You're stayin' static, seemin' frantic,
All my relics of those days are in the attic,
While you're still playin' with 'em every night,
Is there somethin' I can do, is there somethin' I can say,
I don't know what to say, I don't know what to do,
Watchin' your life waste away, watchin' your eyes fade to gray,
Not my problem, not my business,
But it's pathetic, sad, the way you remain listless,
Not hearin' your name in my part of town,
Not seein' your face in the bottom of my mug,
Not carin' much anymore, my old love.

Away #179: Raindrop

I took a minute to think the other day,
It came to me in the form of a drop of rain,
It told me everything I had been wondering for years,
It ran down my cheek and into my mouth,
Played around on my tongue,
The taste, I'll never forget,
It tasted like a piece of heaven,
Honey-sweet and smooth.

Damn, it sure did burn like Hell on the way down.

Now I'm free,
From all my wants,
Now I see,
What you meant,
Now I know,
What I need.

I took a step away from that rut today,
It clung to my ankles like chains,
I shook them off and ran so far,
When I stopped, I looked up,
And all I saw was a rich shade of yellow,
Engulfing the world in one ball of flame,
I saw it all burnt down,
Out like a match,
Violent and destructive,
To the very last.

Now I'm free.

Away #227: Sweet

broke down so i slunk down to the bottom of the barrel
prying up the bottom to find the underside
feeling like no man feeling no woman
feeling that tear roll down my cheek
lost last shred of dignity there in light so bright
blind and naked stood and judged
found guilty being silly
nobody built to be with you my son nobody created to find your heart
nor hold your hand so said the prophet to the fly
down at the docks watching the boats launch
while flags billow red white blue in the dusk
all black in the dark all grain in the sack
slung over shoulder orange face under straw hat
turned skyward listen to the crows
announcing how another soul goes free today
tonight she took me by the collar
she looked me in the eye and she spat
hon you ain't no man not by what i have in my hands
words so sweet fall so short when you don't believe
don't believe

Away #251: Philosophy

I wrote a letter today, self-addressed,
Stamped it and burnt it to ash,
I told myself I'd never know anything,
That reality was a lie, all was falsified.

Let's wax philosophy, tune up uncertainty,
Nothing makes sense, nor to you nor me,
I love it when you say, "It's all relative,"
In that sexy voice of yours.

Perception is the world,
The world is a projection,
Of the individual mind,
So fuck factuality --
I just made that word up, too,
Then looked it up and saw it was real.

Floating on an ocean, I set sail today,
Took a crash course in marine biology,
Paddled out to the middle of nowhere,
And sprang a leak.

So let's wax philosophy, just you and me,
Between the sheets, it's so discrete,
Your lucid dreaming repaints my face,
And you'll be a walrus.

[Adios]

A Hole

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 04:02:00 +0000

     there is a hole
    wherein all pleas fall
   a place to throw
these away

   all words spoken
    unspoken loneliness
     lonely silence

      there is a hole
     wherein they live
    dug from anxieties
   and_nervous habit

    a_broken mind
     telling_itself it's_alright
      it's alright

       there is_a hole
      wherein_they bury
     all hopeful promises
    and promising circumstance

   you reach out to find
   the ruler is most definitely unkind

    a crooked smile
     telling itself_it's just fine
      it's just fine

       never enough ways to say
       your_heart aches for more

      a blind eye
     telling_itself it's not_gone
    it's_gone

     there is a hole
      wherein love hides
       the painful distance
        between faith and form

       echoing memories_of happy times
      rippling reminisces_on worn-out_lines
     lost paths in red sands

      no home for_your rest
      walk on and on in that far-away forest

     How well shadows hide until out goes the light.

      thirstier_and_thirstier you_know
       the dryness will do nothing_but grow

      Improvement seems to be a fleeting lie told by reality.

       a light to lead you to escape
        for_what chances do you take

         fading voices_in the dark horizon
        the night_draws dimmer
       as the moon betrays it

        there is_a hole
         wherein_hope climbs
          a thousand miles
           of emptiness…

“You kept me close, for I was all you had,
Your one and only begotten son;
Put me up on the cross in your name,
My identity so blurred with yours.

“To chain me down, you lied and lied,
You told me not to trust anyone else;
How could I cry for help if I had no words,
No way to flee within this heartfelt maze.

“You taught me everything I know,
Of love, the innermost workings of myself;
So it's no wonder I no longer can believe,
With the world so poisoned from inside.”

…there is a hole.

Eh Pea Bee

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 04:02:00 +0000

Eh Pea Bee: all words have escaped —Copy?	Ten Four: on the watch for nouns and adjectives on the run —Copy?
Over: on the lamb grammar and poetics armed and dangerous —Copy?	Repeat: all words have escaped —Copy?
Dispatch: suspect matching description of ten point font with bold typeface spotted at Softcover & Spine —Copy?	Car Fifty Four: where are you? watch out for adverbs known to suddenly modify situations —Copy?
Dispatch: suspect is on print not obeying meter or rime possible free verse —Copy?	Repeat: all words have escaped —Copy?
Ten Twenty: Dime Novel & Fifth Avenue in hot pursuit drunk form-class words —Copy?	Ten Eleven: eee eee sea problem can't understand too much dialect try a the hemming way —Copy?
Ten Twenty Six: suspect is apprehended clause subordinated successfully subject agrees with verb bringin' 'em in —Copy?	Repeat: all words have escaped —Copy?
Over and Out!

Nighttime Melancholy Insanity

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 04:02:00 +0000

      Another lonesome night,
Spent up in the wastes of humankind,
      I crawl up to the moon and sigh,
There's little left to lose when you're all alone.

      The jagged loneliness has grown,
Another night of sin for which to atone,
      Worn out in the shadow of my gravestone,
No love is invulnerable to the weight of loss.

      The truth does not hide its ugliness,
A world full of meaningful nothingness and regrets,
      What was once holy is now rotten secrets,
I've lost my fragile senses of goodliness and wronging.

      Where you tread cautiously,
The moon cuts it viciously askew,
      The warm blue light of night anew,
Replaced by a yellow burning ferocity.

      I want to hold,
A piece of time,
      Leafed in gold,
In this heart of mine.

      I want to know,
You will stay,
      Where it glows,
And I shall see.

      I will pray,
For redemption,
      For recollection,
Madness cured.

      Another lonesome night,
Used up in the bowels of wretchedness,
      I lay on my empty bed of lies,
There's little left to know when you're long lost.

Further Cop-Outs: More Delays

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 10:31:00 +0000

The barrage of real-life-type affairs contines to prevent me from sitting down and truly writing anything worthwhile. I will be taking this week off from even attempting to do as much, so that I can catch up with the obstacles in my way (that I can see clearly now). In case you're curious, basically restarting the college semester and taking up the mantle of the head or vice-head of various organisations has preoccupied my time, along with visiting missed acquaintances who were away for the summer. My life is uninteresting; the interesting things I do with my life will commence, again, next week.

I also swear the two entries I promised "next Monday" will actually surface soon. They're big'uns, so I hope you, my imaginary readers, will understand the time expended hasing them out, editting and revising the myriad words I type on the keyboard to ensuring that what I inevitably put up here is not complete tripe—only fractionally so.

Cop-Out: Delays

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 23:02:00 +0000

Revising and editting the second part of this story has taken me much longer than anticipated, so the next part will be posted Monday, as I really don't want to put up anything of compromised quality in the name of filling space.

Una Canzone, Ein Getränk & Un Bais

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 04:02:00 +0000

The pianist is alit on the little, slipshod stage in the corner,
       He looks through you with glassy eyes, straight to the red and blue,
Song spun on a twisted loom, every note a heartbeat of your life,
       “Raise your glass, a toast to freedom, the will to fail!”

The barroom scene of man's folly wrapped in a garbage can,
       Leave the lid down and flush it all away, come and sit and pray,
To the gods of olde, to the powers that be, so that it won't burn so much…
       “Here's to lowered expectations and ground-up hopelessness!”

The bartender smiles, rag in hand, and pours another,
       You squint up at him and slur a word or two, he wipes up your life,
Spilled on the counter, next to the ashtray wherein burns your soul,
       “What a lovely crowd, tonight, dressed up in funerary garb, I see!”

You listen to the pianist as he tells his story to the empty air:

“I knew a girl, she had a mouth,
       A real pearl, a regular Hellhound,
Time and time again, truth unfurled,
       Sin-bound she was, drawn to fire.

“I loved her, I told myself,
       It didn't help that she loved me,
Complicated the whole matter,
       Beyond reconciliation, at that point.

“There were some obvious plot holes,
       You know, clichés and the usual,
Another man, a small dog, the usual,
       Lipstick on the collar, keys on the dresser.

“I knew a girl, she had eyes,
       A real pearl, a regular Succubus,
Spun our lies, together in a lovely world…”

“Pay up, pal,” the bartender spits and slips the bill,
       You look down at the counter without a word, your worth the cost,
Dripping from his rag, down and down, ashes within smoulders your soul,
       The black and red lights on the crowd's eyes strobes and pulses…

A memory from below comes up high, the cats cry in alleys far gone,
       The hand of fate contains two eights and two aces, they pray,
They pray, the mouth curls up into a ball and hits the gong, the village scatters,
       Up and up, the smoke signals read, “Pay for your sins, pal.”

Mewling children we all once have been, the pianist swaggers,
       He murmurs to the rafters, to the hidden desires of the hereafter,
Tune told on a sinister needle, “Did a camel leap through it?”
       They clink their tumblers and drink three more, three more.

The empty air listens to the pianist as he mouths his sobs:

“I knew a girl, she had no soul,
       A demon, a ghost, a wraith,
By many names, she tricked me,
       What was true, what was a lie?

“I cannot answer for the past,
       I cannot recompense for my regrets,
She drew me in her arms with a sigh,
       I was but lost for a lack,

“It'd make a poor film, I bet,
       No hooks, no twists, no surprise,
A romance without a token hero,
       Sex only sells so many scripts.

“I knew a girl, she had legs,
       With those, she walked away,
A real pearl, a regular Jezebel…”

“My marriage was a sham, here's to that sonuvabitch!”
       The jester twirls the pins, you gawk and point your tail,
She saunters up with malice in her groin, smiling like a jackal,
       “Here's to new beginnings, and the same old ends!”

You sign your name away to the barroom to-nite,
       To-morrow, maybe you'll reclaim it after a gutter-nap,
The coffin is built, plank by plank, the hammer falls in time,
       Playing along, the pianist is there until the lights go dim…

“Won't you pardon me?” she asks, a touch of apology,
       Unaccostumed to such degrees of false sincerity, you are stunned,
Your heart is hung on a nail driven through the bathroom wall,
       The eulogy is done, the casket is closed, the dearly departed departs.

The pianist listens to the empty air as you lower your baton:

“I knew a girl, or so I thought,
       Lies are spiders, we are flies,
The analogy is clear, so I think,
       Yet we still miss the trick.

“The same old tricks, the repeated refrain,
       A relationship like a farcical play,
Our minds the stage, our parts all played,
       Dancing, dancing, dancing.

“She was here, then gone,
       I was there, then fallen,
Heaven's missing an angel,
       Hell's locked its gate.

“I knew a girl, she had breasts,
       Which was a good thing,
Because that's, at least, something to miss…”

The bartender puts on his coat, takes out his key,
       From his pocket, out falls your life onto the floor,
He shakes it out, pursing his lips, wonders what it is,
       “What a night, here's to the ludicrous profit margin.”

The pianist grabs his hat from off the rack,
       Next to where your heart is still hanging,
He cracks a grin and laughs, the song rattling his brain,
       “I know, I know, I know.”

She sucks it off her lip,
       Your eyes rolled to the sky,
Breath like turpentine,
       Here comes the kiss…

[Adios]

Three Reviews: The Animus Inside Weeps

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 04:02:00 +0000

I would just like to take a moment to confess that this week, the writing did not exactly flow freely, and I had a hard time getting these six reviews out and done. Just today, I realised exactly how much I've been making myself write, that when you actually put the entries, with all the HTML code, into a word processor like WordPerfect, they come out to four, nearly five pages, each; I've been writing everything in Notepad and aiming to write "a full page," which meant a window full of text with Notepad maximised—which, up until this week, didn't feel like that much. Perhaps, now, I will consider putting my goal length at something a bit shorter, so I don't die, or, more than likely what the case would be, push myself to write so much I burn out and don't feel like updating anymore. Anyway, here are the three reviews I just know you all have been on pins and needles for all day…

Cars

      Pixar does a notoriously fair job with the whole "CG Animated Feature-Length Family Film" deal, and Cars is not really an exception, here. The premise: a cocky and showy race car gets in a threesome with two other hot, sleek Lamborghinis—er, I mean, a threeway-tie for the racing season championship title, The Drunken Redneck Budweiser & Chicken Wings Cup or somesuch, and there is to be a plot device to teach the son of a bitch how to be a better person-car-guy-thing—er, tie-breaking race in California. On his way to the Big Racist Sporting Event—er, Big Race, whacky circumstances occur (Jinkies!) and he ends up waylaid in a piss-Antz town at the end of the status quo establishment—er, in the middle of nowhere, arrested, tried, and found guilty; the punishment: death by lethal fuel injection—er, I mean, he has to repave their street that he fucked all the hell up with his speedy hijinks. There, Steve McQueen—Er, "Lightning" McQueen (the fancy racing-type car, voiced by Owen "The Ugly, Whiny Brother" Wilson) meets a hot-ass bitch—er, a sensitive, self-actualised and independent female role '05 model, Sally Carrera (the automative puns never stop, folks; voiced by Bonnie "Who?" Hunt), and befriends the slobbering retard—er, I mean… wait, yeah, slobbering retard, Mater (the joke: Mater, like tomater, 'cause he's RED, ya know, like a tomater; voiced by Larry "Makes the Other Three Blue Collar Comics Look Smarter" The Cable Guy); other characters in Radiator Springs include: Flo, the obligatory fat and sassy black-sounding lady-car (Jenifer "Not Queen Latifah" Lewis); Sheriff, the, uh, sheriff-car (Michael "Where Did I Come From?" Wallis); Ramone, the dirty hippie-sounding stoner-car (Cheech "Who Else?" Marin); Sarge, the angry, impotent—er, militant jeep (Paul "Not Lee Ermey" Dooley); and Luigi and Guido, the greasy Italian jobs (Tony "Monk" Shalhoub, and Guido "Guess Who I Voiced" Quaroni). They all own various, silly businesses, but I imagine I should leave somethings to be discovered by the viewer. One of the two directors, Joe Ranft, makes the noises of Red the Obvious Victim of Child Molestation—er, Firetruck, as well; he also voices "Peterbuilt," but mentioning that would require me to remember which character that was.
      This is actually a pretty amusing movie, a lot better than I was expecting. The plot progresses, life lessons are learnt, McQueen realises the dark, nasty secret of Doc Hudson, the grouchy and incontinental elder-car (Paul "What Do You Want From Me?" Newman), bonds are formed, love blossoms, the Architect incoherently explains the world, the Machine is contronted, Neo is crucified—er, I mean, and everyone lives happily ever after, except Mater, who falls out of a helicopter and dies tragically (fade to white), bringing everyone together in a moving scene of coming to grips with the harsh reality of death (SPOILER ALERT: I'm a liar). Oh, right, and there's the whole "championship-determining race" between McQueen, Chick Hicks the dick (Michael "I'm the Goddamn Batman" Keaton), and The King… that's right, they race-off against the creepy, plastic-faced Burger King mascot… no, actually, they race-off against Richard "I ACTUALLY DRIVE A RACE CAR, WHOO!" Petty. Guess who wins? Cole Trickle, that's who.
      Ah, random cameo by George "You'd Think Inappropriate For Family Films" Carlin as the voice of sleazy but lovable sponsor, Fillmore, there's always room for George-O; because Pixar clearly owns his soul, John "My Last Name Is More Awesome Than Yours" Ratzenberger provides the voice of Mack the Kni—er, Truck, which leads into a rather amusing re-envisioning of all previous Pixar films he was in, as placed in the Cars universe, at the end of the movie ("You're a TOY CAR! A TOY CAR!"). All in all, I was quite satisfied; another bang-up job by John "I Write and Direct All These Pixar Films" Lasseter and Pixar Studios. Failure Rating: 12%.

An Inconvenient Truth

      Not so much a movie as a highly controversial video slideshow—it's been called a PowerPoint Presentation by many, including Jon Stewart, but I prefer to imagine he didn't use PowerPoint—Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is an informative and interesting presentation of the Global Warming issue; an issue which has been called everything from "Cause for Alarm" to "Liberal Hoax." It's funny, to me, to see how this has sparked up the conservative end of the spectrum to put back on their anti-environmentalism (not called as such, but that's the basic notion) and spouting off about how it's all a conspiracy to challenge civic freedoms or somesuch—been awhile since I heard terms like "treehugger" in the news. I'm a registered member of the Green Party of Virginia, you don't have to show me a fancy video to get me to go, "Oh! This is problematic!" I've been reading and following the issue for years, and my biggest thought on the matter is this:
      It's mostly debated from the entirely wrong angle. Global Warming isn't a scientific issue, it's a political issue—or, rather, it is based on science, but the importance of the issue isn't of a scentific nature, it is of a sociopolitical one. Al Gore used very legitimate scientific studies in Inconvenient Truth; I'm not qualified to contest the validity of his data, and I don't think most people who do are, either. It seems like a simple correspondence: more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere equals a higher greenhouse effect. Thus, every other aspect of this debate aside, we do not want more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than necessary—I don't like one hundred degree temperatures in the summer let alone, say, all year long. Indisputably, industries spew out CO₂ gases; internal combustion-based, gasoline-burning and coal-burning engines spew out CO₂ gases; if we do not want a ton of CO₂ gases in the atmsophere, then these things that produce the carbon dioxide need to not produce so much, eh? It's that simple: we know carbon dioxide is problematic, we know what is producing an abundance of it, let us work to curb the production.
      I don't really care if the global warming effect is entirely manmade, or if it part of a natural cycle—most of the scientific community does agree that we are entering an era of a level of CO₂ in Earth's atmosphere that is higher than ever in history—the dissenting scientists there are few and hard to find; Republicans and conservatives, or anti-environmentalists of whatever creed, do find them, of course, which leads to needless bickering in political journals and on the news and so forth. FOX News, of course, is content to put entirely unqualified people on the air who call Global Warming a complete hoax, that it doesn't exist—I saw this, with my eyes, and just felt saddened. This muddles the issue: this is not an important point. Our civilization is not accustomed to dealing with the effects that the predicted climatic changes will induce, whether or not it's ever happened before, hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago is moot: if it happens now, we're fucked. Not Earth, the Planet… no, no, I don't mean we have to "Save the Planet," here—I do think that's a good idea, but that's not what I'm specifically referring to in this instance… We need to save ourselves; we need to make sure we don't incur massive destruction, huge loss of life, and possibly global catastrophe. Whatever happened to the axiom, "Better Safe than Sorry," folks?
      The problem is there are powerful forces that don't want change, progress, advancement toward a cleaner burning fuel and to a cleaner environment as a whole, so they intentionally obsfucate the nature of the issue and keep the public as uneducated as possible, or plant stupid ideas in their heads like: "Global Warming does not exist. These are not the CO₂ gases you are looking for." They wave their hand and steal our shit while we're mesmerised. While there's still oil in the planet to harvest and exploit, overpriced gas bills to hand out, cheap and dirty industrial practices to maintain low-cost, high-profit endeavours, the Powers That Be will not want to see things like electric cars, hybrid cars, hydrogen fuel cells, effective solar power, etcetera, etcetera. So, let's take the message of a movie like An Inconvenient Truth and let's skew it all out of whack until people just laugh and go, "Oh, that Al Gore, what a silly hippy." There is a problem with our corporate and industrial practices in this country, and it stems from too much freedom with too little thought, this selfish attitude of "Let 'em do what they want, it's their right." No, this isn't a natural, human rights issues, as businesses are not people: this is not what Jefferson meant by life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—what they do harms everyone else, whether or not they're cognisant of it.
      I've, apparently, hijacked this review and turned it into a political rant, huh… The movie itself was well-constructed, although the little sentimental pieces about Gore's life were kind of unneeded and felt a bit like emotional pandering; the bit about the 2000 election was superfluous, as well, and just diluted the point of the movie, making it more about Al Gore and less about Global Warming. What I've heard and read is Gore did not want to include these parts, but his producers pushed him to do it—ah, marketeers, always there to sell, sell, sell. People will continue to use this as a reason to lambaste Gore due to their petty, political grudges, of course, and people will continue to miss the point, that we should change no matter the real motivation. In the end, the point remains: trees are awesome. Failure Rating: 13%.

Muse's Blackholes & Revelations

      Muse, a British rock band heavily influenced by classical jazz, is one of those gigs that you either really get behind or sounds too pretentious and "artsy" for your tastes, akin to other bands such as Mars Volta, Fugazi or Spiral Architect; these bands are usually labeled "progressive," which really just means they're doing something atypical and creative, and one's enjoyment of can be dependent on having an acquired taste. Their big, big radio hit last year, "Our Time Is Running Out," earned Muse a spot on the billboards, in movie soundtracks and on the bad TV drama commercials, and was probably the most easily digestable track off of Absolution—a fucking brilliant piece of masterful work. Blending the sound of Jazz, Rock, and old-school British Pop, Muse is spearheaded by Matthew Bellamy, the amazing vocalist, lead guitarist and frequent pianist, whose voice is a wonder to behold, as bizarre as it is beautiful, with Chris Wolstenholm backing it up with the driving bass line, and, finally, on the ever-essential drums, Dominic Howard, making sure everything stays rhythmic.
      Blackhole & Revelations is a bit of a divergent endeavour by the band, the sound having more in common with older album, Origin of Symmetry, than the previous one, Absolution, which was an epic torrent of monumental-sounding songs that built on each other; Blackholes returns to a format of more self-contained songs, independent with differing feels and textures of their own. The track which lyrics wherefrom the title is derived, "Starlight," is reminscent of older songs like "New Born," vast and "space-age"; the first single cut off the album, "Supermassive Black Hole" (which you would think is where the album got its name), reminds me a lot of the band Self, and is the easy radio hit. "Map of the Problematique" and "City of Delusion" continues in the same vein as Absolution, with a highly charged energy of a Biblical proportion—har, har, that's a pun 'cause they use a lot of Biblical imagery and metaphors in their lyrics. "Soldier's Poem" is your usual dose of the slow and romantic fare, which you always find one or two examples of on every album, along with "Invincible," a rolling, melodic tune, another very sweet song. Track number one, "Take a Bow," and later on the album with "Assassin," Muse throws in some fast tempo, throbbing tunes for the kids to jump around to; the least remarkable cut is, in my opinion, "Exo-Politics," which would stand out in the repertoire of most bands, but not Muse—I just expect more from them, as it reads like a less interesting version of their other works. "Hoodoo" is a strange song, calming and soothing but, yet, motivating and pulsing, another trademark of Absolution, leading into what is the perfect, awe-inspiring bookend to the album, "Knights of Cydonia," which departs from any other song they've ever done. "Knights" proves to me that Muse would be the band I'd hire to compose a soundtrack for my quirky, medieval fantasy slash science-fiction movie if I were to ever make one; this is a song in the same league as "The Hope Overture," by the Kroonos Quartet, that requires listening to understand how compelling and immersive it is to hear.
      Overall, there is little complaint from me here, but I still think Absolution is their masterpiece. Blackholes and Revelations is a great ride though, and well worth time and money. Failure Rating: 1%

[TIA;TY]

Three Reviews and a Baby (Minus the Baby)

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 04:02:00 +0000

Yes, this was posted a day late, in reality, contrary to the day and time displayed. My apologies, I forgot to actually publish it, after I wrote it, so it sat around as a "Draft" until around 5:00 PM on Wednesday. But, here goes, nonetheless, three reviews of a moderate length, in lieu of five briefer ones. Thursday's reviews will consist of the same.

A Scanner Darkly

    I was very eager to see this film, because I have a love of animation to a nigh perverse level, on top of being an independent film geek; so, put both together, with delicious rotoscoping effects, and I'm there, right quick. After trekking to the nearby independent movie theatre and sitting down to watch, wide-eyed like a schoolgirl in awe, quivering with joy and fear—fear, for you are never quite certain if such adventures in non-mainstream movies will be regretted or not—the film finished and I did not know what to think. The style of animation, rotoscoping, is something I think only I fervently adore amongst my friends, for when trailers were being ran for A Scanner Darkly, I was going, "Ooo!" and my friends were going, "Eeeh…"—I ultimately thought the film looked awesome, just so bloody neat, that I am far from retracting my opinion there.
    The performances were pretty admirable; Keanu Reeves did what he does best, namely not having a clue what's really happening (unsure if it's acting or reality); Robert Downey Jr. was a brilliant conspiracy theorist; Woody Harrelson was the perfect drugged-out, surfer dude; Winona Ryder maybe gave the most bland performance, but there wasn't a lot to do with her character, I have a feeling. The bulk of this movie was a string of scenes centered on the daily lives of Bob Arctor (Reeves), Barris (Downey), and Luckman (Harrelson), in or around Arctor's house or in the car together, where they interacted with each other or with Donna (Ryder), Arctor's girl, and friend, Charles Freck, a minor part played quite beautifully by Rory Cochrane. A Scanner Darkly begins with Charles Freck, actually, following the course of his breakdown due to the drug, Substance D, which is highly addictive and induces serious brain damage; the final scene with Freck is quite hilarious, quite sad, much like the whole story of the movie.
    Here's the jist: Fred is a police officer, a Sheriff, assigned to flush out Bob Arctor, a dealer in Substance D. Sheriffs wear a suit at all times which constantly mutates their outward appearance between hundreds of thousands of combinations of body parts from the government's records, in order to overcome the identity recognition technology located essentially everywhere in the country, so that the police force can operate with anonymity themselves. What you find out early on in the film is that Fred is Bob Arctor… something Fred slash Arctor doesn't seem to realise. Fred "takes on" the identity of Bob Arctor in order to do his job, and installs surveillance technology, scanners, all over his own home. Barris and Luckman are two druggies who live with Arctor, and, thus, the movie flips between scenes of the three men interacting with each other, and, then, Officer Fred later observing himself interacting with his two friends. Substance D splits the two hemispheres of the brain apart and causes them to conflict, to send criss-crossed messages to the nervous system, to, in essence, fight; therein you have the primary tool for the theme of duality within the movie: the self within the self that observes itself (O Existentialism, thou art so grandly overdone).
    For the majority of the time, the film is a meandering observation of the schizophrenia of Arctor, Barris and Luckman, a "caustically comical" view of their paranoid delusions, their ridiculous conspiracy theories, their drugged-out lunacies—the funniest sequence in the movie is probably the one I refer to as "Come On In, the Door is Unlocked" (better watched than explained). That which I would fully understand as a reason to dislike A Scanner Darkly is that it does a lot of aimless wandering, takes no semblance of a direct route through the story, and leaves you wondering what the point may be. There is a backbone of a plot within the story tying everything together, but each scene, individually, is almost a short in and of themselves. No traditional, Hollywood moviemaking going on here, and I like that—maybe you don't, though, I don't know.
    This is a drug movie, irrefutably. Did you like Requiem for a Dream? I did; this one is nowhere near as dark, though, much more of a dark comedy. Failure Rating: 10%.

Tom Waits' Big Time

    Let's talk about Tom Waits, shall we? As a musician, he's been a creative force in the musical underground—the real one, not the one fueled by rebellious, snivelling teenagers and mindless trends—for decades. His music is a throwback to Blues, with a heavy influence of Jazz, plus a heavy dose of world music; his voice is an instrument of its own, a powerful, fear-inducing thing, bass and strong, hoarse and raspy, twisted and bewildering. The music of Tom Waits is bizarre and delightful, like a beatnik but good.
    Watching Big Time, a live performance of sorts by the man and his ensemble, helps solidify what it is that makes Tom Waits so interesting: Tom Waits is the music you would expect to hear in the corner of a bar in Hell; you find yourself in the Underworld, you make your way to some seedy, dim and smoky dive, on Queens Street of Pain perhaps, and there's Tom Waits and his band, in the corner, playing. Tom Waits is the Blues of Hell—it doesn't help that the man is some form of demon, easily seen when you watch him performing, as no man can make such frightening expressions and do such creepy dances unless he is secretly demonic. His voice is a channeling of dark forces, indeed, as well.
    Could there have been any better music to have playing in the barroom scene of Fight Club? I say, "No," and the producers of the movie agreed. When you need someone to play the deranged doctor in Bram Stoker's Dracula, Renfield, is there any better man to fit the part? Again, "No," and it is agreed upon by the moviemakers. Want a random, desert wanderer in your movie to spout prophetic riddles at the protagonist, making her unsure if he is an apparition or mirage? Tom Waits is there, Mr. Tony Scott, to appear in your film, Domino.
    Big Time seems to be a couple concerts by the madman, cut apart into several different sequences, and spliced back together in some kind of strange nightmare vision. In case the music of Tom Waits wasn't weird enough, now we have his idea of his own music video movie. It's all strangely perfect, however, the imagery and scenes matching his sound perfectly, and the man may be crazy, but he's a brilliant showman on stage. Each little vignette tells the tale of a grimy, run-down little theatre and the characters—all Tom Waits—associated, in the loge, in the ticket booth, in the bathroom. It's the story of every down-trodden American in the city ever told, set to the tune of Tom Waits.
    The lyrics of Tom Wait feel as though they are one long story of barroom misery, of drunken failure, of love lost and heartbreak, of time wasted down the drain, of mistakes made and sins enacted, of unseen dramas in back alleys and deserted docks, the ringing sounds of an abandoned warehouse and the rats within. To listen to his modern-era albums is to listen to the dark side of the American dream, like a beautiful retelling of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," or if William Faulkner wrote of the big cities and was put to song; Tom Waits is black comedy at its best, a dark look through a red lens set on life, love and everything inbetween.
    Imagine all that, in a concert movie. It… is… so… fucking… awesome. Failure Rating: 0% (Big Time is no longer in distribution, can only be found on preowned VHS tapes, and has been put into DVD format and is freely distributed, legally, by very cool individuals only).

xkcd

    For several reasons, I have a special interest in this particular webcomic, "xkcd." For one thing, I know the writer and artist—not really that closely, mind you, but an acquaintance, nonetheless—who graduated from the same college I attend and is now living with my ex-roommate, locally. Being able to watch things develop firsthand, as it grows from a secondary LiveJournal for random doodles on occasion, to being updated thrice a week, to becoming a standalone website with powerful hosting, all at specific, timely stages, I find the whole experience intriguing and telling of things I always knew to be true, but only from secondhand sources. Seeing a webcomic's popularity deliberately engineered by virtually exploiting the big social networks on the Internet is a curious sight.
    The comic itself is fun and great for gags. The art is usually neglible, for it's mostly stick figures or crudely drawn objects for the purposes of conveying textual jokes, so there's not much interesting to look at in most cases; once in awhile, the creator utilises a visual trick or sketches an animal, landscape or famous person, all of a very "margin doodling" style… The joke-writing is the real strength of xkcd, typically able to produce a good laugh—or a groan, due to the puns, because when he says a "webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language," the "language" part means horrible puns, the bastard. The "romance" part is of a variety of sappiness I can't get behind, as he definitely strikes very "emo" chords here and there: bemoaning lost love or complaining of a broken heart and the such. The "sarcasm" is my personal favourite part, and it can be very well timed and executed.
    What is the most interesting part of it all is how it got to where it is. This is not a webcomic made for the webcomics community, or really much a part of it, on the whole. The creator is only recently initiating himself with the world of webcomics (to probably try and figure a way to farther expand his readership). The fanbase of the strip was garnered almost entirely from the Blog community and the LiveJournal community, the two largest social networks on the Internet, via simple manufacturing of links and associations. The website is separate from any webcomic studio or network, nor is it syndicated through any major webcomic label; it is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 license, however, making it freely shareable (if that's a word). The trick was accessibility: xkcd has had, since nearly day one, an RSS feed and a LiveJournal for the RSS, plus the permanent links for both comic page address and image URL are explicitly displayed for each comic. So, when it got linked by big Blog sites like BoingBoing, the hosting guaranteed site stability despite huge traffic, the RSS made it easy to keep up with afterward for the visitors, and other, smaller Blog sites would put the links and comics up, too; all the while, it's trickling slowly through the LiveJournal community, thanks to the creator's efforts and a few associates who persistently linked it to friends, who, then, "friended" (a verb I do not endorse) the RSS LiveJournal. Thus, a moderately popular webcomic that has nothing to do with the webcomics community whatsoever.
    My only notable problem with xkcd is the tendency to be a tad high-flown, mostly with the "math" part of its tagline. Some jokes boil down to little more than mentioning a complicated or highly advanced mathematics or physics (the field he got his degree in) concept, perhaps with pretense of being otherwise, but a lot of it can be "Ha, ha, look at this! Isn't this funny?" Other people see it, and say, "Oh! I know what that is! Ha, ha, that's awesome that he mentioned that thing I, too, know about! That is funny!" Very apt for the Blog community, really, which is fueled by such practices of large, psuedointellectual circle jerks. A lot of the times, xkcd is being quirky and clever, but, other times, it's straddling the fine line between pretentious and merely observational, reminiscent of the songs of Tom Lehrer. You can sometimes not quite be sure if he's making funny of others for doing this same thing, or if he's doing it himself—if you consider that clever or not is your choice, I choose not.
    Mostly a "non-comic," in the vein of Far Side, with little to no continuity, small amounts of narrative, zero characters, xkcd is a mouthpiece for the author to crack wise about entirely random subjects, and I respect that. It, also, truly is simple as pie (or pi, AHAHAHAHAHA) to keep up with new updates; bonus points for consistent updating, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, always on time (especially considering he has automatic scripts for posting and a queue of comics for always about a month ahead). Failure Rating: 15%.

[TIA;TY]

The Concatenation of Propoganda from Corporate America, or Why I Hate Hating Microsoft

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 04:02:00 +0000

—Title Link Image from "This Modern World," by Tom Tomorrow: http://www.thismodernworld.com.

After having read this long interview between EGM and Peter Moore, a representative of Microsoft for the X-Box 360, I began to think of snarky things to say about Microsoft. For example, who the fuck created the adjective "next generational" and why didn't I get to cast my vote for whether or not that word exists? I truly wish I could vote on things like that, for it'd, at least, give me the ability to say, "I voted 'No' on Proposition 'Heart as a Verb"—which could then be printed on a t-shirt that I would proudly wear.

And I thought about how this interview is pretty much EGM trying to "take Microsoft to task," because that's what a lot of old-school gamers and computer nerds would want to see. Everybody—within the sphere of geekdom—wants to tear Microsoft to shreds and eat them alive, garnished with pure, unbridled spite. I've got beef with Microsoft, too, surely; to quote myself:

“Questionable obtainment of intellectual property, slightly underhanded and convuluted methods of avoiding classification of a monopoly, continual expansion of all-inclusive contracts with proprietary systems manufactors and distributors, vague and veiled marketting strategies which mislead and verge on fraud, unspoken agreements with solicitors and known spyware distributors to continue to allow private information to be bilked from the unknowing customers duped by said marketting . . . All of this, and none of it, whatsoever, presents any disagreement with the current capitalist, American society. Maybe the question is not about whether or not Bill Gates is entitled to his money, but whether or not anyone should be entitled to such vast amounts of money through unscruplous means. But, really, who wants to raise this question in an economic environment where it's alright to break American regulations and laws so long as you establish satellite factories and branchs in other countries in which you break those laws and then "sell" your own product back to yourself at cost so that you can, then, turn around and mark it up five hundred percent to the American public. Microsoft, Heinz, Exxon, Walmart, Sears, Nike, Adidas, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola . . . Perhaps it's just my hairbrained opinion, but maybe it's just taken a company as big and shady as Microsoft to gain so much power without explicitly breaking any rules to cast doubts into the American public's mind about the nature of its capitalistic economy, and that's what's so upsetting?”
—from "My Humble (Pah!) Opinion: Fuck Off, Andy Not-Rooney", December 29th, 2005

    I still stand by those opinions stated above; I have no reason to have changed my mind, since then, about things such as multinational conglomerates and shady corporate practices… Microsoft as a business is still evil. Big Business, two capital B's and all, is evil, period, in my mind. Cutting every possible corner and cheating the public isn't ethical or moral, or plain right, so sayeth I.
    I'd like to see Microsoft taken to task, as it were, but not by reading some hoity-toity magazine interview which is trying to do it only to sell their own product. Why is it that the educated population more commonly seems compelled to sit in their Towers—that may not necessarily be Ivory, but the metaphor stands—and raise their pinkies in disgust at the corrupt practices of American business and, maybe—just maybe—write something snarky, rarely witty, about it in their journal, in their magazine, in their Blog?
    How many times have I witnessed, first- or second-hand, someone intelligent and educated only use their knowledge to be derisive, to mock others, and go off to fulfill their base desires, live their selfish lives, and poke their noses out long enough to laugh at everyone else who doesn't know the truth, who is too occupied with surviving in a more difficult living condition, or was under-privileged, or poor? The divide in the American middle-class seems to be between those who are too stupid to know better, and those who know better but would rather just act stupid than be proactive—with a small percentage of people who don't fit into either categories.
    What's the point in taking potshots at Microsoft in magazines? I have a better idea: don't buy their shit. I don't like their products, I don't buy them. The X-Box is a faulty product? Their games are subpar? They're trying to sell us games at higher prices that are but a slight margin better? Don't support it. Boycott it, even. I don't like Microsoft Office, so I use OpenOffice.org, an open-source program…
    As an aside, what does it prove that something like OpenOffice.org is open source? I'm tired of hearing (or, more often, reading) that it's the superior method of developing software… That's simply not true; it's not a viable business model by any stretch of the imagination. What open source software typically proves is that the retail products out there are overpriced, that the software market is saturated with products that aren't that difficult to make, that a small community of bored programmers can do the same thing, for free, in their spare-time, and the market expects consumers to pay hundreds of dollars for something a corporation produced that does veritably the same thing as the free, open source equivalent.
    Word processing just isn't that robust of a thing. I write most everything in Notepad, for fuck's sake, and maybe run it through Corel WordPerfect—an OEM product I bought for thirty bucks—or OpenOffice.org if I feel ther emay be a prolific amount of spelling errors or somesuch. I don't need animated avatars telling me about suggested grammar corrections, I only need the suggestions. But, corporations want to justify the ludicrous price-tags they slap on their software boxes, so they throw in all this useless, shiny shit, and people pay for it because they're too lazy or don't know better, and they need something newer, for some inexplicable reason, than the last incarnation of point-and-click document making and chart production which still works fine and performs the same, basic functionality (Hint: this is called, by airy intellectuals, Manufactured Obsolescence).
    "Ooo, this version can make PDFs (or, alternatively, the useless Microsoft equivalent)!"
    "Ooo, this version can make colourful, three-dimensional scatter-plots and animated pie charts with shadows!"
    "Ooo, this version can make more silly noises when the slide changes, and has a host of dumb-looking, new clip-art!"
    When you stop and think about it, bells and whistles like this are worthless and don't justify the fact that you're shelling out a hundred and fifty dollars again for the exact same core features of word processing and desktop publishing. I wonder, occasionally, if new versions of Windows were made solely to sell new versions of Microsoft Word—look at Windows fucking ME, with its added feature, over 98SE, of memory leaking. Of course, corporations rape consumers! It's their nature. Of course, Big Business wants our money for little to nothing: it's why they exist.
    The products we pay for en masse are capable of being created and distributed with the most minimal of effort: bored programmers make better word processors, better operating systems, better software as a whole. Stop buying and using Microsoft products if you don't like this.
    The problem is that these bored programmers, these cynical nerds, they are more content to sit on the knowledge that they can do better things on their own, that the big businesses are butt-fucking America, and twiddle their thumbs within their cliques, on their private forums, on their self-ran IRC servers. And they have the nerve to sneer and laugh at everybody else, when they really are doing nothing better than the corporations because they are doing practically nothing. They horde their information and knowledge and masturbate amongst themselves, talking about how great they are…
    So they can smirk at interviews in EGM that "teach Microsoft a lesson"—EGM, a magazine which undoubtedly has sold plenty of advertising space to Microsoft.

    "Well," you say, assuming you are one of these sardonic fellows sitting in eager anticipation of the next big anti-MS Internet joke, "everybody else should just figure it out, too. They should educate themselves, and they should learn how to use Linux or FreeBSD, how to code their own hardware drivers and build open source software." How kind of you to be considerate of other's lives, to perhaps give someone the benefit of the doubt that maybe their life doesn't revolve around surfing the Internet and wallowing in geekdom… I am so glad people have assumed this attitude that everybody else should help out their fellow man, that the best thing to do is to give everyone else all the helping hands they can provide in a world where greedy corporate fucks and evil politicians are out to swindle everybody and their sister; it is certainly a blessing that we don't just yell, "Every man for himself! Fuck the women and children!"—as we dive headlong off the sinking ship, having stolen a lifesaver for one's own salvation. It is definitely awesome that this isn't how people are acting.
    Why do we feel the need, once we've attained knowledge on our own, to horde it, like dragons, snarling and blowing smoke out our nostrils when anybody comes venturing near our lair of impenetrable doom? If I could do it, anybody can… Right, right, haven't we heard that line before, again and again. It's not like some people grew up in the wrong time and place, or that the propoganda hasn't drowned many, that the commercialised television programming hasn't lured millions to sleep while their wallets are drained by credit card companies, brand-name prescription drug companies and cell phone companies. It's not like any of this should ever be our concern, because, well, we're fine. We're not still on the sinking ship, anymore. We got off it, 'cause we're so smart.
    How much hypocrisy is there, too? How many "Anti-MS" people are there who buy X-Boxes and X-Box games? "I know better, so it's alright for me to bend the rules." That way, you can end up right where you started, except with a smug feeling of superiority. Video games are entertaining, so I guess that's different. Microsoft is only evil so long as they aren't making cool things. Walmart is only evil when I don't want something cheaper. EGM isn't just another business venture taking our money for little return, for a flimsy product dripping with advertisements. Give me convenience, or give me death!
    And it's not like people are asses about their "superior" knowledge of things; oh, no, this is definitely not the case—people don't automatically look down their noses at people who haven't happened to dedicate their life to random information and obscure trivia. I am happy to know that when someone expresses an opinion that may be mislead or wrong that the response from many isn't to derail them so they feel like a giant idiot for not knowing something inconsequential to survival or their own lives. After all, this is a world where people are compassionate and caring, where we help all our fellow men, where we don't abandon hope for the education of mankind based on our slim perspectives and middling amount of life experience. Yes, the answer to ignorance is not biting sarcasm, thankfully.

I'm certainly above this. I haven't made these mistakes. I've never been mislead in my life. I don't get fooled into thinking a certain way to the advantage of Big Business. I'm guitless; my hands are clean; my soul is pure; I have been Saved! It's great that I can make these statements with absolute impunity, that I don't have to hold myself up to the standards I set for everybody else. I expect things of others that I'd never bother to do myself. I love Walmart. It's open twenty-four hours a day! Three dollar DVDs! Holy shit! Why am I not at Walmart right now? Why am I not playing my X-Box? I could be fragging "n00bs" in Halo 2 or someshit, yo. I could be chatting with my programming friends about how awesome I am for knowing how to use Linux and code. I don't know why I'm not at Walmart while on my laptop engaged in a circle jerk with all my nerd friends at this very moment, getting off to how great [Insert Obscure Programming Algorithm Here] is. I've been wasting all this time writing this…

[Adios]

The Pen Is Mightier Than the Shark: Prima Facie

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 04:02:00 +0000

Much like a superhero, I have a secret identity. Unlike a superhero, I can't fly, shoot webbing from my wrist, tear through steel with my bare hands, punch the planet and shatter it into pieces, shoot lasers out of my eyes, freeze people into blocks of ice with my breath, sprout multiple appendages at will, grow one hundred times my usual size, shrink to the size of an atom, stare menacingly at a cashier until he gives me whatever I am buying for free or get away with wearing neon-coloured spandex. Instead, I make poignant and profound statements about the world around me through the written language!

Previous works by my secret identity include a biting piece on the unfairness of life and that bitch Katie, a deep exploration of the state of the human race, and a seering song about romance and relationships.

And, now, for your reading enjoyment, I shall feature here a new release by the world-renowned, infamous writer, my secret (shh!) identity.

"A Generic Political Commentary Unnecessarily Put Into the Form of a Poem (Meant to be Angrily Screamed at a Poetry Slam),"
by c.Jay hawtsk8r88 on August 1st, 2006

it is very unfortunate
that our president
is George W. Bush
for I do not
much care for him

he likes oil a lot
he likes money a lot
he likes cock a lot
by cock i mean chicken
(not really)

Karl Rove is Satan
not Ronald Reagan
sorry Mr. McGruder

Dick Cheney is a cyborg
half-man half-machine
cold hard metal unbeating heart inside

i like making vague
unsupported statements
about our president
and quoting Mr. Stewart
isn't his show funny?
(i think so)

all i know about
our last president
is that he liked sex a lot
i do too so i can relate

and the first Bush
puked all over
the Japanese

who is this
Jimmy Carter
you speak of?

Ell Bee Jay?
Jay Eff Kay?
Eff Dee Are?
Eeh Bee Bee Vee!

all i know
is that i do not
much care for
George W. Bush
(the end)

No Apologia: Net Neutrality

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 04:01:00 +0000

I want to try something new with this entry: instead of just rambling and ranting about my political and worldly views with barely any context and no reference, no bibliography or Works Cited Page, as it were, I want to actually dissect an issue based on outside resources, official and unofficial remarks made by people who aren't me and are potentially more or less qualified to speak on the matter at hand. Depending on how I feel about the result, I will do this each month.

The first issue I want to address is the Network Neutrality Act. The full body of this entry will be posted later, when I finish it. I apologise for the delay due to the scope and scale of the undertaking. I hope one or two days wait is not too much of a wait for something that's not just bullshit filler.

CHECK BACK MONDAY!

The Plebian Speaks of Newness, Again

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 00:36:00 +0000

Here's the deal. I want to try and maintain this Blog with regularly updated content, in a progressively more frequent manner. As of right now, I have worked out a simple schedule, with room for additions later. My aim to create a sort of "monthly magazine" feel, with a number of features that appear once a month, for now. I have some plans for things in the future, as I always do, but here is what my schedule is as it stands:

Week #1: Tuesday—Random, Thursday—Ramble/Rant
Week #2: Tuesday—Five Brief Reviews, Thursday—A Full Review
Week #3: Tuesday—Poetry; Thursday—Story Installment
Week #4: Tuesday—Random, Thursday—Ramble/Rant

To explain what some of this means, in detail:

Random: This is an entry to give me room to basically do something according to my whim, by my fancy. I intend to use this for short or lengthy comedic pieces or bits, parody or satire, absurd or whatnot; it may not always be funny, but I basically intend to have two entries a month that are atypical of the rest of the other features, to serve as my licensed space for arbitrary nonsense.

Ramble/Rant: A ramble is where I discuss whatever topic or topics strikes me as interesting at the time, in a sort of low-key or civil manner. A rant is basically the same thing, except angrier, more sarcastic and usually profane. Sometimes, an entry can fall between those, but this is usually just me putting a Soap Box down and stepping up onto it.

Reviews: Where I tackle movies, music, books, websites or whatever is in need of my personal appraisal. Not much explanation should be needed, here.

Poetry and Story Installment: I like to pretend I'm an artist slash writer, so this is the week where I put up things I do creatively within the realm of literature. Poetry can include one long poem or several shorter ones, and most people will still not care. I have several ideas for serialized short stories, including the one I started last week. Prose is usually more appealling to most, so I hope to weave interesting stories and practice my writing style.

This Blog has always, essentially, functioned as a form of my own personal practice space for writing, but I have plans to transform it into something more than just that. If nothing else, I hope to turn it into an outlet for something more than just writing, soon, and include some art. I don't know exactly what direction I'd like to see this go in, but I am thinking of bringing in some collaborative efforts with creative people I know. Something in the form of this Blog or a tangentially related, new thing may be born… I hope.

Oh, as a note, within the rotation above, this is currently a Tuesday of Week #4, if it's not apparent. Thursday will be a Ramble/Rant, then the monthly cycle will begin anew.

[Adios]

From the Diary of James D. Fitzherald (Part 1 of 3)

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 04:01:00 +0000

[Foreword: This is a… short story of sorts, I think? Something like that, anyway, that will be three parts, posted once a month, and, ideally, interesting reading for people who aren't me. If you, dear reader, remember my old series of stories I was posting a year and more ago… well, this is mostly unrelated. But I do have intent to revisit those stories, soon-ish.]

September 1st, 1997

"Life could be worse."
           I'm hungry.
                     It seems a silly thing to say.

      The walls of the small room, off-white plaster, surrounded the loft bed and its occupant, a young-looking boy laying on his back and scribbling in a spiral-bound diary. The blankets on the bed were plaid, green and white, with a matching pillowcase for the single pillow he laid against. He held his head with one hand and wrote with the other, a bored look on his face—a clock sat on the desk in the room and measured the time in glowing digital numbers. Outside the window, through the closed, burnt sienna-coloured Venetian blinds, crickets chirped beneath the sounds of traffic and a city.

"Tomorrow, I am going to begin high school, and it scares the Hell out of me."
           I'd really like a grilled cheese sandwich.
                      Coward, cowardly little Boy,
                      To be a Man, lie yourself unafraid.

      The boy had dark, ruffled hair, bushy and wild, and a pale, unsunned complexion, very soft, rounded facial features and a spindly build—not more than five foot eleven inches in height, standing. The digital alarm clock radio read '1:33' in red on black, a small, bright dot indicating it was the A.M.-designated hours of the day. He wore a long, baggy, green shirt with a white stripe down the side, over brown, red and white flannel pajama bottoms that were too short, reaching to above his nubby ankles. Over the bed, on the ceiling, posters with frayed edges for bands both current and old were taped haphazardly in place, a few peeling off—a small, stainless steel lamp was clamped to a bedpost, illuminating his writing with its artificial, yellow glow. The lamp's dull electrical humming faded behind the noise of the spinning, green blades of the fan on the ceiling—air from outside came through the one window ajar, rustling the orange, floor-length curtains.

"Miles and Good Boy will be there, though. We've decided to form a band this year."
           I'm thirsty, too… We're still out of soda, aren't we?
                      Rocks in rushing water, eversinking,
                     Stepping stones to becoming all alone.

      His large, green eyes, from beneath half-closed lids, followed his white ball-point pen as it marked lines and joined them together into letters along the light blue lines of the diary's pages, with one leg dangling over the edge of the bed—an acoustic, six-string guitar with a cherry-stain finish was laying beneath the bottom of the boxspring, next to its unzipped, black canvas case—a black canvas shoulder-bag was stuffed full of notebooks, binders and papers, hanging off the end of the bed on the loft's four-rung ladder. He licked his large lips and flipped a page, the faint crinkling of paper drowning out his light breathing and the creaking of the bed's springs as he shifted his weight and stretched out his leg not dangling from the edge. A foghorn blared in the far distance, over the horizon, signifying the time for some unseen activity in the town's shipyard.

"Sister's fine. Still smokes. A lot."
           Damn, I could seriously go for, like, some MacDougal's or Colonel's Fried Chicken.
                     All people, plants in the Garden,
                     Watered regularly, to bloom and wither,
                     The Gardener last in line.

      In a room across the hall from the one the boy quietly wrote inside, dissonant and chaotic music vibrated the thin walls of the small house, originating from the twin speakers of an older model, silver stereo perched on a chipped, brown dresser. The walls, sky blue plaster, enclosed the small, pine desk where a teenaged-looking girl sat resting her face on the palm of one hand, an elbow leant on the rough, stained surface of the desk, while tapping the ash of a smoking cigarette into a red-glazed, ceramic tray full of similar, smoldering, grey and black ashes. Behind the wooden, splat-backed chair the girl sat in rested an unmade, twin-sized bed with rose-red sheets tossled. Lifting a thick, black eyebrow, the girl continued to stare at the wall with an expression of malcontent and worry, sucking on the butt of the cigarette and letting the smoke roll out of her nostrils. Suddenly widening her bloodshot, hazel eyes before slightly shaking her head as though waking from a daydream, she noted the time on a dusty, antique clock with fine etchings of figures on its mahogany body, the longer hand at the 'I' and the shorter halfway between 'VI' and 'VII.' She exhaled a breath and a puff of grey and white smoke followed by grey, smoky trails.

"Today was dull, like most days here in the middle of Nowhere."
           Everything's closed, now, of course… Damn. Is there still leftover Chinese?
                     The clouds grow heavy, saddened,
                     By tears of the lonely, the broken toys,
                     Paradise Nowhere in God's domain.

      "Need to take the trash out," commanded a coarse, weary-sounding voice coming from around the corner of the cramped, messy kitchen where the dark-haired boy was waiting for a slice of toast to finish toasting. The white, four-slice toaster lazily ticked away the moments, as a wooden cuckoo bird on a pole sprang out from a wall-clock in another room and sang seven times. He grunted his compliance and looked over at the full, plastic trash can against the wall, a stained paper towel hanging over the beige top. The toaster dinged and sprang the golden brown toast free at the end of the seventh cuckoo, startling the boy and causing him to jolt out of his half-awake state. The same voice as before returned: "And the dishes." A radio from outside the kitchen was emitting the voices of a pair of self-promoting morning show hosts on a rock station, interrupted by the well-timed use of goofy sound effects. Turning toward the nearly overflowing sink, where plates with bits of food stuck to them and a greasy pan awaited, the boy took a dry saucer from the drain next to it and opened a drawer for a butter-knife. "Woowee, sure is hot today, eh, Tommy?" one of the radio hosts said with a laugh, followed by a soundbyte from a popular TV show with one of its main character qupping something quite witty about heat and underground places.

"Was the last day on the job, today."
           After three months, I'm really sick of fucking french fries…
                     The mountains grow higher, unreachable,
                     The House of God, high atop, vanishing,
                     Lost in the foggy mists, the plants weep.

      A bald-headed, tall, fat, brown-skinned man wearing a visor with a colourful, architecture-based logo and managerial nametag glanced up at the yellow-faced, red-handed clock on the green tile wall of the loud, industrialised kitchen behind the greasy, yellow counter of a fast food hamburger restaurant. "Kid, you're off, get out of here," he shouted, his bass voice dry and scratchy, while heading back toward the drive-through window, holding a massive, sweating cup full of cola, facing away from the dark-haired boy, that he was addressing, standing at one of the cash registers in the front, in the middle of rapidly punching in a customer's order.
      "What would you like to drink, sir?" he inquired poiltely, squinting his eyes and staring down at the colourful, happy images on the register's square buttons, waiting for the big-nosed, bearded man wearing dark, red-tinted sunglasses across from him to give his response and a payment of some form.
      "Diet," the customer answered, smirking and scratching his nose at the same time. The boy nodded and gave him the order's total cost, taking the man's plastic credit card when he offered it and promptly ran it through the slot of a credit machine. "Aren't you going to I.D. me, kid?"
      The boy blinked, embarassed, and grimaced in discomfort. "Er, sorry, yes, can I see an I.D., please?"
      "You don't recognize me?" the man asked, chuckling and pausing for a reaction. The boy looked up from the buttons of the register at the man: he wore a simple, grey suit, no tie, with the top, black button of his black, wrinkled shirt undone. Shaking his head after searching his memory, the boy wiped his sweaty hand over his mouth, rubbed his chin and blinked rapidly several times in the harsh, flourescent lighting of the restaurant.
      "…No?"
      The man smirked, once more, and held a picture I.D. up for the boy to see. The credit transaction authorised finally, spitting out a receipt, and a bored-looking, black-haired, teenaged girl with braids stepped up to relieve the boy of his duty, appearing next to him on his left suddenly holding one of the restaurant's canary yellow cardboard cups full of Diet soda. The man signed the receipt and waved a hand dismissively, taking his credit card back from the extended hand of the boy. "You will."
      "…All…right, sir? Have a nice day."
      The smirking man in the red sunglasses picked up the drink the girl had sat on the counter in front of him and stepped to the side to wait for the rest of his order, while the boy repeated it, in shorthand, into the microphone by the register, before letting the girl take his place. In line after the bearded man, a balding, blonde man in thick glasses walked forward to the counter, his mouth downturned into a frown, prepared to give his order.

"Hung out in Miles' basement, also."
           How long ago was dinner, five, six hours? Shit… I forgot to take the trash out.
                     Down below, the villagers pray,
                     The Obelisk looms, the Moon empties,
                     Trees, eldest of the plants, cut away,
                     The River is rising, but nobody's the wiser.

      The dark-haired boy stood before a white, screen door still holding his finger out, having just completed depressing the house's doorbell. A finch was perched on the edge of the gutter above the porch, and nervously shifted from side-to-side, occasionally screeching, as a fat, black and white tabby cat sat on his haunches, in the front yard, and gazed longingly upward. The boy turned away from the door, glancing down at the overgrown grass of the lawn and the intermittent patches of grey dirt that broke it up, over at the older model, rusted, silver, four-door car desperately in need fo washing parked across the sidewalk, before the front door opened and a tired-looking, muscular man in a white tank-top, stained with red and yellow spots, and tattered blue jeans glowered at him through the screen. "You Guy's friend?" he asked, hardly annuciating the words or seperating them from each other much, tilting his chin up and looking down his nose at the boy after a moment of no reply. The finch took off flying and shat on the silver car's windshield—the cat appeared to be downcast momentarily, and mozied to his half-full water bowl beside the bottom step of the porch, where dead insects and dirt floated in circles.
      "Ye–Yes, sir," the boy stuttered, opened the screen door, and, then, shuffled over the threshold into the house as the man stepped aside and motioned for him to enter, letting him come in before slamming shut the front door, locking and bolting it with a flick of his fatty, hairy wrist. The young bow nodded to the older man, proceeded to not avoid eye contact, and stepped over a pile of clothes in his path, toward the archway that lead out of the littered, smelly living room. Dim light filtered in through the three windows in the room, through the closed, tan Venetian blinds, each somewhat bent and broken in places, spilling onto the brown carpeted floor in a barred, golden pattern. An upset, auburn, red and white cat darted through the boy's legs, meowing and diving underneath a pile of old boxes, toppling over an empty, damp cardboard box that had been precariously balanced on top. Looking down reluctantly, the boy saw—and smelt—a pile of fresh cat feces and quickly scuttled through the archway, coughing.
      "Miles?" he called into the house, making his way through a dining room that had an oak, square table surrounded by stacks of boxes, bags and clothes, no chairs, and no working light, into a kitchen with old food dropped on the yellow and orange linoleum floor and more stacks of various sizes and types of boxes. The kitchen was lit by a flicking, flourescent light fixture hanging from the cracked, white ceiling. "Miles?" A television set somewhere else in the house was blaring the noise of a sports show, a pair of sportcasters bantering with some semi-famous sports personality, while a cat kept crying, over and over. The dark-haired boy swatted at a fly buzzying by his ear and turned around in a circle, noting the crock pot half-full of used grease on the uncleaned stovetop, and the broken plate in the bottom of the otherwise empty sink—the black, splotched microwave, easily older than the boy himself, blinked yellow digits reading '12:00', indicating the time was unset. "Miles?"
      "Yo."
      The boy turned to the sound of the disembodied voice and saw another boy with short, closely trimmed, blonde hair, wearing a torn, desert fatigue-patterned t-shirt missing its sleeves and green, army pants, cuffed at the bottom as they were too long, with polished, black, SWAT boots that had straps on the inside and zippers on the outside—the other boy held a hand up in greeting and was walking around the corner, through the archway from where the dark-haired boy had not entered. "C'mon," the blonde boy prompted and gestured for the dark-haired boy to follow him back to where he had appeared, descending two steps and going through a door with flaking, ochre paint, into a stone-walled basement, down a flight of unstable, wooden stairs coming onto a dusty, cracked, concrete floor. In the middle of the room a threadbare, cream-coloured carpet was laid down with a gaudy, secondhand, striped couch, orange and brown, sitting on it, along with a wooden coffee table and a plastic, white end table. Junk was sprawled everywhere, on the surface of the tables and on the couch cushions, on the floor and piled on shelves against the walls—magazines, old toys, malfunctioning electronics, borken appliances, red toolboxes, exercise equipment, free weights, bundled newspapers, aluminum cans, half of a stereo, a car door, boxes and boxes. Sunlight streamed in through long, narrow rectangles for windows high up on two of the four walls, illuminating the clouds of dust circulating in the basement air like ancient, dying cyclones. The cat was still crying over the muffled, barely audible noise of the sportcasters comparing statistics on television.
      The blonde boy picked up a bucket of yellow, blue and red building block-like toys from the couch and sat it on top of issues of ripped music and electronics magazines on the end table, clearing a set for his guest. The dark-haired boy kicked a yellow, toy van based on an animated show about anthropomorphic reptiles that fought crime accidently as he moved toward the couch, grimacing as he heard something snap. The blonde shrugged and scooped up a tennis ball that looked to have been chewed on and shot it against a wall, sending it angling off into a small mountain of plush toys—orange cats and tigers, fake babies and children.

"Good Boy came by, too."
           I think I'm going to grow my hair out, not get it cut for awhile…
                     The Gardener works, unassisted,
                     As God abandons the Village, unbidden,
                     The River is teeming, can't You see it,
                     The Rocks are sinking, sinking, sinking.

      Three boys now sat on the creaky couch with sagging springs in the dank basement, the dark-haired and blonde ones joined by a light brown-skinned, long-haired newcomer who wore a humongous, pastel, tie-dyed t-shirt and red trackpants, barefoot. They were listening intently to music from a sizeable boombox that had been set amidst the junk on the coffee table, on top of notebooks and used books, the chords of an electric guitar backed by a rumbling bassline and the fast beating of drums, a nasally-voiced singer cutting in occasionally to talk about listlessness, apathy and paradise. Together, they silently communed in reverence to the song for a number of minutes, until the blonde boy leant forward and picked up a clean, black, electric bass guitar where it had been nestled at his boots. Unplugged, it made soft, echoing sounds as he began running through simple scales, plucking the strings with one hand and fingering the notes, down then back up the fingerboard, nodding his head in time to the poppy, rock-influenced music from the radio.
      The song ended and a radio D.J. spoke up, so the long-haired boy turned the volume knob to the left to drown out the inevitable, inane prattling about sponsors, concerts and product endorsement. "Summer has come to a most pleasant close," he commented, while watching the blonde boy's fingers run over the bass's strings. The sunlight in the basement was beginning to turn darker shades of orange and gold, but an overhead lamp was now humming softly and emitting artificial light for the boys. The dark-haired boy unzipped his guitar case and produced his acoustic instrument, humming a bit to himself for a minute.
      "Could've been worse," the guitarist said, plucking at a string and tuning it by ear carefully. The long-haired boy, sitting in the middle of the couch to the right of him, smiled broadly and absently rubbed a silver cross that hung around his neck by a string. A filthy-looking, white cat, out of nowhere, leapt on top of a pile of boxes in the corner of the basement and curled up.
      "Could've been better," the bassist retorted, still making the soft notes with his unpowered instrument. He sat to the right of the long-haired boy, who nodded his head, running his hands through his hair and sighing. The cat in the corner yawned expansively, an impressive display of the pink throat and yellow feline teeth.
      "We should start a band," the instrument-less boy proposed, standing up from the couch and stretching his arms and legs out. The couch creaked loudly, startling the cat and causing her to dig into the cardboard, refridgerator-sized box with her claws, standing bolt-upright in an instant. Heavy footsteps resounded upon the floor above the basement, followed by the sound of a door openning and shutting. A television set was still blaring a sports broadcast elsewhere in the house.
      "Right," the guitarist sighed. The long-haired boy frowned slightly and tilted his head in a gesture of curiosity, looking down at the two still-sitting boys. The radio station the boombox was quietly playing featured a commercial for another action movie starring a foreign bodybuilder—imperceptively beneath that, the breathing of the cat on the refridgerator box slowed, coming in long nasal inhalations and exhalations.
      "We've been saying that all summer, G.B.," the bassist smirked. Shrugigng his shoulders and chuckling, the long-haired boy hopped over a toy firetruck and walked over to a long, rectangular, dark blue bag that was shoved underneath the basement steps. Unzipping it, from inside he produced an electronic keyboard and accompanying power adapter, laying it on the edge of the coffee table after sitting down, cross-legged, and fitting the plug into an power strip ran from an outlet in the nearest wall, meant for just such uses. Flipping the keyboard on, he adjusted the volume, balance and pitch settings, tested a few notes and proceeded to tap the 'C' key over and over with a medium temp to grating effect. The white cat meowed and rolled onto her other side, her ears twitching in annoyance.
      "Stop that," the bassist eventually snapped, stopping his own plucking. The keyboardist grinned mischeviously and tapped the key twice more before stopping and beginning to perform a very slow rendition of Chopin's "Chopsticks."
      "What would we call ourselves?" the guitarist asked, strumming a random few chords to the same tune of "Chopsticks." The song was interrupted by the incredibly close sound of a dog barking at the top of the basement stairs, shortly preceding the yowl of the cat as she exploded from her perch and tore around the room in a panic—a second later, the dog yelped and a man's gruff voice could be heard scolding, presumably, the animal. Calming down, the cat urinated against a wall and proudly strutted up the stairs. The disc jockey on the radio announced the start of a program entitled "7 'o Clock Rock."
      The three boys simultaneously shrugged. "Dunno…?"

"We still don't have a name for our band, as usual."
           I am so fucking hungry…
                     Listen, Boy, to this tale,
                     It tells of daring feats of bravery,
                     Lies constructed for moral teaching,
                     And the moving woe of those left alone.

                     We swim in fire,
                     Baited in by liars,
                     A silly thing to say,
                     But perfect to pray.

Latest Scuttlebutt Says: Two Poems Ahoy

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 04:01:00 +0000

I continue to propogate this silly idea that I am a poet, for whatever reason. On two unrelated notes, vanilla caramel is a delicious flavour for coffee creamer, and Blogger's post update continues to strive to foil me at every turn.

Love Song No. 9

"Hey, hey," sang the popstar, "Baby, baby,"
The teenagers cry out, the lights raise,
This is the gig of a lifetime, the critics rave,
"Love, love, love," the lyrics speak of hearts of gold.

       Is this the triumph of love?
       Electronic drums, synthesized notes,
       Moved by the crescendo, dip an' go.

Drinks after the show, down we plow,
The fertile fields of our minds, seeds a'burstin',
Seeds a'plenty, of doubt, of shame,
"I love you," she slurs, eyes aglaze with passion.

       Is this the triumph of love?
       Two guitars and a bassline, reel 'em in,
       Chorus, bridge, chorus, variation, the end?

"You alright?" he asks over her moans, hair in hand,
She nods, grimaces and gags, "You sure?"
His answer of splashing as she shakes, so pained,
And looses more vomit upon an open toilette.

       Is this the triumph of love?
       Five men prance 'n synch on stage,
       Lights afire as the amplifiers rage.

"This alright?" he asks over her moans, hand in hand,
She nods, grimaces and prepares, "You sure?"
His answer of silence as she shakes, so afraid,
And loses herself whilst he comes à l'intérieur.

       Is this the triumph of love?
       Fifty thousand screamin' fans adore it,
       Fifty million dollars reimburse it.

Drinks in the morning, reap the fields,
The crops of pleasure sown, seeds a'plant'd,
Seeds a'plant'd, of doubt, of shame,
"I love you," he murmurs, eyes aglaze with passion.

       Is this the triumph of love?
       The gig is over, the curtain falls,
       Then, darkness swept o'er them all.

"Hey, hey," sang the doctor, "Baby, baby,"
The teenagers cry out, the questions raise,
This is the gig of a lifetime, the parents rave,
"Love, love, love," the vows speak of hearts of gold.

* * * * * * * *

Words #3: Dismay

When the apple falls to pieces,
The capitalists dance in discos,
The church will march in line,
The army pray, the rod divine,
Where the tree stood once.

"Holiest of Holies, holy moley,"
Children whisper under covers,
Flashlights held to lil' golden books,
Crucifix on the wall watching with dead, darkened eyes.

"Gee golly Gosh, darn the luck,"
Women clutching coffee mugs,
Baristas wiping, demons flying,
"Where'd the time go, the time go?"

Worlds of words bound in empty heads,
Hands heavy with mops and buckets,
The blood ran red, unsurprisingly,
"What other colour is there for it to be?"

Prayers on mats in Eastern camps,
Lives locked in lucid dreaming, forever,
Philosophers write their revolutionary essays,
Published in quarterly releases, serialised,
"The Deific Humanisation of Localised Ostentation."

Oranges shaped like planets, floating free,
Orbitting forests of brown and yellow,
Spring is the season of choice, critics say,
Two thumbs up, this is our loveless waste,
Embrace it, as the waters rise.

"Hallelujah," the chorus screams, afire,
The flowers wilt in salty waters,
The arsonist smiles and keeps runnin',
The lilies drift on fresh swamps,
The bodies pile up on Heaven's doorstep.

God doesn't wear a hat, you see,
Neither do I, but that's beside,
Come, sit, stand, salute, sit, sob,
Rust, flakes forming rivers golden brown.

The extra crispy Christ figure, Colonel,
Delicious holy herbs, sacred spices,
Seven-hundred seventy-seven ingredients,
Complete with a side order of manna.

"Where's your God now, Hero?"

"I hear he vacations in Burbank…"

"Really? I've got family there."

"Huh, me, too. Small world."

It's a small world, after all,
It's a small world, after all,
It's a small world, after all.

A survey of a select sample of Southern belles,
Decisively says that Tennessee Williams got it wrong,
And there is hope for family values in the long haul,
That William Faulkner, too, was just a drunken fool.

Red Rover, red Rover, quick, pull over,
Me and my Buddy, my good pal, Frankenstein,
Mary Shelley and Adderal, Lucy Lui to Pearl S. Buck,
(Not to be confused with Rita Pearlman).

"Hasn't this gone on long enough,
All this strife, all this pain,
So many tears,
All alone,
Again."

End?
No.
…
O.

[Adios]

Five Florid Brief Reviews

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 04:01:00 +0000

I have been to the movie theatre on a number of occasions in the recent past. Inside of these mysterious halls of stained and frayed carpets and glassy-eyed, zombie-like servants, magic glowing machines show me things, terrible secrets of arcane and ancient natures. Lord, I have seen the End, and it is more terrible than the prophets have written! Yea, I say unto thee, the faithful and pure believers, hold thyselves from sin, for the consequence that awaits thee is nigh unfathomable in its sinister torments! Worse yet, it may very well be starring Halle Berry—I shall pray for thy soul's salvation, o ye lamb!

Superman Returns

     The wizard's tower I ascended for the viewing of this moving, entrancing picture was obelisk in nature, monstrous in scope, marked with the appellation, "IMAX," for truly it's treatment to the eyeball and things related was in a maximised portion… I'm going to stop writing like a bad 70's fantasy dime-novel, Were the cheap novels even a low as ten cent, then? Fuck it, who cares. Superman was what we got in exchange for the filth that was Ratner's X3, as Bryan Singer jumped ship from that franchise after X's 1 & 2 to do this project, which is something, as my ex-roommate estimated, that should be weighed upon when speaking of this film. The question must be asked, "Was this movie worth the travesty of X3? Would a good X-Men movie have been preferable to a good Superman one?" In other words, Superman Returns had to be awesome enough for two.
     Now, in my opinion, there are very few films that aren't benefitted by being on a gigantic IMAX screen, at least in the action-based genres, so that's an instant plus. Oh, man, do I love the IMAX; seriously, when you have to turn your head because something is going on to the right or left, there's something nearly "virtual reality" about the whole thing. Unlike Matrix: Reloaded, which on IMAX mostly revealed that the movie was both unsatisfying and included more nipples than I needed to see outside of pornography, Superman Returns was pretty great and didn't challenge my sexuality. The 3D parts were kinda nifty, arguably just by the merit of "Hey, it's not 2D," but it wasn't the most outstanding three dimensional effects ever manufactured. I'm maybe a bit desensitised to the entire idea by Busch Gardens Williamsburg and the onslaught of 3D Theatre that was always offered there—which, additionally, involved getting remotely damp for some reason—but I'd say go see it at IMAX 3D if you can, over plain ol' traditional cinemas with their non-wrapping silver screens o' doom.
     As for the movie itself, it was Singer-licious, very evident of being envisioned and created by a man with an eye for good writing, good scenery, and good fun, clearly able to rally a team of able writers, actors and a production staff worth their salt. Everything in the movie was pretty much spot-on with no major complaints, except for one thing I'll get to later. Like X's 1 & 2, the humour is cute, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, and worthy of chuckles, the action was expertly executed it such a way not so overdone that it reeked of budget-squandering or effects-masturbation (see Pirates 2), and the plot was adequately true to a comic-superhero flick while not being out-and-out stupid (see X3). My ex-roommate commented that it felt like "an episode of the old 50's TV show," but he said that with a negative implication, and I can't say I found that so bad—after all, X-Men 1 & 2 were like the old X-Men cartoon, Spiderman was like an episode of the old show if one existed—sure, there's a formula of "exposition, villian attemplts plot, hero foils plot while overcoming obstacles, dénouement, all with underlying romance subplot" but that's kinda to be expected.
     The dénouement would actually be about what I had anything resembling a "big" complaint, speaking of. Superman had trouble finding an ending, and after things basically settled down post-climax, there was just too much time spent dwelling on the winding-down process. I was a bit tired of sentimental, slow cuts of emotional displays with moving violins by the time the credits appeared. The Lois Lane slash Clark Kent slash Superman drama is interesting enough, is definitely a staple of the universe, but I was not quite invested enough in the ordeal to want that much lingering on it—even with the kid, now. Honestly, I found the whole "love triangle" subplot to be… not trite or anything like that, well-written and acted, but… eh, sorta unneeded. Could've done without it, but it wasn't a huge detriment. The best comparison would be to the Bruce Wayne slash Rachel Dawes affair in Batman Begins: it reeked of being there solely because it's expected there's to be love interest and romantic drama, not because it built on or supported the actual story. Sometimes, I'd just like something not telling me that love makes everything complete—fuck that noise, as the kids say.
     Brent Routh deserves a nod of approval for his performance as Kent and Superman—wherever one gets a chin like that from, it's good to see it made good use of. Kate Bosworth was an iteration of Lois Lane to be ranked with the best. Sam Huntington made a darling lil' Jimmy, perfectly too-eager and willing. But, let's face it, it's all about Kevin Spacey as Lex Luther, here. It's hard to stand beside such a performance and not be overshadowed, what with how much it shined. Everybody loved—even the people of the future who've yet to see it—the "C'mon, let me hear you say it, just once… No, not that… WRONG!" scene, but I do not know about you, but the scene with Lex Luther standing there in a robe with a toothbrush in his mouth asking, surprisedly, "Loith Lane?": gold, pure gold, hands-down. It's good to see a change-up from the "Aww, his daddy didn't hug him" Luther from Smallville, back to the roots of the "Aww, he's criminally insane" character; thank you for that, alone, Singer.
     I'm not sure if I'd say Superman Returns was awesome enough for two movies, and I still wish Singer had kept with X3, but this film will be a solid classic superhero flick. Failure Rating: 15%

Silent Hill

I have a friend who veritably worships the Silent Hill franchise, and my ex-roommate really likes the games a lot but not quite as much, and I, myself, have never owned a PlayStation 1 or 2, so I've never indulged in the games more than occasionally viewing others doing so. The overall (dis)agreement between the three parties, respectively, is: 1) "OMFG SO MUCH H8!!!!!!11!1ELEVEN!!1!," 2) "It wasn't at all like the games, but it was a right good horror, indeed," then, 3) "I found the atmospheric overtones, the visuals, the setting and the style of cinematography to be very creative and interesting, the plot to be… very faithful to Japanese Horror—which it to say, ignore it or regret it—the acting to be par for the B-Horror course, and the obligatory twist ending to be satisfying, making for a very solid modern Horror experience that was decidedly not the bullshit that was, say, Hide & Seek or Jason X (read: garbage)." Failure Rating: 32%.

Thank You for Smoking

Satiric comedy is something I take probably more seriously than is good for my enjoyment, most of the time. When something is clearly vying to be a satire, I, thus, expect it to say something I consider poignant and slash or pointed, not just abuse the label of "Satire" to masquerade as bad comedy with a so-called message. This movie was great. It was that brand of tongue-in-cheek comedy that is so rarely executed elegantly without being nothing more than "Ha-ha, people are dumb, isn't that funny!" Aaron Eckart is now a name I may actually recognise from henceforth, it was nice to see Larry Miller in something again, and William H. Macy gave a solid performance as a douchebag: very fitting for a role as a Senator. It was worth the gamble it was to go catch in theatres, I'd say. Failure Rating: 20%.

One thing I do outside of watch things with my eyes is listen to things with my ears.

Mindless Self Indulgence's You'll Rebel To Anything (As Long As It's Not Challenging) LP

I adore this band, a lot, because it's something unique in a sea of mediocrity, something catchy and fun without being shallow and recycled, poppy without being predictable; reminding me that to be "pop punk" isn't necessarily to be yet another incarnation of the same-old NoFX, Green Day or Blink 182 formulae. I saw them live when they came through Norfolk, and that was one great fucking set. After that, I actually bothered to seek out their newest album, for which they were touring, and listened to it… over and over and over, for days. Apparently, when they sit down and make songs about something more than masturbation and dick jokes, the result is very cynical and sarcastic; this is an entire album of songs like "Thank God" (lyrics quoted in LJ entry linked earlier). At the concert, Jimmy Urine (the lead singer & programmer) came out in a jacket with the phrase "Shit Eats Pee" printed on the back, and proceeded to rouse the audience into chanting said phrase; why? We believe because he could. To quote Urine later in the show, "C'mon, say what I say, dress how I dress, do what I do, and we can all be non-conformists TOGETHER!" That is reflective of precisely the attitude on this album, the mockery of their own fans they indulge in, with lines like the following one from the song for which the album is named (or vice verse, who knows): "You're telling me that fifty million screaming fans are wrong? I'm telling you that fifty million screaming fans are fucking morons!" Their style has matured and developed since earlier work, they've become a tighter unit with more sophisticated techique, and the writing is golden, accompanying Jimmy's oddball, high-pitched vocals. Here is a band that has been doing it's own thing for years and has become a force to be reckoned with in the pop-punk scene. Failure Rating: 5%

And, sometimes, I watch things with my eyes that aren't out of Hollywood, too.

Samurai Champloo

It's probably fruitless to review something shown on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim line-up, but, nonetheless, I want to say a few things about this anime. From the creative talent of those who brought us the genius that was Cowboy Bebop, comes an entry in historic, fuedal-era, Edo-period Japan genre of anime that's not another rehashing of Rurouni Kenshin. The first lines seen of this show, after the opening sequence, are: "Although this story is largely fiction and some parts do not line up with history, stop BITCHING and just shut up and WATCH." What follows is a stylistic exploration of the journey of three characters, their pasts, and the state of a civilisation in transition, with a sufficient amount of action, comedy, and drama; actually, to clarify, the action in this series? Hands-down, some of the best fight scenes in the history of animation are included in Champloo, with sharp, delicious animation. The top-quality animation work that was seen in the Bebop movie is what you get through all twenty-six episodes, as well, leaving little about which to complain. Calling this "Cowboy Bebop in Fuedal Japan" would not be wholly inaccurate, and I have no issue with that, because seeing more material in that same style of art and writing is quite invigorating. The musical focus here is, oddly, hip-hop and rap, as opposed to Bebop's focus on Jazz and Blues, still done with utmost precision and love. Good animation, good writing, good music: good show. Where's the movie? Failure Rating: 2%

[TIA;TY]

The Mounteback May Say, "Pirates Beat Ninjas!": I Say Nay

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 04:01:00 +0000

"Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest was a successful sequel to the original, packed with all the same, original entertainment and fun."

     I would write the above line if I were a liar. I desperately want to write that above line—or, I did, before I saw the movie, at least—but I am prevented from doing so, mostly by how I actually felt about the flick. Pirates 2 was a two and a half hour effects festival that fell short in ways I wasn't even expecting; Disney thought they could cash in on a second success big-time, and they did: the highest grossing opening weekend in history (bumping Spiderman). I wish that were deserved.

     The beginning of this film, to me, felt like the writers desperately trying to tie the second film to the first while explaining what the characters had been up to since then, and it rushed the audience through a jarring and very confusing series of scenes which ultimately served little purpose in terms of plot or story development. The actors, for the most part, sleepwalked through their performances for the duration of the first twenty to thirty minutes—a long time to get to the real plot—and mouthed the words they were told to say. The legendary performance of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow even felt half-hearted.

     Once the movie got going into the plot, with two full hours remaining, it proceeded to be sidetracked time and time again by long, drawn-out special effects sequences that were supposed to be engaging, but came off more like budget being squandered on insignificant sequences of fluff. I could've done without so many scenes revolved around "Holy shit! The Kraken is totally fucking shit up, ya'll!" I got it, guys: there are tentacles, they are big, they are breaking things. No need to show us that for five straight minutes. The entire "Swordfight on a Moving Mill Wheel" scene could've been thrown out; for that matter, the swordfight between Sparrow, Turner and Norrington just felt forced, like the producers raised a hand and yelled, "Time for the obligatory swordfight!" It wasn't choreographed in any way that felt new or interesting, more like they just instructed the actors to swing their prop cutlasses around wildly and smack 'em together once in awhile. And that was a lot of what took me, as a viewer, out of the effects-driven scenes: they mostly seemed forced and clumsy; moreover, all in all, I think the movie easily wasted twenty minutes on footage entirely consisting of special effects.

     The story itself really seemed… poorly constructed. As was pointed out by a friend after the movie, there were a lot of MacGuffins throughout the plot. There was one, after the other, after the other, totalling approximately seven (compass, drawing of key, key, chest, heart, jar of dirt, Turner's father); ultimately, this lead to very little audience investment in what was going on, the producers clearly wanting viewers to pay more attention to the shiny effects. It added up to a very boring and contrived type of plot that had so much more potential: I mean, they could've done a lot more with Davy Jones and the mythos surrounding him, but they didn't. It boiled down to a lot of simple "go fetch the plot device!" Yawn.

     Speaking of Davy Jones, of all the performances in the film I found the one by Bill Nighy as Captain Jones the best. The character was full of subtle nuance, much like how Captain Sparrow had once been in Pirates 1, and surprised me by being more than just a menacing archvillian stereotype. My ex-roommate noted that he seemed "unable to decide on an accent," but I thought that more intentional than a mistake, somehow representing the diversity of pirates and sailors on the seas: British, Welsh, French, Spanish, so on. The fact that there was a spark of sentiment for the villian was refreshing, and I found myself asking the question: "Why am I supposed to hate this guy, precisely?" In the end, Jack Sparrow is a more vile human being than Davy Jones, who is really just collecting on a promised payment, whereas Sparrow repeatedly proves throughout the film that he's a selfish coward.

     Then, oh dear, there's the end. Heh. After two and a half hours we're outright denied an ending. Instead, we get an abrupt cut in the plot, setting up for the sequel, At World's End, inevitably to be released as a blockbuster smash hit next summer. Oh, boy. After two and a half hours of a dull, uninteresting plot interrupted by long sessions of effects masturbation, thanks for that, guys. Thanks for the complete and utter non-ending. I needed that, to feel satisfied after waiting for two and a half hours for something of interest to happen, and to be smacked in the face and laughed at for my effort. "I'm sorry," the producers explain, "Were you thinking this movie would give you anything to leave with? Oh, hah, we don't know why you thought that, really."

     Johnny Depp has acted to much better effect before, I've seen it—hell, I saw it in Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl. Orlando Bloom actually grew into the role of Turner more in this film, but it's a shame his character was basically manhandled by the writers and put on the back burner, behind Sparrow's "delightful" antics and pretty, shiny objects. I also found myself more enamored with Miss Knightley as Elizabeth in this iteration, as well, but she, like Bloom, just got shoved in the background as pretty backdrop. The scenes surrounding Elizabeth's adventures as a random pirate in some random, other crew on some insignificant ship were probably the only times in the film I found myself chortling. Jack Davenport danced his steps as the one-trick pony-character of Norrington, namely a lot of "Grr, revenge!" Jonathan Pryce was entirely unconvincing as a despicable villian, and more came off as a bad attempt at a rehash of Grand Moff Tarkin. Oh, gee, who else was there in the movie that wasn't merely killed…?

     On the matter of death, by the by, Dead Man's Chest delivers in spades, in literally boatloads. If you thought Black Pearl was a bit objectionable for a Disney film… well, there's little denying that Dead Man's Chest shed any pretense of being a family-friendly flick. From start to finish, there were more deaths than in the first movie five hundred times over: people just died left and right. The film abruptly introduced the crew of Jack Sparrow's ship mainly to slaughter them wholesale, like fattened cattle. Maybe Disney wants us to think that they're "bad people" so them dying horribly isn't bad, but, uh, a little kid would probably be asking questions after about the second dozen bunch of characters were finished being drowned or crushed or burnt or ripped to shreds. I don't know what the producers were getting at outside of trying to heighten sales with gratuitous violence, but there was death, believe you me, sir.

     Yeah, and, uh, "spoiler alert" or whatever—not really—don't sit through the fifteen minute credit reel for any bonus content: there's a ten-second cut there, sure, but it's hardly worth sitting through the epic adventure of those credits. A lot of people were apparently involved in piecing together this immense disappointment.

     The longer I dwell on this film, the worse it grows in my mind. My ex-roommate liked it well enough, but I… can't. In the first Pirates, Johnny Depp displayed a character of interest and depth; in this one, Depp re-used all of the same tricks from the original movie and added little to nothing new to the mix—Hell, not even "little to nothing": simply "nothing" is accurate. I wasn't compelled to say that "It was more of Jack Sparrow acting like Jack Sparrow." It was just the same lines in a very slightly new context. Old hat, if you will.

     What Dead Man's Chest did offer was some brilliant costuming. Davy Jones' crew was an innovatively designed array of terrifying fish people, and there's nothing bad I can about that. The costumes of everyone else were pretty much standard fare, but let's pay more attention to the crazy fish people: seriously, Davy Jones was like some sort of Lovecraftean image of a pirate, and that's awesome. If the movie had spent more of its time focusing on Davy Jones and his crew, I would've been so much happier, because if you're going to have uninteresting character interaction and dialogue, it may as well be done from the confines of an insanely cool costume. If they could've just had more of that, I would've been pleased. It wasn't even about special effects, it was just very creative costume design.

     I can't say the soundtrack stood out to me, except for that the end credits were very dramatic. My ex-roommate and I actually wrote a little adventure about the End Credits, that they were a marching army of Credits going to fight the Evil Forces of an encroaching, opposing force of Credits, that right off-camera to the north, there was an epic battle ensuing, words fighting words, names against names. The music swelled as a drastic turn of events took place, the unseen flanking manuever of the enemy Credits general causing a big jump in casualities to the Good Credits, a heroic build-up as the Good Credits continue to endeavour and push forward, slowly making a dent in the enemy forces, their numbers winning over the possibly more skilled strategy of the other General. Things finally turned out well in the end, and the Good Credits won, thankfully, striking another victory for the good guys, a victory like one I had greatly wished Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest had been itself, a film I had anticipated with child-like glee and soon found myself regretting seeing.

Sorry, pirates didn't win this one, folks. Failure Rating: 46% (Upped from previous Rating of 27% on second thought).

[TIA;TY]

The Apotheoses of Moneyed Geezers: Election Year 2006 Issues, pt. 1

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 04:01:00 +0000

It's an election year, albeit not a Presidential one, mind you (so an even smaller fraction of the American public cares than would otherwise—no need to worry or fret when we've got McDonald's and American Idol!), which means there's a deluge of issues brought to the table by the bobble-heads in office to stir up vague approval from constinuents and earn cheap votes.

The Homosexual Agenda: Available in Hot Pink, Bright Green, Canary Yellow…

      Once more, gay marriage is a hot issue. Do these arguments sound new to anyone? "If we let the gays marry, what's going to stop polygamists? What's gonna stop a man from marrying a sheep?!" For one, if you've reached a point in your life where another fellow man is indistinguishable from a four-legged animal, then I suggest a heavy dosage of medication from your friendly doctor (he'll smile for you while he writes the prescription for five bucks, too). I don't see how hard and silly it would be to just, say, make marriage between humans… you know, sentient beings that have the capacity to communicate consent to an activity? If it can't say "Yes" in such a way where the answer is inseperable from either agreeing to get married or, say, getting fed some delicious corn, then I don't think there's a big issue with disallowing marriage in that case. It's kind of the same means by which we deal with rape.
      Polygamy, huh? Big, pressing issue, eh? That's not clearly a diversionary technique, hmm. Why's it hard to delineate marriage as between two human beings, then, if it's so "dangerous" to let the polygamists get married to multiple spouses? What do you tell the polygamists once the gays can marry? I don't know, because I can't fathom a reason why you would deny them marriage rights, in the first place. Basically, you'd be using all of the same arguments against gay marriage that fall apart upon inspection.
      CONSERVATIVE SENATOR: Well, you see, marriage is meant to propogate family values.
      A GAY: Aren't you just placing your own personal, traditional views on family values upon society in lieu of an open, honest discussion about what that phrase, "family values," even really means, because the masses won't think and will just nod along because that's the same beat we've been drumming for centuries?
      A POLYGAMIST: Yeah, what he said, plus, we can have kids biologically, anyway. And why has that ever been an issue, anyway? Having kids? For one, do we deny sterile heterosexual couples marriage rights? No. Aren't there hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of children already born out there who need to be adopted, as well? We're polygamists, we love huge families, too; we could adopt, like, twelve.
      CONSERVATIVE SENATOR: Well, you see, what I really mean to say is that most people don't realise how muddled and mixed-up marriage rights are, to start, and just think about how it'll look to have gays and polygamists marry, not about how unnecessarily difficult it is to receive joint property rights or the ability to file taxes jointly as an unmarried couple. The clear compromise of distinguishing between religious marriage ceremony and governmental, bureaucratic aspects of civil union isn't an option because that doesn't sway voters and is more condusive to a civilised debate. Instead, I'm going to continue screaming about how outrageous it is, hoping nobody actually has a handle on compassion, even though according to the very religion I'm parading around as my own, Christianity, we are supposed to have compassion for all people, not just selective demographics and socioeconomic classes.
      Right, we continue to live in a society where a 90-year-old millionaire can marry a 20-year-old supermodel without quarrel, and two decent, average men who happen to desire each other's company for life can't walk down the street without strange looks. This makes sense.

Mario Killed the Video Star

Violent video games have also come up in the news, what with pushes for government regulation on the rating of video games, despite how moot this point truly is. Hey, parents, here's a clue: if you take the thirty seconds out of your day it may occupy to read the back of the boxes on video games before letting your children play them, you can probably guess which ones are good or bad. Video game companies are not out to trick the general public about what their game is all about. Hitman does not describe itself as "a colourful frollick through grassy meadows and knolls with unicorns and rainbows."
"But, wa-a-a-a-a-a-a-ah, there was a hidden sex scene in a video game rated 'M'!" Yeah, hidden insofar that you had to patch the programming of the game itself to see it. And, hey, hate to break this to you, but the sex scene? "Hot Coffee"? That scene didn't rate any raunchier than the three minute long droolfest that passed as a sex scene in Matrix: Reloaded. What was that rated? 'R', correct? The equivalent rating to the ESRB's 'M'? Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a game centred on violent gang activity, drug trafficking, and keeping in shape by lifting weights on a regular basis between drive-bys, if a highly pixelated, naked breast on the screen is the deciding factor against your 17-year-old playing it, then you are a poor excuse for a parent.

America's Virtual Army: It's Virtually There!

      I have a personal theory about violence in video games, on a related note. Why have the conservatives, especially the warhawks, been against violence in video games for so long, when the attack on Hollywood and music has subsided and is meek—or, at least, hidden from view—in comparison? This isn't an issue of morality, we all know it. Just like with movies and music, it's about control. Controlling society in such a way where it produces the type of people who please the Powers that Be. Anything that promotes rebelling against the standards of society or deviating from tradition is a big No-No. How do violent video games do this, though?
      Let's face it: the fact is, violence in video games does not produce the frothing, raging people the corporate media and conservatives will have you believe. It, in actuality, produces something quite the opposite. Violent video games sate those violent urges we all have as humans, that deep-down thirst to fight for something. Writers, poets, and musicians have been speaking on ths for ages, about how there's this something inside all of us that yearns to fight for life, for blood, for pain. Amos Oz's novel, A Perfect Peace, is a wonderful exploration of this idea, amongst many others. You may ask, "What am I getting at here?"
      Why join the military when you can kill something in the comfort of your own home? Where's the big need to feel "manly" and brandish a big gun in real-life when you can do it in an imaginary, graphical world where there are no consequences, no risk of getting hurt or killed yourself? Why do you think gamers are such a generally peaceful, non-competitive—outside of gaming—stock? Because our flabby asses are getting all the violence we need on our couches; we're fighting our wars against the likes of King Koopa or hordes of aliens. We don't need to shoot Arabs because of political aims in the Middle East.
Don't you think this prospect makes conservative warhawks tremble? That there can be such an easy, affordable means to quench the human thirst for blood without being their pawns? Look at how the marketting for the military has changed: "Join the Army, we'll pay for your college… kind of, sort of, not really! Uh, er, uhm, er, yeah, uh… you can work with computers in the Air Force! Doesn't that excite you?! Please?"
      The moral? Don't waste your time in the military when you can shoot fake people on the TV screen without losing years of your life to government indoctrination!

      It's 2006, let the muck-raking and the mud-slinging, the Christian flag-waving and the feigned attempts to care about the troops, the half-assed calls against the Republican's corporate masters and the mean-spirited and immature name-calling against the Democrats, and the usual bout of suppressing the Greens and keeping them out of sight begin.

[EOF]

Detective Stories: "Laisser Faire"

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 04:01:00 +0000

The night was . . . somewhat dim. It was kind of drizzling, just a little overcast. On this fateful night, everything would change . . . for a very short while, then inevitably revert back to the status quo, probably . . .

     My day could have gone better, but I've had worse. I sat at my semi-tidy desk in my well-lit office, the fan was working better than it had been, no longer did it squeak or shake as it spun. That was actually a nice change, the repairman came by the night before and worked on it, was a real cheery fellow. We're gonna get together and play some Scrabble™ next week. It ought to be real fun. The kind of fun that ought to be illegal.
     I smoked a cigarette, it was a slim menthol brand, filtered for minimal health risk. I only smoked maybe two cigs a day, been trying to cut back and, eventually, quit, but the goin's been tough. I tried the patches, you know, but they just didn't help. My brother-in-law—that amazing bastard whom I love dearly—suggested those pills that I see advertised for sometimes. Said they worked for him . . . just fine. I noticed the ashes were piling up in the tray on my desk, so I dumped it into the dustbin by my feet—wouldn't want it to get too dirty, ya know?

Then, she walked in, at a casual stride, not in any particularly remarkable fashion . . .

     She was the most absolutely average dame I had ever laid eyes on, her fair-to-middling curves did not really illicit much of any interest whatsoever. I instantaneously felt drop-dead apathetic about her, with her medium-length, brown, unspectacular hair reaching down to her straight, covered-up shoulders, her basic, brown eyes came to meet mine and I knew, just then, that I would forever be destined to forget I ever met her.
     She wore a green t-shirt and some blue jeans, with a pair of Nike brand tennis shoes—white, like . . . a napkin that was partially-used, dirty with grease. Her t-shirt read across the front, over her very typically sized and unamazing bosom, in plain-face text: "Myrtle Beach Surfing." She had a simple, golden wedding band on her finger, which I had no real intention of ever undermining or challenging the meaning of its presence. She had a cheap, black umbrella, which she compacted and wrapped, then put into her moderately sized purse, made of denim with a considerable number of zippers and pockets.
     I noticed she had a faux gold watch on, which ticked away the time like a ticking time-keeping mechanism designed in a . . . factory by a factory worker on an assembly line somewhere in China—or maybe Korea. Those darn Asians and their cheap labour force and their complete lack of government regulation on industry.

     "My husband . . . he's trying to . . .," she spoke in a mildly accented voice, in a matter-of-fact and straightforward tone, "He's trying to . . . irritate me to death."
     "What, ma'am?" I inquired, leaning forward and chewing on the end of my cigarette, thinking that maybe I should really try those pills (almost six bucks a pack, now, geez Louise). "How do you . . . . me-e-e-ean?"
     "He never does the dishes and he always comes home drunk, throwing his dirty laundry on the floor and expects me to clean it!" she ejaculated, gesturing wildly with her rough, worn, sort of man-like hands. "Like I'm his maid or something!"
     Perhaps I ought to hire a maid service to clean my office every once in awhile, I thought to myself, then I wouldn't have to do it myself anymore.
     "And he's always talking about his job! Work, work, work, is all he ever goes on about! Am I supposed to care?!"
     I wonder how much a reasonably cheap but good maid company charges for a monthly clean-up? Ten, maybe twelve an hour? I'll have to call around, get some quotes.
     "And I bet he's sleeping with his secretary, 'cause I found some lipstick on his shirt collar once, and he sometimes smells like a woman's perfume! I bet he's messing around with her and thinks I'm just too dumb to notice! Just his dumb, stupid, ugly maid, there to cook and clean for him all day long, and do his stinky laundry!"
     Maybe my secretary knows someone good, get a discount or something. I could keep the glass on my door cleaner, don't like it when it gets all smudged, harder for people to read my name.
     "So, I want you to follow him and find out if what he's doing all these nights he's out so late!" She huffed and rested her hands on her hips, indignantly staring at me. I scratched at the inside of my ear, as the ash on my cigarette grew longer. A fly started buzzing around my head, so I swatted at it absently.
     Darn bugs, maybe I need an exterminator, or just a good fumigation. Wouldn't hurt none, don't want insects deterring from business, and—
     "HEY, ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?!"
     "What? No? I mean—er, yes, I am, ma'am, yes," I stuttered and flicked the ash of my cigarette into the tray on my desk. Reaching for a pad of paper and a freshly-sharpened pencil (I kept about ten or so sharp and ready for any occasion) from my top desk drawer, I began to scratch down details. "Right, right, husband, secretary, drinking, dissatisfaction in bed—"
     "WHAT?!"
     "Er, I, uh—er, no, I meant . . . . Possible affair, of course," I corrected myself, then began asking her for her name and information. Could maybe squeeze twenty-five an hour from this broad.

And that was the story of the case that would prove to be the one which occupied next Wednesday, for, like, six hours.
SPOILER ALERT: The husband was cheating on the wife with the secretary, so they got a divorce and she took the house and half his stuff in the settlement that ensued. As usual, the only ones who truly suffered were the children.

X3: The Last Stand, or X3: The Last Straw

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 03:45:00 +0000

I anticipated the third installment in the X-Men movie series like how one anticipates the inevitability of vomitting when sick, stomach clenched and body completely held still as though there's some chance it doesn't have to end in vomit. Unfortunately, as in sickness, it usually does.

"Why You Always Gotta Scream When You Enter a Room?"

Let's go ahead and get the best part of the movie out of the way, shall we:

[SCENE: Juggernaut is going for Leech, the mutant boy who is the source of the cure, in the research complex, with Kitty Pryde trying to outmanuever him and get to the boy first. She leaps onto and grabs him, using her mutant ability to drag him halfway into the floor.]
JUGGERNAUT: Doesn't she know who I am?
[BEAT]
JUGGERNAUT: I'm the Juggernaut!
[BEAT]
JUGGERNAUT: BITCH!

Yes, that's right. They did it. They put those lines in. They made the reference. They made Internet geeks happy all over the world. It was fucking great to hear that.
Onward to the catastrophe that is the rest of X3: The Last Stand.

The Ugly

    Halle Berry is a shit-actress who needs to be fucking banned from Hollywood so that nobody has to see her bland, emotionless, Godawful acting on the Big Screen ever again. She has all the acting talent of David Spade and Dennis Miller all rolled into one. She's a fucking model, she has no place on the Big Screen, and she pretty much killed this movie.
    I was quite thrilled to hear she had walked from the X-Men movie franchise, as I thought she was a pretty lame Storm, to start. Then, Catwoman. Yeah, that's enough to justify its own sentence: that's all I have to say about that. Then, Bryan Singer, the director of the first two X-Men, jumps ship and Berry is back, and I hear they're rewriting the whole script to accomodate her, and . . . And, shit, they did, and it reeked like chimp shit left out on a sunny Summer's day at the zoo.
    Completely out of the character of Storm, she somehow ends up as the leader of the X-Men while Cyclops is, for whatever reason, busy being an angsty emo-kid in his bedroom for two years, completely contrary to his entire character and for what Cyclops always stood. Thanks a fuck-ton, Berry, I hope you get cervical cancer. Storm proceeds to spend the rest of the movie delivering completely useless, expository lines with no feeling. Yeah, you know how Storm was always a pretty quiet character who delivered most of her meaning through expression and action? Yeah, none of that here.
    When it'd be appropriate for Storm to just electrocute some bitch-ass punk without a word, she has to go and deliver some cheesy, bullshit line first. I guess this is Halle Berry's idea of "character development," but that's understandable as the subtleties of acting via facial expression and body language is long far-gone out of her grasp. We, the viewer, have to be hit upside the head with heavy-handed and, worse yet, generic bullshit "character development" which is, for the most part, outside of the actual character of Storm.
    I can not put enough emphasis on how much Halle Berry managed to ruin this potentially much greater movie.

The Uglier

    Speaking of characters, I'm going to go ahead and get into the gross mistreatment of characterisation and development throughout X3.
    Oh, wait, characterisation and development what? "What's that?" asks the screenwriters of this movie, clearly befuddled by such ideas like giving characters more than one dimension and making them, perhaps, well-rounded, life-like people.
    One: Cyclops is not at all devoted to the idea of Xavier's School and the X-Men, and, instead, abandons everything to mope and cry, then, eventually—and by eventually I mean in the first fifteen minutes—die. Cyclops fails to act like a leader, fails to act like he cares, and fails to be Cyclops.
    Two: Wolverine is not anything more than a series of poses and fight sequences, with no real heart or soul. All that shit about his past and every question he continuously brings up, like "Who am I?" and "What have I been doing my whole life?", was just kind of put to the side so Wolverine could menacingly loom and occasionally stab things.
    Three: Rogue proceeds to get maybe four minutes of screen-time so we can establish that she is nothing but a steaming pile of angst, and so she can eventually serve as a stupid plot device.
    Four: Bobby Drake throws away everything he worked so hard to get in the first two movies and in, more than likely, the last two years of storytime for something that is an empty shell of a characterless character. Speaking of which . . .
    Five: Shadow Cat, or Kitty Pryde? Why is she even in this movie? Sure, she made brief cameos in the first two movies, but those were just cameos; however, everything you learnt about Kitty Pryde in X-Men 1 and 2 is pretty much everything you still know by the end of the third movie, because she is given absolutely zero defining characteristics, except that she can phase through solid objects. Oh, and she's apparently more desireable than Rogue—not that any justification or hints as to why this is true are given.
    Like how Rogue and Bobby Drake were pretty much lifted from the X-Men Evolution universe to pander to that universe's fanbase, Kitty Pryde is just kind of thrown in as further hope that alluding to Evolution somehow makes the movie more "true to the comic" or something. And, while I'm on the topic of pandering . . .

Clipped Wings

Six: Angel, who is featured prominently in all the hype and trailers, gets approximately three scenes in the entire movie and serves no real purpose, except to have wings and look cool. Here is a quick renactment of his so-called "role" in X3:

[SCENE ONE: A young boy at a mirror cuts at his back with a knife.]
WARREN, AGE TEN: Ow, it hurts when you cut off a part of your own body!
WORTHINGTON, SR: It is certainly most distressing to me to see that my son has wings!
WARREN: Aw, but . . . I'm cutting them off, Dad! Just for you!

[SCENE TWO: Some generic lab-looking setting, complete with prop scientists and shiny, sterile things.]
WARREN, AGE TWENTY: My father wants me to get the mutant cure, and I don't wanna.
WORTHINGTON, SR: I made this cure all to cure you, Warren!
WARREN: Oh noes! Changed my mind, Dad! [Flies away.]

[SCENE THREE]
ANGEL: Hey, X-Men, can I chill here?
X-MEN: We are sad . . . But, Sure!
ANGEL: Sweet!

Oh, and, yeah, he flies overhead at the end of the film. Great, I sure am happy they included Angel just for that bit of useless filler. What I was told by a friend is that they had so much content and hype about Angel after X2, when Singer was still in control, that it is very likely just thrown him in as a concession to that. Mmm, pander-licious.

Nine Characters in Search of a Good Movie

    Seven: "Hey," said the writers of X3, "Let's include the Juggernaut in the third movie, but completely fail to actually divulge a single-bit of information about his character backstory, even though he's Professor Charles Xavier's motherfucking brother." The producers agreed, "Oh, and, hey, did you see that 'I'm the Juggernaut' movie circulating the Cyberwebnet? Reference that. It'll be awesome and the only worthwhile thing in this film." The producers nodded and yelled out, "Cast some cockney-sounding guy! Whoosh, away! Off to rape some other movie franchise!"
    Eight: Magneto, rather than be the reasonably conceived character he was in the first two movies, proceeds to be a gross exaggeration of the character, taken to ridiclous extremes, but it is fortunate that Ian McKellen's superpower of good acting helped to override some of that bullshit. The helmet continues to look silly.
    Nine: Speaking of good acting, Kelsey Grammer manages to perform possibly the best representation of any character in the movie as Beast, taking the few scenes and sparse lines he's given and managing to actually get across a superb sense of Beast's personality. There really wasn't a better choice for casting.

Shooting Blanks

    Remember Mystique? You can pretty much forget her, here. Firstly, her make-up now looks like utter shit, mostly just her body painted blue (Singer took the make-up crew with him on his way out), Secondly, she serves a very bit part as a rather lame device.
    Oh, also, remember Kurt Wagner, the Nightcrawler? No, you don't. Or, rather, the writers of X3 surely hope you don't, because he's not here, and it's never explained, either. What I heard was that they didn't include the Nightcrawler because "having two blue characters on the same team would've confused the audience." I do not believe it is quite possible to be more condescending and insulting to the movie-going audiences than that. They don't look a fucking little bit alike, kthxdie.
    It is a form of a blessing that Nightcrawler didn't make an appearance, because they probably would've made his make-up look like shit, too, and just painted him blue and scrawled the angelic symbols all over him with a Sharpie^®.
    All the talk of Gambit making an appearance came to naught, as well. From IMDB.com: "Josh Holloway was offered the role of Gambit, but turned it down because the character was too similar to his character on "Lost" (2004). As a result, the character was never added to the film since this would have been a special cameo put in later had Josh decided to sign on."
    Dear Josh Holloway,
       Does your character on Lost imbue matter with explosive energy and hurl playing cards around while wielding a staff? If so, maybe I'll actually check that show out.

A Tale Too Shitty

    At the end of X2, the "X-Men" comic fanbase rose together in joy to see that the next movie, envisioned as just as awesome as the first two, would be dealing with one of the most pivotal storylines in the history of the "X-Men" comics, namely the "Dark Pheonix" saga. What the fanbase did not foresee was control of the movie being handed over to a hack like Brett Ratner, whose biggest claim to fame was the shit-stain of a movie and its even shittier sequel, Rush Hour and Rush Hour 2.
    In lieu of a movie devoted to the "Dark Pheonix" saga, what we are, instead, given is a mediocre mixture of the "Dark Phoenix" plot and the "Mutant Cure" plot. Now, you know all the parts of the "Dark Pheonix" saga that made it interesting, the cosmic being controlling Jean Grey and all that? No, no, no. She just had massive amounts of power, all along, now, and that's that. Oh, uh, yeah, psychic barriers, split personality, blah, blah: half-assed excuse of a plot that mostly entails actress Famke Janssen standing and looking menacing at the camera. Exciting! Oh, a resolution to the Logan-Jean-Scott triangle is presented in the form of blowing Cyclops up early on in the film, so that Storm can step up and be acting leader of the X-Men and Halle Berry can show the world how bad an actress she truly can be.
    Mmm, mutant cure. "Hi!," says child actor Cameron Bright, "You may remember me from such roles as the creepy little kid in Birth who convinces a widow that he's the reincarnation of her dead husband, which had potential to be much more interesting but the movie flaked out at the ending and it was all quite abortive. I'll be here in X3 as the character, Leech, whose mutant power is to suppress all other mutant powers except, conveniently, my own mutant power, in a small radius, for a temporary amount of time. For some reason, they are able to use my mutant genetics to glean a cure for mutation, I guess by injecting other people with my DNA, which magically enables my power in them, even though putting genes in someone's bloodstream in no fashion somehow causes them to instanteously develop the traits corresponding to them. Anyway, whereas my character was an alien in the comics and thus the premise made a remote amount of comic-sense, I'm just a mutant here, so none of this makes any sense! Fun, huh?! I'm really getting used to this whole 'playing a half-baked plot device' game.
    "Also, for no good reason, nobody will think to use me as a weapon against the Brotherhood of Mutants or the Dark Pheonix, despite the fact we were on the same tiny island for the last big scene of the movie. Kind of silly, huh? I guess they didn't want to negate the big, touching, clichéd finalé!" Ugh, I hate you so much, X3 writers. It's like they took a special training course in writing half-assed plots based on ludicrous premises which aren't fully developed and that inevitably end in the most typical, Hollywood style feasible. There's only so much to be expected from a writing staff who so miserably failed to utilise the character of Angel as more than just a one-trick pony.
    In defense of Last Stand, it's not like the cameo appearances or sidekick villians in the previous two movies had been really given any substance, either (See: Sabretooth, Frog, Lady Deathstrike, Collosus, Jubilee, and so forth). These parts really served no function outside of either a nod to the comic fans or as a wielder of cool-looking powers to be muscle or glamour. It's when you take characters with no substance like Kitty Pryde and throw her in the audiences face as a supposedly significant character that it begins to insult the audience with these paper doll plays featuring one-dimensional stars.
    And to take characters that had been given substance in the previous two movies, like Rogue, Bobby Drake, and Pyro, and use them to such ineffectual ends as teenager angst vehicles is equally insulting. Why do I care that Bobby Drake is frollicking about with Kitty, when there's been no establishment of the depth of his relationship with Rogue, outside of a single, offhanded comment like "How do you think I am, I can't touch my boyfriend, waah!" Am I supposed to see the appeal of the Kitty Pryde character when she is given literally no history or personality, just a cute face and ice-skating? And am I supposed to feel the tension between Pyro and Iceman just because I "know" it's there from the last movie, despite it being nothing more than a gimmick in X3 for more corny lines?

The Ugliest

Speaking of corny lines . . . Jesus Christ Almighty, who pays people to come up with this tripe? (Answer: FOX.)

CYCLOPS: Not everybody heals as fast as you, Logan.
(Ouch. Argh. Eech. So. Corny.)

MAGNETO: They wish to cure us . . . And I say we are the cure!
(Hyuck!)

MAGNETO: I have been marked once, my dear and let me assure you, no needle shall ever touch my skin again.
(See, it's a profound statement, because he's referring to the Holocaust, so that's profound . . . and deep. Yeah, clever.)

BEAST: Wolverine. I hear you are quite an animal.
WOLVERINE: Looks who's talkin'.
(ZING! Look Who's Talkin', Too and Look Who's Talkin', Now were pretty bad sequels, too.)

MAGNETO: Charles always wanted to build bridges.
(BWAHAHAHA, IT'S FUNNY 'CAUSE PROFESSOR X MEANT IT METAPHORICALLY AND HE JUST MOVED A REAL BRIDGE! COMEDY GENIUS!)

WOLVERINE: Let's see you grow those back!
(AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, IT'S FUNNY 'CAUSE HE'S REFERRING TO HIS TESTICLES!)

(Lastly . . . )
DARK PHEONIX: You would die for them?!
WOLVERINE: No, not for them . . . For you!
(I could very nearly hear the violin music swelling at this point. Gag me with a spoon!)

X-Men and X2 had lines that were subtle and witty, albeit sometimes corny—always self-aware of being corny, though. X3 was just full of lines trying to be subtle and witty, trying their damnedest to live up to the first two movies, and failing miserably. There were way too many lines of dialogue in this movie which were meant to be moving or poignant, and I just rolled my eyes or groaned, or, alternatively, both, simultaneously, at the same time (See: every single line of dialogue delivered by Halle Berry; I would have put some from Storm up, but, honestly, none stood out as remarkably worse than the rest and it was all about how piss-poorly Berry delievered each and every sentence she uttered, not the actual words; Berry could make Shakespeare sound like Friends). They committed the worst crime of all action writing, too: not being aware of how corny the dialogue was at times. No, they weren't "B.A.", not even close to "B.A.M.F.", just bad.

Callisto to F6, Beast to H3

    Ah, yes. I'm going to take a paragraph or two here for a tangent a lot of people won't really care about: the Chess metaphor.
    So, in the first two installments, we had Magneto sometimes making reference to Chess, but in sensible and usually not overt ways. The last scene of X-Men had him and Charles playing a game of Chess. All well and good, typical fare for the "supervillian" archetype. Mmm-yes, yes, Chess is a game of strategery and manipulation, indeed.
    So, in X3, where par for the course is the writers trying to mimic the first two movies and taking everything to level of retarded absurdity, Magneto makes overt and . . . dumb references to Chess, here. He delivers the line, at the beginning of the final, huge, confrontation slash battle scene, "In Chess, the pawns go first."
    First Point of Contention: In Chess, there are twenty possible opening moves. Four of them involve a Knight and not a Pawn, and they are the opening moves of common Opening Games.
    And, as the scene progresses and many of his grunt soldiers fall in battle, he delivers another line: "That is why the pawns go first," or somesuch.
    Second Point of Contention: Wait, what? The fuck is that supposed to mean? The pawns go first in Chess so that they can be needlessly sacrificed? Is he trying to imply that you send your pawns out in chess just to die? No, bullshit; in Chess, the Pawn Game is almost always the deciding factor in many advanced matches, and you will find that great chessmasters forfeit the game as soon as they realise that they can no longer win the Pawn Game. The Pawn Game, of course, being the End Game where it's just two Kings and a number of Pawns. Many great chess matches are decided by a single pawn advantage. You do not send your pawns out to just be obliterated, fuckwits. That is not how good Chess is played, ever.
    Dear X-Men 3 Writers,
       Play some fucking Chess before you try and write clever Chess references.

In Conclusion

    To Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellan, Kelsey Grammer, Anna Paquin, and Ben Foster: you are great actors and I am deeply sorry there is nothing you could've done with the script to X3 to make it a redeemable film. You did the best you could, and, in actuality, delivered a pretty shining performance, overall, in fact. The acting in the movie was pretty superb.
    To Halle Berry: I hope you spontaneously combust, I hope your flesh melts off your body, I hope your bones shatter and your uterus turns to centipedes, I hope your eyes turn into spiders and your intestines turn into maggots, I hope you simmer alive in writhing agony for hours and hours and hours before finally experiencing the sweet release of death.
    To Brett Ratner: Stick to cheap trick movies like Rush Hour and other such garbage, and leave the real movies to the Big Boys.
    To the writers: I hope the money you got for this trite shit helps soothe the pain of knowing you have created one of the worst scripts in Hollywood history.
    To Bryan Singer: Please, please, please do the next X-Men movie, please, please, please. Don't let FOX continue to rape this franchise like a drunken sorority girl at a frat party.

    This movie was littered with horrible dialogue and the execution of every single plot and subplot in this film was pretty much half-assed. Nobody was really trying, and it showed. The music was listenable, but it was a very bland score, standard fare. The effects were overblown and pretty. It was easy to get caught up in X3: The Last Stand and stare gleefully at the shiny lights and colours, be entranced by the elaborate fight scenes: all the money and effort was clearly put into effects and fight choreography, so pay close attention there, that's your money's worth. If you pretend Halle Berry never opens her mouth and don't think too hard about the actual story of the movie, it's a fun movie. If you're looking for a good followup to the last two X-Men movies . . . Well, I'm sorry—keep moving.
    Failure Rating: 78%

That Is All; Thank You

No Luminary

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Mon, 01 May 2006 11:04:00 +0000

[Scene: Work, CNU Information Technology Services Helpdesk, McMurran 108 Office, I sit at my work computer in front of a window into the computer lab, a heavy-set lady is collecting her print-job from the printer.]

HER: Where are your glasses?
ME: . . . Huh?
HER: Don't you wear glasses? You're doing an awful lot of squinting.
ME: No, I don't wear glasses. They wouldn't help.
HER: Oh, really, why not?
ME: I have an eye disease.
HER: Oh . . . Well, I feel like an ass.
[I grunt noncommitally, thinking: Good.]

You have no idea how often this happens to me, how often someone asks me if I wear glasses or where the glasses are that I so obviously need, or comment about my squinting or how close I am holding something while reading.

[Scene: Dormitory apartment, I sit on the couch in the common room reading the first collection of Fable, the girlfriend of a friend (who lives here) skips into the room.]

HER: Hey! You're holding that awful close to your face!
[I noncommitally grunt, concentrating on the comic.]
HER: Do you wear glasses?
ME: No, they wouldn't help.
HER: Oh! I have to wear glasses . . . Poor me!
[She exits, frollicking away.]
ME: . . .

Yeah, you know what? Maybe I don't want to nigh on constantly talk to strangers about my uncureable, untreatable eye disease? Maybe I don't need your opinion as an amateur optometrist? Maybe not everyone who can't see well needs glasses? This kind of shit is fucking rude and happens everyday about.

[Scene: CNU Student Centre Lounge, a group of couches and armchair, I sit on a couch drawing in a sketchbook, a girl sits across from me with a textbook.]

HER: Why wouldn't glasses help you see better?
[I launch into a five minute explanation of macular degeneration, Cone-Rod Distrophy, and Stargardt's Disease.]
HER: Wow, that was way too much information.
ME: . . .

Fucking can't even win for losing. Don't even get me started on the colour blindness.

Words #2: Verse

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 15:55:00 +0000

Seal the second door to swing,
We dance, we dance, the music sings,
All to come, fall and rise, the
Bells will ring, the dancers laugh.

A flock of birds, brown and loud,
Marks their scar across the clouds,
To find the farthest, warmest nest,
My body shakes with the wanning tides.

Roll the note, tortured vibrato,
It may be the last sound on Earth,
The Seventh Day of the Thousandth Year,
When the dancers all lost their step.

The Trickster cries beneath the roots,
All treachery ripened, green, to fruit,
Losing time in buckets, hours in tears,
He will Arise, have no fear.

Not at all brought to you by Mr. Cummings.

Psalm #1

noreply@blogger.com (c.Jay Wrong) — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 13:30:00 +0000

He paused, mid-stride, to glance to the side,
Lift his eyebrows, a great task, and gawk,
A nobleman once said, "Well, fuck me sideways."

She leapt, wholehearted, and made contact,
Validating her existence, once and for all,
In the scope of this endless verse we repeat.

Resin and horsehair, refrain,
Refrain, wood and string, how
long can we sustain one note?

I wrote, dear friend, to my beloved,
To solidify the illusion, manic schizophrenic,
My mind my return address, postage prepaid.

We skip to the loo, abrupt urgency, to ante,
Lanterlu, lanterlu, lanterlu!
The beat's a bit too loose, too late, too lackluster . . .

Two-four and C-major, refrain,
Refrain, fortissimo and staccato, how
long until the bow breaks in twain?

Tutankhamen the Kid rides again,
While Nero fiddles away.