Sessions in the Summer

George's Late Night Ritual

2006-02-09T22:31:00.000-06:00

He needs a warm cup of coffee, not the scalding stuff that jolts him into action in the morning, but the bitter Folgers without cream or sugar and cool enough to drink eight ounces in eleven seconds. Then he needs to take off his jeans, imprinted with metal burns and slivers, and throw them next to his closet. He leaves the top of his uniform on and climbs into his queen-sized bed. He turns on the television. It's thirteen inches and positioned at an angle atop the adjacent nightstand. He watches the woman prepare a squid and garlic dipping sauce for her party guests. He watches her sprinkle in the spices and grits his teeth. He has always hated squid. The texture feels like chomping on the inside of his cheek. He drifts to sleep, her voice echoing in his ear, demanding that he pay careful attention in roasting the garlic cloves, so as not to singe them. He surely does not want to offend the guests who attend his next soiree.

I Won't Lie

2006-02-06T17:49:00.000-06:00

I won't lie to you, I have a rather intense form of dyslexia. When I dress up for these gala events I can tell what color of dress I am wearing, whether it is short or long, and whether it has straps or does not. These are the only aspects of a dress that I can identify properly. I could be wearing a checkered pattern tonight or I could be wearing the swirls of Van Gogh's Starry Night. To me, the pattern is fluid. It drips over my dress like buckets of hot wax thrown onto a tapestry. It drizzles like a waterfall down each of my curves. And I love it. Normal people see clothing as stagnant, as pretty, or tacky, or ugly, or gaudy. But I see it as all of these, rolled into a sequence of ballet where every dancer improvises and every song is written in allegro.

Congratulations to the Fucker Outside of Angelo's

2006-02-05T23:38:00.000-06:00

You have officially made it into a story of mine. If I ever find out your name somehow through having a class with you, through another person, at a party, etc., I will make sure to use your real name and talk about how you like hitting girls twice in the head and then kicking them while they are crying on the sidewalk. FUCK you Department of "Public Safety." This fucker doesn't get arrested but god forbid a 20 year old drink a goddamn beer or a black man talk to a white person on the street every once and a while. Jesus Christ.

Scene from SCARS

2006-01-24T00:22:00.000-06:00

“Cyrus, give me the knife.” Doug stood, shaking. His quavering voice only echoed slightly despite the high ceilings of the art studio.

The pool of blood looked like oil underneath Cyrus’s weak body. He held the knife loosely, but with the blade turned toward his studio mate’s flesh. Doug usually enjoyed the sight of blood; he would pick at scabs and mosquito bites just to see the maroon liquid ooze. But this was a thick pond, one in which a hellion could leap and splash. It smelled of rust.

Doug stepped toward Cyrus.

“Get away from me.” Cyrus cried. He pushed himself back with his legs, creating scarlet ripples that washed onto Doug’s shoes.

“We need to get you to the hospital, Cyrus.” Doug said the words calmly. He still hadn’t fully understood why Cyrus would have called him into the studio at two in the morning to witness a suicide attempt.

“You can’t trust them over at that place, Doug. They put something in me.” Cyrus’s eyes were wide with fear.

“We have to get you to the hospital. You’re losing a lot of blood.” Doug started toward his friend.

Cyrus flashed the blade at him. “Stay back!”

“I felt them…underneath my skin,” Cyrus said. “These bumps that didn’t used to be there. Those…people from the AIDS place. It happened after I talked to them. I had this dream and this girl said they were going to drown me. And I needed to cut the bumps out. Or I would drown like a fish…like a fish out of water.”

“Cy, you’ll be fine,” Doug lied. “We just got to get you out of this place. Those people just asked you questions. They don’t want to hurt you.”

“I found some scraps…in their dumpster…and I put them together…I didn’t understand…but the dream told me,” Cyrus was growing whiter. “We can’t let the fish drown.”

Cyrus held the bloody knife to his friend, “You have to help me!”

A sudden body spasm jolted through Cyrus’s body, jerking him into a fetal position. A faint whisper eased from his mouth. It was monotone and quick, as if he were reading a eulogy while high on cocaine.

“Jumped into the pool and it was only second best

To the time that it was blood and I was floating on my chest.”

Doug used this opportunity to rush over to his friend and seize the knife. He threw it across the linoleum floor and picked up his friend. Cyrus repeated the words again into his friend’s ear. And then he fainted. It was at this time, when Doug’s best friend was bleeding in his arms, when his heart raced faster than a machine gun blast, when all hope for Cyrus seemed to be waning out of his dissolving body that Doug wished he would have screwed all the neo-Bohemian artist lifestyle shit and purchased a cell phone.

Forget the 60s

2005-11-14T23:14:00.000-06:00

It’s fall and in Milwaukee that means that the two weeks between the sweltering summer humidity and the icy winter drafts that blow through thickest coats like steak knives through cottage cheese have finally arrived. But for now I am safe. I am comfortable. The leaves are turning. Songs enter my mind as I am walking down Wisconsin Avenue. They are about winter, about leaves, about longing. All the leaves are brown and the sky is gray. California dreaming on such a winter’s day. Winter days are looming and I can feel it. Days when the cold gusts will dry out my eyes and I will try to keep them closed as long as I can on the way to class. There will even come days when I will be sitting in my Processes of Writing class, huddled with my classmates in a circle, wishing I could toss my desk in the middle of the classroom and start it on fire. Maybe someone could have a spare guitar. And we could sing about writing and dreaming and learning and all those things, those life-changing things that are at the forefront of our college minds. This is the autumn of our lives. And I want it forever.

Winter has been inevitable in the past. The “Greatest Generation” made the Earth a ticking time bomb of stocks and bonds and fossil fuel. And the 60s, the 60s were a fucking joke. All those baby-bopping street-strutting hippies traded their tie-dyed t-shirts for 100% Wool Business Suits once disco music came around. Disco didn’t just suck—it fucked the soulful rhythms of the Doors, Joplin, and Dylan with stage lights and bell bottoms. The 60s had a chance, just like every child. The Communes, the boycotts, the Civil Rights hotshots. But then there was Woodstock.

Woodstock was the un-aborted child of the 60s. Abortion wasn’t legal yet. So it was born in ’69 and thousands and thousands of people gathered in a desert field and said goodbye to all of there goals. They said goodbye to Jimi, Janis, Jim. They said goodbye to equal rights, the environment, their “sins.” But for those three days the sky was less polluted, the water was more clear, the government was less imposing, the camaraderie was more genuine. And once they knew that the world really could be better—that if they bonded together they really could change something—they gave it up.

They left Woodstock and attended Community College where they were trained. Trained not to cross their arms during a job interview. Trained not to dig deep. Trained to meet their bosses’ expectations. Trained to be the same blood-sucking leaches who their Woodstock heroes sang about. Trained to suffer through slight colds so they wouldn’t have to take a sick day. Trained to keep themselves busy. Trained not to daydream. Trained that in order to be the Employee of the Month, they must invite their boss to a family barbeque. Trained to have a wife and kids because it’s natural to multiply. Trained not to ever, ask, why.

My philosophy teacher is bald but has gray curls that extend from the sides of his head. He likes to talk about human dignity, racism, sexism. Most of all he likes to talk about dumpster divers, bums, and homeless people. Anyone who can’t find food to eat or a place to stay. He wonders what is wrong with the youth today. Why we don’t stand up and fight the injustices that still exist in our country. We do more drugs and have less protests than his generation. I don’t argue with him. He’s right.

Some people call us ‘Generation Y.’ I propose that we add a bit more to this title. Because right now, in college, I am learning and dreaming and doing the things that make me ask a simple question. Why can’t I live in Autumn forever?

I don’t want a last hoo-rah. I can be spared the perfect party as long as the fight will stay within me.

The Jumpmaster

2005-09-21T14:41:00.000-05:00

Character Sketch, You Steal This and You Die.

He called himself the Jumpmaster. It fit him. Even through the aroma of fresh coffee and pancakes, I could still see his eyes flicker from movement to movement. His black hands quavered as he sipped from a mug. It was at its last few drops. The waitress hassled him over the bill. It was too late to trust in the common customer. He spoke in too many words about enjoying his meal and another cup of coffee. He wide-eyed her as she sauntered to the kitchen.

He reached for his wallet. It was from New Orleans. It was beaten and flimsy. He opened it upside down, spilling cards and photos on the space of table between his body and his plate of eggs benedict. The photos were rough around the edges: 4 school children, one Christmas tree, one middle-aged woman with split front teeth, and one nude twenty-something with basketball boobs. A faded Mastercard that hadn’t been used since 1987, a business card from Coin-Op Laundry, and a paper receipt with the number 206-4209 scrawled in black marker across the transaction. He grasped at his fallen items, which stuck to his moist finger tips. The receipt became imprinted with cheese grease.

The waitress came again with a coffee pot. Black rimmed- caffeine cocktail. Before she could start pouring he leapt at the mug in front of him and extended his arm out. He held the cup as far from his torso as it could be. He watched the liquid fall from the spout and into his cup. He squealed when the cup filled to a bit over half.

“Enough! Enough!”

The waitress retreated- nose and forehead squished like a pug.

He cowered over the steaming liquid- eyes flashing around the diner. He shot his eyes to the left, then to the right. And then he took a sip.

Philip Roth's Our Gang

2005-08-22T16:04:00.000-05:00

After reading Bookslut's article that described her love for modern satirist Philip Roth, I decided to give his late 1960s classic "Our Gang" a chance. I had previously read his short story "Conversion of the Jews" and had been impressed, but not enough to pursue his other works with much fortitude.

Within the first couple of pages, I was laughing my ass off. The book is written like a play (though the dialogue is good it may be a bit dry for the theatre) and focuses on the re-election campaign of Trick E. Dick. The Nixon clone is surrounded by his cronies who twist each issue from abortion to war and from sex and the Boys Scouts of America into a statement that the ever-moral Trick E. Dick can use as a mantra in his campaign. Sex is disgusting. Boys Scouts are mowed over by tanks. Abortion is good for Vietnamese.

Though the jokes may be over-played and the book probably could have been condensed into a long fictitious editorial or a single act play, the manipulation used by the politicians seems to be an ever-living part of the "moral" right wing. Many of the issues that Roth discusses have been mirrored by the Bush Administration with the majority of Bush voters casting their votes for "moral issues." Like Vonnegut, we laugh at the jokes though their underlying assumptions are worthy of tears.

Final thought is that this book is worth your time if you read it quickly. The jokes will get old if you don't. I bought Roth's American Pastoral and will probably read it within the month.

Mahalo.

Wicked and The Sunset Tree

2005-08-02T12:01:00.000-05:00

Here is an attempt at a joint review concerning the newest LP by The Mountain Goats The Sunset Tree and Gregory Maguire's 1995 novel Wicked. Though I could yammer on and on about how great I believe both of these works to be, I would rather concentrate on the idea of logos in writing. Logos is what an audience brings to the text. It is comprised of the previous knowledge that a reader or listener has regarding subjects in which the text concerns itself.

I'll start with Wicked. Now a Tony-Award-Winning Production, Maguire's tale is a biography of the famous Wicked Witch of the West. As an audience, most of us have pre-conceived ideas of this character because we saw The Wizard of Oz a dozen times in our youth. So, it is with this logos that a reader dives into Maguire's novel. Though the Wicked Witch is vile and heartless in Walt Disney's depiction, Elphaba (Witch's actual name. Taken from the initials of Oz's creator L. Frank Baum) is a scientist and a political revolutionary in Maguire's work. She is concerned with the rights of Oz's most lowly of citizens and detests the Wizard of Oz for his unfair mining and his new laws regarding Animals (capital 'A' because these are regular animals with Souls). The story is rife with Elphaba's inner struggle to find truth, love, justice, and companionship.

And so now the next time I see The Wizard of Oz I will be able to go into it with a new logos that will cause me to sympathize with the witch. Therefore, by writing a better tale than the original story, Maguire changed what the story meant to me. Perspective does not become reality. Perspective is reality.

Onto the Sunset Tree. Whatever one takes with them while listening to this album greatly affects what one can get out of it. All of us have issues regarding our childhood and this album can surface these past events quite well.

Alright, I'm done with this review because Rosie just bit me.

Stolen Songs XV

2005-06-21T17:02:00.000-05:00

Sleater-Kinney- Entertain [mp3]
The Catheters- No Natural Law [mp3]

Hmm the Catheters remind me of The Strokes f/Eddie Vedder pre-1998. I saw them last year at the Capital Hill Block Party. New article once I finish Wicked. It's amazing so far and I'd highly recommend it.

Chuck Palahniuk's Lullaby

2005-06-17T13:28:00.000-05:00

The Gigantic, Diamond-Studded, Hardly Malleable, Yet Still Uniquely Cracked Down the Center, Llama Pendant.

In the English language, adjectives are usually placed before the nouns that they describe. This rule makes it difficult for a reader to develop a picture of the object in their mind. They must then go back and reread all of the adjectives in order to really understand what they should be picturing. Quite frankly, many of us are too lazy for that.

Here's the point: Palahniuk's style can be strongly correlated with this rule. In Lullaby, we are given little information about the main character. We know that he is a journalist who is investigating infant sudden death syndrome and that his name is Carl. and blah blah blah. he finds out a song is killing them from a book. blah. and then he wants to go destroy all the copies. But in order to do this he uses the "culling song" to kill the people who get into his way.

Chuck Palahniuk has trouble ending his stories. So he comes up with some outrageous ending where Steven King takes over his body and begins writing The Body Snatchers. Steven King then hands the book over to all of his grunt writers for editing and they polish off the book with their rudimentary neo-nihilistic ideas. They just read Quinn's Ishmael and fucking loved it. So they dreaded their hair and bitched about the Nutria that have been introduced into the United States while they drove around in an SUV killing people who got in their way of saving the world.

Later on, after they had burned all of the copies of Poems and Songs from Around the World, they used the grimoir (a fancy word for witch's book) to create millions of ghosts that ended up performing sodomy on our hero while he was in jail. They stuck small glass figurines in Carl's foot when he wasn't looking and then they blinded Mona while she was plucking them out so that blood and pus would spray everywhere when she wrenched each one of the fuckers out from under his skin. These English grad students got really excited over what they had the potential to control and started killing off supermodels and engaging in post-mortem sexual intercourse with their corpses. Life was good.

Then Chuck woke up and saw Stephen King's grunts ruining his masterpiece. He quietly muttered the cooling song and they all developed rheumatoid arthritis and were unable to type. Chuck saw the dissaray in which the students had left his world, so he summoned Peter Venkman, Raymond Stantz, Egon Spengler, and Winston Zeddmore using his last remaining Yu-Gi-Oh card. The four were able to take care of the monsters that plagued Gotham City and Chuck Palahniuk was given another best-selling book.

A Succinct Session: Stolen Songs 14

2005-06-15T14:43:00.000-05:00

i'll make
this post
look
like
a modern poem.
too short
too cool
to write
to you.

excited about
going to this in
september.

will post an article about
chuck palahniuk's 'lullaby'
soon, followed
by one on
gregory maguire's 'wicked.'

here are some live bright eyes tracks

at the bottom
of everything
[mp3]

when the
president
talks to
god
[mp3]

landlo
cked
blues
[mp3]

i promise
i won't do
this again.

just because you are so fucking deep that you feel the need to leave assumed thoughts in the space between your words does not make you a god damn poet rosie o'donnell. 4 reeeeeeeel.

Your Affectionate Uncle...Screwtape

2005-06-04T15:03:00.000-05:00

*If anyone is interested in hearing any sections of this book (I would recommend Screwtape's Proposal) then email me and I'll hook you up with an mp3.*

This is the line that ends each one of C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters. There are just under twenty letters in all, written from the perspective of the head of the temptation department in hell to his nephew and novice temptor Wormwood. In each letter, Screwtape fluctuates between praise and castigation of Wormwood's work regarding the human whom he was assigned to tempt, known simply throughout as "the patient." Using these criteria, Lewis is able to personify, with quite remarkable success, the demons that he believes distance us from who Screwtape refers to as "The Enemy."

One can't help but draw a comparison to Nabokov's Lolita when confronting such a creepy narrator. However, unlike Humbert Humbert, we are supposed to completely despise Screwtape. Lewis states in the forward that there are two unhealthy outlooks on these type of demons. One of them is to maintain that they do not exist and the other one is to have an unhealthy fascination or interest in their inner workings. So we should not attempt to disect the character of Screwtape or even attempt to disect his arguments. Instead, the point of the letters is to recognize the varying angles that demons could use in sucking our souls into sin. For example, when the Second World War reaches the doorstep of "the patient" (it could be the first one, I'm not entirely sure because it's referred to in the story as the European War), Screwtape informs Wormwood that they can work against "the patient's" soul whether he is an ardent pacisfist or a valiant warrior. It doesn't really matter which path he chooses as long as his intentions conform with a vice.

One of the most intriguing sections of the book was actually written years after its first publication and was added as an epilogue to the later editions. It's entitled "Screwtape Proposes a Toast." We find our favorite antagonist at a graduation of the newest batch of temptors- soon to be sent to each of their own "patients." Screwtape relives the highlights of his career in temptation and gives the recruits advice that will be useful during the post-war world. The key word? DEMOCRACY.

Good call Mr. Lewis. Good call.

The Daily Dozen-- Stolen Songs

2005-05-19T12:44:00.000-05:00

Belle and Sebastian- Take Your Carriage and Clock and Shove It [mp3]
Stephen Malkmus- Baby C'mon [mp3]
Shout Out Louds- Very Loud [mp3]

Alright once I get to Seattle I'll post more because I'll have more down time. GT4 is really taking over my life at the moment. I'll put up an article soon maybe. Or maybe this new short story I wrote called "Of Gods and Gardens." We'll see. Email me if you're interested in reading it. later playas.

Ahead of His Time

2005-05-12T15:57:00.000-05:00

OK, so someday I swear I will write out a lengthy review of someone else's writing. But for some reason, I just have a lot to say when it comes to Hawthorne. Dr. Wadsworth rules.

Many Nathaniel Hawthorne experts will maintain with eloquent fervor that he is a shining example of all the traits contrary to postmodernism. This conjecture is accurate with the broad majority of his works and is certainly evident in his most famous works. Often he uses tokenism in creating his characters: namely in works such as "The Maypole of Merrimont" and "The House of the Seven Gables." He also utilizes characters to symbolize certain ideas such as Zenobia in "The Blithedale Romance" and Hilda in "The Marble Faun." However, despite his incline later in his career to employ these methods of characterization, he wrote a tale entitled "The Haunted Mind" that is brief (trust me, it's really short. Just read it you lazy bastard!), yet undeniably postmodern in its approach to the individual.

The second person narrative gives us a closeness to the story that can be uncomfortable for many readers. Hawthorne is in control of our thoughts and of our imagination. He utilizes our own experiences to develop a scene with which all of us can empathize: the struggle of falling asleep. Our mind lingers in his prose, shifting in the dreary state between reality and the dream world.

"A funeral train comes gliding by your bed, in which Passion and Feeling assume bodily shape, and things of the mind become dim spectres to the eye. There is your earliest Sorrow, a pale young mourner, wearing a sister's likeness to first love, sadly beautiful, with a hallowed sweetness in her melancholy features, and grace in the flow of her sable robe."

His gothic ideals shine with eerie brilliance, casting the reader into a swamp of wintery whisps and callous coffins. We have lost our notion of reality, exiled to the wandering world of possibility. Are the frosted art pieces real? Are we actually dying? Is this truly a dream? With Hawthorne, exemplified more fully in "Young Goodman Brown," these existential question do not really matter. All that matters is our perceived notion of the reality: a pillar of the postmodern.

However, there is also a sense of realism, however strange that may seem, to this story. We are given exactly what we are intended to see. The main character is able to trust his dream world enough to describe it vividly. We do not have to attempt to hypothesize over what we are truly seeing [as the narrative] versus what Hawthorne is dictating to us.

I love this story because of its unique blend of all of these genres. There is also some sort of innocence in Hawthorne that I feel is exemplified in this story. He's just a story-teller: not attempting to grasp some sort of universal truth like many of his other tales. Or...maybe he is.
In any case, this is one of his most intriguing works.

Hadda be Playing on the Jukebox: Stolen Songs 12

2005-05-10T11:33:00.000-05:00

Guided By Voices- Everywhere with Helicopter [mp3]
Love as Laughter- Dirty Lives [mp3]
Junip- The Ghost of Tom Joad (Bruce Springsteen Cover) [mp3]
The Prodigy w/ Tom Morello- No Man Army [mp3]
Nina Gordon- 18 and Life (Skid Row Cover) [mp3]

The Hold Steady's new album Separation Sunday piques the interests of the dumbasses at Pitchfork. But where the fuck were they during the release of "Almost Killed Me?" An 8.0! What the fuck!? Damn hipsters. This among many other injustices is why indie people need to shut the fuck up every once and awhile and admit that just because a CD is popular doesn't mean it is crap.

And if you're going to review crappy rap albums then where are the britney reviews? I don't understand why upper-middle class suburban white kids reserve their highest marks for indie rock and hip-hop albums. I just don't understand the perceived marriage between the two that people like john darnielle of the mountain goats see. I'm sorry, I just don't like hip-hop. i think that it's really good at perpetuating racial stereotypes. The genre tends to thrive on a culture that is greed obsessed, lust-ridden, and power hungry.

"The Game is not a particularly singular rapper. His hoarse, guttural voice doesn't possess any of the relaxed menace of classic West Coast rappers; he sounds more like Tha Dogg Pound member Daz Dillinger than Eazy or Snoop or The D.O.C. He has an appealing confidence and an unforced lyrical toughness, though: "I spit for the niggas doing 25 on they fifth year, ready to throw a nigga off the fifth tier/ For the white boys in the Abercrombie & Fitch, yeeah/ And every nigga who helped me to get here," he rhymes on the dramatic and brutally hard Just Blaze banger "Church for Thugs".

Truly, why is everyone getting behind this stuff? Do they some how think that it is their duty to review the genre because of its mass public intrigue? I believe that it is good to describe what it is like in the ghetto, but perception becomes reality. And the stereotypes of gun-slinging, drug-selling protagonists rampant in rap music will do nothing but continue these fashions. I just wish that the truly heroic voices of the ghetto like Jimmy Santiago Baca and Allen Ginsberg would be turned up a bit louder. (Another Allen Ginsberg poem)

p.s. Because it's my roommate Marcos' birthday, I'll give his site a plug.

Rappaccini: You Mean that Crazy Bastard Down the Street!?

2005-05-08T21:19:00.000-05:00

I have no time because of finals so I'm just going to post a short paper that I wrote about Rappaccini's Daughter. Enjoy.

Rappaccini’s Forbidden Fruit

In Nathanial Hawthorne’s short story “Rappaccini’s Daughter” there exists many subtle and a few not so subtle references to the story of The Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden. Though the characters in Hawthorne’s story may not harbor all of the same characteristics and ambitions as those of their biblical counterparts, there are striking comparisons that can be drawn that can aid the reader in understanding the themes of “Rappaccini’s Daughter” more fully. Both stories utilize abstract ideas pertaining to death, sin, temptation, and knowledge. We can use both of these stories as springboards in deciphering Hawthorne’s ultimate themes.

Hawthorne suggests early in the story that Dr. Rappaccini himself may be the character of Adam, however the story later demonstrates that he should be closer associated with the character of God. Initially, Hawthorne states, “Was this garden, then, the Eden of the present world? And this man [Dr. Rappaccini], with such a perception of harm in what his own hands caused to grow, -was he the Adam?” (190). There are some attributes of Dr. Rappaccini that would suggest that he is in fact the Adam- most notably his dominion over nature yet his weakness in being unable to actually touch some of his plants. This idea is not unlike Adam being forbidden to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. However, upon closer examination we learn aspects of Dr. Rappaccini’s character that would suggest that he is not the character of Adam at all; rather, he is the Lord of his garden. When we first meet Dr. Rappaccini, he is in his garden examining his plants with “assiduous care, as if all had their individual virtues, know to the scientific mind that fostered them.” (189). Hawthorne gives him an aura of omniscience in regards to his creations. He is seen almost as a father-figure to these plants, tending to their every need with a meticulous and confident zeal. Rappaccini is unable to touch the plants themselves just like God is unable to interfere with human free will.

Since Dr. Rappaccini never really has a “fall from grace” in the story, we must find the characters of both Adam and Eve in the young man Giovanni Guasconti. In the first paragraph of the story Hawthorne gives us reason to think that Guasconti’s soul may be in jeopardy or that their may be some type of demonic power within the house where he is staying. He writes, “The young stranger [Guasconti], who was not unstudied in the great poem of his country recollected that one of the ancestors of this family, and perhaps an occupant of this very mansion, had been pictured by Dante as a partaker of the immortal agonies of his Inferno.” (188). This language begins the movement of the gears in the reader’s mind toward the biblical poles of good and evil. It also informs the reader that this story is certainly not void of religious ties. The reason that Guasconti best fits the character of Eve is his strong fascination with Beatrice’s beauty and his curiosity of her secret ability to handle the most poisonous of flowers. Eve is strongly drawn toward the forbidden fruit in the garden because it is so beautiful and she is curious when the serpent tells her that she can gain the wisdom of God if she indulges herself by eating of the tree. Guasconti can be compared to Adam because he strongly loves a beautiful girl. This beautiful girl, Beatrice in “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and Eve in the Creation Story, will end up leading their respective loving sources to doom. Eve gives the apple that she has eaten of to Adam and he accepts it, leading to their fall from grace. Beatrice dies and leaves Guasconti to a life of loneliness and toxicity.

Probably the most intriguing comparison that can be drawn from the text of “Rappaccini’s Daughter” is that of Beatrice and the forbidden fruit. The obvious tie between these two is that they are toxic. Beatrice is deadly to many of the flowers, to all people, and the small lizards that live within the garden. She kills a lizard simply by touching it and when Giovanni Guasconti finally speaks to her, she tries to grab a bouquet of roses for him but they wilt almost immediately after she touches them. The forbidden fruit in the Creation Story causes Adam and Eve’s fall to mortality. A more subtle observation in the text is that oftentimes when Beatrice is mentioned, Hawthorne throws in an afterthought concerning the color red, purple, or crimson. When Guasconti hears her speak to her father for the first time Hawthorne describes what he thinks of her voice: “…A voice as rich as a tropical sunset, and which made Giovanni, though he knew not why, think of deep hues of purple or crimson and of perfumes heavily delectable.” (190). There is also the image of Beatrice attempting to hold the bouquet of red roses before they wilt. Most often in the Creation Story the forbidden fruit is depicted as a luscious, attractive-looking red apple. Hawthorne may have intended the reader to look at Beatrice in much the same way, giving her crimson surrounding whenever possible. Another comparison is that both Beatrice and the forbidden fruit were created by a force that really gave them no choice in how they would turn out. It is not as if either the forbidden fruit or Beatrice is innately evil, but they each have certain characteristics that are foreign and not understandable by other creatures besides their respective creators. Beatrice also has scientific knowledge that is almost as great as Rappaccini’s. Baglioni tells Guasconti that “Rappaccini is said to have instructed her [Beatrice] deeply in his science.” (193). This can be linked to the Creation Story because the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve eat is from the Tree of Knowledge in the garden. Once they eat of this unholy fruit they gain knowledge and realize that they are naked and are ashamed. In both stories there is a special relationship between Creator and creation. In the Creation Story it is God’s knowledge and in “Rappaccini’s Daughter” it is the scientific knowledge of how to create and care for special plants. In Rappaccini’s garden, Beatrice becomes the forbidden fruit that Guasconti should avoid.

The final key character in the Creation Story is Satan, which can be characterized in “Rappaccini’s Daughter” as Baglioni. Initially, we may gather that Baglioni is out to help Giovanni Guasconti because of the odd and possibly immoral science for which he is so critical of Dr. Rappaccini. However, when we view Dr. Rappaccini as a god-like figure who is only looking out for the best interests, though they may feel distorted to outsiders, for his daughter and for the good of scientific innovation, Baglioni then comes off as a lesser scientist who is simply jealous of Dr. Rappaccini’s genius. Baglioni says to Guasconti, “He [Dr. Rappaccini] should receive little credit for such instances of success, -they being probably the work of chance,-but should be held strictly accountable for his failures, which may justly be considered his own work.” (192). This type of attitude for a scientist is completely unprofessional and it seems that, in fact, Baglioni harbors a fierce jealousy of Dr. Rappaccini. He talks plenty about how immoral of a man Dr. Rappaccini is but he does nothing to help Beatrice out of her situation, unless you count giving her a potion that kills her, and he does nothing to dissuade Guasconti from obsessing over the beauty of the doctor’s daughter. Actually Baglioni had a part in contributing to Guasconti’s fascination with the work of Rappaccini and the beauty of his daughter by giving him a special wine called lachryma “which caused his brain to swim with strange fantasies in reference to Dr. Rappaccini and the beautiful Beatrice.” (193). Because Baglioni knew of Beatrice’s deadly touch yet only added fuel to the lust fire growing within Guasconti’s heart, he must be held responsible for the fall of Guasconti into a toxic being like Beatrice. Once Guasconti has fallen there is no need for the forbidden fruit anymore and so Beatrice dies. The horrible nature that Guasconti has fallen to is best exemplified when he maliciously reprimands Beatrice after he discovers that he too has become poisonous. He screams, “Thou [Beatrice] hast made me as hateful, as ugly, as loathsome and deadly a creature as thyself- a world’s wonder of hideous monstrosity!” (207). Guasconti’s true sin was his lust for Beatrice and he paid dearly for this transgression. He has transformed from a young, jovial, and promising man into a pitiful, hateful savage.

Hawthorne drew these types of comparisons to the Creation Story in the Bible to create a Garden of Eden for the present time. If we view the situation before Guasconti arrived at the house as a given, with Rappaccini being the ruler of his natural domain, Beatrice being his most intriguing creation, and Baglioni being a fellow scientist that craves the attention and success of a better doctor, it is easy to see where these characters fit in the biblical story. Guasconti fell for the forbidden fruit and now he is fallen, never again to return to his former prestige, however immorally materialistic he may have been before arriving at the house. He is now, like Adam and Eve, physically marked with the consequences of his own sin. The sin in science is a physical fault in someone whereas in religion sin is a spiritual fault. Hawthorne views this booming industry of modern science and medicine as a new religion because of its obsession with ridding human beings of these “sins.”

Live! Tonight! Sold Out!

2005-05-06T17:09:00.000-05:00

The Decemberists once again are putting on a show that we non-avid concert goers can watch from the comfort of our dorm rooms. Though I'm not sure if I will actually watch it, sort of doubt considering that nba march madness 2005 is slowly taking over my life (and everyone knows how big of a sports fan I am). This time its not a download though. just a stream via npr's new feature "all songs considered." haha i wonder if garrison keillor gets royalties from that name? anyway its a live feed tonight at 10 pm central time 9 pm mountain time. here is the link.

Betty Bowers is the nation's best Christian. She really is. Books are no longer for those damn liberal elitists! Take a tour of her recent accomplishments. Look for an article soon either about martyrdom and Nathaniel Hawthorne or Why People Really get Excited: Symbol versus Substance on the Marquette Campus. It's a good thing that students here realize that A WORLD IS HAPPENING OUTSIDE OF THEIR NARROW MIND. hehe eh. It really isn't as dire as I'm making it sound. Wasted revolutionary potential...

Have a great weekend ladies and gents. I'm going to start posting every other day from now on by the way. Maybe some fiction up, maybe not. I can't decide whether I should trust this intraweb thingy.

After the Death of Iscariot: Stolen Songs 11

2005-05-04T14:44:00.000-05:00

TV on the Radio- Staring at the Sun [mp3]
Rilo Kiley- My Slumbering Heart [mp3]
Guided By Voices- My Kind of Soldier [mp3]
The New Pornographers- Twin Cinema [mp3]
Pretty Girls Make Graves- All Medicated Geniuses [mp3]

Rilo Kiley-Portions for Foxes (Quicktime Video) [mov]

I saw a PGMG concert last year while I was in Seattle. They put on a great show and I talked to the bass player (his name escapes me and www.prettygirlsmakegraves.com rivals the mountain goats old website in crappiness) after the show about their album "The New Romance" released last year from Matador. Anyway, they are probably better in concert than in the studio, but eh, that's how they've made thier bones in Seattle.

Oh Fuck the Longings and Agonies of Youth!

2005-05-01T22:56:00.000-05:00

The Reduced Shakespeare Company is performing "All the Great Books (Abridged)" in Chicago next week. I wish I could go, but it's in the middle of the week and I have a fuckload due on Thursday and Friday. Check out what's on the docket.

I'll try to put up an article sometime this week, but no promises because i have to disect Hawthorne's notion of martyrdom and do some paper about Jesus or something. "Jesus don't want me for a sunbeam, 'cause sunbeams are not made like me..."

And Sometimes When You're On, You're Really Fucking On: Stolen Songs Ten

2005-04-28T01:45:00.000-05:00

Rilo Kiley- A Better Son/Daughter (live) [mp3]
Rilo Kiley- More Adventurous (live) [mp3]
Joy Division- Love Will Tear Us Apart [mp3]
Beyond Dawn- Atmosphere (Joy Division Cover) [mp3]
The Mountain Goats- Jenny [mp3]

I've really gotten into Rilo Kiley lately, which makes me horribly behind the times in the indie music world. They have quite an extensive libarary of live performances on this site. Look for a new article sometime soon, I had one about Ann Coulter going for awhile before I realized that I didn't want to make this into a political blog. But in case you want to see her look like a complete dumbass (though this is hardly the first nor the last time) then watch this.

That Goddamn Ten-Cent Field Goal Kicker!

2005-04-27T11:07:00.000-05:00

And now for something a little different.

I saw the movie Buffalo '66 while I was in Seattle three years ago. It is a brilliant movie about Billy, a man who has just been released from jail (Vincent Gallo), and a random woman, Layla (Christina Ricci), who he forces to pose as his wife when he visits his parents. I know this sounds like some kind of crappy Ben Stiller movie, but the slapstick is forgotten in this one. Horribly dark images of the ex-con's first swimming lessons and a wonderfully eclectic bowling scene will give anyone who can appreciate the comedic side of attempted homicide and recreational drugs a laughter-induced broken rib scare.

A few quotes from the movie:

Billy: "Mom, Dad, this is my wife. She's a stripper.
Layla: "AN EXOTIC DANCER YOU IDIOT!"

Billy: "There's nobody that I like bacause girls stink. They stink. They're evil. And they're all bad. All of them. They're backstabbers. Like you."

There are tons of cameos in this one including Anjelica Huston, Rosanna Arquette, Kevin Pollack, and Mickey Rourke. As for insane and eccentric writers/directors, if Vincent Gallo and Quentin Tarantino were children's saturday morning TV shows, Tarantino would be the Care Bears and Gallo would be the God Damn Teletubbies.

Happy Sunset Tree Day! The SS IXer

2005-04-26T19:52:00.000-05:00

The Mountain Goats are releasing their new effort today. Here are four full tracks off the new album via Amazon. John Darnielle also wrote an article on a book about bootlegging on Largeheartedboy. Good Stuff. Keep it up Don Juan.

The Mountain Goats- This Year [wma]
The Mountain Goats- Dance Music [wma]
The Mountain Goats- Up the Wolves [wma]
The Mountain Goats- Song for Dennis Brown [wma]

NWA- Fuck the Police (explicit content only) [mp3]

The Decemberists: I Love the Internet

2005-04-24T15:31:00.000-05:00

Colin Meloy and the rest of the Decemberists play a gig and give an interview in the KCRW studio on the show "Morning Eclectic." Colin talks about MISSOULA (us montanans have to take advantage of any sort of 'shout outs' we get), the history of the band, and their new album. They play many new songs with absolute perfection. Yet Ashlee Simpson is the one that goes platinum...oh well, mass acceptance could ruin them. and we don't want to risk that.

Interview/Concert

Stoned Immaculate: Stolen Songs 8

2005-04-24T14:17:00.000-05:00

The Doors Covers

Pearl Jam- Roadhouse Blues [mp3]
Pearl Jam- Break On Through [mp3]
Pearl Jam- Light My Fire [mp3]
Local H- The End [mp3]
Local H- Five to One [mp3]

The Pearl Jam ones are definitely better quality and I think that Eddie Vedder can pull these off better than Scott Lucas but that's just me. Lucas is probably closer to the way that Jim Morrison actually sang on stage and Vedder makes them sound better than the average drunken buffoon.

Ha! but if either of these 2 were only a shred of the lyricist Jim was...

Stoned Immaculate [mp3]

I'll tell you this...
No eternal reward will forgive us now
For wasting the dawn.
Back in those days everything was simpler and more confused
One summer night, going to the pier
I ran into two young girls
The blonde one was called Freedom
The dark one, Enterprise
We talked and they told me this story
Now listen to this...

I'll tell you about Texas radio and the big beat
Soft driven, slow and mad
Like some new language
Reaching your head with the cold, sudden fury of a divine messenger
Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god
Wandering, wandering in hopeless night
Out here in the perimeter there are no stars
Out here we is stoned
Immaculate.

i stay underneath the blanket at all times, despite the fact that i hate to be tucked in.

2005-04-22T02:07:00.000-05:00

"No Sam, it's NEXT saturday, meaning NEXT week's Saturday."
"Oh OK, but I still don't know about it."
"C'mon man, it's only gonna be twenty bucks a pop, and I think it's the last time Macho Man Randy Savage is gonna wrestle!"
Sam laughed, "He'll probably end up being the Mick Jagger of the WWF."
Matthew pressed on, "Isn't Susan off on Saturdays? I mean, she could stay home with Mikey."
"Yeah, I know. But I just don't think it's worth it."
"Alright, well maybe I'll ask Donny."
"That'd be good. I just don't know if Susan would think it was a good idea."

Seated in the back of Ms. Kelley's ENGL 187 class is a twenty-year-old male student who only speaks in class when he is put on the spot. He slouches slightly in his chair, but never falls asleep. After this reading of his classmate Mac's story, he is stunned that another like-minded individual exists on a campus fraught with liberals and minorities. Obviously, Mac's story subtly yet surely describes not only the laziness of the Jewish people but also the loss of their collective faith. Matthew is able to take life by the horns and truly LIVE, while Samuel the Jew doesn't think that twenty dollars is worth going to see his childhood hero. Frugal bastards. He would casually invite Mac to his Sons of the Light meeting after class.
---------------------------------

The ideal form of story-telling uses no words at all. If science could possibly decipher the whereabouts of a certain idea within the human brain, then the perfect story-telling method would simply be an implant of grey matter into the audience's mind. All words carry with them an innate ambivalence because they represent a certain action, mood, idea, etc. but are NOT that idea in and of themselves. For instance, I say the word "apple." and you may picture a chopped apple, a slice of an apple, a whole apple, etc. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a word creates as many mental images as there are people in the world. A writer must acknowledge that every single reader brings a different set of biases and experiences to the table and therefore must be prepared for diverse interpretations to any instances of ambiguity within the work.

Rampant among college creative writing classes, and even some expository writing classes, is the idea that it is better to "show" a reader how a character is rather than "tell" a reader. And while I do not believe that a writer should explicate every single thought and bowel movement in their story, it is important for a writer to maintain that they ARE telling their story for a reason. What I'm really trying to get at with this article is that if a writer relies too much on the assumption that a reader will be able to infer the meanings of what he/she shows them, then there is a horrible risk that the audience will completely miss what the writer is trying to say. Therefore, you as a writer must weigh out how much you care if your reader understands your themes.

Enter the Preface. Yes, sometimes, a Preface is needed if a writer is going to be more subtle or needs the reader to note the distinction between what the writer thinks and how the narrator is telling the story.

So should a good story's themes be spelled out completely? Well...maybe, it depends. If a writer is writing to everyone and developing some sort of search for a universal truth in the world, then, yes, a theme with such immense clout should not be shouldered as an afterthought. But if you are simply attempting to have a conversation with a reader about a certain topic and wish the reader to discover their own beliefs concerning a particular subject, then "showing" may be the way to go. But really then...aren't we nearly entering the realm of non-fiction then? Disgusting!

Name a good fiction writer that was not arrogant. It comes with the territory. Either your story deserves to be told or it doesn't. If you don't have the balls to tell an audience how your imagined world IS, and instead rely on character plot instead of character description, (Dan Brown you son of a bitch!) then how can a reader develop any real convictions concerning your work? Everything then is just a bastardized form of the ideal. Why even write fiction then?

So I say...Show when you feel like challenging the reader, but Tell when you feel that all types of interpretation of your work should not be accepted as equal. Care about what you write!
---------------------------------------

P.S. Next one will be about thesauruses...hmm i like the word thesamurai. sounds like some sort of apocalyptic tidal wave...

I Fucking Love Kurt Vonnegut

2005-04-21T12:23:00.000-05:00

Interview

Stolen Songs: The Magnificent Seventh

2005-04-19T19:56:00.000-05:00

Herbie Hancock- All Apologies (Nirvana Cover) [mp3]
The Foo Fighters- Best of You (from upcoming unreleased album) [site]
Nine Inch Nails- The Hand That Feeds [mp3]
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists- Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone? [mp3]
The Mountain Goats- Mole [mp3]

The new Foo Fighters LP is going to be called "In Your Honour" (yes they are going with the Canadian spelling again). The song is poppy and catchy, but it does sound like they may getting back to their faster/heavier "The Colour and the Shape" sound. It's going to be a double disc, one disc of rock, one disc of acoustic and will be released in June.

New article will be up soon. it's about jews and thesauruses (?). peace.

Day of the Beast: Stolen Songs Six

2005-04-19T00:43:00.000-05:00

alright here are some tunes that, if you listen carefully, will prove that we as humans are in fact quite a different phenomena than our bestial cohorts.

The Mountain Goats- The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton [mp3]
Local H- Time (Pink Floyd Cover) [mp3]
Of Montreal- Sad Love [mp3]
The Decemberists- The Soldiering Life [mp3]
Okkervil River- Kansas City [Removed- IM me for song]

that of montreal song is like a sesame street version of local h's "lovey dovey." and i would like to mention that everyone should check out Okkervil River. holy balls they are good.

should i start making the band names hyperlinks to their websites? or are you google savvy enough to find them yourselves? get back to me. peace.

Nuking Apollo with the Periodic Table

2005-04-14T19:43:00.000-05:00

There is a new commercial on TV for the Girl Scouts of America that is trying to convince young women to go into the fields of mathematics and science. A young girl is seen walking down a sidewalk in a somewhat lively town. A dog barks. The young girl visualizes the mathematical explanation for how the sound waves move from the dog's throat to her ear lobes. She looks at a group of scarlet flowers and ponders which wavelengths of the color spectrum are being absorbed and which are being reflected. A grasshopper jumps. Given his acceleration and height of his jump the young girl is able to calculate exactly where he is going to land. However, before he lands the parasite that has burdened him for the last month finally breaks through his exoskeleton and kills him mid-air. The girl could never have predicted this.

Ok so most of that is in the commercial...and by most I mean that a few elements of the two are similar. Bear with me.

Science ruined the mysteries of the earth that awed the poets before the Scientific Revolution. With the onslaught of scientific "fact" during the Enlightenment, we see both a movement toward the cultivation of these ideas within literature as well as a movement that is terribly fearful of what these new understandings of nature will yield in the future. Whereas the Enlightenment is often seen as a progression toward Secular Humanism, many modernists, who still hold on to a love of myths and inexplicable phenomena, despised the idea that human beings could possibly begin to comprehend why perennials come back in the spring and why nightingales sing to the moon. These were the magic, the wonders of the world! Another group emerged as well, led by clergymen such as Jonathan Edwards, who believed that science could be utilized in order to convert and preach (See his work "The Spider Letter"). However, a more fascinating phenomenon that occurred in response to the Enlightenment and persons such as Edwards, was the hatred that many poets and writers during the 19th century held for these leaps in technology and understanding.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, a writer who is so widely read for his castigation of the American past, is also weary when it comes to scientific progress. His tale "Rappaccini's Daughter" tells of his science phobia. However, as much as I love Hawthorne, I think that Edgar Allan Poe more concisely nails this point home with his Sonnet- To Science. We can view both of these writers then, as being ideal modernists, (though I believe Hawthorne to be the first postmodernist with his tale "The Haunted Mind," but that's for a different day...) so it follows that they be critical of modernism as well. They analyze EVERY social institution, and oftentimes hold on to the myths of the past (Greek, Roman, American, etc.) as being MORE true than the REALITIES of the time.

These critiques by both authors create a perfect breeding ground for satire, parody, sarcasm, and mockery. All of these elements are used by ideal modernists to shed light on the imperfections of the human condition. Therefore we are to assume that all of our institutions are flawed (including the theories of modern science) and we cannot possibly predict or decipher the wonders of the world because of situational complexity. Science, therefore, becomes somewhat of a smorgasbord religion- take certain elements from it, but do not pretend that science is any more accurate than the most implausible of the world's religions.

The battery on your IPod may last for five years according to scientific projections but that won't help you when it falls out of your car and is run over by a six ton garbage truck. Sure as hell didn't get that grasshopper to the finish line.

StolenSong-Five

2005-04-13T01:48:00.000-05:00

The Mountain Goats- Alpha Incipiens [mp3]
Sleater-Kinney- You're No Rock n' Roll Fun [mp3]
Visqueen- Blue [mp3]
Regie Gibson- I Will Not Know You Until I Have Watched You Sleep [mp3 of Poem]

What's on the menu for the lads of Of Montreal?
Oh, I believe they will skip right to the intravenious injection of hard drugs.

Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Polarization of Descriptiveness

2005-04-12T18:54:00.000-05:00

I'll start this by saying that I detest "The Grapes of Wrath," partially because of John Steinbeck's dauntingly drawn out descriptions of the Dust Bowl. It was the literary fad during this time and several generations beforehand to overwrite. Contemporary writers such as Vonnegut and Palahniuk are the counterexample to this movement because of their tendency to underwrite. So where does Nathaniel Hawthorne fit into this war over descriptive decency? Well the answer isn't as simple...

Near the commencement of Hawthorne's career as an author, he wrote chiefly short stories and sketches. He shied away from the more lucrative market of full-length novels until 1850 when he published the universal classic The Scarlet Letter. He became a novel writing machine, publishing his next two (The House of the Seven Gables and The Blithedale Romance) in the proceeding three years. He finished his fourth (not counting the early novel that he disowned) and final work The Marble Faun in 1860.

Hawthorne does fit into the genre of over-writers such as Steinbeck, but he fits in a separate dialect of the same language. Steinbeck devotes twenty pages to a turtle crossing a dusty road in the twenties. Hawthorne, in contrast, devotes twenty pages to the relationship between Chillingworth and Arthur Dimmesdale. Though both tend to ramble, Hawthorne leaves much of the settings and the appearances of the characters alone. He feels that his words should instead attempt to tell of the deep recesses within the souls and minds of his characters: The sins that burden their progress, the goals that inspire them to live on. We receive descriptions based on meta-fiction (i.e. “Alice Pyncheon” from The House of the Seven Gables) as well, a relatively new literary tool during the 19th century. We are left to imagine much of a character’s appearance with Hawthorne, whereas with Steinbeck we are given details instead concerning trees, roads, and mountains which we can hardly empathize with more than on a material level. Though there do exist some deep descriptions of setting (i.e. “The Prison Door” from The Scarlet Letter) for the most part, Hawthorne keeps these to a minimum.

Relationships, guilt, sin, animosity, purification, and forgiveness are the central motifs in many of Hawthorne’s works. In order to fully grasp at these principles, Hawthorne employs deep, thorough, and oftentimes lengthy descriptions about the inner workings of his characters. Because what is reality but an individual’s perception?

Definitely more on Hawthorne to come...including reaction to The Blithedale Romance (and the final line that pat detests) as well as a piece on the influences that Hawthorne had and continues to have on literature (Melville, Poe, Rise of Gothic Literature).

We few, We happy few, We Stolen Songs of the Day IV

2005-04-12T02:03:00.000-05:00

The Mountain Goats- The Boys Are Back in Town (Thin Lizzy Cover, Bridge--> R. Kelly Remix to Ignition) [mp3]
The Hold Steady- Positive Jam [mp3]
Local H- Toxic (Britney Spears Cover) [mp3]
The Thermals- No Culture Icons [mp3]

i'm in the middle of writing a piece about Nathaniel Hawthorne, it should be up tomorrow. Here are some cool links that i thought were interesting.

Ipod Games (I wish I had one but I know some of you do) [link]
What Books Should be Taught to High School Freshman? [link]
(refer to article title for my dedication to the master of drama)

The Ever Incorrigible Sir Stolen Songs of the Day the Third

2005-04-11T02:29:00.000-05:00

I swear I'll write a whole article one of these days, but as it's 2:30 in the morning and i've still got an italian comp to do. so here are a few songs and links to appease your attention until then.

Okkervil River- The Velocity of Saul at the Time of His Conversion [mp3]
The Mountain Goats- The Mess Inside [mp3]
Suffrajett- Love Me More [mp3]
Visqueen- Mrs. Elder (Quicktime Movie) [mov]
The Hold Steady The Swish [mp3]

I was going to include a track from the Liars new lp "We Were Wrong So They All Drowned" but it's no longer free via their official website. boo to that.

Okkervil River is touring with the Decemberists this year. They are an amazing band and deserve all the best. Anyone want to sponsor a young lad to travel to Chicago and see this dynamic duo?

Some may recongnize the Visqueen song from some of my AIM away messages. You freaking stalkers! if you can find this song in mp3 form and send it to me i will buy you a gallon of ice cream.

"Someday all our days will be Sunday, and boy don't we deserve it."

Stolen Songs of the Day Part Deux

2005-04-07T15:43:00.000-05:00

The Mountain Goats No Children [mp3]
Pearl Jam Better Man w/ South African Choir [mp3]
Richard Cheese Nookie Break Stuff [mp3] (bear with me this is being hosted by geocities but is worth the spasms you will
suffer from uncontrollable laughter)
Local H Here (Pavement Cover) [mp3]
Suffrajett The Drugs [mp3]
Collective Soul Various Videos (Live/Studio) [link]

OK...and here is a random humorous link for the day. I would be delighted if I never heard the name Terri Schiavo again for the rest of my life. But honestly, who the hell knew that the Ultimate Warrior is still alive!?

i am half sick of shadows

2005-04-06T16:22:00.000-05:00

i’ve found myself several times in the midst of debates concerning 19th century literature. This time period, almost universally, can be associated with a rehashing of the past of one’s country. The brits would claim to have been the first to start it >> this re-exploration of the novel/romance (though Sir Walter Scott, who is often called the founder is actually Scottish). However, they seemed to be too entranced with their own literary history, particularly with their 16th century protégés, causing a gap to form between the issues in which an audience could have genuinely empathized.

Those brits that fall into this category can be stereotyped using the poem “the lady of shalott” by lord Alfred Tennyson. Tennyson writes about a beautiful lady that is trapped on an island where she must weave night and day what she sees. She views the beautiful city of Camelot through a mirror that lies in front of her. The maiden knows that if she stops weaving or views the actual city rather than its “shadow” found in the mirror, a curse will certainly burden her. We are then given an account of Lancelot, usually such a proud, noble, and able knight. He is clad in magnificent armor and is making his way to the Arthurian city. At the end of the poem, the Lady dies and Lancelot is unable to do anything about it.

Interesting right? Yes

(Very cool images actually. Idle weaving = rosary, mirror that she must look through in order to see the city = the intermediaries that catholics have to go through [ie priest, saints, pope, etc.] and only see a shadow of the truth.)

Creative right? No

The allusions and comparisons that can be drawn using this work and Edmund Spenser’s epic The Faerie Queen are so numerous that it’s nearly humorous. Tennyson even calls Lancelot a “red-crosse knight,” just in case a reader needed to be paddled over the head with a 16th century morning star. While I do believe that Tennyson is able to accomplish his goal of subtly coaxing the reader into his anti-Catholic agenda, the poem is so fraught with Spenser’s ideas that Tennyson becomes a historical reporter rather than a creative poet. The critical reader can deduce that because Lancelot does not cower, pray before god, and admit his inadequacies as a human, he is unable to save the lady of shalott from her death at the hands of the curse.

So there it is. A nice, incomplete, concise version that only hints at the deep, brilliantly defended themes of The Faerie Queen. Truly, the first issue of Cliffnotes to date.

i'll get to more brits...the irish...the americans...and the russians during the 19th century later.

stolen songs of the day

2005-04-06T13:37:00.000-05:00

Pearl Jam Someday at Christmas [mp3]
Okkervil River He Passes Number Thirty-Three [mp3]
The Mountain Goats Two-Headed Boy (Neutral Milk Hotel Cover) [mp3]
The Mountain Goats The Sign (Ace of Base Cover) [mp3]
The Decemberists The Engine Driver [mp3]

i think that's enough for today, i'll try to do this every so often but if you want any of these songs you should try to get them while they're still up. maybe i'll write more later today, not too sure. oh and i happened upon this blog too, which in my opinion is terrible. terribly hilarious.

a liberal on liberals and christianity

2005-04-05T16:11:00.000-05:00

A liberal person that i know was once hanging out with his friends in an alley, smoking some cigarettes before school. they were juniors in high school, just barely deciphering their own convictions regarding the world around them, while still heavily influenced by the heroes of their youth. "Frederick" (a name that i will use for him, simply because of its modern impracticality) was discussing the religion test that he had taken the previous day with his two friends. he still had the study guide for the test in his pocket and he utilized it to convey to his peers the injustices he had suffered as a result of Religion class.

"This is so fucking stupid! Why do we have to take a class in Christianity when we could learn so much more if they taught us about current political events?"

He crumpled the study guide before his friends and threw it to the ground. His low-top skater shoes rubbed the paper into the gravel.

"This is where Christianity belongs...underneath my foot."

This scene tends to be mimicked all so often these days. There is a counter-culture forming that is perfectly tranquil with the modern, more hip religions and philosophies such as Kabbalah, Feng Shui, Scientology, and Unitarian Universalism, yet refuses to bestow any merit whatsoever on Christianity. It has become dismissive to many liberals in an ad homonym type of way. They attack Christianity just because it is Christianity. The good that Christianity does in the world, the compassion and love that are its central teachings are forgotten in their tirades. Often they will give infinite room for diverse interpretations for Muslims, Hindus, and Jews, but will give Christianity the leaniancy of a pedophile at Chuck E. Cheese.

I do believe that this in some way is directly related to the addiction of knowledge that I was discussing in my post yesterday. It is possible that, because so many people in the Western World were raised as Christians, there is an association, maybe even sometimes consciously, between the religion of Christianity and ignorance. We learn more and more as we continue our scholastic journey and do not wish to be attached to our childhood naivety through our religious beliefs.

This is not meant to be political in the least; it is meant to be a piece on hypocrisy. What I am trying to say is that if we want to be truly accepting of the diverse religions and cultures of the world, we have to recognize that the ones we in the West have been most influenced by have merit as well. Respect each other. Learn with each other. Live with each other.

knowledge support group...

2005-04-04T16:26:00.000-05:00

alright, i'm going to explain why i've decided to make a blog considering i am a firm believer that "a little bit of sincerity is a dangerous thing, too much is absolutely fatal." knowledge itself is a drug. a horrible, horrible drug that throughout the history of humanity none have been able to conquer it completely. think of who you know. not even just the philosophy/theology/biology/insert random class here professor who talks over your head (definitely math for me...jesus i need a calculator to do long division.) and whom you think could not possibly babble on anymore, but also the Cubs obsessed wealthy suburban white kid who could tell you the back-up third baseman in 1977. we're all mesmorized by it, knowledge and pseudo-knowledge alike. the forty-five year old balding bachelor jerking off to a picture of a girl who is younger than his illegitimate daughter is infatuated with the knowledge (even for just that instant) that he too could fuck such a tight body.

and so here i am. and here my blog is. and i hope to god that i don't turn this into some sort of dramatic rant on the injustices of life as i know it. i will try to keep my personal life separate and focus more on universal issues. this is a method of coping. coping with the knowledge to which all of us are addicted.

sometimes there will be clouds and pollution that interfere with the light of academic revelation. but sometimes the clouds will be pushed aside and we will be able to talk freely and openly and decipher the myths of the world.

these will be our Sessions in the Summer.

test

2005-04-04T11:35:00.000-05:00

1-2-3.