Monday - 18 Nov 2002
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8.46p - goodbye
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I've been considering something for awhile now. That something is a massive purge of my friends list, on a scale I've never undertaken before, of people whom I both have known for a long time, and those I've just met. The one characteristic all those to be removed share is that I am not close to them, even if, at one point, I might have been, and I can no longer afford to maintain semblances of friendships with people I never talk to, people to whom I have nothing to say (in the most literal way I can mean that), even though the option is right there.
I'm tired of lj being a big echo chamber, essentially, and so I'm paring down and going into hermit-mode. It's debatable, even, whether there'll be anything new; I might simply use this account to comment, and that's it, for awhile. I don't know. 65 of the 99 names on my list are being cut, so don't take it personally; it's not as though you're being singled out. I am also leaving nearly all communities. Anyway, this will also give any of you who've wanted to delete me but might've felt weird about it a good situation in which to do so.
It's not that you've offended me. It's not that I don't like you. This isn't some fit of pique. I just have to have a much smaller crowd these days.
You know how it goes.
current mood: isolationist
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2.19p - ugh
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5.10a - get your nihil on
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I've just finished reading the book John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead, the other book I needed to finish before I can write my paper on it, first draft of which is due Tuesday evening. I really enjoyed it very much... it's mostly about a set of junketeers and the pop trash they spawn for a willing public. This appeals to me greatly in that it doesn't try to be a morality tale or anything like that; rather, it acknowledges the futility of opposing the emptiness that defines so much of modern western work and life itself. I like that. It's not trying to fool anyone. I think that's what I hated so much about Ford's Independence Day; it worked so hard at making the mundanities and inescapable banality of life something more, something suffused with this obnoxious artificial nobility, and I just couldn't stand the contrived optimism of it. Uplifting literature only brings me down, and worse, it bores me because there's nothing in it to relate to. Who wants to be uplifted? That takes way too much work.
"You know what's so hard about being on the wagon?"
"What?"
"There's so many hours in a day."
current mood: sated, good book
current music: fallen cross -- "god damn"
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(insurrection)
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| Sunday - 17 Nov 2002
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2.08p
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Here can my letter to the editor be found; it's the one under the heading "Iraq" (predictably). Woo woo.
current mood:  busy
current music: astro club
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(3 civil wars | insurrection)
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| Friday - 15 Nov 2002
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1.52p
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I dreamt this morning that aliens invaded Earth. They arrived and took up positions over military installations, then proceeded to lay them utterly to waste... their weapon looked like a floodlight. It bathed everything in an entire area with bright white light and then it all just caught on fire and burned green, reduced to ashes in a matter of seconds. They moved on to major cities then, killing millions and millions of people in the space of hours, leaving molten, smoking wreckage in their wake. The few humans who were left formed a "resistance council" to try to devise a way of fighting back against the aliens, but we ended up splitting into mutually hostile factions instead, continuing wars that were being fought before the invaders arrived. I tried to get people to focus on the real enemy, but they wouldn't, and I was watching another city being burned on TV when I woke up... except that city was being torched by other humans.
Weirdly enough, the alien ships looked like Apollo moon-landers, only tremendously large. Eh.
Oh, and I've gotten another editorial published in the town paper; it'll be out Sunday or Monday. I'm so damn cool.
current mood: apparently very cynical about humans
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(4 civil wars | insurrection)
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| Thursday - 14 Nov 2002
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9.05p - tastes like burning
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There are few sensations more gratifying than the realisation that you have substantially more money than you thought on which to continue to live... as sad as that is.
Anyway, hurrah for having $40!
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You know, there's this show on Fox called Fast Lane, on which I am developing a strange fixation. It's not for the plot, which is the sort of cheesy, predictable, Miami Vice-already-did-it-and-did-it-better, interracial-buddy-cop fare one can expect from Fox. It's not for the cinematography, which is unduly influenced by 24 and The Matrix anyway. And it's not the dialogue or the acting, which are both beyond ridiculous. No, the reason I like it is that the two main characters, a pair of habitually undercover LA police officers, are quite possibly the slashiest couple on TV right now; last night one chased the other round and round a car in a manner reminiscent, not of macho cops, but a 1950s corporate executive trying to play grab-ass with his secretary. They really have this whole Xena-and-Gabrielle queer subtext thing going on, and the fact that they're both frighteningly sexy certainly helps matters.
I'm sorry, I just had to share that.
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I got a wedding invitation today, for the commitment ceremony of my dear friends Alyssa and Chris. It's in January. :) Of course, I will be attending. Should be most pleasant, especially as there promises to be a surfeit of Sammy Hagar songs at the reception. ;)
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I want my own domain. Ignore the fact that I can't possibly afford one, but still, it'd be neat. I miss having a website besides this lj. Hmmm.
current mood:  relieved
current music: creedence clearwater revival -- "cotton fields"
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(2 civil wars | insurrection)
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7.51p - a noble spirit embiggens the smallest man
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6.27p - stasi
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| Wednesday - 13 Nov 2002
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2.23p - my new literary obsession
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... that is, the author in general, not just this one piece. But she does the sort of work I want to do -- poetry as witness, record, and resistance.
The Colonel
Carolyn Forché
What you have heard is true. I was in his house.
His wife carried a tray of coffee and sugar. His
daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the
night. There were daily papers, pet dogs, a pistol
on the cushion beside him. The moon swung bare on
its black cord over the house. On the television
was a cop show. It was in English. Broken bottles
were embedded in the walls around the house to
scoop the kneecaps from a man's legs or cut his
hands to lace. On the windows there were gratings
like those in liquor stores. We had dinner, rack of
lamb, good wine, a gold bell was on the table for
calling the maid. The maid brought green mangoes,
salt, a type of bread. I was asked how I enjoyed
the country. There was a brief commercial in
Spanish. His wife took everything away. There was
some talk of how difficult it had become to govern.
The parrot said hello on the terrace. The colonel
told it to shut up, and pushed himself from the
table. My friend said to me with his eyes: say
nothing. The colonel returned with a sack used to
bring groceries home. He spilled many human ears on
the table. They were like dried peach halves. There
is no other way to say this. He took one of them in
his hands, shook it in our faces, dropped it into a
water glass. It came alive there. I am tired of
fooling around he said. As for the rights of anyone,
tell your people they can go fuck themselves. He
swept the ears to the floor with his arm and held
the last of his wine in the air. Something for your
poetry, no? he said. Some of the ears on the floor
caught this scrap of his voice. Some of the ears on
the floor were pressed to the ground.
current mood: pleased
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(2 civil wars | insurrection)
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12.49a - at last
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Finally. Poem in progress -- I'm writing about the epidemic of child conscription, in places like Uganda. I'm still not entirely confident that it will be as well done as some other pieces I've written this year, but I'm glad to say that at least I won't be humiliated by sharing it with the world, quite unlike the trash I produced in desperation on Sunday night.
It's most peculiar, but it seems lately that violence and war are about all I can evoke with even the barest modicum of skill.
Oh well; go with your strengths, I guess.
current mood: in progress
current music: someone should buy me tori's latest.
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(3 civil wars | insurrection)
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| Tuesday - 12 Nov 2002
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9.22p
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My wisdom teeth are coming in, and I am for to feeling the pain today.
This, of course, is all I needed.
Keep smiling, though! Woo!
current mood: resigned
current music: the cure
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(4 civil wars | insurrection)
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| Monday - 11 Nov 2002
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4.51a - are you robot enough to party with Nixon?
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I really ought to go to sleep. Bluh. But I have a history test tomorrow for which I guess I sort of have to study (I skimmed for ten minutes last time and still came out with a high B so I'm not worried), and am still trying to write a new poem; I haven't in a few weeks, you know, and I can't keep slacking off this way. It's just hard to pull that shit out on command.
Hopefully, my book will arrive tomorrow. I ordered a copy of Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White by Frank Wu last week; I read a review of it in The Nation and was sufficiently intrigued to throw down $5 on a used copy. I've meant to familiarise myself further with racial politics for some time now anyway; I don't have the sort of confidence in discussing them that I have in other areas and hope to change that, insofar as simply reading books can affect such a change. It can't hurt, though.
My brain is trying to destroy me, by the way. Everytime I go to sleep it afflicts me with highly unpleasant dreams. Perhaps I have angered Freddy Krueger; I do live on Elm Street.
current mood:  tired
current music: sigur ros
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(5 civil wars | insurrection)
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1.32a - nice.
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US to invade Colombia
So how'll they spin this one, I wonder? Please ignore the special interests pushing the drug war, and Colombia's proximity to Venezuelan oil fields (the coup failed, so perhaps they're trying to pacify Colombia in preparation for something a little more direct?); we gots some terrorists to kill! Also please ignore the fact that the FARC has never done jack to America besides sell some tasty coke to its citizens (citizens like our own Gee Dubya and his fucked up niece), and that the Islamic militants so bedeviling the US in Afghanistan and the Philippines got their start killing communists, not inviting them to train at their two-bit fantasy camps. So how long until the FARC is "discovered" to have met with Iraqi agents in Prague? It didn't work with al-Qa'ida; they've got to make it work with someone! Oh well, maybe the Cubans when their turn rolls around.
current mood:  cynical
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(insurrection)
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indifferent
worried