might as well face it.....

i read an amazing article yesterday. maybe it was a novella, not sure. it was called "addicted to hate" and written by a journalist named jon michael bell. the project is basically an expose about fred phelps and the westboro baptist church.

here's a really fun fact: according to the conservapedia, phelps is a democrat. i was shocked until i read the article and found that this due to the fact that there is a vast difference between the man he thinks he is and the man he actually is.

the article alleges that phelps is an emotionally disturbed man who has abused his position as a parent and pastor. with charges ranging from daily physical beatings to being the towering, domineering architect of a clan whose only mission in life is to terrorise his fellow citizens, phelps seems much like jim jones, but without the kool-aid or the charm.

i read a really interesting blog about phelps. in it, the blogger postulates that he believes that phelps is a kaufman-esque clown parading a focused mirror back onto the christian right. a sort of effort to out-right-wing the fundamentalists. the optimist in me wants to believe that the world is such a mad place that it is just possible, but after reading the article, i find there are more similarities to kafka than kaufman.

some great quotes

"My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement" - john patrick shanley

"evil is an act, not an appetite" - gregory maguire

"we are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us" - charles bukowski

"any scholar of the great ninja vs. pirate wars will immediately understand that pandas and cows are bitter enemies fighting for the affections of the zebra overlords" - unknown

"the world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong in the broken places. but those that will not break it kills. it kills the very good and the very gentle and the brave impartially. if you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry" - ernest hemmingway

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be" - douglas adams

"it made you realize that you werent the only one who was more than discouraged with the world, you werent the only one moving toward madness - charles bukowski

"i do not believe in cinema verite. sometimes a really good lie is better than any truth - werner herzog

"seek freedom and become captive of your desires. seek discipline and find your liberty" - frank herbert

"all governments suffer a recurring problem; power attracts pathological personalities. it is not that power corrupts, but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. such people become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted" - frank herbert

"happiness is a 'how'; not a what. a talent, not an object" - herman hesse

"it is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes" - douglas adams

"hmm..maybe gods can bleed....no, just ketchup." - me

"religious faith is (nothing)(sic) more sublime than a desperate marriage of ignorance and hope" - sam harris

"there is no snake so cruel, so worth your dread;
if anyone upon his tail should tread;
as woman is, when kindled once to ire;
vengence is then the whole of their desires" - geoffrey chaucer

"anger is the executor of pride" - chaucer

"there is only one thing in the world that i admit is not natural; a work of art. everything else, whether one likes it or not, belongs to the natural order" - andre gide

"eleanor roosevelt was a strong woman and a strong first lady, but it wasn't like we didn't know who was wearing the wheels in the family" - me

"The sky is pocked with stars. What eyes the wise men must have had to see a new one in so many" - james goldman

"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job" - douglas adams

I've snapped and plotted all my life. There's no other way to be alive, king, and fifty all at once. - james goldman

Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians! - james goldman, "the lion in winter"

"Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss." - douglas adams

"There is a theory which states that if anybody ever discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened" - douglas adams

one of my favourite quotes from work

"i have scabies"
"you can't have scabies, you have to be on a ship"
"that's scurvy"
"oh"

jude the obscure- an unintended book report

**friday 30 november 07**
so, i finally got marcel proust's remembrance of things past from the library a week or two ago. it was right after my blog lamenting my philistine reading habits. i have to admit i liked what i read, but it was incredibly dense. i only got through the chapter called overture. it was like a medieval tapestry. it was well made and i could appreciate the weave of the material and i knew that if i followed the threads, they would lead me to the bigger picture of the rest of the tapestry, but i only had so much attention to give. so, i pulled through as much as i could and then put it down. i haven't really cracked it open in a few days. i went to the library yesterday and found that they had finally gotten a copy of jude the obscure by thomas hardy in. somewhere along the way, i got the idea that hardy was kind of the english proust, meaning that you had to plod through his work. i started reading and found myself pulled in. i read 120 pages last night. now, don't get me wrong, it's not a page-turner, but i get some vague satisfaction that i can at least make it through hardy.

**monday 3 december 07**
okay, so let's re-examine the story of jude the obscure. it's your basic story. poor boy dreams of going to college, though he is a peasant. boy meets girl that fakes pregnancy to get him to marry her. girls runs off to australia. boy moves to the city and meets another girl. this one is his cousin. so, of course, he falls madly in love with her despite the fact that he is still married to girl #1 technically. girl #2 makes him chase her like a wolf for the next 100 pages and then she marries his old school-teacher out of obligation(don't ask). after marrying the older man, she finds that she is repulsed by him and asks his leave to have an affair with jude, whom she loves in the unfettered smolder that only the victorian english can manage. turns out girl is a sociopath (though they don't have that term in 1896 when the book was published) and she keeps jude at a distance for a year or so and when his now ex-wife shows up at the door, girl #2 goes into a mad tantrum. to appease her, jude doesn't go out to see the ex. jude has been courting her for almost 200 pages at this point. finally, they decide to get married (after each has had their previous marriage annulled-confused yet?) but they decide that marriage is such an unhappy proposition that they will live together but not actually marry.

turns out that in victorian england, this is the equivalent to being gay. before they even admitted that homosexuals existed, they had to treat someone like shite, so i guess it was unwed couples. they have 3 children and are fabulously happy until they run into trouble finding a place to lodge because it seems to be imposable to find a place that will let out to a couple with children. in a moment of despair and depression, girl #2(the cousin) tells the eldest child that the world sucks and the kid (already a manic depressive child) takes it upon himself to hang himself and his 2 siblings while his mother is out so that the parents would have an easier life.
the girl, now a woman (named sue, btw) is so distraught that she becomes uber-religious and goes back and re-marries the old schoolteacher(she believes that the death of the children was G-d's way of getting her to toe the line). jude is heartbroken and goes on a bender. during which, his ex-wife appears a widow with plans to get jude back because he is a stone-mason and makes a decent wage that she can live off of. she gets jude so wasted that he is easily tricked into marrying her again. like monday morning in Vegas, he sobers up and finds that he was duped. dramatically, jude loses the will to live.
in that spectacular victorian way, he wastes away in depression. eventually, he walks through the rain to the village where sue lives, and says goodbye. he upbraids her for being a twit and a coward. she covers her ears and he walks away into the rain and to his death.

to review, boy meets girl, she's an emasculating bitch. boy meets the love of his life and she loses her mind and becomes a hard-core christian. boy dies in poverty of a broken heart or broken spirit.

not exactly uplifting stuff.

i turns out that i mis-understood the characterization of hardy. it's not that the book is hard. it's written in a fairly free flowing form of prose that isn't hard to understand. what is hard about the book is the wading through the abject suffering of the main characters. the story in the novel is very much like the story of job. only in the story of Job, Job will eventually win out. it's a story about faith. if Job has faith, he will be rewarded.

that's the beauty of the bible for people of limited intellect. there really are no grays. there is good and then there is bad. the good are rewarded and the bad are punish-ed. unless the good are punished to see if they will stay good or turn wicked. then there's the good who turn wicked and stuff happens to them so that they see the error of their ways and become good again. that's it. any ambiguity that may have been there in the gospels is cleaned out in the homogenizing process that translation has become.

i guess the whole point of the book is that because of his poverty, jude was never given the proper opportunities to rise above his dismal circumstances. this is before the scholarship was thought of apparently. in the first few chapters of the book, jude is an incredibly smart and precocious child that teaches himself greek and latin from second-hand books. the idea is that he is more than intellectually capable. of course, he meets a girl and it all starts to turn from there.

i think one of the main differences betwixt "literature" and more modern reading is their approach to the audience. like most abstract expressionist, "literature" expects that you their point is so important that you will suffer through quite a lot to decipher their meaning. the book i started reading directly after jude the obscure is a book called "the sparrow" by mary doria russell. i 've read it before and found it to be a good story written rather well. the author goes to pains to make you like and respect the main character in the first few chapters. even though the main character is a priest, we are told how charming and sexy he is, as if the author was imagining a cleaned-up father karas from exorcist.

you're really supposed to like father sandoz. and then there is jude. jude is supposed to be irrepressibly bright and precocious. the whole point of the book is that his life has been a waste. he is lamentably intelligent in his studies but amazingly naive when it comes to sexual politics. i certainly do not have much room to speak on that matter, but through a greater part of the book, you feel like yelling out "don't do it, you fool!!!"
he meets a girl who has him wrapped around her finger in a few pages and keeps him dangling for pretty much the rest of the book. she is a completely unsympathetic character that utters things like "you musn't love me jude. i am wicked." to which he replies,"but i adore you , my darling. i am the wicked one."

the whole book is like that.

i'm not sure if thomas hardy was a misogynist, the victim of a similar jerking of the heart, or just trying to make a point about courtship in victorian england. by modern standards, jude puts up with her insanity with the patience of a saint. he is rewarded with misery.

am i glad i read the book? yeah. i actually learned a few things. if you approach the book as a document of english society at the turn of the previous century, it's intriguing to notice the difference in cultures and times.

the goal was to start reading literature to learn more about the human condition.

that's one down.....

from spring awakening to purple summer

i recently discovered a broadway show called "spring awakening". i regularly read this blog called deus ex malcontent that is really pretty good. he lives in new york and he raved about seeing the show on broadway. i hadn't heard of the show, so i wanted to try it out and see if it was any good.

i remember the first time that i heard the soundtrack for "wicked". here's how i prove what a homosexual i am and admit that the first time i heard "defying gravity", i got shivers. actual shivers. there is something magical about discovering musicals. you know what i'm talking about if you own a "phantom of the opera" cassette tape or cd sitting somewhere.

i "discovered" wicked and then i found "rent. it's been a while, but i finally found something new. if you get the chance, i highly recommend legally finding a copy of the music and give it a listen.

life is a highway

so, yesterday was thanksgiving, as i'm sure you are aware. if you didn't know, sorry for spoiling the surprise.

justin went to his aunt's house in wallace and i didn't go. when i came back from CA, justin's father & stepmom made it clear that they don't want me in their house. i was 'dis-invited' if that is the correct phrase. i'll admit, it actually hurt. i felt i had gone out of my way to be incredibly civil and to try and adjust to their vastly different way of life. if there was any friction, it was mostly due to the idea that i was fairly offended by their need to indulge in the fairly tale of "close friendship" that made my relationship palatable to them. in fact, one of the most divisive issues happened when i made a joke that got taken the wrong way and the crux of the issue was that i had inadvertently addressed the fact/reality that justin and i were physically intimate with each other.

i love telling this story in person, but maybe it's time that i write it down before i forget it. there is this cozy little shack in a small town called Osbourn that is called "the snake pit". if you've ever seen dante's peak (the pierce brosnan epic), then you have seen this restaurant. it's like an old west TGI Friday's. there are old saws on the walls and various nick-nacks. it's kind of charming in it's way.

well, justin's folks used to always make dinner when we came over, but this one time, we decided to go out. i ended up footing the bill for everyone's dinner, i'd like to add before we start. it turns out that the specialty at this particular venue is called "rocky mountain oysters". RMO is the polite way of saying bull testicles. it's fried and breaded bulls balls. i was feeling particularly adventurous and i decided to try them out. everyone else ordered standard fare and it wasnt too long before we had our food in front of us.

now, for some reason, justin's dad had left the table. maybe to wash his hands, get something from the bartender...who knows. so it's just justin, myself and his step-mother, heidi. she turns to me and says,"i can't believe you ordered that."

without thinking, i blurt out, "well, i know what they taste like normally, but i wanted to see what they tasted like fried."

now, i though it was funny. turns out she was mortified. she's one of those people that plays her cards so close to her chest. i never knew when i'd gone too far until justin told me a few days later about a conversation that he'd had with her. to add insult to injury, when justin's father found out about it later he was super-pissed and it became a thing.

it was always like that with them. we would hang out and then go home. two days later, i would find out from justin that i had said or done something to offend and no one said boo while i was there. i got tired of that and so i was hurt, but not surprised when justin told me that they no longer wanted me around them.

now, the rest of his family, i got along with just fine. i like both of his aunts and pretty much everyone else. either way, everyone involved thought it would be a good idea if i stayed home. no worries.

i spent most of my time on the couch being lazy and watching tv. i watched a few movies and just kind of relaxed. i found my roommate's copy of disney/pixar's "cars" and watched that to start out with. i genuinely forgot how good that movie is. i have a great deal of respect for pixar in general, but i am in awe of the amount of talent that they employ. there hasn't been a pixar flop yet. i just saw ratatouille a week or two ago and it was outstanding.

stay with me, this all has a point. i'm going somewhere with this, i promise.

anyway..."cars" (if you don't know) is about a young rookie race car having an amazing year at the track and is on the cusp of winning the piston cup, the end-all-be-all of the animated racing world. he is on his way to california for a tie-breaking race and along the way he gets stranded in this backwards town on route 66 that got was abandoned when the interstate re-directed traffic away from them. while he is there, he falls in love with a porsche (who wouldn't) who loves the town for the idyllic stop that it once was. he also befriends an old rusty tow-truck name mater that is low on brains and big on heart. ( i feel like i'm writing the back of the DVD, lol). the race-car learns in the end (he makes it to the race) that there are more important things than winning.

it's an old maxim. one i've heard before. a young man in a leopard print jacket once told me as a child "life moves pretty fast, and if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you just might miss it". this was after singing danke shoen(sp?) on a parade float in the middle of downtown chicago.

as i always do, i watched the behind-the-scenes doc on the inspiration behind cars and it had a great interview with john lassiter. over the course of the 16 or so minutes, lassiter spells out the lessons to be learned from cars, or rather the lessons that he had in mind when he started. the whole character arc is this guy living alone in the fast lane that is forced to slow down for a minute and learns to enjoy life.

"life is what happens while you're making plans" -j.lennon

lately, i've been lamenting to myself silent reproaches about living in idaho and the choices that got me here. when i was a kid, i hated living in the midwest, because it always seemed to me that life was happening "out there". in europe, in NY, in LA, anywhere that wasn't home. i've always had that mind-set. i've always felt trapped by it. if i'm not in the middle of it, i feel like i am wasting my time.

i feel helpless.

if i'm honest with myself, i feel very trapped here. i feel like the rest of the world is just kind of passing me by...again. it's not really cabin fever. i think it's just wanderlust. i miss waking up in the morning and being excited about my work.

film is the only thing that got me up at 5 in the morning, excited about the day. i'm tired of wasting my life at this dead-end job.

however.....

yesterday, sitting on the couch in my pjs, i got this sudden burst of "maybe this is all happening for a reason". maybe there is some fatal flaw in my personality that i need to salve before moving on to the next part of my life. i learned a lot about my experiences with justin's folks. maybe there's some lesson there that i need to figure out.

as always, i'm trying to change my perspective and the way that i think. i have to, if not just for pure survival reasons. if i keep feeling like i'm missing out, then i guess i won't see all of the wonderful things around me. unfortunately, the grass will always seem greener somewhere else.

i know i spend a lot of time whining lately. i can't help it. the whole point of writing this blog has been a personal assignment in catharsis. there's all of this stuff that i need to get out one way or another. all of these thought that i need to organize. i'm probably harping on about the same things, but i really hope that there is some kind of character arc.

a story without any kind of character arc is just boring.

it's just too much

i must be a masochist.
i keep looking at the presidential race and i always end up finding something that scares me. the presidential election period (especially when there is no incumbent) is an amazing time. all of the vast differing viewpoints come together and we find out
what it is that is important to other parts of the country. for example, i am relieved to find that the vast majority of my countrymen aren't so blood-thirsty anymore and that there is a possible chance that there might be some kind of end in site for the bush manifest destiny franchise being built in the middle-east.

i'm still not sure if i'm for hillary or obama. i'm honestly not. however, i find that i am watching with rapt attention the republican race. as of the time of this writing, it seems that Giuliani is leading just over fred thompson. when fred thompson became a serious contender, i don't know. i assumed he would end up falling off like bill brady.

what fascinates me is the writhing in the fundamentalist right to try and find someone as crazy as they are. i don't pretend to be a journalist, and i am certainly not impartial. i have a very clear and personal stake in Giuliani for the republican ticket. like bush he has used the momentum of 9/11 to his benefit, but he also has some credit for cleaning up NY. i still haven't forgotten the chris offili/saatchi show incident, though.

anyway, i found this article and it had some interesting points. here's my favourite quote:

"There are now more Mormons that used to be Southern Baptist than any other denomination," said Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, a 16-million strong group."

"As a consequence, Southern Baptists and other evangelicals have taught their people what Mormons believe and why it's beyond the boundaries of the Christian faith, to inoculate them against those Mormon missionaries," he told Reuters.

and then there is this one:

"There are a lot of conservative Christians who are going to look at the Mormon thing and say, 'Wait a minute, he may be conservative but he's a Mormon,' and they're not going to go there," said Steve Swofford, a pastor in the city of Rockwall, near Dallas, and former president of the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention."

lately, the recurring theme in this blog has been how insane the mormons are. when the southern baptist have to stop and say "whoa", you have to ask yourself "what is wrong with this picture".

what is lamentably more amusing is the fact that there are some people who have said, "you know what, southern baptists are crazy enough for me. bat-shit crazy mormonism, now that's the way to go."

i stand corrected

so, i have to issue a rare retraction here. when i was talking about the church, i mentioned the ATM-like registration system. i asked christina to read the blog, b/c i was curious if she would be offended. she was not. she did correct me that the sign-in system is for the day-care, which i understand and support. i guess you have to sign the kid in and the sign little johnny out again.

christina asked me to re-consider going to church, but i think i need something a little more intimate. it would be cool to work the cameras or play in the band, but i just dont know if i can deal with that anymore.

i've noticed that as i've gotten older that it is easier to hold grudges (which i never used to be able to do) and i seem to be getting more morose and engaging in life less. maybe it's just a phase. maybe it has something to do with the meds. dunno.

grappling with big religion

so, it was an interesting weekend.

due to the fact that i can't afford to fly home for thanksgiving, a group of my friends and i decided to get together and have a thanksgiving meal on sunday. my friends christina, kim, and tara all go to this church over in post falls called real-life ministries. they've been asking us to go to church with them for a while (never persistantly, but just enough for us to know that we are always invited). i finally aquiesced and said we would start sunday by going to church with them. i said that justin and i would both go.

so sunday morning, we get up early and get dressed in decent clothes and meet them at christina's house. from there, we go out to post falls and to this church.

now, the church is set back from the road about a quarter of a mile. we've passed that spot in the past and when people pointed down that road and said that the church was down there, i always assumed that it was past the warehouse, turns out it is the warehouse. the side that faces the road is canary yellow and probably a good 35-40 feet tall. we pull down the road and check out the parking situation. imagine walmart. then imagine that the car park for walmart wasn't quite big enough and they had to have people parking in part of a cleared field and you've got the picture.

i have to admit, it made me uneasy. as we were walking in, i made the obligatory wise-cracks about jim jones.

"if anyone hands me kool-aid, i'm outta here", i joked.

the prior service had just gotten out and it looked like a train had just arrived. people streamed out of the various doors and moved their cars so that the next brood could slid in. we walked in past the people who were catching up with each other in the convention centre style lobby. before entering the actual "sanctuary", a few of my party wanted to go get coffee.

the place was huge and filled with people. i was reminded of an airport terminal, you know, the way they used to be when friends, family and various well-wishers were allowed to meet you at the gate. hanging from the ceiling in various places was a closed circuit television system with a timer counting down from 30 minutes, ostensibly telling us when the next service would begin.

i wonder if they dim the lights right before, like they do at play intermissions. i'll have to ask.

i almost forgot to tell you about the programs. you know, the double sided photocopy folded in half that lets you know what hymns you're going to be singing and the like. at real life ministries, the look like insurance brochures. printed in full cmyk on card-stock with a little "pocket" that holds all of the obligatory "tell us who you are and what you want us to pray for you about" cards mixed with the tithe envelopes.

so, now my friends are getting coffee that huge banner is telling me is from christian mission growers and i am nervous. i like the term "as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs" a lot. partially because it's so homey and full of character, but also but because, to me, it implies that one is vigilent to the point of being paranoid due to a perception of danger. in this case, i think it fits.

i'm scanning the crowd and i see the first thing that runs shivers up my spine. just past the coffee, i see a sign that says express check,-something. i'm not fully paying attention. my social anxiety is kicking in, so i'm already uneasy. there is a crowd of people and at first i think that there is some kind of cafeteria selection of pastries and they're making money off of the concessions. quaint, but not disturbing.

then someone moves out of the way and i noticed the screens and the ATM-like devices that they are attatched to. i look at the sign again. express check-in. an automated roll call? do you have to be a card carrying memeber, like the mormons?

i put my best foot foward and try to consider the logistical nightmare that managing this place must be. i push my exceptions into the back of my mind and we move to the sanctuary portion.
now, the snactuary portion is the size of a large gymnasium, in fact when i look up to the ceiling, there is a basketball hoop on one of those electric arms. here's the kicker, though. to give you a sense of scale, when the basketball hoop is in the upright and locked position, it is a few feet from the wall with the hoop facing the cieling. the clever observer will note that this means that since when the hoop is brought down, it will need to be in the correct position, that means that the pole holding it is the length of a basketball court.

and then, there's the stage. yes, a stage. i've been to churches with a stage before. i was in the band for a very brief period of time, but this is a stage. you know, like when you go to a concert and they have that metal girder-looking stuff that they hang the lights on? yeah, it's set like a concert hall. it looks like in a few minutes, rush is gonna take the stage and open with "tom sawyer". i find myself looking for my seat number on my non-existent ticket. i make a lot of nervous jokes about who the opening act might be. apparently, motley crue would not be welcome, though i'm not sure about stryper.

after a few minutes of extreme discomfort, i ask justin if he would be okay with leaving and it turns out he is as uncomfortable as i am, only he actually has the good sense to be quiet about it. we ask our friends if they would be offended if we leave. they say no (no way of telling if that's true) and then we are gone.

as we walked out, i felt kinda bad, but then by the time we got to the car, i could feel the weight lifting off of my shoulders. no more arena-rock churches for me.

the reason that i'm writing about this is that even though the experience was uncomfortable, i'm self aware enough to ask why.

allow me to digress for a moment.

when i was going to school in ireland, we went on a field trip to the irish museum of modern art. a very nice museum in an old army hospital complex. very cool place. there was this couple from russia that made these little automated scenes in these boxes and the idea was that they were to entertain kids that were in the hospital with severe of terminal cases of whatever. a noble cause certainly. the show-boxes were interesting and well constructed. the really interesting part was that the way they presented them was they sectioned off part of the building and made it back into a hospital again. each area seperated by sheets on a metal bar, like the privacy sheets at any hospital ward. it was an interesting way of showing the work, because you had to factor in the room and the significance of the empty bed. by having the empty beds, you had to factor in the perspective of the child when veiwing the works. in retrospect, i think it was really interesting. at the time i hated it.

one of the things they had done, one of those touches that makes the atmosphere, was to spray everything down with that cleaner that they use in hospitals. you know the one. they dont really use it much anymore, but when i was a kid, that was the smell of hospitals. it is very distict, but it's hard to describe. i imagine it is a series of disinfectants of some kind.

when i walked into the "hospital room" to see the work, i was assaulted with that smell. it made me very uncomfortable and i made it through only a few before i couldn't take it anymore. i only have a vague memory of the works. i was so distracted by the mise-en-scene that i could not concentrate on the work.

it wasn't long until i was tearing my way through the exhibit, through the various rooms trying to get out. i don't know how many "rooms" there were, but i remember being on the verge of a panic attack trying to get out. by the last few, when it seemed like there was no end in sight, i must have seemed like a madman, pushing the curtains aside, hoping that the next time i swept curtain out of my way, i would be free.

i left the museum and walked around dublin for a while in a daze. i've been to a lot of museums and i've seen a lot of exhibits, but there arent many that are as memorable. the point of art is to provoke some kind of reaction in the viewer. a good piece of art is interactive. a masterpiece is a mirror.

i spent a lot of time trying to figure out what it was about that work that got to me. i wasn't sure if it was the quiet discomfort of the empty hospital rooms. or if it was the works. eventually, i realised that it was the smell. i knew why the smell bothered me. i associated it with memories of my mom being in the hospital when i was a kid. i think there was more to it, but even though i dont have a very good sense of smell, i am always very wary of walking into hospitals, lol.

the way that this ties in to my point is that i was incredibly disturbed when i came out of that "church". i've been trying to figure out what it was about the experience that was so unsettling.

i'm wondering if it was the setting.

maybe i'm a closet traditionalist. i mean what are the basic components of any church service?

A) there are seats for the congregation
B) there is an elevated space for the preacher to lead the service and to give his sermon
c) there is some kind of musical instrument to lead the congregation in song

all of the basic parts are there, it just happens to be a re-imagining based more on the genesis "we cant dance" tour than the traditional transept and pew arrangement.

there was a part of me that really wanted to go. i havent been to synagogue in probably 2 years. i miss the communing with G-d thing.

i mean, it could just be a stirring of some old memories. when i was in college, i used to go to a church called "harvest". someday i'll have to write all about my experiences at that church because they were formative. i feel the way i feel about christians because of that place. there were a lot of similarities in organization, but the scale was far smaller. it was at least more intimate than the county fair.

it might be my prejudice against christians.

dunno. i'll have to think about it.

a moment of reflection

so, i've been writing this story. if you read my last blog, you know the title. it's a cool title, but at the end of the day, i'm writing it as a catharsis, a bloodletting, if you will. there are things in my psyche that i need to deal with and things that i can't keep hidden from myself.

i know this is all kind of whiny, emo stuff, but the question i find myself asking is this; will there ever be a time when i won't be an addict? i mean, i'm not doing drugs or anything, but don't confuse the not-doing with the not-wanting-to.

i mean, the story is my way of trying to create something that will let me deal with my past and to try and have some creative go at my past in the LA underground. more to the point, with my time in LA altogether.

in the story, i wrote a scene about the character getting high. the idea is that he starts out where i was and gets closer to where i am, just without having to trudge to idaho. i'm still working on it.

anyway, it's taken me a week to get through that scene. i read the description (and i think it's a good bit of writing, btw) and it gets my heart racing. it makes me wonder if i'm ready to deal with this. will i ever be? why not now; sooner than later?

in taking mental stock, i found that i know that if someone handed me a bag of the stuff, i certainly wouldn't turn it down. i don't know if i even have the mental fortitude to do so.

i suppose i could just suck it up and just try and move on, but when i did that, i was brought to my knees the first time that i ran into anything. if that experience taught me anything, it's that there needs to be a bunker or citadel that you can retreat to when the barbarian hordes come to the gates.

just checking in

i haven't written in a little while because i have been busy writing a story.

i've had this idea in my head for about a year and when i was swimming a few days ago, it just coalesced into a feasible plot line and story. the next day, a friend of mine in LA sent me a link to the national novel writing month site. i gave the link to a few other people as well. the idea is to write 50,000 words during the month of november. the idea is to just write. you can edit and re-write in december, but for november, just write.

at some point, i'll try and post the story. there is an excerpt of it on the NaNoWriMo site, but it's not very easy to navigate. if you're brave enough to try, my name on the site is bnelson7. good luck.

other than that, things have been fairly quiet. i've begun this strange fascination with marcel proust and i'm going to attempt to read "remembrance of things past" because i hear that it is amazing. after that, i'd like to pick up genet's "our lady of the flowers" or sartre's "road to freedom"series. for some reason, i have this craving for french literature. i'm yearning to read thomas mann or even thomas hardy.

i've been reading this book series called the "dresden files". it's the literary equivalent of a mcdonalds hamburger. the premise is that it is about a wizard who works as a private detective in modern-day chicago. the character is incredibly noble, sarcastic, chivalrous, and quotes or references sci-fi or fantasy movies all the time. there are maybe 10 or so books in the series and justin and i have devoured them each in turn.

i have always felt bad for my escapist tendencies when it comes to reading. i try to pepper my literary dancecard with stalwart classics. i'm not sure what my motivation is. i mean, i want to say that it is because literature is something that helps you to grow as a person and as a human being. ideally, a good work of literature will help to lay bare some empirical fact about life and who we are as human beings.

i'm not sure if i buy it.

the definintion of post modern culture, as i understand it, is the creation of something new by using a pastiche of old concepts and ideas to create something new. i would submit that the simpsons are the ultimate in postmodern entertainment; the reason is that the show's humour is written in layers. the smarter you are, the funnier that show is. for example, if there's a shot of homer getting stuffed in a barrel and thrown down niagara falls, then there are several layers of funny. first off, there's the initial schadenfreude of watching someone yelling as they scream going over the cliff face, but then there might be a hobbit reference as he inches towards the edge. if you get the hobbit reference, the joke is twice as funny. does that make sense.

the best example of this is "moulin rouge", the baz luhrman film. it is a musical, but the songs in this musical are actually pop songs that are part of the popular consciousness of western culture. i guess the best way to describe it is as a cinematic mix tape.

i have a confession.

i cannot read moby dick. i have tried several times. i even got the book on tape. i cannot seem to get into that book no matter what i do. maybe there is some guilt about that. i consider myself a reasonably intelligent guy, but to be confounded by moby dick is embarrassing.

if i'm to be truly honest with myself, i think that i would like to be more intelligent and to have a greater range of references to draw upon, but maybe i just want to be able to get more jokes.

dunno.

anyway, the name of the story i'm writing is called "starfish prime". cool name,. huh.

it's actually the code name of a was a high-altitude nuclear test conducted on 9 july 1962 over Honolulu, hawaii. of course that has absolutely nothing to do with the story that i'm writing. well, philosophically, there is a parallel, but i thought the name was uber-cool.

it's kind of like reservoir dogs. it's not about a reservoir, and it's not about dogs, but it is about criminals and a bank heist. after you see the film, you kind of just get the title. it's a strange thing, but it works. it's supposed to be something like that.

hallelujah

"Father of slain Marine wins case against funeral protesters
Pa. man awarded nearly $11 million in compensatory and punitive damages

The brokenhearted father of a Marine killed in Iraq won a long-shot legal fight today after a federal jury in Baltimore awarded him nearly $11 million in a verdict against members of a Kansas church who hoisted anti-gay placards at his son's Westminster funeral."

a special place of honour in hell

a good few years ago, when the internet was still shiny and new, i was traipsing through the web and i found a site that nearly moved me to tears called god hates fags.com. i have no idea if the site is still active, but what struck me was the insane amount of hatred that could be encapsulated in HTML.
there is a man who embodies that kind of hatred, and he's a minister, if you can believe it. his name is fred phelps, and i hope that there is place of honour in hell for this man. do you remember the part in poltergeist II when the reverend walks up to the screen door? that's what this guy looks like .

working from a church in topeka, KS, he and his followers have managed to make the mormons look sane (no small feat, in my opinion). the latest in the zany antics of the westboro baptist church are found in this article.

with apologies to fox mulder, but "i want to be beyond belief".

check out this quote:

"The Westboro protesters, whose church is in Topeka, Kan., frequently picket the funerals of military officials and soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan because church leaders assert that God is killing soldiers to punish America for condoning homosexuality. "

now, don't get me wrong, i am not a fan of the military, and i certainly am not a fan of the war in iraq, but there is something very wrong with the way that these people are dying for no rela reason other than to protect our interests in the middle east and when they die, their deaths are used for the purpose of any nut job trying to get their point across, from bill o'reilly to fred phelps.

i am certainly a proponent of the first amendment, but there has to be a line somewhere. mind you, i'm not very comfortable with drawing it, but this is not a guerrilla war, there need to be rules.

anyway, that's enough for now.

a point of clarification

yesterday i ranted a little about religion, well, not so much about religion, but about extremists. i wanted to just clarify-for myself and for the record what i mean.

i was thinking about it, and my viewpoint is thus: i view the fundamentalist/evangelical movements as the christian equivilent to al-quaida. i'm not saying that the southern baptist convention is going to start sending suicide bombers into abortion clinics and gay bars (though i'm not sure it isn't because they havent thought of it yet). what i'm saying is that the evangelicals are politicizing religion. granted, guys who shoot up abortion clinics and assassinate the doctors are the christian equivalent of your garden variety suicide bomber.

at the end of the day, fundamentalist muslims and evangelical christians both lack a basic understanding of the logic behind a separtion of church and state. both parties are guilty of trying to create theocracies in support of their gods.

i guess that i, like many americans are guiilty of being suspect of Islam as a religion, but since i don't believe that there are really more than a handful of true christians in the world, then i suppose it is logical to hope that there are more than a handful of muslims that want nothing more than to have peace with their god and let you have your own.

i'm not sure if there is a point to any of this, but i needed to get the thought out, at least.

WTF?

to the left is a picture of republican candidate mitt romney. i consider myself a libertarian, but when practicality pushes and shoves, i normally go with democrats, because i hate them less. i have to say that i have found that i waiver betwixt obama and hillary. if you want to be practical about it, obama is a great candidate, but i would like to see him win in 2012. i think that hillary should win this one, maybe just so i can see bill clinton in the white house just one more time, lol.

actually, there is something exciting about a woman being on the ballot for president. it means that we live in an exciting time. although, the old joke comes to mind:

how do you get a woman into the oval office?
have her run against a black man and a homosexual.

the other day, i was at the gym working out and there was a small gap between when i finished working out, and when the pool would open up, so i sat down in this little lounge area and watched tv and rested for a minute. what was on was that insipid "insider" show. i watched for a few minutes, until i couldn't take it anymore. i didn't realize the remote was available until i got up and saw it stuck between 2 cushions. i sat back down and surfed a few channels. i then realized that the pool was opening up and that i should get going. i turned the tv to bravo and project runway was on. i smiled quietly to myself and walked away, leaving it there.

now, to place this in context, you have to remember that i live in north idaho. the tv is in a spot that everybody that goes from the front desk to the weight room has to see it. i have never walked by it w/out some form of sport or ESPN variant being on.

for some reason, i wanted to rattle people in my own subtle way and leave a show about fashion design on. dunno why. maybe it was my little rebellion against the rampant homophobia that exists here. couldn't tell you.

i think there is a little bit of that impulse with my endorsement of hillary clinton. i think it would be interesting to see what a woman would do in the oval office. i have found that her policies are generally okay (though i do fault her for voting for the patriot act). i think, more than anything, i want to see the evangelicals sweat.

i have major issues with the fact that this insane sect of our society is soooo pandered to. does anybody else get the feeling that politicians treat these people like spoiled children? it's like a voting demographic full of verruca salts.

"but, daddy, i want a theocracy."

"but, verruca, sweet-heart, that's what our forefathers escaped from."

verruca yells "i want it now, and you're going to get it for me; or i won't vote for you."

"oh, all right...."

mrs. salt "if you don't give her what she wants, you're going to be very unpopular around here, 'enry...."

i think that there is something obscene about the politicization(sp?) of religion.

the reason that romney graces the top of the blog is b/c i found something really interesting while i was perusing the net at work. here is an article that i found interesting. the idea behind the article was that the "evangelicals" are upset that there is no candidate that they can fully support and stand behind.

here's a quote:

"Romney, who this week picked up the endorsement of Bob Jones III, the chancellor of Bob Jones University, is viewed with suspicion by some evangelicals because he had previously supported abortion rights, a stance he has since disavowed. Polls suggest that his Mormon faith is also a concern among some evangelical voters. "

isn't there something wrong when the southern baptists and the WASPs think that the Mormons are TOO crazy?

granted, upon further research, it turns out that he was cool about homosexuality for about half a day in 2003, but then was good about reversing that in 2006.

i read a really interesting quote and i can't seem to find it, but it goes something like this: "the problem from fanatics of any religion is that they seek to limit the dialogue about human spirituality"

i know i killed it, but hopefully i have been able to get the point across.

i also read a really interesting article a while back that pointed out that if the LDS church decided to back Romney, he would be the undisputed front-runner. who, outside of the campaign trail veterans in washington, knows how to mobilize a force like the Mormons. if they can dictate to each of their card-carrying members to spend 2 years of their lives trolling neighborhoods across the country in pairs, imagine what they can do with political conviction wrapped in a blanket of moral certainty?

abandon hope all ye who enter here...

I AM THE WAY INTO THE CITY OF WOE
I AM THE WAY TO A FORSAKEN PEOPLE
I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL SORROW

SACRED JUSTICE MOVED MY ARCHITECT
I WAS RASIED HERE BY DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE,
PRIMORDIAL LOVE, AND ULTIMATE INTELLECT

ONLY THOSE ELEMENTS TIME
CANNOT WEAR WERE MADE BEFORE ME
AND BEYOND TIME I STAND

ABANDON HOPE, YE WHO ENTER

i've been trying to work on some illustrations and i decided to do some illustrations from dante aligheri's inferno. i have been researching and seeing what others have done (i think the work of gustave dore is my fav, but followed closely by rico lebrun).

what attracts me to this project is the idea of portraying the torments of judeo-christian hell in a striking image. the challenge is, how do you put that much rage, anger, remorse, pain, madness, and regret into a "scene". is that possible?

in dore's version, he seems to go for it, but ends up with something that gets closer to frightening grandeur than anything else. lebrun's version is pictorial pain and madness. horrific figures that exist in contorted motions that can only be horrifically painful. pieces of the human anatomy glued together in a grotesque mockery of "G-d's image".

how do you top that?

linux...grrrrrr

so, in an earlier blog, i wrote about how wonderful that linux is; mind you, i still think it will be cool when i get it to work.

my friend justin and i tried to install studio and it kept having issues installing, so i downloaded the version of Ubuntu (feisty fawn) and put it on a disk so that i could install it on my computer.

i am a pack-rat. i hate throwing anything away, but more than that, i hate to have anything erased, so i took some time and i isolated the D drive that was empty away from my windows-laden C drive. i had the computer arranged so that it was just D drive and my CD reader. i installed Ubuntu on that drive and plugged everything back in.

somehow, along the way, i corrupted my windows drive and when justin and i tried to get everything sorted out on sunday, it took 6 hours to get back to the beginning and only have Ubu on the disk. i have to boot from the CD to have an OS. the cool thing is that i am learning what all of these things do, but it's a frustrating learning curve.

this is all very dry, i know.

there's this great moment in the great muppet caper when diana rigg starts getting lost in a monologue about her brother, ms. piggy stops her and asks "umm, excuse me, but why are you telling me this?".

she simply turns and without missing a beat says "it's exposition, it has to go somewhere."

so, now i wait. i'm waiting until my next day off (thursday) to install windows (vista this time) and the very latest version of ubu (i think it's call gutsy gizelle or gamey gnome or something like that-i would like a more graphic name like gelded gnu or something more interesting)

so, now i have to get them so that they can boot to either drive.

i read a really interesting article that mentioned that Ubuntu seems to be the winning dialect of linux. because of it's user-friendly GUI, it should start working it's way into the greater market as an OS. i still think that linux is quite some ways away from that yet. based on my experiences, i am learning that it is not as simple as it seems. granted, most people just have their pet computer geek help them w/ installing an OS, but this system has proved to be intreresting. of course, all of that having been said, one should take into account that my computer is kind of a heap and there might be something to that.

linux ubu releases a new version every 6 months and they go through the alphabet and use the same letter for the adjective and the noun (it's very cute). my suggestion for the next release

is HELLFIRE HARLOT

LDS with SSA

in retrospect, i have come to believe that being gay is one of the best things that ever happened to me.

it's hard to explain. i'm a white kid from the suburbs of a blue-collar town in the midwest. racial tension is high on both sides of the issue in my hometown. for example, the ghetto has boundaries.


when i was a kid, there were certain streets that were considered boundaries. the city is laid out on a grid for the most part. greenfield was a north-south street, but the east-west streets were numbered. when i was 13 or 14, if one was walking down greenfield at night, you did not cross 16th street. if you were smart, you stayed up in the 20s. there was a 10 block neutral zone that wasn't great, but it wasn't a guarantee that you were gonna find trouble if you went there.


point is, as a white kid, i grew up hyper aware of gentrification and downward spirals caused by poverty in reagan's america. when one is young, it is easy to make racial connections with ghettos, poverty and crime rates. in fact, i will admit to myself that there are biases that i still have based on the way i grew up. the difference between being human and being a racist is that i choose not to let my internal issues affect the way that i deal with people. people suck in general, but it's foolish to throw away the baby and the bathwater together.


the reason that i say that i think that being gay was a great thing for me, personally, is that it taught me to see from other perspectives. in college, i read a book called Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration. (1991). by an artist named david wojnarowicz. he was a gay man living w/ HIV in ed koch's NY and reagan's america (a scary place, by the sounds of it). wojnarowicz talks about being born into a civilization with rules that don't really apply to him b/c they don't take into account his existence. to wit; "If I die it is because a handful of people in power, in organized religions and political institutions, believe that I am expendable". like any good artist, he sees society from the outside, a condition that is compounded by his homosexuality and then further compounded by his HIV status (this is the late 80s).


in close to the knives, DW is tired of being on the fringes and angry. really angry. one of my favourite quotes i cannot find in detail, but i can sum it up; "i am ten feet of rage stuffed into a 6 foot frame."


i ran into DW at a time when i had finally started to stop fighting so hard against my attraction to other guys. i had fought hard, with prayer and with will and found that i was weak. we all grow up in a society that is built for heterosexual white guys and i came close to the mark. i came close enough to the mark w/out hitting it that i believed that there was something wrong with me b/c i wasn't like everyone else on the inside. there was a part that i hid, a part that i was ashamed of, a part that i did not address for many years. around 19 or 20, i finally got tired of fighting it. there are so many other things that consume your energy during any given day in modern life that it seemed like a waste. maybe that's not the right way to say that. i think that one day i woke up and decided that maybe there was a reason that i was this way.


i have always had a strong belief in G-d. that having been said, we don't talk a lot. the fault is mine, but i don't have a single doubt in my head that there is a G-d. sometimes i wish that i did. i believe that if you can quiet your heart and your mind enough, you can hear him.

there was a greek philosopher named Pythagoras who believed in what he called "the music of the spheres". Pythagoras was the first to believe that math was the universal language of the universe. he also believed that music was a direct extention of mathmatics, hence, there is a perfect harmony that keeps the universe together and it is called the music of the spheres. (of course, it is a metaphor)


maybe G-d's voice is that harmony, just white noise in the background. like a fridge that you didn't realize was running until it cycles down for a few minutes.


back on track.....


it was when i read a great book that took what the bible said about homosexuality and really examined it in detail that i was able to concede that this part of me may be part of G-d's plan for me. while following that rationale, i have realized that i have become a far more tolerant and empathetic individual.


maybe it's some kind of mutual courtesy? a live and let live thing?


dunno.


what i do know is that i have one prejudice that i cannot let go, as much as i may try. that is my loathing of mormons.


i have never been able to figure out what it is about mormons that makes them different in their belief structure from regular "christians".


i find it ironic that the LDS sends out missionaries around the country (and maybe the world), but they require a membership card to enter their temple. you have to meet their exacting standards to enter.


by all means, they certainly don't hold the monopoly on trying to make their religion an exclusionary experience. i would submit that they fall in the same vein as the extremist (read terrorist) muslims and the hasidic jews. i consider myself a jew, but i'm not really a fan of the hasids. the great thing about hasids, though is that they treasure learning, wit, and tradition. in fact, learning and wit are part of the jewish tradition. hasids are, however, less likely to blow up a bus full of school children (israel aside).


if you nose around the internet, you find sites about ex LDS folk and what they describe is kinda scary (though i will admit, i have a thing about mormon underwear; it's kinda hot. i know it's weird. don't ask me why).
here
are
some
links.
here's another interesting link.


what got me out of my morning daze, and moved me to action was this blog that i was reading. i happen to find a really interesting blog called "attempting the path". it is the blog of this really cute and interesting kid with what he calls his struggles with SSA (that's same-sex attraction-leave it to the mormons to classify it like a disease). in his links list, he has various sympathetic blogs and some that are frighteningly relevant.

there is this blog called savingjohngalt about this guy who is full-blown LDS w/ a wife and 3 kids and on a business trip, he meets this guy in london and they have this whirlwind relationship over a 2 year period. the blog starts in august of 2006 and ends in june of 07.

it is a document of a good guy whose desires conflict with everything he believes about the world around him. been there. except for an incredibly lucky and small percent, anyone who knows that they are gay knows this fight well.

what is heartbreaking is the hell that he puts himself through in his quest to adhere to the things that he believes he should be doing. when he goes to his bishop for help, the man revokes his membership card for 6 months.

i have always thought that it is easy and cruel for people to try and "help" you to change. if you like chicks, it's really easy to believe that you can do it too. don't get me wrong, men can usually have sex with anything. hell, i have even had the urge to sleep with women from time to time, but that was more to do with boredom and frustration with gay sex at a time when i was heavily into drugs and had a voracious appetite.

that blog is a document of suffering that is self-imposed and i can't help but wonder about the cruelty of his family and social surroundings that make his life a living hell.

i have to stop here a moment and add that i feel nothing but sympathy for the wife. when you read about the LDS, the common story seems to be "marry a good woman and you can put it all behind you", which leads to the inevitable crumbling of the marriage years later.

david leavitt wrote a book called the lost language of cranes and in it, the son struggles to come out to his uptight parents, only to find out that his father has been fighting his homosexuality his whole life. the reason that the father has remained distant from his son all of these years is that he believes that lack of contact means that the son won't contract it by osmosis or whichever.

my life is far from perfect and there are some things about being gay that kinda suck.

my greatest regret in this life is that i will most likely never have a child, but i will definitely never know the sensation, the miracle, of watching my/our child grow together in the person that i love the most in the world.

i can only imagine the joy of that experience.

i can't say i have many regrets, though.
i regret my drug use.

actually, that's not entirely true. i don't regret the experiences and lessons that i learned from my time in the seedy underground of LA, i just regret the cost.

i regret not chasing after someone when it was clear that...
i regret taking so long to get my act together.
i don't regret being gay.

i do, however, regret using the validation inherent in relationships to supplant my low self esteem.

i regret that it took so long to get myself back.

back to the matter at hand. i have no idea how long this rambling will be, but what i do know is that i am moved by the story of john galt. i am moved by the sickness that is him fighting what he sees as a sickness.

john's entries end in june of 2007. that is where my involvement in his story ends. i can't say i would be surprised to find out that john galt had killed himself.

john is done writing. i never really knew him. he is, in a way, a fictional construct. he is, like all good characters in fiction, a mirror showing us the joys and pains of life and the caliginous murk that is the human psyche.

thanks for listening

So, recently I have begun to truly embrace wikipedia. Anything you want to know, is there and for the most part it seems to be true. Even better, there are links to sources and links to places to go on the net to further research the chosen topic that usually dead-ends at amazon.com. i have to say that i love the logo.

look at it. it is simple and beautiful.

cisco has a commercial and in it, they show different parts of the world and how inter-connected they are through technology. there is a shot were they show a girl sitting in a halway on a laptop and she is quite obviously on wikipedia and the overdubbed voice mentions "book that write themselves" and i realized that that is the practical version of what wikipedia is.

i've been harping about linux, and now i'm harping about wikipedia. i guess that's what happens when i wrote blog posts at work. you can't get too emotionally involved with what you're writing b/c you'll be in the middle of it and then suddenly get a call.

don't get me wrong...there are plenty of things going on that warrant a long blog that lists a discussion between my self and myself. i know that there are many things that need to be addressed in my life by the fact that i cannot get a decent night's sleep to save my life. when i do sleep, i have dreams of running and being chased in bizarre situations. i wish i could stand away from them and watch them, but it's always me that's running. i want to make some kind of snarky comment that the guy who directs those films is really good, but what i really need to say is that there is something that is hunting me down from my subconscious. i cannot seem to escape and hoping that it will not find me does not make it less true.

of course, i have my suspicions about what it is that is haunting me. there are various things that i could point to. i'm self-aware enough to know, but smart enough to push these things down to where they don't affect me during the day.

i have to wonder if that's the trade. if i have the will to push things out of my mind that would torture me during the day, then maybe it's a trade-off and i have no choice; the thing will have me at night if it can't have me during the day.

the gym has been good about helping me to get more energy and to be more conscious of what my body is doing. i have fond that some spark in me that i had thought dead has re-ignited. i have the urge to create again. i have a couple of projects that i am thinking about working on. i'd like to do illustrations again. my first idea is for a cover for richard III by shakespeare, after that, maybe something for marlowe's faust and then some plates for dante's inferno.

dark and sinister is easy to do. it's a good place to put all of those pent up emotions that one can no longer safely express in the society that we live in.

i work in an office environment. people here are easily threatened and easily offended. the only way left to express the frustration and rage i feel against my daily life (the kind that i keep lock and key under anti-depressants) is in some form of art.

the reason that i am putting linux on my computer is so that i can maybe record some music and mix it together elliot smith style. there are supposed to be some really good music programs on ubuntu studio.

i was reading about elliot smith on wikipedia and I was reading about his life and listening to his music on my IPOD and thinking about the elliot smith tribute band I was in a few-3 years ago. I think there is some irony that directly after the show, I started back on meth after a month-long stretch on being clean.

i could write a whole blog just on elliot smith.

actually, i'm tired of writing like a whiny high schooler. i'd like to write about something else besides myself.

dr. linux: or how i stop worrying and learned to love the penguin

so, i recently decided to try out linux on my computer.

when i went to school, i was trained on MAC and when i got out of school, i found that PC was far more reasonably financed. so, in the intervening years, i have been using windows. i can't say that i have had a huge amount of issues, but i've never really been one to tweak my computer. there are some people who can't leave well enough alone, but i think that having a healthy fear of screwing up my computer has always kept me in check.

several years ago, i had 2 computers, but i had an ex that one day decided while i was at work that they needed to be combined into one tower. it turned out that he was right, but that didnt make me any less furious with him for messing with my computer. until very recently, i have always assumed that everyone else knew more about computers than i did and that there was so much to learn that you would have to be born to it. after my latest roommate decided to "help" me with my computer, i reckoned that that was enough. i have since taken an active role in learning how and why my computer works.

the hardware part is easy, but figuring out the software is hard. i only recently found out what the BIOS does, lol. i have been scouring the internet looking for keys to crack open my trial version of illustrator so that i won't have to pay adobe for the privilege, but then my friend justin told me about linux. i had forgotten about linux (in fact, all i remembered was the penguin-doesn't he just look like he should be a squeak toy?).

linux, if you don't know, is free-ware. the version that i am using is called UBUNTU (incidently, the name of the version is Feisty Fawn). here's a link to some info. what makes it interesting is that it can pretty much be customized however you like. i am still attatched to photoshop, don't get me wrong, but i still would like the learning opportunity that linux provides.

the other good thing about linux, and the best reason is that there are no viruses for linux.