NIGHT OF THE TRANIBORGS.

I'm writing SF, apparently. To the perfectly wonderful and incongruous soundtrack of rembetiko classics. You can tell from the title of the post that 'Utopia' is somewhere on my mind, although I feel the need to declare that my slow, softboiled SF effort is neither inspired by More's or anyone else's 'Utopia'.

I cannot, of course, guarantee that my story will not be called 'Night of the Traniborgs'.

I got back negatives for my holiday photos. All distressingly dull, as usual, but I'll excuse myself, because most of my holiday was spent climbing boulders and skipping waves. And the damned camera, the damned camera is an automatic. What can I say.

I recently translated a Bangla children's story into... into Scots, and will be posting it here as soon as I can preface it with the most articulate disclaimers possible. I wasn't expecting a standing ovation or a gift certificate, but I had mentioned that I'd be translating into Scots the previous day; the professor seemed comfortable enough reading it out; and then to say 'this is not English'. I mean: no, it's not English. Nor is it Scottish Gaelic. It's Scots. I'm not an authentic writer of Scots and I wasn't trying to pull that off, but whatever I did I did consciously. Is there something disconnect between what I was supposed to take from that observation and what I did? As a somelongtime fan of Scots-in-writing I found it fascinating. It's not perfect, it's probably laughable, but I understand the politics of this, I think, and some of the resonances between the languages made it worthwhile and pleasurable enough to pursue. So. There. Shrug.

Doshomi.

Hello. I haven't gone out yet, but art and writing and footy have kept me happy. I guess my mum's cooking helps, too. Isn't it always supposed to? Imagine the cultural embarrassment when your mum sucks at cooking. Enough salt to burn your throat and squeeze your tongue out of your mouth - na, maa, akdom noon kom hoi ni!

My brother got me to sit down to watch 'Rang de Basanti' today. It's very well-made, and the boy banter is almost hilarious. Apart from this - the trope of Earnest Young White Woman reintroducing existential-crisissified Indians to their historical heritage or things of similar, exalted nature, where have I seen this before? And ok, yay for parties. I am underwhelmed. Don't mind me, I'm just a cynical hater.

STOIC CHEESE.

Rivets in my spine. A long metallic grin.

This Tavener fellow and his Protecting Veil. I don't hear holy, I hear hole in the ground.

But their connection: woolly. Expound. Argufy. Give examples.

Project Objectify. Keepin' it light and oh-so-tight.

Look. I was gonna say stuff about, y'know, THE SPORT ITSELF, because even with my limited knowledge of skatesthetics/jargon I know Plushenko is hardcore brilliant. I was gonna try to pad and puff my post with absolutely scintillating trivia, such as the fact that, apart from being a superachieving ice star, he is also apparently in the Russian Army. I was gonna post pictures - naturally not the slightly scarring one where he's grinning at Vladimir Putin.

Then I thought, to hell with that shit! Ladies, laddies and all other gentlefolk of the world - I present Evgeni 'Sex Bomb' Plushenko.



Edit: barring the next Project Objectify post, all frothy frivolosity re footy will rest over at DLG.

the unimaginable zero summer

Dear October:


Please be quiet.

Hmm.

The local rickshawallahs are dragging out their Bishhokorma Pujo celebrations. Which include playing music really loudly. It's always Rabindrasangeet and classic Bangla film songs in the morning, and Hindi filmi hits in the afternoon. Really, it's like an unwritten rule. You know how specific ragas are associated with specific hours/periods of the day? Reminds me of that.

Last night after a weekend's worth of gnashed teeth and high blood pressure I ended up watching both English Premier League matches on tv - Chelsea-Liverpool and Arsenal-Man.Utd, each ending 1-0. I'll spare this little blog my match babble, except I am a goalie fan and I cannot lie even by omission. Petr Cech was wonderful, which made me root for Celsea even though I don't exactly support either team. See how complicated football fandom is? And in the other one, green (erm, literally, too) boy Tomasz Kuszczak did his 'mates proud. Of course Arsenal were once again criticised by the commentators for being slow starters, for not capitalising on all their chances, for their lack of Thierry Henry. I mean, I agree with the second one, but English footy seems to have this unhealthy obsession with madscramblethud!action. It makes for excellent dorkiness, of course, but I suppose I'm used to a slower, more Machiavellian oh did I just type that? scratch it more calculated style of play.

Oops, babbling despite myself. Jens Lehmann almost got his darling face broken while blocking from - was it Cristiano or Wayne Rooney? One of the brats, anyway. That was close. Over during Milan-Parma, though, poor ickle Gilardino's match ended in blood and stitches. It's not serious, but again. Close.

This morning, among the many appalling news stories I woke up to, this one gave me a bit of hope. Not the bit about the actual fact of the commercial, but the fact that Vasselli isn't taking this shit as the 'harmless joke' the men responsible for it so conveniently thought it was. You know how feminists are, always getting their knickers in a twist over yet another harmlessly jokey jab at their historical and innate incompetency at, well, everything including recognising 'irony'.

Two steps forward, three steps back: or, internalised misogyny is such a bitch (ooh, I was being ironic, don't you know). If that's depressing, have a non-sexist giggle over this!

Of bards, boys and birds.

We are studying 'Hamlet'. I am geeking out on the textual studies geekery of it.


I want. Not fond of this unhealthy obsession with the EPL, although so many of my favourite players are there. Butbut Scottish, Dutch and French league matches! I haff neffer seen those! Now if only someone would show some Bundesliga and Liga Argentina... Oh who am I kidding. I barely ever have time to watch anything, much as I'd love to. And it is frustrating to watch footer on tv anyway, imagine myopic eyes swimming in a sea of icklebickle pinpickle, and the camera whorishly following the ball even though it's almost as much fun to watch one of the goalies keep himself awake at the far end... And I still haven't decided whom to make that subversively fruity Project Objectify (a.k.a Hot Male Athletes Are Just That) post on. Aishwarya decided on Rafael Nadal, he-who-is-too-young, and Supriya on Thierry Henry, who is like an ice dancer except on grass not ice and with a ball not skates. Um.


Um. Yes. So. In my frivolous froufrouey way, the only news I will comment on has little to do with war, horror and woe, not because I don't care or have my head under sand or anything, but because this blog is now officially frothcentric. Until the next white-hot feminist rant, at any rate. The news is this: a new bird species has been discovered in India, specifically in Arunachal Pradesh. It has been named the Bugun Liocichla and it is most darling to behold, assertively coloured (guessing the picture in the paper is of a male) and spiky-capped. I read also that it has a beguiling song. How lovely is the loveliness. There doesn't seem to be too many of them, which is a situation that one hopes will change. If only there were incentive packages for the reproduction of birds, eh? (I think that rant is about to explode on to this blog very soon.)

WWJD? Whom would Jesus do? It could be... YOU!

So I rediscover an old song whose violiny bits I rather liked. Ah, it's 'Flames' by Vast. Slow and schmoopy and simple, good song for a not-yet-rainy afternoon. And ah, there are the angsty violiny bits. And ok, so the lyrics are utterly useless... 'Close the door, leave your fears behind, let me give you what you're giving me...' And then the guy goes, 'Just put me inside you, I will never ever leave.' Repeats this, more insistent now. Then crooning and violins. By now the song's spell, however cheap and brief, has been utterly broken.

I suppose the reason I collapsed into snickers has to do with a story a friend related this morning, from today's paper (I shall have to ask which one). Something about a group of nuns bringing in a hysterical rickshawallah. The rickshawallah moaned and writhed and rolled his eyes before his anxious audience - some of whom thought the poor man was going through a heart attack. But what was really happening? 'Jesus had come in him'.

Anyway, I'm going to listen to some nice Mahmoud Ahmad songs now and attempt to write something that resembles verse.

Hwæt!

My internet and computer both seem to be working, and, shockingly, in synchrony! Praise them with great praise. And I have rather neglected the blogosphere for a long time, haven't I? Have kept busy, though, with medieval texts on virginity (damned if you do, damned if you don't), trashy cable telly, and before I forget to underline this, league football

During the World Cup I remembered why and how much I'd loved the whole sprawling mess; by now, I'm keenly aware of the perilous state of my blood pressure. Because I realised: this is why I stopped watching. God, the corruption, the conflicting rumours of transfers and public statements, the conspicuous lack of any football beyond the bloody EPL on tv (rodeo boys, golfers and cricketers of the world, never have I hated you more)... But it is exactly this helpless and cynical excitement I seem to crave. I suppose I can live with the collateral damage - worrying over whether the bloodthirsty moneybags who run the business will tear Jesusboy Kaká away from AC Milan, or why Alessandro Nesta is selling Gatorade instead of spumante. Anyway, it is a beautiful game, and I'm touched by the vanity and the sublimity. Despite myself.

Regarding Steve Irwin, whose death prompted the Telegraph, my current Englang daily, to print two obituaresque articles in yesterday's paper. He seems either to be adored for his all-too-easily caricatured Australianisms and love of wildlife, or to be demonised for trying to feed his son to a crocodile and generally Disneyfying everything with teeth and scales. I actually thought immediately of Timothy Treadwell, alias the 'Grizzly Man', who got himself and his girlfriend killed by bears three years ago. Treadwell made the monumental mistake of thinking himself very like a bear, which bit of delusion proved fatal. On the other hand, people dying on the job - happens all the time, why bring convoluted notions of karma/ the animal world 'taking revenge' (Germaine, Germaine, you are not very germane) into it? What a singular connection to have made with a sea creature. Poor bloke.

I am so happy I finally got to see 'Stage Beauty'. It's heady - not with the stench of inch-perfect period drag and perfume, but with thought and insight. It is spirited and cheerful about its anachronisms. It even has a smart soundtrack. The fact that Billy Crudup has incredible hands also helps. For some reason I cannot now remember I had expected to be troubled by its treatment of gender, but that final exchange between Maria and Kynaston, where Maria asks him, 'And what are you now?' and Kynaston answers, 'I don't know', repeats this, almost awed by the revelation yet utterly at ease with it - I could have wept yes. Yes to this film, damn your cynical damnations of the human psychology, yes because 'I don't know' is a more powerful and true and audacious answer than 'this' or 'that'.

I am listening to the B-52's and my two-year old stash of Italian pop. False nostalgia reigns.

And the fangirls screamed.

OH GOD I AM REALLY DOING IT.
I AM WRITING TO STEPHEN FRY TO TELL HIM HOW MUCH I LOVE HIM.

Wonder if I can insert a salacious little epistle, codified of course. A double dose of pleasure, don't you see, first the cerebrum-wriggling exercise of deciphering the message-within-the-message, and second the trouser-squirming delight of ... well... having deciphered it.


Classes, semester three, year two, day one: Excellent. Remind me again why we didn't have Old English in the first semester?


Aishwarya keeps hinting at me to blog about things that are consequential. In fact, now that I mention it, I welcome suggestions from all quarters! I can't ever seem to be serious on this website, but I suppose there's no harm in trying. I'm game.

UGH.

Anyone from my college who's reading this - please confirm or deny the rumour that classes start on the 10th.

Working on my Bullshit Detector (tm). The zero-tolerance setting, that is.

I could explain, but I know enough about people not to trust them. So.

Notes to self.

1. Penalty shootoutss are mildly traumatic, when not downright entrants into the 'trainwreck' category.
2. FIFA's giving them referees some kinda crack and it is NOT JIVING.
3. Oh Brazil, how sick and tired I am of you. How sick and tired exactly? I wrinkle my nose and yawn the moment I see Ronaldo tumbling towards the goalpost.
4. ESPN India telejourno hack with glasses? Shut your pie-hole. Failing which, just, like, die or something. Thanks.

Memeage.

Got tagged by Aishwarya. Not tagging anyone in turn because my blog readership beyond the other people she tagged is er doubtful at best. So here goes.


I am thinking about
Sunnyside up, eggs.

I said
'We all know which of them really was hired for being pretty.'

I want to
Draw.

I wish
That gorgeous book on Schiele didn't do the inanimate-object equivalent of dancing naked in front of me. With bells on.

I miss
The news, sometimes.

I hear
Lebanese pop. Vot?

I wonder
If I should write to Stephen Fry (oh my god, my palms are so clammy they're practically clams, how do you write to that man without exposing yourself as a witless loutish spewer of metaphoric botty-dribble?).

I regret
School.

I am
Your daddy.

I dance
Like Moz.

I sing
Songs by The Smiths, operatically. I am awesome. *inserted pointed look from taggee in general direction of tagger*

I cry
For my country! Alas ehui hay bhogobaan.

I am not always
This patriotic.

I write
In cursive. Ain't nothin' sexier.

I confuse
Death metal bands with other death metal bands.

I need
Money to spend on books.

I should try
Sushi.

I finish
With a clean plate.


Ta-ta for now.

Fame fame fatal fame.

It's been a rough couple of months, my little honeylumps, sugarcrumbs and other assorted antipastry. Did you miss me? Aww.

I have the cough from hell, very puerile of old Luci to poke me in the alveoli with his silly cutlery every two and a half minutes. It's summertime and the weather is fine for the sweet oblivion of sleep and misery. I now have no idea if I should pick up a Middle English reader or a copy of 'How To Read D.H. Lawrence's Fiction Without Wanting To Commit Random Acts of Homicide - For Dummies' because this optional course business is just sparkly and unpredictable like that.

There seems to be a copy of 'Trainspotting' in the Film Studies library, which is exciting but sad because Ewan IS SO NOT Rent Boy.

What else? VH1, please stop showing Arctic Monkeys videos. As India's resident expert on British 'indie' rock, I declare them provincial, overrated and just plain sorry.

I fail to understand what I've recently identified as a folkloric obsession with the procreative powers of snot, but I guess it's all good.

God the heat.

I've been licking the fridge clean of all kinds of yummy summer fruits. Aam, well, of course, but also talshash and lichoo - such chastely pale watery jellyish things.


While writing songs - rather heavy on the lyric side, alas - I occasionally stop and think, why do I even need a defined 'chorus'? Or for that matter a 'bridge'? But the basics are basics for a good reason. The real challenge of songwriting is not even the songwriting part. And yes, one of the songs is dedicated to an oddly charming, quite alarming man with a disproportionately large head on his queenly shoulders. It promises to be by turns lustful, worshipful, scathing and cold. (I've been learning from the Wainwright-McGarrigle school of the politics of lovehate.)


I was almost forgetting. Last night I watched an entire episode of a reality TV show! It was called 'The Cut' - you know there's plenty of design school wank to be found where people have 'clothing artist' after their name. These shows never fail to amaze me - we have here successful (well, one measure of success at least), smart young people who are getting The Big Opportunity to prove to the world their successfulness and smartness, but all they manage to prove is their (callow) youth. Tommy Hilfiger (did I spell that right?) is the Donald Trump, here, as the ugly corporate panjandrum with hair that would be ashamed to grow on the arse of an... ass. And the tagline? Is the brilliant, cutting 'You're out of style. Take the runway.'

Um! Let's see. There were pushy, desperate, people, of course. Poor teamwork, predictably. On one team there was a straight white woman who had to work with a gay black man;she harrassed him and in doing so made an revolting clown of herself. On internationally broadcast telly. People must have really fucked up brains if they can take so unquestioningly to heart that all publicity is good publicity.

I have a tremendous distaste for any smart successful young person who can say without collapsing into self-deprecating humour that they are the best and they always win and they don't know what being second is. Crass, crass, crass. But then reality TV was never supposed to be about reality - it's about TV, and this sort of earnest pronouncement is good for a laugh. Because suspense is impossible in a medium where every day brings a new cliffhanger.

But this is old hat. I missed this week's 'House', bah.

'... of nothing in particular'

I looked at the first Sin City book today. The story bored me to death but I was hooked to the gorgeous stark art. Come to think of it, I thought the artwork was unnecessarily fussy. Comic geeks, feel free to kill me for the sacrilege.

I have a Holy Bible now. The inside cover says

Presented to :-
Dr B.D. Agarwalla F.R.C.S.
4 Bishop Lifnoy Road
Cal-20.

With best of compliments of :-
Michael Bhattacharjia
Gideon Association.
C/o "Waldorf"
24-B Park St. Calcutta 16.

Today was a beautiful day. Today was a beautiful day in Kolkata. Today was.

A gem! Truly, a gem!

Found in a PoCo theory book:
... whereas Western gynocriticism heralds the pen(is) as responsible for fathering texts and the female ink/milk as a possible lubricant for the blank page.

I read gender theory and literary theory and it's a lot more fun than you'd think, but the sheer hilarity of it shines through, sometimes. As it does up there.


One of the recent Da Vinci Hullaballoo articles somewhere quotes flamboyantly gay actor Ian McKellen. What? Ian is one of the least flamboyant actors around. He brings the snark, you idiot journo, prepare to be decimated. But it reminded me of how much of a cliche it's turned into, like troubled rockstar, only more pervasive. If you're gay you are by default flamboyant. If you're straight and you regularly talk to the press about your sexual exploits, you're not labelled flamboyantly hetero (Eva Longoria, I'm looking at you). The undertone is, however, that 'flamboyance' is somehow disturbing. The world likes its gays withdrawn, depressed, closeted, dead. Woe unto them if ever they express a lack of shame or guilt! Of course, Lesbians Don't Exist, except in the liberated (COUGH) fantasies of straight men, so there are no flamboyant lesbians. But wait, what does it then mean whenever the players of the Brazilian football team are written up as 'the flamboyant striker' etc etc. ? Oooh.


When I was at school, a lot of girls who watched the football World Cup were mocked by the boys for supporting teams because the players were attractive. I call bullshit. First of all, boys, there happens to be something aesthetically delightful about grown men piddling around on grass in shorts and translucent jerseys clamouring after a BIG BALL. (Incidentally, going by the spirit of the PoCo book sentence I quoted, perhaps the reason why goalies are so frequently villified is that they're in the sole feminised role in their team? Their job is to resist, if in vain, penetration? I like this little theory of mine.) Second! Make fun of your fellow fans only when you've pulled that twice-life-size David Beckham poster off your own wall.

You can crush us, you can bruise us, but you have to answer to...

Increasing reluctance to reveal much of my thoughts. The world filtered through my ego, slick/shoddy rainbows in puddles of petrol.

I've been drawing and writing, though. And have rediscovered the Clash.

So. Hello, of sorts. Recommend a contemporary work of fiction in either Bangla or Hindi. Sharp, smart, bitter, possibly on crack. Go on, I've bookworms burrowing my brain through and they demand tastier morsels.




Beastly!

With Gaaaa-wd on our saaaa-ide

I am ITCHING to skip straight to the Johnny Cash.

Reader, let it be understood without any doubt remaining whatsover that music is above almost everything else, for me. Even above literature. There, I said it. No big deal, really, multitasking brains and opposable thumbs, y'know. But still. I can't claim to have heard more music than anybody or the coolest bands or anything - and I don't care to, that sort of declaration has nothing to do with music and everything to do with the distended, diseased ego even so-called 'music experts' often fall prey to.

However, my musicobsession should not be construed as indicative of an indiscriminately open mind. I am willing to try anything twice - I will make the effort I sometimes I do not even make for books or for people - but I will not stand being talked down to - my experience as a musician and a listener deserves simple human respect, and a little more from hacks who take the easy route and say, for example, oh, you don't get Jimi Hendrix, you're a loser.

I don't get Jimi Hendrix. What does that mean? Precisely that. I don't get Jimi Hendrix. What it doesn't mean: that I'm somehow 'inferior' or 'ignorant' because I don't enjoy his music.



Oh, and by the way: the next person who says that Queen the band are 'not worth talking about' needs to... do either of the following:
1) Listen to their damned music already. Don't open your mouth before you've opened your ears, idiot.
2) Accept that this is their own opinion and that it does not allow them to stomp childishly over people who like Queen. Music is not about power, or at least it should not be and why perpetrate when you can progress?



I think Frank Zappa is the shit. It's ok by me if you think it's shit. You want to discuss it? Let's agree to disagree and START FROM THERE. Let's shake hands. Or just shake your hips. Music is fun. It's not your kingdom and bands are not your phantom army. Listen and let listen.

Five things.

1. My mother apparently watches Animax. I'm speechless.

2. I am making a new mixtape. This one's for my useless arse of a brother. Haven't planned the tracklist yet, but Janis Joplin's 'Mercedes Benz' has to be in there somewhere. Because, as we all know, it's a song of great social and political import. I am a potentially compulsive maker of mixtapes. I don't make them for people I like or love, I make them for people who want to listen to new things. Surprisingly few people, would you believe it. And this puts me in an awkward position, because my brother does not want to hear new things. He wants to vegetate under the influence of Eurotrashy technotrica. I'm ashamed of him :[ Or maybe they think I'm going to stuff their ears with artery-splitting industrial rock. Which, for the record, I rarely listen to, and only two or three bands. Mixtaping is so horribly indie, but I get an enormous satisfaction out of introducing music to people. I like to hear things like: 'Wow, I thought she was a a certain kind of singer, you know what I mean? But actually she's amazing.' This is the best, though: 'I listened to it, and I want more!' Loyal readers (yeah, right), feel free to ask for one of these spifftacular compilations, and I'll come up with one sometime after the first week of June.

3. 'My' room in this flat is an utter downer. One wall is all desk and shelves, another is tedious porcelain and glass goods I am told would make us thousands at the auctioneer's. Another is window and door. The one wall I have relatively free is badly lit. I've decided to put up a noticeboard there, to pin photos, drawings, reminders, quotes and other miscellany on. Is that a very teenage thing to do? I'm afraid I can't care. Waking up to the sight of Morrissey waggling bouquets of flowers and wearing one of his blinding 80s shirts would be heavenly. And I'll finally remember to do all those chores I'm supposed to.

4. Last week I saw my first Pasolini film - his take on the Canterbury Tales. It was hilarious, it was porny, it had Ninetto, it was - well, almost everything I expected a Pasolini film to be. I'm actually more familiar with his literary work - read his first two novels and many of his poems in translation. And of course I've read about him. I don't think I was prepared for the level of slapstick sexviolence, although I think I took to it better than, oh, twenty- or thirty-odd other students in the AV room did. A lot of nervous giggles and meaningful silences in the air. The last sequence, with demons in lurid body-paint shitting out churchmen and welcoming the new denizens of Hell with some thorough buggering, nearly had me in splits. And that's interesting, because the joke of this film, the comedy if you will, was so blackly malicious it wasn't really funny anymore. Ah, don't you love tortured avant-garde cultural icons. They're there to make you feel better about yourself. If you dare.

5. Bob Dylan is gonna be a radio jockey. Cue news items starting: Hey Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me... There're rumours of a new biopic on him featuring five or six different actors as Dylan. Very cool idea, especially as it seems they're not going for physical resemblance. The article also said that Julianne Moore is going to be in it, but not as Dylan. Bah, why not? A woman playing the Sainted Not-yet-dead White Male Bard of Classic Folkrock - that would be cooler than Antarctica. Although let it be stressed that these are rumours - which when Dylan is concerned are cranked out with unholy speed and regularity.

mapless

you've conjured the snow. now make
a circle, inhale
with caution. learn this tongue
of precious metal. do not
call, for it will come
in its own time: that sullen
wing, that slow reverb.

I just wanted to tell you

that if I were any more in touch with my inner child I'd probably be a paedophile.

Here, have this.





Also, the Tim Supple Dream was seriously delish. And had some seriously dreamy and funny actors, too. For some reason I misread the brochure and thought we were going to walk out onto the greens with the play. That would have been quite interesting, though.

Exorcising the Klimtmonster.

Didn't think about this. Argh. How expensive is gold leaf??

Oh but I may as well try and catch the wind...

He's like a hobbit. He even looks like Billy Boyd. It's silly-making, to hear this floofy pixiehobbitminstrel burring about black-eyed native girls. We all know what boys like him do in Mexico.


So I voted. A deformed purple exclamation mark on my left index fingernail proves that yes, indeed, I voted. What is there to say? I stood in line for half an hour early in the morning. It was breezy and nice. I said to my father, 'Look! A cat!' and pointed up at the ninth floor of a high-rise. My father did, and gravely replied, 'Your eyesight must really be failing. That's a pigeon.' I suppose I did wonder for a moment how the cat could swivel its head like it did... But I was far from the only person present with failing eyesight.
A little old lady with frizzy triangular hair scolded her not so little old husband as other old ladies snickered or looked away. The first polling officer outdid many of the hard-of-hearing voters: he was completely deaf. 'I haven't voted before.' 'WHAT?' 'Here's my library card.' 'WHAT?' The second polling officer was hard of seeing, and succeeded in detaching entirely my photo from said library card because he couldn't find the stamp. Eh.
I'm almost sure the machine I voted on was rigged. But no matter. It's not that kind of democracy anyway, and judging from the hysterical news coverage later in the day 'first-time voting' is overrated beyond all reason. As I said, no matter. My parents bribed me with yummy greasy fried breakfast; after which I promptly fell asleep, waking up not before three hours had passed.


'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. Reread this last night, am going to the Tim Supple production later today. I'm quite excited by the prospect, although like any narrow-minded middle-class maiden I am a little worried about having to travel so late in the evening. Worse than any monstrous mouse, I tell you.

I was in the room when my mother was watching one of the Bangla TV programmes - you know the kind, with segments on cooking and health and law and fashion. The latter my mother watches to 'check out the competition', as I like to call it. Today's fashion segment featured a stinking rich, greasily complacent woman boasting about how she gives jobs to 'underprivileged children'. Um... does she know how creepy that sounds? My mother told me about this fifteen year old girl. She was hired by a boutique owner to do extensive embroidery on a sari. It was the girl's first real job, and did it with complete enthusiasm, staying up nights to finish it by lamplight. When she was finished, the boutique owner gave her... thirty rupees. The girl went home and cried because she would have thrown the money in the woman's face except when you're poor thirty rupees is better than nothing and it was - it is a form of prostitution but what can you do? I can't not hate these women with their fluorescent orange hair (a hundred henna treatments all gone wrong), with their mincing little-girl voices, with their expensive jewellery, going on these fucking 'women's shows' and making their name out of someone else's labour, the someone else invariably cheated out of her deserved pay.


Submitted my L&OA paper yesterday. It's twelve pages of doublespaced but solid prose. I'm quite sure it won't be boring, although I felt a little twinge of regret looking at everyone else's papers, all prettily foldered-up, with pictures to complement the text. I'm not big on the funky fonts, though, this is a paper and not a fan website. I have great hopes for my paper, I'll work on it some more.

Rap, or, I'm Not Kidding.

Re: my new fascination for rap as a form. I say rap as a 'form' and not as (misguided definiton of) 'lifestyle', because I have seen pictures of stupid NRI gangsta-rappa-wannabes and I cannot understand why people should wish to ghettoise themselves. I will be honest and admit that what I dig most about music is melody. And I haven't been listening to any rap lately. I also know very little about the history of rap beyond what was mentioned by the ubiquitous Professor Lal in one of the Lit & Other Arts classes. By the way, I like the name 'the ubiquitous Professor Lal', it has a lovely gangsta feel to it, I shall call him that from now on.

I took an interest in the work of Tupac Shakur and of Notorious B.I.G. - see, any art form or instution will be rife with Dead Males, whether Black or White. No I will not quote Michael I-love-children Jackson, thank you. Who else? Hmm, does Eminem count? I think him tiresome, immature and masturbatory to a disturbing extreme. Yes, and of course Public Enemy's 'Fears of a Black Planet', whose cover I once spectacularly misread as 'Fears of a Black Plantaganet' (I blame History cramming, but it's still charming).

Let me put it this way. I am going to listen to rap this summer and contemplate how a young brown middle-class feminist can appropriate and transfigure that experience. I have been writing rap, and because the internet is a crazy place and I am a crazy person I shall record my songs in .mp3 and force my friends to listen to them. Thence, naturally, to a lucrative record deal. Don't expect any gyrating women in the video, though - oh, all right, I'll throw in some dashingly pretty multiracial dancer boys. Happy? Good.

It is like a vacation.

Vocative.

O ... o. o. o.

The stench from the canal.

Only connect.

Everything is wonderful.

I have to stop giving people the benefit of the doubt.

Thank you for the teenage angst.

I don't dig the sleazy businnessman/sex tourist look you've got going on, and your obsession with your testicles is about as bizarre as your militant vegetarianism, and to be fair I don't even like most of your songs, but there's just something about you, you silly old man. I will hear you sing a cover version of Gloria Gaynor's 'I Will Survive' before I die. Or you do. Dear me, I'm so cruel. In any case, you shall have some of these digestive biscuits, for I have too many.

Endsems may be delayed by about a week because of voting. So I hope and pray. Who needs one and a half months of summer holidays anyway?

I have to buy at least five books, all college-related. This decision made after coming to the sad conclusion that I cannot borrow them, and it would be impractical in the extreme to make photocopies. It would be so nice to have a scholarship. Bah.

A man of means by no means

Reading by candlelight is interesting. If I'm really caught up in the book, the flickflickshadowflick makes it such a sensuous experience, even if the book itself is, say, Jung's 'Modern man in search of a soul' (you know what depths of despair a person is plumbing when they dredge up that title). So, yes, summer is here. Summer in Kolkata is always going to remind me of woesome things like mortality, and winter of freedom and warmth and wellbeing. Oh the joys of varying perspectives.





'Brokeback Mountain' on Sunday, the cheapest ticket, which was a meagre one-thirty rupees. My pockets have phantom pain. It was beautiful. It wasn't perfect, but if I put aside the criticism and consider what it means to me, it means a tremendous lot. As it did to many other viewers, I am sure. This may or may not include the group of giggling high school boys sharing the same row at Inox Forum (all dressed in virginal white...). I'm in half a position now to contribute, if belatedly, to the BBM-vs-Crash debate, but I don't particularly care for the Oscars (anyone in their right mind will tell you it's all about the gowns, and even the gowns are getting ugly), and after everything I've read about 'Crash' I can't come away wanting to see it instead of BBM a second time - or even saving up for 'V for Vendetta'.



Speaking of theatres and films. Apparently it's unusual, for someone like me (read 'J.U.D.E student') to not be a regular theatre-and-or-cinema- goer. Apparently this means I am stodgy (what I heard before college as, inevitably, 'bhalo meye, podashona kore, disco-fisco-e jaye naa') and lead a sad, sad life. I do actually have a sad, sad life, but not sad-as-in-pathetic.
There were some screenings of the 'right' kind of films, recently, that I saw posters of and wanted to go to. I'm talking about the Fell Beast Fellini. I should have gone. But I had no time. Horror of horrors, that must mean she's cramming for exams that are, well, a whole month away!
I've suspected this for a while: people who are ambitious, even aggressively so, but do not go around tooting and tuttling trumpets - there's this popular assumption that they're so radical they must be not radical at all. The seventh circle of Pomo hell. Occasionally, I admit, I feel like promoting my various talents (how many people in college who know me know that I sing? I paint? I swim?), but screw that. I'm going to do things my way, and not because I need the most impressive resume/a raving fanclub/whatever. That's what punk is all about.

You saw it here first.

What is Dishwalla's 'Opaline', sonically, but sweetly angstful Calipop washed with electric guitars too sensible to explode? Nevertheless I listen. It's great morning music.

I've been working and took a tea break to read the newspaper. And. And. And. I'm a little shocked, because Brokeback Mountain is in town. Now that I can go to see it I'll hate it, I'll hold it up standards and find it lacking, I'll fall off my seat laughing at Gyllenhaal's 70s porno moustache. I will blink a little stupidly because I expected Owen Wilson to pop out of nowhere (because Owen Wilson would be my first choice for this movie, I don't have to explain why). But Canada, she acts with madness in her method. I know this simply by looking at the stills. And yet I know her beauty is the beauty of motion. She has something of Middle-earth, so sentient is she. Oh my, Brokeback made it this far.

I wish I'd read Kannada literature before. In a way, because I still haven't, because I don't know the language. Sensitive, these issues. Everything is so interesting.

Unpleasant reminder

that I am all too human: I completely forgot about the double period with ADG on mediaeval Christianity. While the classes were going on I was tucking happily into a book of poetry at the DL. Ragini had completely forgotten as well, and there's nobody else in Ugh One with Chaucer and Langland.
I can't quite believe it. Missing one class wouldn't be too horrible, I suppose. Missing two... ye gods and little green fishes, my mind is going.

I was petting a George Harrison book - lavishly laved with photographs, of course - at one of those swanky chainbookstores and realised that to me, as to countless other fans, the Beatles don't represent anything particularly radical. They're comforting and familiar. Here there be perils, such as questions about art, scepticism over a celebrity-philia that falsely equates pictures of rockstars with the contents of family albums in terms of emotional value, and the simple fact that, horror of horrors, this has nothing to do with the music.
Screw that, I say. I'd have bought the damn thing, but the price reminded me of the real world and nasty things like capitalism and professional leechcraft. Haha.

The personal is political. And vice versa.

I put my caramel coloured shirt on the wrong way. I noticed while pouring myself a glass of water, and cannot be bothered to put it on right now.




Filling out forms is a bit of a nightmare, because I'm always afraid I'll write something that'll disqualify the wrong document. One little detail... Reminds me of Algebra exams, where invariably I would finish with flourish - after having written two x instead of two x squared. For someone who loves details in so many things I'm dangerously casual. So my endsem exam form is still tucked away in my notebook.

Thinking about the semester that's about to end I'm terribly disappointed. Not in myself. Careful and frequent analyses of the situation, and I'm convinced I've been getting a lot of really bad vibes off the two core courses. Correction: the way the professors have handled them. Yes, I'm criticising professors. I've been reading about education and thinking about it since I was in junior school; now that I'm in college, the real fun's just begun.

So it goes like this: Postcolonialism is exciting and vitally important, but there are too many texts, not enough theory, not enough time. Much of it is new to me, some of it I already knew, but as I see it, the point of this is to increase awareness and enable us to articulate. Instead, we've been going through subtle or not-so-subtle guilt therapy sessions. As for Literature and the Other Arts, our esteemed course leader's favourite hobby... wait, it's actually his profession... is to demean his students; his most visible tactic, to tell them to think for themselves but really expect them to agree with him on everything; his catchphrase, 'you should all know this by now'.

'The educational system demands of everyone alike that they have what it does not give.' -- [Pierre Bourdieu]

I'm not going to add a little disclaimer here - no offence meant! I'm no expert I'm just giving my opinion! Really he's the greatest guy ever! I'm going to say: since when was university teaching about telling students almost all the time that they're stupid, they're shallow, they don't know anything, even their 'own culture'? Why does he think we turn up for classes, participate even at the risk of being the target of yet another needless insult to our basic intelligence, bother to read up on topics not within the confines of the syllabus? Perhaps I'm alone in feeling this way. I hope I'm not, because that would be, well, doubly troubling.

Because there is something too easy about this brand of cynicism, this kind of reckless sarcasm. There's something loathesome and self-congratulatory about it. I'm not upset because I'm not doing fabulously this semester. I'm upset because these two courses are amazing, or would have been, and I could have finished my college experience remembering them above all others simply because of how radical they are. Clearly I won't. I've been painting more than reading. Thank you, professor, you've indirectly (oh, the blinding irony!) led me to take up again something I had neglected for years.



Being unempowered and brainwashed and loserly as I am, I shall end this post with a picture of the beautiful, always surprising Peter Murphy, because beauty is balm for the soul.



And yes, those are fishnets.

Shanti.

Creak squirr yaaaawn

Suddenly I want to go to Turkey. It snows there, in some parts, sometimes, as I've read, but I'm sure it's just as elaborately stifling as... here. Or perhaps not. To sustain such a fantasy one must improve on its basic mechanisms. The same principle as any 'plausible' fiction.

Sometime this week I'll take a whole day off, sleep on it. Maybe I'll come up with something interesting. But it doesn't work like that.

I still remember how personally cheated I felt when I read that what they call an eye transplant is merely a corneal transplant. All our pudding men crumble. A dab of icing, and his smile falters. His body is a feast of ants. We feign surprise, although they have only followed the path through our clumsy walls.

I'm getting addicted to Animal Planet again. Watched a documentary about crocodiles in Mauritania yesterday. Field-toned naturalists who don't hump animals and screech about how beeeyoooiful they are - most refreshing.

One two three check

My sketchblog is up.

Fannish nostalgia and general soppiness.

turn your face to the green world
use well the days

I don't apologise for the fact that, despite everything, I'm a Ringer. Tolkien geek. Wishful Middle-earthian. Potential wearer of Frodo Lives! buttons.

Because, come on. Frodo lives. Seriously, really, truly does.

'All the water of Bombay', hahaha

The 'Filmi Shakespeare' paper was quite interesting - although I'm not surprised at my utter ignorance. Movies don't like me very much. Even really good ones. They shy away from me and mine. Let's hope frustrated cinephiles in theatres across Kolkata never find out.

A friend has been telling me all sorts of horrific gossip about Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst and such. I'm really into gossip these days - listening more than spreading, I'll admit.

Tomorrow is a very special day. It's not on any conventional calendars. It's silly and magnificent and pathetic and profound, and I'll probably make a post about it.

Have rediscovered the music of Cher. She's one of those pop stars who simultaneously think they're better than they really are/are better than they seem to think. The first song I heard by her was her cover of Marc Cohen's (I think it was this way round...) 'Walking in Memphis'. Since then I've had the mixedfortune of listening to several of her other hits, often accompanied by puzzling music videos, where often she resembles fantasy/scifi heroines from alien worlds. I'm convinced this is something pop culture theorists have not looked into too closely yet. I've even seen 'Moonstruck'. I think vocoders are evil (except when used by Imogen Heap) and should be kept out of her reach. I wonder how many facejobs it took her to look like a mummy at the far end of 50. That was not a typo.
It has been said that, after a nuclear holocaust, only cockroaches and Cher will survive.
I hope she goes on making guilt-inducingly addictive pop songs well into her 80s. Because I'd pick Cher over cockroaches any day. Although I love cockroaches and harbour them in my home as if they were beloved pets.

In case this has not been passed around many times already.

Take kep! - Geoffrey Chaucer hath a blog.
Includes the most creative Brokeback Mountain spoof in recent history. Or in all its brief history.

Taken out of its filmic context 'I wish I knew how to quit you' sounds rather less emotional. But what about: 'I WOLDE I KNEWE HOW OF THEE I MIGHT BE QUITTEN!'

Heee.

My Perfect Man. Hearts and flowers optional.

A while back I got tagged for this meme.

MY PERFECT MAN.

It's impossible to write or read that phrase without wanting to cringe. Not just the heterosexist assumption -or the dubious status of that word 'perfect'. It's just one of those sentences, along with 'I can explain' and 'I accidentally pushed a marble up my right nostril when I was sixteen', that are inherently embarrassing. Fact.

So I couldn't decide whether I'd like to declare that my perfect man doesn't exist because nobody's good enough, or ironically list every pedantic requirement I can spontaneously concoct, or simply post another picture of Hugh Laurie looking stubbly and pale and intellectual and distant and sexy, or just talk about MY PERFECT WOMAN instead.

All of those would be equally do-able.

But for once I'm taking a meme more seriously than perhaps it could ever be worth. I'm going to tell you what would make a man my perfect man.

Being (pro-)feminist.

'Man is a political animal', they write in textbooks all the time. Interchangeable with 'rational', 'scientific', 'social'. The curious thing about this rational, scientific, social, political animal is that he has constantly proved himself, to carry over the generalising 'he', a venomous, appalling, needlessly violent, malicious, murderous WOMAN-HATER.

The bad news, which is not really news at all, being that even men who are not overtly misogynistic contribute more or less directly to the hysterical hatred of the 'other' (sex) to the point where people can write books with titles like 'Men are from Mars, women are from Venus' and be taken seriously. That's one piddly little example. I could spend my lifetime listing others and I'd never exhaust the inventory.

I don't need to, because there's a handy little word to effectively sum it up: patriarchy.

So that the most radical and convincing thing a man could ever do, in the context of this perfect-man-for-me-shit, is to be, unequivocally, actively, painfully, wholly consciously be counted of his own free (hah) will of this number, this thing called 'feminism' that is so reviled, so un- (as opposed to mis-) understood.

Because hair colour, sense of humour, taste in music? Those are all negotiable. Or even non-negotiable. Those are all small things, secondary things compared to this.

This is what is important. If you think I'm exaggerating beyond all hyperbole, and that it's really very simple, and you can name lots of men you, why, personally know! who qualify for this ONE criterion, think again. You can probably count them on one hand (or finger, if we're reading by joints). If at all.

Art Supplies R Us.

I wish I could emulate that mirrored 'r' shape here.

There are some people who ooze complacence but haven't the slightest idea exactly what they're dealing with. One of the shop assistants at Kumar's Concern - I've always known he was a smirky patronising wet turd, and I should have remembered that that combination is always inherently pathetic. I want watercolour inks, you walking talking oil slick, and that means watercolour inks. What are watercolour inks used for? Why, what a profound question. I believe they do what they say on the label - then again, how dare I presume to tell art store people about art supplies?

I'm not a cheerful believer in the 'customers are always right' school of thought, but I don't think I ever signed up for the one that goes 'the people running the shop are less likely than anybody else within a ten mile radius to be an arsehole'. He came up, at any rate, with something called 'photo colour'. Then someone else made one of those faces condescending old men always find it necessary to make at younger women and said he had never heard of watercolour inks. Well, isn't that marvellous.

-----

In PoCo we've moved on to Caribbean poetry. I think we had two classes on the Cambodia issue. Pitfalls of the semester system, yes, but sometimes I have the feeling that the B.A. English course at J.U. is like Englitt: A Crash Course. We're certainly breaking speed records. Then the scramble for exams. Perhaps I ought to be sitting with my nose in a book twenty hours a day. Or agonising over my dangerous, insulting involvement in the perpetration of stereotypes and spreading the poison of a colonised mindset. O may my poor brain not break under the pressure.

Have wiped two years' worth of dust off compoota screen.

Cannot believe how shiny all the pictures look now!

I love Ray Davies' voice so so much.

I need my Kinks fix, this weekend. I listen to these beautiful songs and feel a little angry that people hardly talk about them. It's like the 60s canon has only room for four or five people, and everyone else is 'not as good'. As I discover more and more of these bands, I'm a little shocked by how many of them are generally, criminally neglected. And as the header says, the voice. Not even the Beatles had a voice like this, a voice I hear and immediately want to sing along with.

Currently stuck on 'Waterloo Sunset'. It is love.




TV is fascinating. Just yesterday I caught two very hmmworthy shows.


One: America's Next Top Model. Because tv, especially this brand of 'reality tv', is so carefully scripted, it's amazing how much shit people are capable of spouting. So we have six girls travelling to Japan to be judged on their 'commercial value', literally and literally.

One of the things they have to do is act for an advertisement for some kind of Japanese food. One of the girls can't make herself swallow it; she ducks under the table and spits the food out into a glass. Reality tv is all about moments like these. As the judges put on various faces of malicious delight barely disguised as horror, you get the sense, shit, this girl's in trouble. And she is. Tyra Banks, who hosts the programme, looking remarkably like a sour blanched b-movie vampire, shakes her head, says things: 'As a model you have to respect the product.' The others chip in gravely, clearly enjoying it. 'A model has to have humility.' 'You have to CONNECT with the product, you have to convince people.' And, here is the crucial part, 'You want to be a top model, you gotta suck it up.'

To be a top model, you have to suck it up. Because that proves your dedication. Your determination, your desperation, your reason for being.

As a model, you have to respect the product. Because as a model, you're no better than a product. Bow down before it, for it provides your livelihood. Don't shit where you eat- eat what you shit.

But wait. There's more. The Japanese client, who doesn't speak English, consults gravely with his translater, who informs the girl that she has 'insulted the client, Japanese food and culture and the Japanese people'. When that girl spat out a lump of something she couldn't swallow because it made her gag, she obviously didn't realise the symbolic portentiousness of that simple act. She failed to grin and bear it. THUS SHE INSULTED JAPAN AND ITS PEOPLE AND ITS FOOD OMG!!! Now, I'm all for certain forms of what is dismissed as 'political correctness', but the line is sometimes quite fine. This is crossing it. Does anyone with two brain cells to rub together seriously watch a tv commercial and assume that whichever actor/model is DOING THEIR JOB by HAWKING that product loves it and uses it all the time? That is fucking ridiculous. The tv ads/ reality show industry is based on lies, on hypocrisy. It is so funny that it's not funny at all, that the already dehumanised human model is supposed to bow to THE PRODUCT.

And hey, I hate sushi. Maybe I shouldn't go to Japan, because if I did I'd be polluting the country with my anti-Japan sushi-hating. Hahaha.



Two: It's the Christian channel! And, gasp, we are looking at... Biblical muppets! Longhaired Texan Samson is being milked of his secretz by falsetto-voiced Delilah! But before you laugh - cuuut. It's really a little cowboy lad watching them muppets on the teevee. And his mother is not amused. 'CHORES COME FIRST', she declares, busting a few blood vessels as she faces her lazy bum of a son. The son is not amused. He whines. Then he goes out and cuuut. Little cowboy lad meets littler cowboy lad. The following hilarious exchange occurs:

Little cowboy lad: Let's go down to the old mine-shaft.
Littler cowboy lad: But I'm afraid we'll get caught!
[they go anyway]

ARE YOU THINKING WHAT I'M THINKING? Damn straight.
Or not so straight. Giggle.

I AM A RAPPER NOW.

A rapper-in-training, that is. I don't have street cred and I don't have bling, but who cares when all you need is RAP?

O blaring trumpets of atonal sapphire perfectibility! O curmudgeonly cormorants. Beware, I say. Beware, as Gaiman made someone say somewhere in a grungy comic book, of the ideas of March!

I lied.

All of this is a lie. Or multiple lies, symbioticking. Nobody knows me, least of all myself.

We will stop with that. Our important public service message ends there. To proceed.



I love 'House'. I love Hugh even more. He looks so different and yet not different at all, here. You know there's hope for mainstream teledrama yet when a character can be this disconcerting. Oh his gorgeous gorgeous bloodshot eyes.

I'm listening to the 'Brokeback Mountain' soundtrack. I'm thinking of starting over, none of this hopeless eraser-jobbing. Rather palimpsests. The heart of the onion. An onion by any other name. Skinned deep.

To proceed.

I found myself listening to the Sgt Pepper album almost 24/7 recently. Does anyone else feel an inexplicable urge to turn the volume down when side 2 starts? We were taaaaaalking, shhh shh sh-sh-SHUT UP. It's a little embarrassing.

Anyway, here is the sort of thing I do in class while industrious others are busy taking notes or staring and nodding at the professor.

Last night I watched a film on, was it, Zee Studio. It was called 'Fateless'. I think Zee Studio is doing what most other 'English-language film' channels are doing - trying to gain viewers by airing previous Oscar-nominated flicks. I'm sure Star Movies has already shown 'Titanic' three or four times, haha. The difference seems to be that Zee Studio is also airing films nominated in the foreign film category. So, here we are. It's a Holocaust film in the most direct sense - we see an adolescent boy wrenched from his home, cattle-trucked to the grimly obscene irony that is Buchenwald. To do labour, not to be gassed, but that doesn't make it any easier, does it? I haven't read the original novel, and I had to divide my attention between visuals and subtitles, and I don't have any film jargon. What I can say is-

It had some especially good moments. Seen as a whole, it's more of a collection of snapshots, or of anecdotes, which is not a bad thing, but then you have the very artsy use of colour filters, and the slightly annoying way scenes have of fading into black. Abrupt cuts would, I think, have served the material better.

I have no idea what Daniel Craig was doing there.

Probably the most disconcerting thing about 'Fateless' is how beautiful the protagonist, Gyuri, played by some kid called Marcell Nagy, is throughout the whole hellish mess. Even after he's broken and reduced to this naked will to survive - and even after he comes close to wanting to lay himself down and die - he's painfully, painfully beautiful. Now perhaps I'm more of a paedophile than I'd be comfortable accepting - but really, I don't think it's what I mean. It makes more sense at the end. Gyuri goes back to face the hypocrites, the spouters of meaningless platitudes, the spooners out of empty sympathy, and the film ends with his asserting that he will go on- there was happiness to be found even in the camp, and nothing is so unbearable that it cannot be endured. Perhaps what I found beautiful in the character (I don't know how good Nagy is, but I felt for him, and it didn't feel cloying, so he was doing something right) is that. The defiance, despite it all. The will to survive, which is too often said to be 'animal', therefore vulgar, therefore ugly like truth. But this, too, is truth. Clumsy, clumsy paraphrasing. I'm teetering on the edge of dangerous words, words like 'transcend', like 'vital'. Then again, 'vital' is right, subversively, utterly right. It made me think, and I'm still thinking. I'll probably have to read Primo Levi again.


Graffiti I saw on campus today: one of the many anti-Bush slogans that have cropped up seemingly overnight. Rather unimaginative, but oh well. What made me smile, though, was that the 's' in 'Bush' was stylised into a swastika. Equating, naturally, Bush with Hitler. Whoever painted that either believes that, out of respect, the swastika should always stand as a sign for 'Nazi', for hatred, for genocide, for Evil. Or has conveniently forgotten that it's really a symbol that has been around for ages, a symbol belonging to many cultures, a symbol that was appropriated by the Nazis, a symbol that anyone walking about right here in Kolkata will find on anything from coconuts during a pujo to crusty chairs at outdoor functions. That a swastika is not always or everywhere a shorthand for 'Nazi'. There are arguments for both sides, of course, but I just wonder if they knew. If we're protesting against George W. Bush, shouldn't it be a properly indigenous, or indigenously clever, protest? Shouldn't it be more than sad little micchhils that end at the main gate? GEORGE BUSH DOORE HOTO. That walking talking steaming pile of poop? He's not coming near us, comrades, if that's any comfort (best served cold).

Prematurely senile, that's me. Someday I shall have enough decency to be embarrassed by these rants.

With the ritual breaking of glass

we begin our day.

Well, I freely admit

that today's L&OA class was tonnes better. Somehow I knew it would be the moment I heard that not-really-whoopsy drum burp 'Like A Rolling Stone' starts with. I don't want to miss tomorrow's Beatles listening party class listening party! but I do have Chaucer&Langland during that period. Sigh. Choices.

Defacing pictures in the newspaper is a highly therapeutic activity. Everyone must try it.

I saw one of the teachers doing something today I cannot get out of my head, will not for years. I couldn't believe my eyes for a moment, but six or seven other witnesses were present and now I'm wishing I had a little camera I could carry around all the time with me. It was. God. It was one of those little miracles of life. Haha.

I may be going

to College Street today. With my pockets padded. All right, not really. I'm (perhaps naively?) hoping to find exactly what I mean at exactly the price I can afford right now. The last time I was seen rummaging through piles of discarded comic books was so long ago. I'm almost nostalgic.

It occurred to me that some people at uni think I'm a class clown. I don't think anybody knows I can actually 'do' anything except say provocative things (various degrees of 'provocative', here). Which always amuses me. Unlike a few people I have to endure in class, with their constant braying need to assert their smart(arse)ness and general overcompetence, I'm so. Laidback? I work for pleasure, I am pleased by relative obscurity. I am given to understand, however, that this is no way to be, the world being what it is. It remains to be seen if not being to push my way with brute force to the front of the crowd is truly a sign of overall ineptitude. I think it's not so bad yet. Or maybe it is and I'm being optimistic, although I usually don't bother to be.

My mother just came armed with a piece of fruit for to rub on my face. Apparently it's 'good for the complexion'. Oh my sweet mummy, I am happy with my burnt brown skin, and you'll have to put up with worse once the swimming (pool) season starts this summer.

O.

I am writing.

Donut dishturb.

So we are all to be converted

to the Church of Dylan?

What can I say except announce that I am rebelling by listening to lots of J-pop. Especially songs by Gackt, who is marvellously androgynous as well a damned good musician.


I thought the Litt&Other Arts classes were going to be the best in this semester, but C&CB take the honours here. The rock lyric classes are a little tiresome, as in: I am already tired of being condescended to because I am one of those people who are not walking-talking encyclopaedae of American folkrock history or whatever. I am already tired of the effortless, empty cynicism, the gross (both senses) assumptions, the general and overwhelming sense that I am considered a loser simply because I have not had the opportunity, the privilege, of growing up with the kind of cultural capital - or hell, the capital - needed to, say, have 'heard things not on the Billboard Top Twenty'.

Anyone who knows me probably also knows how much music I listen to and how varied my tastes are. I can't exactly claim to not be a bit of a music snob myself. But the planets do not align, the spheres do not resound, I do not even bother to speak up in class because I know that even when I'm right I'm wrong.

And I'm tired of the conflicting messages. 'Think for yourself'. Well, thank you sire, I do, and I think, I really think that I do not appreciate having my intelligence no matter how indirectly demeaned by all these little throwaway oh-so-sarcastic comments.

I don't dig Bob Dylan despite the fact that he's a genius? I can deal with that. And I think it'd be good if everyone else could, too. We're not all the same.

I have to listen to Bob Dylan sooner or later? All right. In fact, I am. I like it. But I doubt the subliminal arm-twisting is going to turn me overnight into a Fan. Incidentally, why isn't all this stuff on the DL computer? Instead of retarded pop videos. Whose brilliant idea was it to load that ludicrous Guns and Roses video, by the way? the one where Axl Rose or whatever his name is cavorts around the stage wearing bright red hot pants. Such a straight man, that one. Haha. Too bad he's just a filthy mess.

Also, Simon and Garfunkel fucking suck. If I want sweetness and sensitivity I can play the Beach Boys. But for now I'll listen to ambiguous-looking popstars with lyrics I can't decipher because they're in a different language. Go me.

Notes

- On becoming addicted to a teevee soap mostly about American teenagers in suburbtopia:
A friend expressed puzzlement over the fact that 'All the women wear *orange* lipstick and even *look* suspiciously orange!' I told her that 'I'm guessing that's why they call it the Orange County.'
I trust that more horrendous jokes have been and will be made.
Really it's about the character of Seth Cohen, played by Adam Brody, that would be the Hair Brody as opposed to the Nose Brody. You have to see him to see the appeal. In any case, he gives good subculture. Comics and emo songs and plastic horses over waterpolo and skeletons in drag anyday, 's what I say.

- On writing poetry again:
No we will not pinch our collective nose and plunge into the brackish depths of pseudosemantics. A poem is a poem is a not what is a poem, savvy? It feels good to finally move out of neurotic essays about Byron's dieting habits and occasional bursts of diaristic, or should I say diarrhoestic, hee hee, prose.

- On hypothetical pets:
A snake would be too expensive. Keeping a dog is not terribly different from raising a human child. Birds do not belong in houses. I am not bored enough to buy a hamster, set it on a wheel and trip out on the trippy circling motions - so far out it's, well, *out*. Etcetera rrrhmmm this leaves two options: a cat or a tortoise. I am temperamentally best suited to cats, but not to the persistent stench of catspiss. A tortoise is delicious (not just in a soup, bless it) but lacks the eminent pettability of feline fur.
In the end I will decide to spend the money on a lavishly illustrated and utterly useless book about watercolours.
The tortoise would be named Don Juan, the cat Staples.

- On comments made and promptly deleted by the commenter:
The very acne of wit.

- On difficult decisions:
C&L? L&C? C&L? L&C? Alas ehui lol zzz...