tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77851074494820743182024-02-18T18:54:03.889-08:00Les Enfants PerdusEverything involving the sphere of loss --- that is, what I have lost of myself, the time that has gone; and disappearance, flight and the general evanescence of things, and even what in the prevalent and therefore most vulgar social sense of time is called wasted time – all this finds in that strangely apt old military term, lost children.mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.comBlogger359125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-1446233749016065102013-05-16T17:46:00.002-07:002013-05-16T17:46:32.750-07:00Back In Black<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Noir is light and noir is dark. It is black on a white screen, projected by white light. It's lightness is found in the illumination of events but its blackness is given to us by the harsh reality of those illuminated events. Yet Noir is not only the standard black and white, it is also insidious shades of other colors as Chester Himes evokes in his writings. Himes gives the noir world not only its typical shades of black and white, but additional shades of racialized darkness, of racialized lightness, and of the oscillation between the two which people like a pendulum sway between.<br />
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Chester Himes was born to a mixed woman (the daughter of an Irish man and either an African princess or Indian Squaw) who looked like a "<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sallis-himes.html">white woman who had suffered a long bout of illness.</a>" His mother, Estelle Bomar, married the son of former slave. Chester's father was able to put himself through Claflin College located in South Carolina. Upon his graduation Chester's father, Joseph Sandy, became a blacksmith, wheel smith, and professor of metal trades. It was this that allured Estelle Bomar to Joseph Sandy according to James Sallis, a biographer on Himes.<br />
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While born to a black middle class family the tension between Estelle's desire for properness and white society (shown in her refusal to congregate with other African Americans) and Joseph Sandy's internalized sense of inferiority would bring the marriage to an eventual halt. While intra racial tension was a constant at home, there was also the blinding heat of racism from the outside world.<br />
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In one of the pivotal moments of his young life, Chester Himes was punished and forced to sit out of an experiment that he and his brother were conducting. Working alone Chester's brother mixed the chemicals which exploded in his face. His brother was rushed to the nearest hospital where because of his ethnicity he was denied treatment. "That one moment in my life hurt me as much as all the others put together," Himes wrote in "The Quality of Hurt."<span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 19px;">Himes life followed a troubled path shortly after his brother's injury. He was expelled from highschool and then arrested for armed robbery. It was while in prison at Ohio State Penetiary where he lived from late 1928 to 1934 that Himes began to write. His short stories were published in Esquire magazine, and in 1936 he was paroled. Upon his completion of paroled life he emigrated to France where he lived the remainder of his days.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 19px;">It was while in France that he wrote "Cotton Comes to Harlem" a novel that would eventually become a movie and along with other detective novels featuring his characters, Grave Digger Jones, and Coffin Ed. </span></span><br />
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Himes novels are not only classical noir exploits but also a delving into the double consciousness of the African American psyche of the time. Double consciousness as depicted by W.E.B. Du Bois is the:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"> sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.</span><br />
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Himes work epitmozes that sense of duality. His lead characters are both protectors of and antagonists of the african american community. They work for the white man, and yet also against him.<br />
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In the "Real Cool Killers," the second of Himes' saga of Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed, a black man attempts to murder a white man in a bar, the black bartender saves the white man hacking off the original assailant's arm. The white man flees outside. He is chased by another black man who shoots a series of blank pistol shots at him. While running down the street in black Harlem the white man is stopped... stopped dead by a shot.<br />
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Digger and Coffin show up on scene to unravel what has happened to the white man after all it's their job. Grave Digger notes his duty when speaking to a white man saying "'I'm just a cop,' Grave Digger said thickly. 'If you white people insist on coming up to Harlem where you force colored people to live in vice-and-crime-ridden slums, it's my job to see that you are'" (65). It is in protecting white people from the other side of the city that things become muddled, partially because of the crowd which includes members of a juvenile gang, "The Moslems." It's natural for a crowd to engage with the fore mentioned events thought, after all "it's only once in a blue moon they (Harlem residents) get to see a white man being chased by one of them. A big white man at that. That was an event. A chance to see some white blood spilled for a change, and spilled by a black man, at that" (151).<br />
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The Moslems hide the main suspect in the case, Sonny, the man who was shooting blanks, while Digger is left to unravel who the white man is. After trolling through the underbelly of the city visiting the bar after bar, and a brothel, Digger returns to the original scene of the incident and unravels through intimidation and violence that the white man, Galen, is a sadist who enjoys whipping black girls. Thrown out of a brothel for his violence, Galen resorts to whipping girls in the basement of the bar in which he was initially attacked... by a man whose daughter was whipped by him in a prostitutional exchange.<br />
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Galen had been in the Harlem bar because it was a site where black girls would come to him. He was known for his compensation for services rendered and the bar also was a place of service for his desires (he would bring the girls into the basement where he would whip them). After all for a black woman it wasn't that much ado, as the bartender tells Digger "A colored woman don't consider diddling with a white man as being unfaithful. They don't consider<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> it no more than just working in service, only they is getting better paid and the work is less straining. 'Sides which, the hours is shorter. Ad they old men don't neither. Both she and her old man figger it's like finding money in the street" (59).</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 19px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Himes unveils that one of the girls was less than happy with her experience and when the old white man sought to engage her girlfriend in his sadistic desires she shot him in a moment of confusion.</span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 19px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It is here that Himes' double consciousness can be seen. While his main characters bring to justice the gang members who are suspected and tried for their crimes of deliquency and hiding a suspect, they also alleviate the culprit for her shooting of the white man as essentially "he deserved it," he was sadistically abusing young women for money. They allow the real culprit go free, a black girl, while still prosecuting the black male youth. </span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 19px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The layered notion of ethncity and race does not stop with "The Real Cool Killers" though. Himes' "Cotton Comes to Harlem," which was turned into a hit blaxploitation film, also uses Grave Digger and Coffin Ed as establishers of justice in a black world.</span></span><br />
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Spurred on by the writings of Marcus Gravey, whom advocated as part of his staunch support of Pan-Africanism and Black Nationalism that African Americans to return to Africa in order to redeem the homeland from European powers, Reverend O' Malley, former con artist and recent parolee, sets up a drive to get the families of Harlem back to Africa. He takes $1000 per family in 1965 in order to fund his front operation. During a barbecue sponsoring the Back-To-Africa movement the money is robbed and hidden in a bale of cotton. Harlem is turned upside down in search of the value laden cotton.<br />
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Himes sets Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed in search of the missing money, which they only wish to return to the families of Harlem knowing full well that O'Malley sought to hoodwink the local residents. To the residents, however, O'Malley "appeared in their imaginations as a martyr to the injustice of whites, and a brave and noble leader" (112). O'Malley disappears instantly after the robbery and in the search for the reverend the detectives put his wife under arrest.<br />
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It is in a comic scene between the preacher's wife and a detective that the Himes shows the way in which the black body is attempted to be consumed by whites. The preacher's wife tempts the detective with sex and injures his sense of masculinity so that the detective "was incensed by her allusion to his masculinity, but he consoled himself with the thought that in different circumstances he'd ride that yellow bitch until she yelled quits" (70). The wife continues with her seduction and says that she'll make it with the detective if he wears a sack on his head. He puts on the prophylactic on and the wife escapes. The detective is then found naked by other white officers who never "knew who was the first one to explode with laughter" (74). Here we see the temptation offered by the exorcized black body. The wife uses it to aid her escape and the white man is left with a flaccid cock and worthless sack.<br />
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The cotton quietly switches hands in the meanwhile. Found by a homebum who sells it to a junkyard the cotton bale is then acquired secretly from the junkyard by another homebum, Bud Cotton. Bud finds the money but still sells the bale to a stripper Billie Belle who in turn sells it for even more money to a white Colonel. The white Colonel was behind the initial robbery and becomes quit flummoxed when he can't find the money in the bail much to the amusement of Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed. After all the detectives care only about returning the money to the residents of Harlem and in wanting so threaten the Colonel with a murder he committed (the Colonel murders a junkyard worker while in search of the cotton bale). The detectives force the Colonel to write a check out for the same amount as was in the cotton bale and let him go. Allowing a white criminal to go free, and thus break the law in order to restore order to their Harlem home.<br />
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The detectives then return the money to the residents in an event similar to the one that opens the book. Grave Digger stands before the families and looked at a souvenir map of Africa given out to the barbecue. Grave Digger then states clearly that "Brothers, this map is older than me. If you go back to Africa you got go by way of the grave" (157). Digger in his closing statement makes it clear that the residents are stuck in Harlem, and that they will be forced, as Digger and Jones are to live in a white man's world. After all it is a world where police Captain's redden with anger and state "I'll arrest every black son of a bitch in Harlem" (120).<br />
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Ultimately Coffin Ed and Grave Digger Jones realize that the world they live in is damned, and thus do nothing other than serve as arbitrators of a justice within the Harlem community. While acting within the white police department the detectives go about their duty in order to save their people and thus act as folk heroes. Grave Digger's sense of self sacrifice is spurred on by the history of slavery and oppression suffered by him and his people. He tells the chief of police that "'I wouldn't do this for nobody but my own black people,' said in a voice that was cotton dry" (122).<br />
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mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-88470698817303118422013-05-06T19:12:00.001-07:002013-05-06T19:12:03.921-07:00Drive, Driven, Drove<br />
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James Sallis writes character novels. In "Drive" and its sequel "Driven" he explores, and expands the myth of the "man with no name." In the original novel, a fast paced 158 pages, Sallis gives us "the driver," the main character of the stories. He is a man who is good at one thing, driving... He's also quite adept at another thing- violence.<br />
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The lead character is a stunt driver who is the getaway man on a heist gone wrong when Sallis opens up the "Drive." The repercussions of the failed robbery are immediate.There is a rapping sound and dead bodies. A woman whose blood pools, an albino's whose doesn't, a third man whose blood was dropping into the sink, Driver used a straight razor to shave the man's neck open. There is the rapping of Driver's hands on the floor.<br />
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Driver continues to do what he is good at in the non linear novel, he drives cars and does violence. There is no love line, there is no rhyme or reason, there is just the absurdity of life for Driver.<br />
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In the stunning major motion picture starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Nicolas Windig the story is far more linear. There is the Driver, a heist gone wrong, a love interest, and a climax.<br />
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The movie stands apart from the novel. The film uses the same characters, and some of the plot but the stories are radically different.<br />
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The character played by Carey Mulligan, Irina, who is a latina in the novel, is blown apart in a fast paced sentences however ripping apart any semblance of meaning to Driver's existence.<br />
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"Home from her new job as ward clerk at the local ER, Irina refilled their wineglasses.<br />
'Here's to-'<br />
He remembered the glass falling, shattering as it struck the floor.<br />
He remembered the starburst of blood on her forehead, the snail of it down her cheek as she trie to spit out what was in there in the moment before she collapsed.<br />
He remembered catching her as she fell- and then, for a long time, not much else.<br />
Gang business, the police would tell him later. Some sort of territorial dispute, we think.<br />
Irina died just after four a.m" (86).<br />
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At the halfway point in the book one of the two female characters is killed off, the other dead already. What follows isn't a strict revenge plot, but rather it is Driver trying to make sense of it all. While the movie and the novel are noir in character there is a difference in the existential themes of the two. The film weighs more in on what it means to be human while at the same time being detached, and violent.<br />
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While the existential and noir aspect comes in the novel when Driver experiences an existential crisis in the problems related to choice. Has Driver chosen a path of violence? Did he make choices for Irina? Did he chose the path of revenge?<br />
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The problem of choice is made clear in the last dialogue between Driver and Bernie Rose, a gangster who has had his hand in the business of violence which motors Driver along.<br />
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"'Think we chose our lives?' Bernie Rose said as they cruised into coffee and cognac.<br />
'No. But I don't think they're thrust upon us, either. What it feels like to me is, they're forever seeping up under our feet.'<br />
Bernie Rose nodded. 'First time I heard about you, word was that you drove, that's all you did.'<br />
'True at the time. Times change.'<br />
'Even if we don't'" (156).<br />
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Driver kills Bernie Rose after the gangster attempts to slash him under the moonlight with a knife. The novel ends and Bernie Rose is the only man that he'd ever mourned killing.<br />
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The existential problems of choice, so common in noir novels, continues to haunt Driver in "Driven." If Sallis hinted at the problem of existence in "Drive" he sings the theme out with beautiful sentences.<br />
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In a conversation between Driver and an accomplice, Manny, the more loquacious Manny states:<br />
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"'We think we make choices. But what happens is the choices walk up, stand face to face with us, and stare us down.'<br />
'So you believe a man's path, the way of his life, is set?'<br />
'Re: belief, see above. But yes, we come suddenly alive, we scamper around like a cockroach when lights go on, and then the light goes off'" (32).<br />
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Sallis is using Manny to further his theme of choice and that choices choose us rather than the other way around. Additionally he makes the typical existential comment of our lives essentially being worth little after all "we scamper around like a cockroach" (32).<br />
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This sense of choice and destiny is furthered in Sallis' beautiful depiction of the sun setting. He write, "Outside, day gave way to night by a kind of gentleman's agreement, neither is losing face: light still strong as shadows moved in from nearby hills and taller buildings" (53). Here light and dark face off with each other, they stare each other down and then by a gentleman's agreement they part.<br />
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The sense of choice becomes even more riddled with doubt when choices remain dubious. Even little choices like where to eat become problematic. Sallis depicts it accurately when he depicts a diner scene where "everyone in the diner gave the impression of having barely arrived from one place while being eager to depart for another. Feet fidgeted under tables. Eyes swung toward windows" (98). Sallis does a great job of creating an anxiety ridden sense of being between choices, to stay or to go.<br />
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The sense of choice which was a running theme through the two novels is not resolved. Instead at "Driven's" conclusion the sense that choice is limited, binding, and never fully coherent is emphasized. Sallis writes, " Our eyes bounce off surfaces, we can't see far or deep. We make choices from the pitifully little we understand about who we are, held in place by that. Then we hold our breaths fully expecting the heavens to tear open any minute. All of us do that, Eight (Driver). Not Just you" (146).<br />
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Nevertheless Driver continues on, he makes a choice, or maybe the choice makes him. Sallis closes his novel with the simple sentence, "He drove" (147).<br />
<br />mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-17052122298517783982013-04-12T00:31:00.001-07:002013-04-12T00:40:56.979-07:00A World With Two MoonsHaruki Murakami has achieved literary fame yet that celebrity status is based on a singular purpose. After all it takes focus to write. Luckily Murakami is a man of concentration as is evidence by his yearly habit of running marathons (his highlight being a 3:31:27 in 1999 in NYC).<br />
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Murakami didn't always have writing as his main purpose. He owned a jazz club for a while and then he reached an epiphany that he could write novels while watching a baseball game. A ball was hit and he was struck with the idea that he could write, and write he has.<br />
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His latest work, 1Q84, a play off of George Orwell's 1984 and the Japanese word for nine, pronounced like an English "Q," is a three volume, one thousand one hundred fifty seven page piece of labor. The lengthy love story was originally two volumes published in Japan in 2009, a year later Murakami expanded the story to its denouement and the finished product was published in 2010.<br />
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1Q84 is an amplification of Murakami's "On Seeing The 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning" with the main character's, Aomame (meaning Green Peas), and Tengo falling in love with each other as children. Aomame grasps onto Tengo's hand one day in school and the two fall for each other. However, their fates pull them apart with Aomame being sent to a different school. They continually think of each other but never come in contact until a strange series of events propels them to meet in a world with two moons. Their inescapable love and fateful coming together is alluded to by Aomame early in the novel when she speaks of free will to her friend Ayumi saying,<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"It's the same with menus and men and just about anything else: we<i> think </i>we're choosing things for ourselves, but in fact we may not be choosing anything. It could be that everythings's decided in advance and we <i>pretend</i> we're making choices. Free will may be an illusion" (241).</span></div>
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The illusory agency of the characters is initially propelled forward through Tengo, a cram school teacher and aspiring writer, deciding to rewrite a novel called "Air Chrysalis." Fuka-Eri, the original author, is a beautiful seventeen year old woman whom is dyslexic and comes from a shadowy cult, The Sakigake. Under the influence of Komatsu, a popular editor, Tengo decides to rewrite the novel and submit it to an emerging writer's contest. The novel wins and becomes immensely popular.<br />
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In the meantime, Aomame, an aerobics teacher, body worker (she stretches people in something akin to yoga), and part time assassin is hired by an older woman, the dowager, to kill the leader of the Sakigake cult who has been raping young girls. Aomame engages in her missions by touching a specific part of the body with a make shift ice pick and targets men who are domestically abusive. This by no means should be taken as Aomame being a feminist or a lesbian, as she states explicitly to the dowager's question if she is either, "I don't think so. My thoughts on such matters are strictly my own. I'm not a doctrinaire feminist, and I'm not a lesbian" (168). Aomame does engage in some lesbian activity though, but that is one of the lighter "sexual deviancies" in the novel.<br />
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The leader of the cult, whom also happens to be Fuka Eri's father is a large, mystical man, who can levitate alarm clocks and undergoes prolonged periods of muscular rigidity during which he is unable to move his body at all. This is what leads Aomame to him. As an expert in muscle stretching she is recommended to alleviate his ailments. While he is in rigid states young women fornicate with him. When quizzed about the nature of these relations, the leader evades the question of rape stating that "'I had congress with her,' he said. 'That expression is closer to the truth. And the one I had congress with was, strictly speaking my daughter as a concept'" (580). If that doesn't make any sense, don't worry about it, most of the rest of the novel doesn't either and according to the leader the morality of "having congress" with young women is entirely subjective as,<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small; text-align: justify;">"In this world, there is no absolute good, no absolute evil... Good and evil are not fixed stable entities but are continually trading places. A good may be transformed into an evil in the next second. And vice versa. Such was the way of the world that Dostoevsky depicted in The Brothers Karamazov" (558). </span><br />
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Through the conversation between Aomame and the Leader, the Leader convinces Aomame to kill him anyways. He wants out of his life, and his crappy body. She obliges and then is on the run from the cult. She hides out in a safe house provided for her by the dowager and then is mysteriously impregnated, much like the Virgin Mary. Unlike the mother of Jesus, Aomame knows the father, Tengo! Evidently he knocked her up somehow, and Murakami alludes to Tengo boning down with Fuka Eri as being the source of Aomame's pregnancy. Somehow Fuka Eri acts as a medium for his sperm and Aomame's body, basically its a magical realist menage a trios! </div>
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Murakami seems to enjoy playing with weird sexual acts, and often has some serious mother loving situations as evidenced in Kafka On The Shore which has a Oedipal story line. Murakami certainly doesn't disappoint the mother lovers amongst us in 1Q84.</div>
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He gives Tengo a weird relationship with his mother who abandoned him as a child. His only memory of her is a scene in "which his mother in underclothes let a man who was not his father suck on her breasts" (345). Tengo continues to relive the scene and remembers the "look of ecstasy suffused his mother's face while the man sucked on her breasts, a look very much like his older girlfriend's when she had an orgasm" (218). Tengo decides to relive the scenario with his older girlfriend who wears a white slip like Tengo's mother. Tengo takes off the slip and:</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "adopted the same position and angle as the man in his vision, and when he did this he felt a slight dizziness. His mind misted over, and he lost track of the order of things. In his lower body there was a heavy sensation that rapidly swelled, and no sooner was he ware of it than he shuddered with a violent ejaculation" (218).</span></div>
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The novel isn't just about weird sex though, its also about cooking! Murakami's characters often cook and drink cans of beer. Murakami carefully lays out cooking scenes with care as is evidenced by Tengo who:</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">"chopped a lot of ginger to a fine consistency. Then he sliced some celery and mushrooms into nice-sized pieces. The Chinese parsely, too, he chopped up finely. He peeled the shrimp and washed them at the sink. Spreading a paper towel, he laid the shrimp out in neat rows, like troops in formation. When the edamame were finished boiling, he drained them in a colander and left them to cool. Next he warmed a large frying pan and dribbled in some sesame oil and spread it over the bottom. He slowly fried the chopped ginger over a low flame" (452).</span></div>
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Despite all this cooking "Tengo drank only half his beer and ate only half of his shrimp and vegetables" (453)! What a waste! Luckily Tengo goes on to cook some more while listening to old Rolling Stones Albums with Fuka-Eri. After all "cooking was not a chore for Tengo. He always used it as a time to think- about everyday problems, about math problems, about his writing, or about metaphysical propositions" (653). Tengo was making rice pilaf with ham, mushrooms, and brown rice accompanied by a miso soup with tofu and wakame to help him think about his metaphysical propositions.<br />
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Ushikawa, the novel's villian, of sorts, doesn't cook for himself. Instead he eats simply and when he stakes out Tengo's place he just eats "canned peaches, and smoked a couple of cigarettes" (923). When Ushikawa does go out it is for simple food as he <span style="text-align: justify;">"ordered a bowl of soba noodles with tempura. It had been a while since he had had a hot meal. He savored the tempura noodles and drank down the last drop of broth" (954). </span>Ushikawa's meals have none of the metaphysical properties of Tengo's, that's for sure yet there is still a large role of food for even the villain.<br />
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Along with weird sex, and food, another recurring topic is music, specifically Leos Janacek <i>Sinfonietta.</i> Both Tengo and Aomame continually listen to the piece throughout the novel. I have no idea why, nor the significance of it although <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/the-fierce-imagination-of-haruki-murakami.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&">this write up </a>might shed a helpful light on things. Tengo and Aomame also listen to jazz and modern rock too. Why they don't listen to Oingo Bongo, or Duran Duran, beats me, I guess its just a Murakami thing.<br />
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Overall the novel is a sprawling tale. Murakami takes his time in telling a convoluted, twisted, and surreal love story. The premise is simple, boy and girl meet, fall in love and live happily ever after but as Murakami says "the role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form" (222) and that other form is a lengthy weird tale... or in other words its a typical Murakami piece that is longer than the rest.mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-15918583427598181002013-04-01T03:01:00.000-07:002013-04-01T11:58:32.192-07:00"I'm About Making Money! That's the Dream! The American Dream!"I often wonder what people do with their free time that is the time in which they are not engaged in "productive labor". Are they watching movies? Reading books? Going to theme parks? Enjoying a meal with a friend at a restaurant? I always wonder what commodity and to what extent they are dealing with it, and how they just get it away from it all. Recently Hollywood has given me a voyeuristic encounter with how people spend their time away from the drudgery of work and school.<br />
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Spring Breakers, directed and written by Harmony Korine of <i>Kids</i>, and <i>Gumo</i> fame, is the story of four nubile, and nearly identical young women who vacate their collegiate life to enjoy a spring break bacchanal. The thin story begins with three of the women (all bleached blondes) robbing a working class, "Chicken Shack," an obviously low standard restaurant in their hood, in order to fund their extravagant vacay away from school. The necessity for the vacation is obvious in the women's lines and their desire to see another world after all spring break is "Way more than having a good time". Spring Break is a way to get away from it all, "its nice to have a break from reality". They even convince the light weight moral compass, Faith, to come along on the hedonistic trip with their repetitive mantra of "Spring Break Foeva".<br />
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Their plans go sour when after a collage of cocaine, alcohol, and exploratory bisexuality they are arrested. Luckily the Alien, portrayed by James Franco, bails them out. Franco, an obvious play off of rapper Riff Raff, (who is a mixture of white trash, and black gangsta rapper - think Kid Rock meets Ole Dirty Bastard but not as cool, unless you are a hipster, then its probably deeper- both ironically cool and uncool at the same time) is Alien, another worldly being who is made of money. Alien is the embodiment of currency made flesh pronounced when he exclaims "Look at my teef", which are rimmed with gold and diamonds. Alien is made of the right currency after all for the young ladies "Money makes my tits look bigger", and "money makes my pussy wet". Which in the realm of the spectacle a wet pussy and big tits will get you far.<br />
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When Alien first comes on stage as an active agent in the drama, it is in the courtroom, a third of the way through the nonlinear narrative. Alien leans forward interested in the girls being charged and given the choice to pay bail or spend two more days in county jail, a place of B-O-R-E-D-O-M, almost as bad as school. Alien, visually sporting his $ neck tat, makes his tat not just a signifier but signified when he springs the ladies out.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">seriously have you ever seen rich bitches look so bored?</td></tr>
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Alien meets them outside and brings them to the underbelly of of Spring Break, which doesn't mean that the continual splicing of white kids ejaculating booze on lined up rows of white women stops, it just means that there are more black bodies about. The black bodies come to a for in a strip club which is visited by Alien and three of the girls (Faith drops out of the indulgence with fake tears). The black females are covered with money and Alien slaps their asses as he talks to his childhood best friend, Big Archie, who taught him everything he knew.<br />
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The two are threatened by each other and posture, after all what working class white rapper isn't threatened by a black working class rapper? Both have come from the "streets" and somehow both made it into the realm of spectacular capitalism, although neither of them are working class any long but are nouveau rich. Obviously there is a clash of markets and the conflict is not only one of color, but also of the ways in which the colonizer mimics the colonized (how many white girls asses did we see in the film? How many women of color twerked?) The racial depth, along with conflicts of sexuality and depth of intra class warfare, are beyond the depth of this trite blog review however, poo poo.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">So hood, soooo hood!</td></tr>
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In an encounter on the street, with both driving expensive sports cars, Big Archie, in obvious dissatisfaction that his vehicle does not have $ sign rims opens fire on Alien's car. One of the girls (don't ask me who) is hit in the arm. The flesh wound is so upsetting that Alien must engage in a solo piano number, smashing the keys, while the wounded girl showers naked (in a surprisingly unsexual scene). The wounded girl goes home and then... there were two little blonde girls.<br />
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In an act of vendetta and an attempt to show his masculine prowess, rather than be a continual "Scaredy Cat," Alien lays siege to Gucci Mane's place of residence, which is sea side and has a hot tub. Alien and the two girls ride a motorboat, dock, and clad in bikinis and pink balaclavas the two girls way waste to all the black men in the compound, finishing their bulletory ejaculation with Gucci Mane who is watching two voluptuous women of color engage in light lesbianism. Alien, however dies in the first burst of fire and the ladies are left to commit racial genocide without their man. Sad, sad, sad.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bikini Girls with Machine Guns!</td></tr>
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In the end what can we gather from this film? Is it a new venture in riot grrl capitalism? A way of white angst expressing dissatisfaction with the growing black bourgeoisie? A condemnation of curvy bodies? Or black bodies? A tale of intraclass violence? A testimony of the power of the phallus and threat of violence? Is it just a teen exploitation movie?<br />
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Well one thing is for sure... it is a commodity meant to sell and a commodity appears, at first sight as a very trivial thing, seemingly easily understood. Its analysis shows, however, that it is in reality, a very peculiar thing, abounding in pop-cultural subtleties and ideological niceties.<br />
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mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-20292719749602649882013-03-23T01:07:00.001-07:002013-03-23T01:07:30.949-07:00Best Espresso Shot!The Bay Area Latte Art Competition is a series of contests held in San Francisco and Oakland, the only places in the Bay where people actually drink their coffee with art in their steamed milk. The most recent gathering of baristas and beret wearing latte artists was held at Contraband Coffee in Nob Hill, just a stones throw away from the Tenderloin, the difference being that in the former the crack you can acquire is from a hipster bending over in too tight of pants where as the latter is crack cocaine... Huzzah!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Look at all these fucking dorks spectating on who can be the best low paid artist</td></tr>
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Having taken some serious steps in my artistic life I decided to join the competition. I arrived promptly at 6pm and was the second person to sign up, which I thought was odd, wouldn't caffeinated people be on time or at least anxious about it? The contest itself didn't start for an hour so I spent the next sixty minutes doing what everyone else was doing, engaging in small talk, indulging in paralyzing self doubt, harboring self esteem issues, and eating the free food.<br />
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Eventually I was called up to the barista station. A large contraption stood before me. My latte experience being limited to second rate machines I wasn't quite prepared for the technological device that would exude such pure capitalist devil juice. I stood next to a bearded man named Kevin as the two previous contestants waged battle. The contestants made their drinks and then displayed them before the judges whom decided on pure subjectivity whose was better. Kevin and I made some small chat while we waited for the judges' verdict on the previous bout. He worked at Contraband as a barista, yet didn't deem himself that skilled as a barista.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These are the machines of espresso weaponry. They make pure unadulterated capitalist devil juice.</td></tr>
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Kevin was nervous. I was relaxed. I knew I had nothing to lose. Half the battle of a competition is showing up to compete. The official asked us what we'd like to use. I chose a cappuccino cup. Kevin did as well. I filled up my metal tin with milk and used a long needle of a steamer to steam my milk. The milk whirled around and I worried that it wasn't getting enough air, I pulled up on it and gave it a little more air. I stamped the milk down. It looked good. I began to pour. The coffee was too milky as I poured. I pulled out and attempted to make a design in the cappuccino. There was too much milk in my twin. I leaked out a squiggle into a milky mess.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yeah mine is on the left. So what!? Fuck you and your mom!</td></tr>
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Kevin was done. I was done. We set our cups in front of the judges. I let them know that mine was the Japanese Kanji for failure. They pursed their lips and picked Kevin as winner. I shook his hand. It felt swampy from nerves. I walked off my head held high, after all I'd given it my best espresso shot.<br />
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mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-48960848248772910402013-02-21T23:04:00.000-08:002013-02-21T23:04:03.882-08:00Situationist CredThe room when I entered with a friend was full of empty chairs, the fold out pieces of metal were arranged in three rows with a small platform in the middle. The stage would be filled with Donald Nicholson Smith, a short, portly main with a stringy bush of brown hair and a full white beard. He was soft spoken, and seemed benign. The seats would be filled with poorly dressed whites, mainly men ranging from their early thirties to sixties. A few depraved women had come to see a species of men more hollow than them.<br />
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I had come to the event at 518 Valencia, part of their ongoing SF talks series, to see the former situationist and translator of Revolution of Every Day Life speak. Not only as Nicholson-Smith translated Raoul <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raoul_Vaneigem">Vaneigem</a>, but he has also translated Jean Patrick <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Patrick_Manchette">Manchette's </a>noir novels; Fatale, 3 to Kill, and The Prone Gunman. He has also translated Mygale by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thierry_Jonquet">Thierry Jonque</a>t, a noir horror. <br />
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Having originally translated Vaneigem's book in 1982 into english from the original french, he felt a need, spurred by the people at PM Press to update the translation. He commented that he wanted to give way to a more literary rather than colloquial feeling of the book. In the 60s and 70s there were lots of attempts to translate the book, in total and excerpts, due to the popularity of the<a href="http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/"> S.I.</a> These translations were quite ugly to the french at the time. During his translations both in the early days and more recently Nicholson Smith was, however able to speak with Vaneigem about his points and to clear up, as best he could the translation. After a few more comments Nicholson Smith began a long, long reading of his translation from <a href="http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/56">Chapter 15</a>: (Note to reader, if the below bores you, by all means skip ahead)<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: -webkit-left; text-indent: 10px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>Our efforts, our boredom, our defeats, the absurdity of our actions all stem most of the time from the imperious necessity in our present situation of playing hybrid parts, parts which appear to answer our desires, but which are really antagonistic to them. "We would live," says Pascal, "according to the ideas of others; we would live an imaginary life, and to this end we cultivate appearances. Yet in striving to beautify and preserve this imaginary being we neglect everything authentic." This was an original thought in the seventeenth century; at a time when the system of appearances was still hale, its coming crisis was apprehended only in the inhibitive flashes of the most lucid. Today, amidst the decomposition of all values, Pascal's observation states only what is obvious to everyone. By what magic do we attribute the liveliness of human passions to lifeless forms? Why do we succumb to the seduction of borrowed attitudes? What are roles?</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: -webkit-left; text-indent: 10px;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i>The role is a consumption of power. It locates one in the representational hierarchy, and hence in the spectacle: at the top, at the bottom, in the middle but never outside the hierarchy, whether this side of it or beyond it. The role is thus the means of access to the mechanism of culture: a form of initiation. It is also the medium of exchange of individual sacrifice, and in this sense performs a compensatory function. And lastly, as a residue of separation, it strives to construct a behavioural unity; in this aspect it depends on identification.</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; text-align: -webkit-left; text-indent: 10px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">After his long and pointless reading, I could tell no difference between the current and past translations and the talk was beginning to bore me. Revolution of Every Day Life and its companion book Society of the Spectacle had a huge influence on me in my early twenties, and still exert a heavy weight on my weltanschung currently. The former encouraged a pragmatic hedonism and gave a coherent critique of life within capital, the latter offers a total critique of capitalist society especially with its tendency to reduce every relationship to be that of commodities and their images.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: -webkit-left; text-indent: 10px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The floor was opened for questions and people asked about revolutionary violence, particularly as Vaneigem had changed his position. Nicholson Smith didn't note how Vaneigem had changed, he just stated he had. Indeed most of the speakers answers were a little off base, as if he wasn't really listening. That was fortunate for him when an audience member, embarrassingly for the rest of the crowd, began to read a critique he and his companions had wrote. After ten minutes of boredom, truncated by the moderator, he ended with a desire to engage with the other audience members. While that was one of the more painful questions the other audience participation was equally banal. One young man stumbled incoherently into a sentence that more or less said "these are big ideas, what do they mean?"</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: -webkit-left; text-indent: 10px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">Another man historically situated the book by talking the 60s, when the book was written, specifically in Britain, which still had a strong welfare state. Nicholson Smith noted that while the book was very perceptive in many ways, it was at times completely off base. Vaneigem did not see the fall of the welfare state at all. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; text-align: -webkit-left; text-indent: 10px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">The moderator asked an interesting question in that he felt that the S.I. had felt that all political projects were </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px;">cup de sacs of failure, of reformism, and to what extent did that influence the future. Nicholson Smith noted that they (the SI) totally thought that political projects were indeed a cul de sac of failure and thus dissolved.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; text-align: -webkit-left; text-indent: 10px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">With that the talk closed after an hour and a half of quotes being read and boring questions being asked. I stuck around for a few minutes and then left. For all the excitement that the situationists had caused in my life I had just left a rather dull encounter. I walked down into the mission and wondered what I should do, one thing was clear to me, inebriation was in order, a prescription to forget my wasted, dead time. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; text-align: -webkit-left; text-indent: 10px;"><br /></span>mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-29683521227790464912013-02-18T00:16:00.003-08:002013-02-18T00:16:46.446-08:00Notes on Luther<br />
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Cinema has replaced literature in terms of broad appeal. Far more people view television, watch movies, or stream vids on the internet than read novels, short stories, or even magazine articles. This is no news. While cinema has replaced literature there are still similarities such as the emergence of the serialized televised novel, or visual novel. Similar to the victorian era which introduced the serialized novel due to innovations in printing technologies, the rise of literacy, and improved economics of distribution in the modern era we have new technologies such as netflix, hulu, hbo go, that allow us easier access to televised series. In addition our culture, global culture, has become more obsessed with the moving image, and with the easy, inexpensive ways of paying (or not) television series we can look at many television series as the modern era's answer to the victorian era nickelbacks and pulps.<br />
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British Television for monetary reasons, cultural reasons, and or reasons unbeknownst to me has more short term series. One recent pulp serial is the show "Luther." Opening with a James Bondesque sequence that is underscored by Massive Attack's "Paradise City." The dark number is laid with images of the city and a man in shadows. It is a classic noir motif and points towards a common narrative within the noir/detective genre. That of a lead protagonist who must navigate through an urban landscape much like Theseus threads through the labyrinth.<br />
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Akin to Theseus's minotaur, Luther has to defeat half men/ half beasts. Yet his dark encounters with him shade his soul and he is represented as a man who is continually self conflicted. The first series of possible 3 (the second was produced, the third series may be in the works) focuses on Luther's conflict with his ex wife, a human rights lawyer. Luther is also haunted by the ghostly pale, Alice, whom he suspects, using his Holmes' like insight into others' psyches, is a murderer. It is his delving into the others' psyches that darkens him, or at least that is what we are to believe. He is violent, short tempered, and prone to breaking rules if it suits him.<br />
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Paradise Circus</h2>
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It's unfortunate that when we feel a storm,<br />we can roll ourselves over 'cause we're uncomfortable<br />Oh well the devil makes us sin<br />But we like it when we're spinning, in his grin.<br />Love is like a sin my love<br />For the ones that feels it the most<br />Look at her with her eyes like a flame<br />She will love you like a fly will never love you, again<br />Oh, ho..<br />It's unfortunate that when we feel a storm,<br />we can roll ourselves over when we're uncomfortable<br />Oh well the devil makes us sin<br />But we like it when we're spinning, in his grin.<br />Oh, ho,..<br />Love is like a sin my love<br />For the one that feels it the most<br />Look at her with her smile like a flame<br />She will love you like a fly will never love you, again</div>
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mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-56475051241732362912013-01-21T23:50:00.000-08:002013-01-21T23:50:34.705-08:00An Anarchist Makes A LatteMy father drank a lot of coffee growing up. The morning would begin with a brewing pot. The cheap, lightly browned beans were preground and would sink, flushed by water further into the paper thin filter of the automatic coffee machine. A pot would be gone by the end of the morning, before we left for school. I didn't think much of it and I just enjoyed the smell of the brewed product, my father's consumption was a mere drop compared to the 2.25 billion cups drunk each day.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chinese character for failure</td></tr>
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Over a decade later I've found myself surrounded by coffee, the devil juice of capitalism. Originating from the Arab world, the first recorded writings of people consuming the caffeinated beverage hail from the Sufi monasteries in Southern Arabia. Sufis would keep themselves alert for their devotions through drinking coffee. Despite having the first coffeehouse in the 16th Century, Constantinople, wasn't considered hip at the time, but perhaps that is because the past wasn't presented with the presence of hipsters.<br />
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With continual trade occuring between Europe and Northern Africa, England got a hold of the morning time drug. The British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company were able to secure regular shipments for the country and in the latter part of the 16th century coffeehouses began to open in England. The houses were centralizing points for discussions over politics, religion and other stately, manly matters.<br />
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Coffee first came to the Americas in the 1700s and after the Tea Party dumped the shipment of tea into the Boston Harbor in 1773, coffee drinking came to be a sign of independence.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Drink Coffee and Remember to Vote Often</td></tr>
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During WWII in an effort to give factory workers a brief respite, the coffee break was invented. General Eisenhower during his presidential campaign used the "coffee break" as a time for socializing with voters. Since that time the United States has become the world's largest coffee consumer, while the South American countries of Brazil and Columbia have been the main producers.<br />
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In the 1970s the mega corporation Starbucks was created. With the emergence of the large coffee company there was a shift from cheap lightly roasted coffee which was less expensive to produce to more qualitative less acidic darker roasted beans. This shift in quality over quanitity has also coincided with the "foodie" movement and other food movements; slow food, organic, free range meat, etc.<br />
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In the last ten years coffee consumption has become increasingly specialized, as consumers want not just coffee but coffee from certain areas, of certain varietials; Arabica and Robusta, shade grown, bird safe, free trade etc.<br />
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Now most restaurants, bars, and coffee shops will have some qualitative bean variety, at least here in the bay area. Despite the growth of coffee culture I've remained happily ignorant. It was only recently when I went to a friend's coffee shop that I cared at all. It wasn't because of the taste of the latte that got me, but because of the swirling pattern he made with the steamed soy milk.<br />
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Latte art is a relatively new phenomenon. In making a latte, an espresso drink composed of eight to ten ounces of steamed milk and one or more shots of espresso, the barista pours steamed milk over the espresso. Correctly steaming the milk allows the barista to pour a design into the coffee. Notable designs are the rosetta, the heart, and the tulip.<br />
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When I first saw my friend's rosetta design I decided that I would try to do the same. In the past I'd made shitty espresso drinks. I never drank coffee, and never cared about making someone else a very good looking coffee drink. Its taken me about two weeks to make decent looking coffee drinks.<br />
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I am not sure why I became interested in latte art. It serves me no purpose, as stated before I don't give a fuck about coffee, it is just waste. At work, where I am making these lattes, those that aren't consumed by customers are dumped.<br />
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"I am pretty sure Matt has wasted an entire cow's yearly production of milk," one of my coworkers said to me after looking despondingly at one of my latte art abortions.<br />
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Having been in the restaurant industry for so long and not desiring to move up in the industry has limited my creative drive. There is no desire to expand, to get better at my job and so I feel alienated from my work. Having extra creativity, obsession coupled with boredom I make crappy latte art.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin4hSoj2yxrJjd_PSVYiZMg6sL2NIZnR6srdUW6CtCFJ5pyhd2NE9B6y9U7y2C-hftEfGhNqaiaeu-fjBuRO7HL-7fpqtsby1lK8V8MqNAu11Ly3P2hFRAXrUJyDYW4k0V_I98TRsOUNS4/s1600/IMG_1308.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin4hSoj2yxrJjd_PSVYiZMg6sL2NIZnR6srdUW6CtCFJ5pyhd2NE9B6y9U7y2C-hftEfGhNqaiaeu-fjBuRO7HL-7fpqtsby1lK8V8MqNAu11Ly3P2hFRAXrUJyDYW4k0V_I98TRsOUNS4/s200/IMG_1308.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Swirling clouds of cow puss</td></tr>
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In Georges Bataille's theory of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Part_maudite">Accursed Share</a>, an organism has an excess of energy to it, this is unlike classical economic theory in which organisms are always faced with finite amounts of energy. The excess energy according to Bataille, or Accursed Share, is a luxury and this luxury is spent according to the form of society.<br />
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I am not sure how much longer I will pursue this ultimately wasteful activity. It offers me little to nothing, it wont get me a raise, I don't drink coffee, it all seems like some perverse vanity project, besides there's a certain<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a7cHPy04s8"> satisfaction</a> in burning people's milk, perhaps that's why I was doing it for so long.<br />
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mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-16633255390489080212013-01-08T21:18:00.000-08:002013-01-08T21:18:05.348-08:00Once in a whileIts been some time since I've written on this blog. Initially the blog was a space for me to explore attempts at writing. I've since enrolled in college which has taken up a lot of my creative writing time. This past semester I took a creative writing class, one of my pieces was published. You can read it <a href="http://www.sprylit.com/flash/theboxerssoliloquy/">here.</a> Along with that piece I wrote a multitude of others, of varying quality. Below are two of the pieces that I did, the first is an ode the second is a prose poem. Enjoy.<br />
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<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Ode to My Iphone V</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
When you came on the marketplace,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Oh how I waited,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
With breath unabated.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
I waited in lines,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
For your sale,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
For hours,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
For days,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
For minutes of eternal entity.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
How I longed for your sleek, slim, casing to spirit me,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Along the internet oceans.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
The anticipation of your arrival,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Was more to me the death of a million Jobs,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
In America, in China, in the dying of the world economy,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
More important than the dinner conversations</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
That a few years ago went languidly uninterrupted by </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Your buzz, your beautiful buzz or your Marimba ring tone,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
The world could collapse as long as I had you,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
And my 4G network.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
You, you are my key, my plane, my ticket,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Out of boring conversations,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Out of mundane work activities,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Out of the here, the now, </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
To that technological palace</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Of Facebook, with its internet popularity contests,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Of Okcupid, with its countless sordid matches,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Of Youtube, with its clips of grown men being hit in the balls.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Of Instagram, with its hipster's pictures spam</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
And your apps,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
The skyping, the twitter, the flashlights, the games, the netflix, the banking,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
The ability to see stocks and the weather,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Real time watching of the </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Fall</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Fall </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Fall</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Your camera,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
With its ability to give birth to</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Panoramic dick pics</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
To send to anonymous numbers</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
So they might see</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
The high resolution abilities </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Of your great technology.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Oh Iphone,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
Oh Iphone,</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
How I long for an Iphone 6</div>
<br />
----A Prose Poem<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
"Sleep, Commute, Work, Sleep, Commute, Work..."</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I woke up with a hangover. I commute, commute, commute arriving ten minutes late. The boss rolls her eyes as my feet shuffle to the table.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>"Hello my name is... Can I start you off with a cocktail?"</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I had too many last night. I don't pay attention to what they say. I just nod my head and write down what I want. Little scribbles of stickmen being hung. I walk back to the terminal punching in their order. The goods are shuttled. </div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>"How is everything?" A muster of care.</div>
<div style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I walk around and around and around. A customer scowls, picking up their check, the meager tip creates a continuinity of scowls. I meet and greet another table. Then another and another. Boredom mixes with malaise. My phone doesn't ring, so I'm still waiting, waiting, waiting, for the call that will get me out of here.The shift is over and my feet are tired. I sit down with a drink, and another and another. I think I'll wake up with another hangover, and over, and over.</div>
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mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-59916583506810242292012-01-31T11:01:00.000-08:002012-01-31T11:25:54.345-08:00Pimp<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMv7i0FpL44kLOpMcLFRr6WtNckvzqSi0GPLz51Mj3uPk2EJMVm5Rh4XdMUjEdhHPxAQkUjKetYTYpB82tq81GlTCzjfJbe-raUO-qUxjG9HAa_ftsWVUovZHRe2vv9vgfK4elNB_rZEKY/s1600/Iceberg-Slim-Pimp-book.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 262px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMv7i0FpL44kLOpMcLFRr6WtNckvzqSi0GPLz51Mj3uPk2EJMVm5Rh4XdMUjEdhHPxAQkUjKetYTYpB82tq81GlTCzjfJbe-raUO-qUxjG9HAa_ftsWVUovZHRe2vv9vgfK4elNB_rZEKY/s400/Iceberg-Slim-Pimp-book.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5703879533429207138" /></a><br />I was in Bangkok when I first heard of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceberg_Slim">Iceberg Slim</a>'s autobiography "Pimp." While talking to a young english man about gender he mentioned pimp as being indicative of some of the dynamics between men and women. Eventually I picked up the book and read it quickly. Despite its heavy slang the book is easy to read and a page turner. <div><br /></div><div>Published in 1969 the tale follows Iceberg Slim, a man so icy cold that he doesn't stir from his seat when bullets shoot through his hat, and his journey into becoming an infamous pimp in the 1920s and 1930s. The majority of the narrative centers around Slim's early days of pimping. From a young age he aspired to be a pimp and after a few bouts with the state via reformatory schools he acquired his first whore, who would later prove to be a hinderance to his life as a free man. He made his whore work 16 hour days and under the advice of a fellow pimp beat her with a wire hanger when she feigned sickness. The woman stayed with him much like someone involved in the cycle of abuse. The pimp has to secure the woman's continued employment by presenting some sort of end goal, that of a glorious future with the pimp.<div><br /></div><div>Continual reference is made between the relationship between a whore and a pimp as being a reversal of the whore's game. A pimp is just a man who has reversed the dynamics on the whore. He demands payment for the whores work, just like a whore demands payment from a john for her work. </div><div><br /></div><div>The book reminded me in many ways of<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Fran%C3%A7ois_Vidocq"> Eugene Vidocq'</a>s "Memoir's of Vidocq" in which Vidocq is a thief and lives in the underbelly of society until he is "reformed" and becomes one of the pioneers of the modern detective skill set.</div><div><br /></div><div>Like Vidocq, Slim preyed on those around him for the purpose of survival and like Vidocq, Slim is also reformed through the prison system. Reformed meaning that they no longer desire the precarious lifestyle afforded to them by being a thief and pimp respectivelly. </div><div><br /></div><div>What is most apparent in both these books is the sense of adventure. Slim is continually on life's edge and is arrested several times. One of the most exciting parts for me in Slim's tale wasn't his countless conquests of women but in his successful prison escape. </div></div><div><br /></div><div>While I can't condone Slim's predatory enterprise and bougerois spirit I do admire his adventurism and his life as an outsider of society. I hold a strong sympathy to those who toss the chains of society aside and attempting to living life according to one's own will, even if that life might not be particularly moral.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-47861547739264745492011-12-15T12:25:00.000-08:002011-12-15T13:36:54.655-08:00Coming Communism!?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm7Uq8Eh0vgktdHxmam0Ucg0Th8Xf_5aCXeDRs_E2B6_ZJ_uxPDPFwR-QV7fTICiA9irDI9nikXo5tC7Kb1t1__uoPdvwBS45HRNxsK2DaLckqR-OOUgdnMaNAAGWePWFLOTREFa8HP-3J/s1600/Port-of-Oakland-064.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 266px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm7Uq8Eh0vgktdHxmam0Ucg0Th8Xf_5aCXeDRs_E2B6_ZJ_uxPDPFwR-QV7fTICiA9irDI9nikXo5tC7Kb1t1__uoPdvwBS45HRNxsK2DaLckqR-OOUgdnMaNAAGWePWFLOTREFa8HP-3J/s400/Port-of-Oakland-064.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5686472269697311954" /></a><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>The alarm next to my bed went off. She rolled around in the blanketing. I got dressed putting on my warmest clothes. I put on my shoes and went outside. My friend was waiting in his car. The vehicle took us to West Oakland bart. The sky was still dark from the evening. <div><br /></div><div>Our arrival at the bart station for the west coast coordinated port shut down was met with about 1,000 other early morning risers. I was hoping that the event would be short and sweet; some spectacular opposition with the police and a return to my bed within two hours. </div><div><br /></div><div>En masse we marched down to the port and picketed next to three of the berths. Two of them had ships arriving that day and thus were important to blockade, while the third was an opening for workers. A row of riot cops stood in front of the picket. The picket circled around. My friend and I milled about.</div><div><br /></div><div>Four hours later the port was announced closed for the day. I sighed with relief. My toes and fingers were cold. We walked back to the car and I went back to bed.</div><div><br /></div><div>-</div><div>The discussion got started late. I drank a free beer and chatted with the people sitting around me while we waited for the presentation to begin. The book release party for "<a href="http://libcom.org/library/communization-its-discontents-contestation-critique-contemporary-struggles">Communization and its Discontents</a>," lasted three hours. The presenters rambled on about communization theory. The theory, coming from a post '68 left communist mileu asks us; "What does communism look like now that there is no longer a mass worker's movement, and how do we deal with the real subsumption of capital?</div><div><br /></div><div>Theorie Communiste, one of the groups at the heart of communization theory, identify the decomposition of a mass worker's movement as the decline of programmatism. "In brief 'programmatism' is the forms of organization (mass parties, unions) and ideologies (socialism and syndicalism) that valorized workers' power... TC argue that with an intensification of 'real subsumption' - essentially the submergence of the entirety of society within a self-positing capitalism - in the 1970s the 'old' workers' movmement and proletariat become further imbricated within the reproduction of capitalism... the worker's movment carried within itself its antagonist in the shape of a reconstitution of capitalism in the very form its resistance takes - the valorization of the proletariat. (p.198) </div><div><br /></div><div> In the contradictory struggle of capital against labor workers movements of the past have just helped to create a new dynamic capitalism. 'Old' mass workers' movements gains were merely reconsitutions of capital. The recuperation of revolt back into the arms of capital is made more poignant when we consider the real subsumption of capital.</div><div><br /></div><div>Capital has moved beyond formal subsumption, its general form of domination, in which it "...subsumes an existing form of production 'as it finds it'. For example, peasants may still work in the fields in the way they always have but now they are compelled to take their goods to market to realise value. In this mode of subsumption, Marx argues, capital generates absolute surplus-value and can only do so by demanding extension to the workind day. So, surplus-value can only be genereated by fordcing work beyond the amount necessary for self-reproduction, although this compulsion does not tend to happen directly but through economic funcctions, i.e. you need to produce a surplus to generate income to live... This stands in contrast to real subsumption, in which capital revolutionizes the actual mode of labor to produce the specifically capitalist mode of production (p.11)" </div><div><br /></div><div>Capital has made all labour ingrained to valorise itself for capital thus everything we look at is a thing and its price. The workers struggles of yesteryear are no longer viable attempts to overthrow capital. "That which distinguishes real subsumption, that is, this period in which capital has in a certain manner absorbed the totality of social reality rather than remaining restricted to the productive process, is that <i>any activity</i> is capable of becoming a part of the process of valorisation (p.73)."</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Yet if there is no point in struggle against capital anymore why all the theory? Is it merely a hobby to pass the time for graduate students and communists who wish to explain their failings of the past? Endnotes puts its clearly when it states "This arrival of 'communization' at the forefront of radical chic probably means little in itself, but the major movement so far to find its voice in this language is more interesting, for the impasse of this movement is not merely a particular lack of programme or demands, but a symptom of the developing crisis in class relation... If communization is presenting itself currently, it is the palpable sense of an impasse in the dynamic of the class relation; this is an era in which the end of this relation looms perceptibly on the horizon, while capital runs into crisis at every turn and the working class is force to wage a struggle for which there is no plausible victory. (37-38)"</div>mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-44886625094781892102011-11-27T22:47:00.000-08:002011-11-28T12:45:49.782-08:00Pointless rebellion<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">The revolutionary upheaval of France in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1968_in_France">May of '68 </a>has had a profound impact on the pysche of the participants. That imprint has turned up in literature. </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">In my continuing reading of noir fiction I've recently come across Jean-Patrick Manchette. The frenchman, initially an active communist until reading Guy Debord's "<a href="http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/pub_contents/4">Society of the Spectacle</a>," was an author of noir novels in the late seventies and early eighties. Three of his novels; "The Prone Gunman," "Fatale," and "3 to Kill," have recently been published by San Francisco's City Light Books. Translated by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Nicholson-Smith">Donald Nicholson-Smith</a>, a former member of the English section of the Situationist Internationale, the novels take on the usual plotlines of the noir genre. In "The Prone Gunman," we have a hired assassin who returns to his home town to reclaim his highschool girlfriend wanting to settle down and get out of the business, but the company he works for is not obliging. "Fatale," follows the story of an opportunistic female killer as she enters a town and seeks to exploit the town's internal social contradictions in order to make money. In "3 to Kill," a bougerois middle manager worker aids a man after a failed assassination attempt. The bumbling killers come after the worker and in turn the hunted becomes the hunter. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">What sets these novels apart is not only the characterizations but also the surprising endings. Unlike most noirs in which the protagonists' battles against a corrupt society come to naught giving only the character a bitter outlook, Manchette's protagonists' indivual rebellion come to nothing. Manchette points out the futility of individual rebellion against society in his excellent <a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/manchette/1976/earn-living.htm">"Five Remarks on How I Earn My Living;"</a></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">"Less obviously and yet surely, the <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em; ">roman noir</em> is characterized by the absence or weakness of the class struggle and its replacement by individual action (which is, incidentally, hopeless). While the bastards and the exploiters in fact hold social and political power, the others – the exploited , the masses of people – are no longer the subject of history, and in any case only appear in the <em style="word-spacing: 0.2em; ">roman noir</em> in minor roles, more or less socially marginalized – taxi drivers, racial minorities (blacks, chicanos), vagabonds, the unemployed, déclassé intellectuals, servile personnel (but also, in surprising numbers, in the figure of workers, always especially mistreated before or during the novel’s action by the bosses, big shots and their strong-arm men)."</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">In "3 to Kill," Georges Gerfaut's 9our protagonist) life is thrown dramatically off course when on a holiday two hired killers attempt to take him down. He is able to throw off the attempted slaughter and leaves his family and the trappings of a comfortable but boring middle class life. He settles for nearly a year in a small town cabin, aided by an ex-military man who teaches him how to live in the "wild." The military man's daughter comes to visit and engages in a relationship with Gerfaut allured by his rejection of middle class life. Yet the killer's return and eventually Gerfaut is forced to hunt them down. When his mission is successful he claims amnesia and returns to his ordinary life. Manchette ends the novel with haunting emptiness "Once, in a dubious context, he lived through an exciting and bloody adventure; after which, all he could think of to do was to return to the fold. And now in the fold, he waits. If at this moment, without leaving the fold, Georges is racing around Paris at 145 kilometers per hour, this proves nothing beyond the fact that Georges is of his time. And of his space. (p.134)"</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">Despite breaking out of the "fold," Georges is unable to do anything but return. His continuing desire to live a life beyond the constraints of society is obvious in his recklessly fast driving (90 miles per hour) yet he is simply unable to leave this world behind. Unlike other noir protagonist senseless victories Gerfaut is given absolutely nothing. Other protagonists' are given a moral victory, Gerfaut is handed the continued feeling of existential emptiness of his time and of his space.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';">In Manchette's "The Prone Gunman," we see the continued theme of individual rebellion amounting to nothing. Martin Terrier, a hired killer, returns home to reclaim his high school girlfriend. The woman, an incorrugible alcoholic, is dumbstruck by his obtuse goal but goes off with him after her homelife is destroyed by killers looking to track down Terrier. The woman's alcohlic lifestyle, and her nymphomania are obvious signs of her dissatisfaction. Women given set options on how to behave and are also given equally restrained options in how to rebel. Terrier continues to doggedly pursue the woman despite the obvious failings of his narrow romantic dream. The woman ends up sleeping with one of the men from the assasination company Terrier desires to quit and Terrier goes mute. Unable to deal with the woman's sexual "betrayal," Terrier internal problems become externalized in typical male inability to express feeling. Terrier's hurt masculinity is the flip side of his love interests' disatisfied feminity. Eventually Terrier is shot in the head again, which allows him to speak again but at times he babbles. His inability to express his turmoil is no longer mediated by silence it is now communicated by senseless speech. In the end his Terrier's love interest leaves him and his "3 minute coitus," suddenly and without explaination. Terrier is reduced to a common worker's life, engaged as a waiter in a brasserie. Manchette leaves us on a more humorous note than in "3 to kill," with his ending referring to the love interest's leaving; "May we surmise that she is running around the world and leading a passionate and adventurous life? We may; it's no skin off our nose (p.153)." The pointlessness of the character's rebellions and actions still come to naught but in this case Manchette offers us a shrug and an absurdist laugh. Afterall Terrier's position is the same as it was in the beginning, prone, isn't there some humour in being postrate? </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'times new roman';"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 24px; font-family:'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-79799272152510830222011-11-18T23:02:00.000-08:002011-11-20T22:56:54.771-08:00Curtains, an interlude<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">"<i>The show is over. The audience get up to leave their seats. Time to collect their coats and go home. They turn round...No more coats and no more home</i>."</span></div><div><br /></div>I went downtown after the small encampment was first raided. Rows of riot cops, enlisted by mutual aid, stood at the intersection between 14th and broadway. A legion of leftists stood by ready to give a phyricc battle to the pigs for the injustice done to their scraps of plastic, cardboard signs, and assorted trinkets that made their encampment a threat to Mayor Quan and the police force. A plastic bottle or some other debris was thrown. The cops threw back grenades of tear gas, and launched rubbet belts at the protesters in the game of catch. The protesters scuttled away, coughing and hacking, lamenting the injustices of the equipped phalanax. A few went home the rest recovened until more debris was thrown and the police responded in kind.<div><br /></div><div>The anti capitalist march was led by two large banners and the forefront participants were clad in black. A few wore motorcycle helmets, but most were clad in jeans, black hoodies, and sneakers. One of the garbed members wore finger shoes. We left the intersection of Broadway and Telegraph and began a march through the business district of Oakland. The black bloc smashed windows and spray painted anarchy signs or simple slogans on building walls. We passed a large church. People booed. The march found its way to Whole Foods. One black bloc member ran ahead and spray painted "STRIKE" in large letters on the exterior of the building. A handful of leftists were enraged and demanded "No Violence! No Violence!" One member of the "peace police" tackled a black clad woman down to the ground. The march eventually returned to its origin and the black clad "vandals" dissippated into the crowd.</div><div><br /></div><div>I got on my bike and began to ride down to the port. The sun was slowly setting on one of the nation's busiest ports. A mass of bicyclists rode to the port. We crossed a bridge by seventh street in west oakland. The residents of the neighborhood had probably never seen such a mass of people come into their territory. When I arrived there were several large trucks stopped. A group of people stood in front of them. One of the truckers began to pull on his horn for an agonizingly prolonged period of time. I sat down on the curb with a few friends. We watched hoards of marchers walk along.</div><div><br /></div><div>The encampment had been removed again and a police presence was maintained at the Frank Ogawa plaza. The general assembly had called for a day of action. A couple thousand people showed up. I met up with some friends and we rode bart down to the march. The march was far more sedate than the anti-capitalist event of two weeks prior. A group of older folk were singing a protest song. I thought that they should probably save the singing for the shower, but I'm sure they loved the pat on the back. My friends and I hurried to the front of the march. There were no black clad members. When the march turned toward Lake Merritt we left the walkers and got some food. We came back when the march arrived at 19th and telegraph. A chain link fence surrounded a vacant lot, around the lot were new condos. The fence was taken down and the land "claimed" by the occuppation. A truck equipped with speakers played funk music. People danced in the street or stood around. It began to get colder and drizzle. I came home. It was wet and cold.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the morning the encampment was cleared again by the police. Mayor Quan issued a statement saying the camps were putting a strain on Oakland's resources. She was quoted as saying:</div><div>"We will continue to be vigilant and ensure that public safety remains our first priority and that our downtown businesses are protected from vandalism. We will not tolerate lodging on public property whether in parks or open space; it is illegal."</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: medium; "><br /><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" class="regionParent" border="0" style="width: 1000px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: auto; margin-left: auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><tbody><tr><td valign="top" class="region2" style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-left: 0px; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; width: 630px; "><table border="0" width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td valign="top"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px;"><br /></span></span></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></span></div>mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-37912714695676096802011-10-19T22:29:00.000-07:002011-10-20T00:02:27.244-07:00Strangers of Morality<div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 20px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;"><i>If rape, poison, daggers, arson </i></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 20px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;"><i>Have not yet embroidered with their pleasing designs</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 20px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;"><i>The banal canvas of our pitiable lives, </i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 20px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;"><i>It is because our souls have not enough boldness.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 20px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">Charles Baudelaire</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 20px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family:Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif;">To the Reader</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3Jz1zTTaG1o" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Highsmith">Patricia Highsmith'</a>s "Strangers on a Train," is the anxiety ridden tale of two men, whose accidental meeting sends the reader on a ride of amorality. Whilst initially seeming a pillar of moral correctitude, lead character Guy Haines, has his principles eroded under the growing influence of antagonist Charles Bruno. </div><div><br /></div><div>Bruno is continually drunk and takes to heart one of <a href="http://fleursdumal.org/">Charles Baudelaire</a>'s poems.</div><div><br /></div><div>Be Drunk</div><div>Charles Baudelaire</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:verdana, arial, 'lucida sans', helvetica, geneva, sans-serif;font-size:x-small;"><p style="font-size: x-small; font-family: verdana, arial, 'lucida sans', helvetica, geneva, sans-serif; ">You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it—it's the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk.</p><p style="font-size: x-small; font-family: verdana, arial, 'lucida sans', helvetica, geneva, sans-serif; ">But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.</p><p style="font-size: x-small; font-family: verdana, arial, 'lucida sans', helvetica, geneva, sans-serif; ">And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again, drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you: "It is time to be drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish."</p></span></div><div><br /></div><div>This need for constant inebriation is written out in the early in the novel. "He (Bruno) remembered one brilliant and powerful thought that had come to him last night watching a televised shuffleboard game: <i>the way to see the world was to see it drunk</i>. Everything was created to be seen drunk (p.64)." By the end of the novel he is suffering violent physical ailments due to his consumption of the drink. It is worth noting as well that Haines begins to imbibe more regularly as well in the spirits as the story progresses paralleling his moral decline.</div><div><br /></div><div>While alcohol and drunkeness are a part of the story far more important is the wavering sense of morality, a common problem in noir tales such as this. </div><div><br /></div><div>Bruno initially meets Haines and conjures up a plot on murdering for each other. Bruno murders Haines' estranged wife and Haines after Bruno's insistence murders Bruno's father. After all "Any kind of person can murder. Purely circumstances and not a thing to do with temperament! People get so far-and it takes just the least little thing to push them over the brink. Anybody. Even your grandmother. I know," Bruno exclaimed to Haines on the train during their initial meeting. This first statement leads the way for the theme of the book, moral ambiguity. </div><div><br /></div><div>Haines' decline of morality came with a loss of sense of self which had physical repercussions, "-collisions with revolving doors, his inability even to hold a pen against a ruler, and so often the feeling he wasn't <i>here</i>, doing what he was doing (p.183). </div><div><br /></div><div>Haines loss of self coincides with his loss of traditional "Thou shalt" morality. Taught by his mother and father that all men were good, because all men had souls, and the soul was entirely good, Haines believed that evil came from externals. It was not he that was evil, but the world outside invading him. Yet morphed by murder he began to believe that: "...good and evil, lived side by side in the human heart, and not merely in differing proportions in one man and the next, but all good and all evil. One had merely to look for a little of either to find it all, one had merely to scratch the surface (p.180)" </div><div><br /></div><div>Lacking moral guidelines Haines began to feel eternally guilty for the sins he committed. He actions are self justified when he lets go of his morality yet the sins are repulsive to his when he tries to regain them and fit back into normal life. These feelings are projected onto Bruno the coconspirator of sin. Haines is both drawn and repulsed by Bruno.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is a blatant homosexual subtext underneath Bruno's and Haines' relationship. Bruno doesn't care much for women and Haines' feelings for Bruno are as complicated as his relationship to his morality.</div><div><br /></div><div>"'This is my favorite. I never saw anything like this.' Bruno held up the white knitted tie with the thin red stripe down the center. "Started to get one for myself, but I wanted you to have it. Just you, I mean. They're for you, Guy."</div><div> "Thanks." Guy felt an unpleasant twitch in his upper lip. He might have been Bruno's lover, he thought suddently, to whom Bruno had brought a present, a peace offering (p.205)"</div><div><br /></div><div>Highsmith,herself queer, was gay during a time in which homophobia intertwined with Cold War political anxiety which made homosexuality a security risk to the nation. It could be said that Highsmith's internalized homophobia was transcribed into characters, as neither of the lead characters are easy to empathize with. Queers are evil, and isn't it coincidental that the characters are queer for each other? This would be a shallow understanding not only of sexuality but also of the main underpinning of the novel which is sexual and moral ambiguity. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;">It would be easy to point out polarizing aspects of characters in the novel, and people outside the world of fiction, but <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:100%;">as <span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 21px; ">Otto Penzler, veteran editor and publisher of crime writing, said of Highsmith's fiction; "you don't know who are the good guys and the bad guys because there are no nice people." </span></span></span></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-4743835467374607732011-09-22T22:31:00.000-07:002011-09-22T23:07:14.419-07:00The black, The white<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.grouchoreviews.com/content/interviews/176/1.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 480px; height: 640px;" src="http://www.grouchoreviews.com/content/interviews/176/1.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />My love for noir has continued with James Ellroy's "Brown's Requiem." Ellroy, whose most famous work is "LA Confidential (which was turned into an excellent movie)" tells the story of Fritz Brown a former LAPD officer who now works as a repo man in poor neighborhoods. His job as one of the bottom dwellers in the ghetto changes when he is hired by a golf caddie by the name of Fat Dog. The crazed caddie is misogynistic, racist, and deeply obsessed with his cello playing sister who lives with an older jewish man who pays the rent. Brown follows the sister around, and successfully sleeps with her. After dipping his wick in once he's in love (L-U-V) and goes out to try to thwart Fat Dog's maniac plans for his sister and the jewish benefactor. The story unfolds with soap opera style. Relationships aren't as clear as they might seem and lies beget lies which is typical par for the course in Ellroy's novels. The book was thankfully shorter than "LA Confidential" but didn't tell as much of a sweeping story. The writing is similiar as Ellroy's later works but is a bit more straightforward. An interesting quirk in Fitz Brown is his love of classical music which ties nicely into the most recent book I finished by James Cain, another author of the hard-boiled style. Cain is well known for noir classics; "The Postman Always Rings Twice" and "Double Indemity." Cain is not as well known for his proto-feminist novel "Mildred Pierce," which recently was turned into an HBO movie series.<br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ErPMW9QBUWs" allowfullscreen="" width="560" frameborder="0" height="315"></iframe><br /><br />While Cain is considered a hardboiled writer his novels are more dense and substative than the traditional mystery to which the style is associated. I finished "Three by Cain: Serenade, Love's Lovely Counterfeit, and The Butterfly," today. Of the three only "Love's Lovely Counterfeit" falls into the classical realm of noir fiction with its associations with crime, murder, femme fatales, and soulless men. As stated earlier Fitz Brown loves classical music as does the lead character of "Serenade" a wholly interesting tale of a former opera singer whose voiced cracked and so with no talent and luck ended up in Mexico. The washed up talent ends up falling in love with a mexican prostitute. He finds his ability again and regains status as a talented voice. With fame comes problems as his past life catches up to him, specifically in the form of a former male lover who pushed the protagonist too hard and made his voice/self crack. A battle of over the love and attention of the protagonist occurs between the female mexican prostitute and the well to do male lover. This tale was especially interesting as many noir tales tell little of homosexuals. Of course the homosexual was indighted as evil, but there were also obvious ways in which the antagonist was helpful for the protagonists life and on the flip side is the protagonists love affair with a mexican prostitute which is not exactly wholesome.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdPGbfQMU22cj1TRa5iAzW5auuys5YPABtlXjAPttVux-H3sn5SC-9qQyWgVORzy5zSpAA2TGf4Kwkodr52Nk_lLUpMfDJoMUW5sG5pBFeiUsh2sjq_v7kN0kYXYJy3UAxfIDKMkKvqzM/s1600/jamesmcain.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 417px; height: 600px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdPGbfQMU22cj1TRa5iAzW5auuys5YPABtlXjAPttVux-H3sn5SC-9qQyWgVORzy5zSpAA2TGf4Kwkodr52Nk_lLUpMfDJoMUW5sG5pBFeiUsh2sjq_v7kN0kYXYJy3UAxfIDKMkKvqzM/s1600/jamesmcain.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Cain continued to push the boundaries of what is wholesome in his tale "The Butterfly," which was originally published in 1946. This tale follows Jess, a god fearing man in the mining hills of Apalachia. Jess' grown daughter comes back home to live with him and he is seduced by her into making liquor, defending her honor, and eventually sleeping with her. It is revelead that he is not her father which only encourages him to bang her more. There's few tales that point at incestous lifestyles and pedepholia, perhaps Lolita being the only other that comes to mind and it was certainly interesting that Cain wrote the story considering Cain's other pieces but reading these "Three by Cain," continues to show me the breadth of Cain's work.<br /><br />Lastly I've seen "Drive," a new release in theatres that follows Ryan Gosling as "The man with no name" who works as a stunt driver for movies in LA and moonlights as a getaway driver. Gosling falls for the girl next door and her son and when the girl's husband comes home he must do job that goes wrong in order to protect the family. Gosling goes on a knight's quest to protect the girl which is disgustingly noble and excitedly violent. The film is accompanied by an excellent synthpop score reminscent of <a href="http://lesenfantperdus.blogspot.com/2010/06/blog-post.html">Synth Britania </a>and of course the entire film is a nod to JG Ballard.<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/-DSVDcw6iW8" allowfullscreen="" width="420" frameborder="0" height="315"></iframe><br />Particularly enthralling is the slow cinematography that creates a constant feeling of transportation throughtout the movie. When a character is standing still there is still movement as if the character is always in motion, on a highway. It is probably the best movie I've seen this year. Certainly better than <a href="http://lesenfantperdus.blogspot.com/2011/09/muggles-guide-to-reading.html">Harry Potter!!!</a><br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/CWX34ShfcsE" allowfullscreen="" width="560" frameborder="0" height="315"></iframe>mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-69883774474405739982011-09-10T20:31:00.001-07:002011-09-11T03:07:43.914-07:00A Muggle's guide to reading<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.whitegadget.com/attachments/pc-wallpapers/65822d1313049477-harry-potter-hpeaodf-harry-potter.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 552px; height: 413px;" src="http://www.whitegadget.com/attachments/pc-wallpapers/65822d1313049477-harry-potter-hpeaodf-harry-potter.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />I've read the Harry Potter Series. The seven novel chronicle by British author J.K. Rowling is a pop cultural sensation. The narrative follows young Harry Potter, chosen through a series of accidents (and the courageous love his parents) to defeat the most vile of wizards, Lord Voldemort. Our hero/protagonist ages throughout the books and chronicles his enrollment in Hogwarts, a magical school where young wizards and witches learn to hone their abilities. With each passing year Potter uncovers more of the mystery of whom he is, why he was not killed when Voldemort sought to strike him down, and why he must strike down his nemesis. En route to his role as savior to the magical kingdom he is joined by Ron and Hermonine. Whilst Potter close allies, the figure of Dumbledore is more important. It is revealed in the latter books that Dumbledore has been staging the events of Potter's life to conclude with a deadly duel between the two opposing forces. Basically he set Potter up.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/4165/451958-x_studio_08dumbledore_large.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 425px;" src="http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/4165/451958-x_studio_08dumbledore_large.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Potter's naive belief in Dumbledore, a man whom he barely knows, is ridiculous. Potter's trust in Dumbledore's plan is brought into question but ultimately shown to be true, another sad moral to tell children. Often children are told to trust in adults for tautological reasons, because they are adults, because they know better, because they have more experience... Yet adults like children make mistakes and should be as trusted with decisions as much as children. Adults are just as rash, nonsensical, and absurd as children. The only difference is that adults have more experience in rationalizing their decisions and covering their mistakes.<br /><br />The series is additionally disappointing in its lack of violence. For an exceptionally evil wizard Voldemort doesn't murder many. He hardly engages in genocide. There are of course more "evil" things than homocide but Voldemort shys away from them. Evidently he's never read the<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_sade"> Marquis De Sade</a> nor<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lautremont"> Lautremont</a>. Voldemort is hell bent on killing Potter (yawn... if I was the most powerful evil wizard ever I would be doing drugs, fucking, and eating babies) and attempting to sustain his immortality but really what good is living forever without sex, drugs, and baby eating?<br /><br />While reading the series my pictures of Potter and his crew were always formed by the actors in the movies. Having seen the movies before engaging the novels, the actors were scripted into my imagination. When Snape spoke I imagined <a href="http://movies.yahoo.com/images/hv/photo/movie_pix/fox_searchlight/quills/_group_photos/geoffrey_rush5.jpg">Alan Rickman </a>speaking and not some character of my own creation. The same was true for Potter (daniel radcliffe), hermonine (emma watson) and Ron(Rubert Grint). Jerry Mander speaks of this phenomenon in his excellent book "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Arguments_for_the_Elimination_of_Television">4 arguments against television.</a>" Mander not only makes social arguments for the destruction of television but also biological ones. Evidently it is a common occurence for people to replace imagination with things that they see on screen.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://26.media.tumblr.com/ASRyRFXXDariwts5JfIv4sML_400.gif"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 282px; height: 372px;" src="http://26.media.tumblr.com/ASRyRFXXDariwts5JfIv4sML_400.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Overall the novels are enjoyable to read. They are quick page turners that don't have much depth to them. Perhaps they will encourage people to read more... probably they will just encourage people to go see more movies.mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-17629560089405160842011-07-29T10:21:00.000-07:002011-07-29T10:53:21.666-07:00The Century of SelfAdam Curtis in his extraordinary documentary <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self">"The Century of Self,</a>" follows the Freud family and the rise of advanced capitalism. Divided into four parts the film series is a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogy_%28philosophy%29">geneology</a> of the Self in the western world.The Freudian view of human beings maintained that humans are irrational beings driven by unconscious libidinous desires. Edward Bernays, Freud's nephew and creator of public relations, believed that because humans had dangerous uncontrollable desires they must be controlled and managed from above.<br /><br />"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind." Bernays <span style="font-style: italic;">Propaganda</span> 1928<br /><br />During the radicalism of the 1960s and 1970s this view of the person whose consumption habits were to be controlled came into question. The left did capitalism a favor by opening its doors to the importance of individual choice as a means of self expression. According to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich">Wilhelm Reich</a>, a liberatory Freudian pyschoanalyst, the self's desires should not be suppressed but rather should continually be let loose. The inner unconscious desires and motives should be expressed. Capitalism adapted to this new view and began to market products as expressions of individual taste and desires. No longer was a commodity just a fulfillment of a desire but it was also a way to express desire.<br /><br />I feel like the strength of this documentary series is in two things. First in showing the adaptability of modern capitalism to incorporate changing views of the self. Ostensibly the documentary is a depiction of the rise of <a href="http://nntk.net/main.php?g2_itemId=251">Spectacular capitalism</a>. The second strength is in showing how the self has changed with time. This change implies that our senses of self are not static, essential things but rather adapt with changes in social structure and events in our own personal lives.<br /><br />Part 1<br /><embed id="VideoPlayback" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=2641575773935962254&hl=en&fs=true" style="width: 400px; height: 326px;" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed><br /><br />Part 2<br /><embed id="VideoPlayback" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=7014561065732629565&hl=en&fs=true" style="width: 400px; height: 326px;" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed><br /><br />Part 3<br /><embed id="VideoPlayback" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-6111922724894802811&hl=en&fs=true" style="width: 400px; height: 326px;" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed><br /><br />Part 4<br /><embed id="VideoPlayback" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=4282687027796578107&hl=en&fs=true" style="width: 400px; height: 326px;" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed>mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-32374436148878928312011-07-20T01:07:00.001-07:002011-07-20T01:07:42.209-07:00Mike Tyson<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/EUDogb3zO0U" allowfullscreen="" width="480" frameborder="0" height="390"></iframe>mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-87411049797897965822011-07-15T16:32:00.000-07:002011-07-15T17:17:48.286-07:00Metamorphsis on Stage<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.glogster.com/media/1/9/3/75/9037541.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 424px; height: 600px;" src="http://www.glogster.com/media/1/9/3/75/9037541.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect-like creature. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes." <span style="font-style: italic;">The Metamorphis</span> by Franz Kafka<br /><br /><br />Aurora Theatre, the location for Metamorphis by Franz Kafka and adapted by David Farr and Gisli Orn Gardarsson, was small and intimate. The theatre fit a hundred filled seats. The set was simple; a living room with two chairs and a television, a kitchen with a table, a set of stairs with a framed door and the protagonist, Gregor Samsa's bedroom. His bedroom was a simple affair with a bed and a framed window however the room was slanted downward toward the living room. The angle of the room forced Samsa in his motions through the room to crawl, beast like through the area.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://vvoice.vo.llnwd.net/e14//kafka-s-metamorphosis.4670589.40.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 323px;" src="http://vvoice.vo.llnwd.net/e14//kafka-s-metamorphosis.4670589.40.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Alexander Crowther, who played Gregor, was made not into a insect which is implied by many translators of the novella, but is rather given a general unwholesome and despicable character. This characterization is closer to the German <i>Ungeziefer </i>which literally means "unclean animal not suitable for sacrifice" and is sometimes used colloquially to mean "bug." Kafka in the novella defines Samsa as an <span style="font-style: italic;">Ungeziefer</span>. Crowther does a splendid job as a green lit beast crawling about the set with darkened eyes. With little costuming he conveys bodily the disgust that Kafka intended.<br /><br />The play is set in America during the 1950s, an era of witch hunts, paranoia, and sci-fi flicks such as Them! The Samsa family is given a heavy schelack of "normality" which is shattered when their chief breadwinner, Gregor, is unable to work, he is a disgusting beast instead of a good worker. The family is forced to take on a renter, and the father employment. While the economics of the ordeal with Gregor is brings the plot along the interpersonal relationships within the family is where the core of action resides. The cast shows their acting chops with attempts to continue on as normal whilst having a blemish in their lives. Particularly riveting is Madeline H.D. Brown's skill in portraying Gregor's mother. Brown face shows the strain of smiling under duress. Her features portray the tender line between facing things with a smile and cracking under the pressure.<br /><br />What was particularly interesting about this adaptation was its humor. The novella is an absurd story and this existential absurdity is translated on stage as comedy. There was something poignantly funny when the Samsa family dealt with their new found filth. I'm not sure that it was Kafka's intention for his story to be one of humour and laughter but there is something absurdly comical about a man who wakes one day to find himself a <i>Ungeziefer.<br /><br /></i><i><br /></i>mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-68986957261179452482011-07-07T22:52:00.001-07:002011-07-07T22:52:58.654-07:00Mike Tyson<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/7xsfjxVXoEo" allowfullscreen="" width="480" frameborder="0" height="390"></iframe>mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-32320341528938541202011-07-06T13:39:00.000-07:002011-07-07T00:44:30.311-07:00The harder they fallHe washed his glass and wiped it clean, to destroy the evidence, and looked at me steadily. "Mr. Lewis, what is it that turned a fine sport into a dirty business?"<br />"Money," I said.<br />"It's money," he went on, as if he hadn't heard me. "Money. Too much money for the promoters, too much money for the managers, too much money for the fighters."<br />"Too much money for everybody except the press agents," I said. I was feeling sorrier for myself at the moment than I was for the game. That's what the battle always did to me.<br />"I tell you, Mr. Lewis, it's money," Charles was saying.<br />"An athletic sport in an atmosphere of money is like a girl from a good family in a house of ill fame." p.7 The Harder They Fall<br /><br />Budd Schulberg was not only a novelist but a screenplay writer who in his most famous title depicts the scandal and corruption of the boxing world. The story follows Eddie Willis a writer and press agent whose moral compass goes askew when he begins to work for Nick Belinzo, a boxing promoter. Belinzo contracts the behemoth peasant Toro Molina to become a fighter and spectacle for him. Toro is unaware of the complexities and business of boxing. Trusting his newfound friends Toro is led along on a string through a series of created victories. Each fight is made more spectacular and Toro is promised more money and all that he desires. In time with the spectacle is the diminishing of Toro's control over his life.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://nntk.net/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=579&g2_serialNumber=1"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 327px; height: 453px;" src="http://nntk.net/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=579&g2_serialNumber=1" alt="" border="0" /></a> Toro is eventually given a pittance of a payment for his work while the others, the promoters and fat cats get rich. Having no other line of recourse Toro is damned to continue to sell himself to fight.<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Bp1qWJQ96b8" allowfullscreen="" width="480" frameborder="0" height="390"></iframe><br /><br />While the action centers on Toro the realization of the grasp of capital depresses Eddie and makes him feel like a beaten fighter. In this way the novel is a classic noir. The main character is aware of fate and the social structures that create his fate but is totally unable to do anything about it no matter his valiant efforts.mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-13765030754967600682011-06-27T08:32:00.000-07:002011-06-27T08:33:02.276-07:00Bangkok<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/25576589?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="400" frameborder="0" height="225"></iframe><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/25576589">BANGKOK - DUSK TO DAWN</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user4936556">Florian Böhm</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-17531635649263829532011-06-25T01:33:00.000-07:002011-06-25T01:58:40.615-07:00CelebrityThe celebrity, the spectacular representation of a living human being, embodies this banality by embodying the image of a possible role. Being a star means specializing in the <i>seemingly lived;</i> the star is the object of identification with the shallow seeming life that has to compensate for the fragmented productive specializations which are actually lived. Celebrities exist to act out various styles of living and viewing society unfettered, free to express themselves <i>globally.</i> They embody the inaccessible result of social <i>labor</i> by dramatizing its by-products magically projected above it as its goal: <i>power</i> and <i>vacations,</i> decision and consumption, which are the beginning and end of an undiscussed process.<br />Society of the Spectacle 60 <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/info_and_tech/assets/mediated.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 692px; height: 449px;" src="http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/info_and_tech/assets/mediated.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />The gym was warm from the San Francisco heat. Summer solistice had just passed and the weather was finally turning. Neungsiam was doing padwork in the ring while my camera snapped pictures. The 36 year old Thai man will be fighting next month in Ponoma California. I was at his place to help him spar, and to possibly interview him.<br /><br />"Hey, I like your writing a lot," David said to me. I turned toward him. He looked vaguely familiar, later I would recognize his portrait on a fight poster for a couple of years ago. "I totally live through you reading your stuff while I'm at my job."<br /><br />"There's nothing quite like mediated living," I said in reply.<br /><br />He looked at me quizzically and a friend nearby smiled.<br /><br />This is one of the disheartening effects of writing and being public about my trips to Thailand via mymuaythai. People read the highlights of my "adventures" and don't realize that I live an everyday life that is quite normal. Put on stage my exploits are read as a life lived unfettered by social norms, a life of permanent vacation, the complete opposite of socially necessitated labor time/work. Just like happy hours and weekends my advertisements of a life fully lived ends up being escapism. Free time is the time away from work in which we are supposed to regain ourselves and replenish. Labour is a magical commodity in that it can be replenished unlike other items such as coal, meat, or toilet paper. There is a limited supply of the latter, (although I hope that toilet paper doesn't run out anytime soon) because the earth has limited resources. Yet in our free time we reinforce spectacular society. In the above case I am inadvertently reinforcing this idealistic notion of a life truly lived yet as long as there is capital there can only be choices made by and for economics.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.muaythaitrainingcamps.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Saenchai-Sor-Kingstar.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 332px; height: 450px;" src="http://www.muaythaitrainingcamps.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Saenchai-Sor-Kingstar.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />--mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-5876510431628457442011-06-10T10:24:00.000-07:002011-06-10T11:07:14.218-07:00Hair cutThe blue sky had just a few clouds. The slight chilled summer breeze blew all the white whisps away. I rode my bike to 40th and Telegraph. The chain on my bike cranked along eeking out a harsh squeak. The chain was rusted and old. My bike was dented and scraped but still retained a blue sky color.<br /><br />I locked my bike to a bike stand and walked inside the barbershop. Outside a striped pole twirled denoting the nature of the business. Four barber chairs were set up on the north wall. One of them was occupied. An early thirties african american man cut the hair of another's with a clipper.<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/32WXKzwdNTw" allowfullscreen="" width="480" frameborder="0" height="390"></iframe><br /><br />I took off my bag and set it down on a row of chairs for waiting clients on the south wall.<br /><br />"You need a hair cut," said a barber. His occuppation was denoted by his black smock. He motioned me to take a seat. "What do you want," he asked.<br /><br />"Cut down the sides to about one and then a little off the top. I have this weird patch of hair on the top of my head from getting stitches last month and I want it to look better. I don't care what you do to it," I told him.<br /><br />When the hair on the side of my hair is trimmed short you can see the lightning bolt scars from my facial reconstruction. I liked to be able to see them, they are reminders. The lines recall my fight and the surgery afterwards. Are lives are composed of scars, layers upon layers of hardened flesh. Peeling back the topmost slab of skin reveals another and another.<br /><br />The barber began to cut my hair. The clipper buzzed. Attached to the western wall was a flat screen plasma television. It was showing "Die Hard 4." Bruce Willis was once again trying to save america from certain doom.<br /><br />"Yo Aaron, you seen that movie yet," the other barber said.<br /><br />"Nah, I'm supposed to see it with my boy later tonight," Aaron said as he cut my hair.<br /><br />The barber and I saw in silence except for the ever present noise of the clippers. I thought of chatting with him but my tongue was thick.<br /><br /><iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1kew6kLczt0" allowfullscreen="" width="480" frameborder="0" height="390"></iframe><br /><br />"Look good," Aaron asked me. I looked at my reflection. The lightning bolts were there so was the new pink scar that ran down my forehead and into my hairline parting my hair like a cowlick. I blinked at my reflection and nodded.<br /><br />"How much," I asked.<br /><br />"Twenty dollars," he said pointing at a sign on the wall.<br /><br />I gave him a bill and a few dollars as a tip. I ran my fingers through my short hair. I felt the ridge that runs just behind my hairline. I rubbed the ridge and wondered if it would ever disappear.<br /><br />The sky was still blue. The clouds were still sparse. I unlocked my bicycle. The chain still squeaked slightly. I rode home, my hair cleaner and my scars a little more visible for a while.mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7785107449482074318.post-19466048154212535872011-05-31T23:52:00.001-07:002011-06-01T00:51:35.386-07:00A black shirt and a bar<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/GPYOf-P4Hlo" allowfullscreen="" width="480" frameborder="0" height="390"></iframe><br />I buttoned up my black shirt, the garment had been purchased less than a week ago at the Sears next door, it was a necessary item for work outfit. Once buttoned and tucked in I put my suspenders over my shirt and rolled up the sleeves.<br /><br />The small closet of a room stored the staff lockers. A large sign on the front of the door stated that "This room is not secure." Several of the lockers had small locks on them with various items of clothing, purses, and bags stuffed inside.<br /><br />Next to the lockers was a rack on which lay various folded piles of towels; blue ones for the kitchen, white ones for the bar, striped ones for polishing. I took two towels of the latter types and an apron. I wrapped the thin strings of the white shoe length apron around my waist and knotted it. It was a stark contrast with my otherwise black outfit; black shoes, black socks, black pants, and black shirt. I opened up the staff locker room door and walked through the hallway and through the curtains onto the restaurant floor.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.prole.info/ar/ar_17.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 668px; height: 864px;" src="http://www.prole.info/ar/ar_17.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Having come back from Thailand broke I didn't have much option in employment. Not having a degree (which is worthless if its not a master's or graduate degree), and there being a recession meant that my choices for what type of work I wanted to do were limited so I did what an reasonable person would do, I canvassed restaurants for work. Having worked in the food service industry for over 7 years I've done it all. I've washed dishes, prep cooked, line cooked, bussed, food ran, waited, barbacked, and bartended. I've never stepped into the big shoes of a manager because of my distaste for firing people and mucking my hands with owners and upper management.<br /><br />The restaurant at which I work now is considered fine dining, which is merely a matter of appearance. Fine dining is more concerned with appearance and gives the customer higher quality food and beverages along with service. This labor and product comes at a higher cost both in terms of labour power and in price. With the higher bill comes a corresponding higher class of customer. Its hard to justify spending $50 on a meal as a worker that only makes $70 a day, but for someone that makes $150 or more daily the fee for luxurious living can be easily afforded.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.prole.info/ar/ar_22.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 612px; height: 792px;" src="http://www.prole.info/ar/ar_22.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />As a bar back at the restaurant I am in in charge of doing all the grunt labor for the bartenders. The variety of tasks to which I am responsible for is enough to drive a schizophrenic sane. The onus is on me to make sure there is enough fresh squeezed juice, ice, crushed ice, bitters, liquors, utensils, plates, glasses, etc. all the while being burdened with customer service; clearing plates, getting and refilling waters, setting dining ware out. The pace of a restaurant is bipolar in the the psychiatric sense. The business can be depressed and slow with nothing to do and then all at once a maniac streak breaks out demanding immediate and sustained attention. This maniac dash must be reined in by concentration on a variety of tasks demanding one multi-task and constantly think ahead essentially doing labour saving tasks in order to make sure the job gets done.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.prole.info/ar/ar_25.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 612px; height: 792px;" src="http://www.prole.info/ar/ar_25.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Eventually the evening ends.I come home and I shower. The smell of food and liquor hangs on me like a foul perfume. The soap scrubs away the stench but doesn't alleviate the aches and pains. Its late and I know that there is no one to help me ease my pain other than other late night workers. I open a beer. The cold liquid rushes down my throat making my throat cold and my body warm at the same time. I stare out into space and try not to think of the things that I forgot tonight, of the repetition, of work.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.prole.info/ar/ar_56.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 612px; height: 792px;" src="http://www.prole.info/ar/ar_56.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>mlucashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03105822851312475176noreply@blogger.com1