Les Enfants Perdus

Coming Communism!?

2011-12-15T12:25:00.000-08:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 "Communization and its Discontents," 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?

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)

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.

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)"

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 any activity is capable of becoming a part of the process of valorisation (p.73)."

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)"

Pointless rebellion

2011-11-27T22:47:00.000-08:00

The revolutionary upheaval of France in May of '68 has had a profound impact on the pysche of the participants. That imprint has turned up in literature.

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 "Society of the Spectacle," 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 Donald Nicholson-Smith, 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.

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 "Five Remarks on How I Earn My Living;"

"Less obviously and yet surely, the roman noir 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 roman noir 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)."

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)"

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.

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?

Curtains, an interlude

2011-11-18T23:02:00.000-08:00

"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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

"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."

Strangers of Morality

2011-10-19T22:29:00.000-07:00

If rape, poison, daggers, arson

Have not yet embroidered with their pleasing designs

The banal canvas of our pitiable lives,

It is because our souls have not enough boldness.

Charles Baudelaire

To the Reader

Patricia Highsmith'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.

Bruno is continually drunk and takes to heart one of Charles Baudelaire's poems.

Be Drunk

Charles Baudelaire

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.

But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be drunk.

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."

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: the way to see the world was to see it drunk. 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.

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.

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.

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 here, doing what he was doing (p.183).

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)"

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.

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.

"'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."

"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)"

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.

It would be easy to point out polarizing aspects of characters in the novel, and people outside the world of fiction, but as 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."

The black, The white

2011-09-22T22:31:00.000-07:00

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.

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.

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.

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 Synth Britania and of course the entire film is a nod to JG Ballard.

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 Harry Potter!!!

A Muggle's guide to reading

2011-09-10T20:31:00.001-07:00

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.

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.

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 Marquis De Sade nor Lautremont. 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?

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 Alan Rickman 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 "4 arguments against television." 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.
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.

The Century of Self

2011-07-29T10:21:00.000-07:00

Adam Curtis in his extraordinary documentary "The Century of Self," follows the Freud family and the rise of advanced capitalism. Divided into four parts the film series is a geneology 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.

"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 Propaganda 1928

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 Wilhelm Reich, 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.

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 Spectacular capitalism. 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.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Mike Tyson

2011-07-20T01:07:00.001-07:00

Metamorphsis on Stage

2011-07-15T16:32:00.000-07:00

"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." The Metamorphis by Franz Kafka

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.

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 Ungeziefer 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 Ungeziefer. 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.

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.

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 Ungeziefer.

Mike Tyson

2011-07-07T22:52:00.001-07:00

The harder they fall

2011-07-06T13:39:00.000-07:00

He 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?"
"Money," I said.
"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."
"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.
"I tell you, Mr. Lewis, it's money," Charles was saying.
"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

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. 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.

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.

Bangkok

2011-06-27T08:32:00.000-07:00

BANGKOK - DUSK TO DAWN from Florian Böhm on Vimeo.

Celebrity

2011-06-25T01:33:00.000-07:00

The 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 seemingly lived; 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 globally. They embody the inaccessible result of social labor by dramatizing its by-products magically projected above it as its goal: power and vacations, decision and consumption, which are the beginning and end of an undiscussed process.
Society of the Spectacle 60

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.

"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."

"There's nothing quite like mediated living," I said in reply.

He looked at me quizzically and a friend nearby smiled.

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.

--

Hair cut

2011-06-10T10:24:00.000-07:00

The 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.

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.

I took off my bag and set it down on a row of chairs for waiting clients on the south wall.

"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.

"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.

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.

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.

"Yo Aaron, you seen that movie yet," the other barber said.

"Nah, I'm supposed to see it with my boy later tonight," Aaron said as he cut my hair.

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.

"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.

"How much," I asked.

"Twenty dollars," he said pointing at a sign on the wall.

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.

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.

A black shirt and a bar

2011-05-31T23:52:00.001-07:00

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.

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.

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.
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.

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.

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.

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.

Music

2011-05-28T15:36:00.000-07:00

My friend Mark sent this over. The music is aight. I'm a fan because of the name, which reminds me of my blogs incorrect spelling which irks me at times. It should be les enfants perdus not les enfant perdus. Oh well. Enjoy!

The end of the affair and Oranges are not the only fruit

2011-05-23T10:15:00.000-07:00

I picked up a copy of Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair" in a small bookshop off of Khao San road. The shop had reasonably priced used books, roughly the same price one would pay in the states. One of the drawbacks of Thailand is the expense of books as most are imported, and there is a small used book market. That market also mainly contains crappy pulp espionage Tom Clancy style books and or romance as that's what people read while on vacation.

Greene returns to the theme of affairs in "The End of the Affair," which is a running thread in all the fiction that I've read by him. The story follows Maurice Bendrix, a slightly crippled writer who while working on a novel falls in love with a married woman, Sarah. Their love affair is troubled by Sarah's refusal to separate from her boring husband, Henry. Bendrix is a jealous lover and their relationship is plagued by his emotions. Set in World War II in London the climatic change in the novel comes about from a bombing. Sarah and Bendrix are at his home and Bendrix goes downstairs, a bomb hits. He is injured and temporarily trapped underneath a door. Sarah in a fit of panic prays to god to save Bendrix. Her lover is saved and as part of her prayer Sarah has promised never to see Bendrix again. Her devotion to god and her desire to keep her promise to the almighty sets the tone and subsequent dilemmas for the second half of the novel as Bendrix tries to reunite with her. The novel's ending is predictable but what is particularly irksome is the religious tract feel of the story. Instead of being a fictional tale about the sorrowful end of a relationship the novel turns into a polemic about belief in god. Several miraculous events unfold relating to Sarah and her faith which turns everyone into big old Jesus believers. Blech!

Reading about Greene makes me not surprised in the least about this latter turn, as authors' writing is influenced by their lives. Greene was a Roman Catholic himself and had an affair, in fact the book is dedicated to his mistress at the time.

Continuing on with the overally religious is Jeannett Winterson's "Oranges are not the only fruit," a book I shamelessly stole from one of my Thai roommates (sorry man I'll pay you back for it?). The novel is a bildsungsroman about a young girl whose mother is fanatically religious. The mother's social circle is confined to her church group who routinely chastise others for their sins. The mother is heavily influenced by missionary style beliefs and has a strong pentecostal background.
The essential tension comes about because of the young girl's (and narrator) affair with another girl. Under the guise of being especially devout the two girls spend all their time together, eventually a relationship blooms. Unfortunately the lesbian flower of youth is crushed by the hammer of religion as the mother and her cronies find the passion of the two children intolerable. The two girls are torn apart, yet the cycle happens to the narrator again, and again as she become mores cognizant of her sexual desire for women.

The narrative is non-linear with several side tales told about a young woman and a wizard along with knights of the round table. Heavy on the religious symbolism the book is quite layered but what ultimately shines is the simple desire for a more diverse world in which people's desires can be accepted. The title of the book comes about because of the mother's insistence to feed her daughter oranges. The fruit is the only food available until the close of the book when the daughter has come of age and separated herself, to some extent, from the confines of her mother's religion. The mother comes to an uneasy acceptance of her daughters carnal passions by not mentioning them whilst still going out to save the world from sin.

"Oranges are not the only fruit," is Winterson's first novel, published at the age of 24 and like Greene's novel is at least semi-autobiographical. Winterson grew up in a penecostal family. A devout child, Winterson began to deliver sermons and proselytize by the age of six. Ten years down the road she realized that she was a lesbian and left home which mirrors the narrative of the novel. We write about what we know, and we only know what we live.

Winterson includes a handful of poetic and interesting lines that I liked which are included below:

"I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had. Some people's emanations are very strong, some people create themselves afresh outside of their own body. (p. 164)"

"Time is a great deadener; people forget, get bored, grow old, go away. She said that not much had happened between us anyways, historically speaking. But history is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe knot it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing. A cat's cradle (p. 166)."

"There's no choice that doesn't mean a loss (p.167)."

Back in the USA

2011-05-17T16:56:00.001-07:00

The sky is a drab grey. The rain is cold and chilly. The people are taller, and often wear rags to accentuate their alternative lifestyle. The public transportation is slow and expensive. Bikes litter the streets. The restaurants, bars, and clubs are expensive matching worker's wages. The dominant language is english, with all of its idiosyncracies and annoyances. I am back in the USA.

I came back a little over a week ago after a final fight at MBK mall in Thailand. My bout will be posted below. The bout went well considering my opponent's experience level, he had about 40-50 fights. My corner asked me if I wanted to keep fighting as blood dripped down my face and I said that I didn't want to make the decision. They made it for me saying that continuing to fight wasn't worth it. My bout wasn't at a big stadium, it wasn't for a belt, and the money was horrific, I got paid thirty dollars for the bout, granted that is a fair amount of pad thai.

Coming back to the states is like coming back to a heap of problems, and the drudgery of everyday life. I have to find a job, I have to move, I have to pay my bills, I basically have to make up for the borrowed time that I was living on in Thailand. Vacations are borrowed time in a capitalist world, time you are lended in order to keep you in place when you return with more bills and more problems. That said my time in Thailand was one of the best times in my life because I was living exactly the way I wanted to. I went to Thai language school, I was in a great relationship, I had great friends, I trained all the time, I fought, I read a lot, I wrote a lot etc.

I would have stayed if it was feasible but its just not realistic as I don't have a degree. To get the most basic job, teaching English, you need a degree. That said degrees out here in the states are pretty much worthless. While giving a graduate a few dollars more in a new job they don't pay off the college loans right away, if ever. Instead they are a false promise of security down the road, a promise that is increasingly shown to be another lie of the capital-spectacle.

Coming back and not getting into the schools I applied for is pretty disappointing but also reminds me of how pointless it is to be university. If you want something you need to get out there and do it. Now all I have to do is fully express what it is that I wants.

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3 part 1

Round 3 part 2

The Politician by Khamsing Srinawk

2011-04-26T21:58:00.000-07:00

My friend and I were walking around the backpacker's ghetto of Khao San in Bangkok about two weeks ago. The area is great for vegan fare and also a real hotspot if you ever want to come to an exotic country to buy stupid souvenoirs from Thais and or get your hair braided. The area is a dump, however it does offer a few used bookstores. Sadly books out here are expensive, and even more disappointing is the lack of translated Thai literature, if only Thailand had been colonized.

While I was there I picked up a collection of stories by Srinawk. The collection of stories is largely set in rural Thailand, which while making up the majority of the landscape of the nation does not usually factor into the spectacular image of the tourist haven. When people think of Thailand they think of Bangkok and beaches.

Set in the countryside the stories grapple with issues of modernity, gender, and the ever intruding presence of foreigners.

My friend and I sat down on a bench nearby the backpacker's ghetto. She laid down while I sat up reading the book aloud. Nearby boats shuttled down the Chao Phraya river and the yellow shirts headquarter, with its netted garb, churned out ideas to invoke the masses. The introductory story, over twenty years old still has resonance and impact. Not only does it speak of the ambiguous relationship of Thai citizens to their representatives, and the emptiness of democracy but also of the timeless quality of those relationships.

Thailand is gearing up for another election. The prime minister is calling for elections in the fall. It is worried that the red shirts party Peua Thai will oust the current administration. When the nation's television satellite was disrupted for a few hours, everyone throughout the nation assumed that a coup d'etat was in process...

Whatever happens in Thailand in the next few decades, years, months, we can safely assume that politics will always be the same shameful repetition that it always is.
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The Politician

by Khamsin Srinawk

The shadows of the soaring pines falling across the rough road had shrunk in size to a couple of yards. The market-place was quiet as usual at this time of the day. Once in a while a bicycle passed. Under the overhanging roofs thickly coated with dust a few groups of country folk were walking. Now and again shouts emerged from the cafe on the corner but the passers-by paid no attention since everyone knew that of all those who might be tipsy any time any season, who else would it be but Kerhn or, as he was known around town, Professor Kehrn, and his three or four hangers-on. To tell the truth, they weren't a bad bunch. If rowdy, it was usually when each had drunk enough to be stewed, and Kerhn, the leader, wasn't a debauched outsider. On the contrary, he had risen to be abbot of the local temple. He had reached the second of the three levels of Dharma studies, his religious duties were well performed and he was respected by the faithful. Had he remained in orders, it is not impossible he would have risen to be chief monk of the district. But alas, nothing is permanent. The belief of the devout, especially devout women, in the Sacred Teaching often becomes in time belief in a particular monk. When that happens, if the religiously inclined woman doesn't become a nun, the monk finds some reason to put aside the yellow robe. Abbot Kerhn was no exception. Among the devout women who enjoyed going to the temple, but not to listen to preaching, was a widow named Wan Im. Before long, as everyone expected, the abbot left monastery and robe and moved into Wan Im's house where it was understood that they lived together as husband and wife. They lived quietly for some years but then, though her heart was unwilling, disease took Wan Im away. Grief converted the former prelate. The chagrin, instead of dissipating in heavy drink as he had hoped, swelled. Several times people saw him weep aloud in the middle of the market-place.

His wife's financial status having been assured from lending out money since she was young, Kerhn had enough for food and liquor for a long time to come. Later, when Kwahn and Koi, disciples from the days when he was a monk, joined him, the ex-abbot became chief of the band the townsfolk characterized as 'long-time mokns, big time louts.'

'Professor, you've no idea just what a mess the country is in. Pibun and Pao have flown off to goodness knows where,' he said as he pulled up a stool to the table. The three turned to him attentively.

'It's a big mess all right,' Koi mumbled drunkenly. 'Maybe this is what the bigmouths were blowing about at election time. What did they say, Professor?' he said, poking his face at Kerhn. '”Cracy, cracy something”.'

'Democracy, nut! Not “cracy”,' Kerhn said severely, They call it a “democratic coup d'etat” see. You have to have a lot of coups d'etat. Otherwise it isn't democracy.' He continued showing off his knowledge. 'You're stupid. If you don't know, keep quiet. I know because at the last election the district officer and provincial governor came to me on bended knees begging me to be a chief canvasser for their boss.'

'Eh, true!' Kwahn put in. 'The Professor and I really gave it to them. No one had the nerve to speak. Now there's going to be another election of people's representatives, isn't there?' he added gleefully.

Gurt put the glass down, brought his stool closer to the table and shook his head two or three times. 'Election for sure. I heard the bunch up at the provincial office spreading it around that it was time to get some service points again by going out and having the people knuckle to.'

The wind puffed a cloud of red dust from the road into the shophouse. Falling pine needles pattered on to the tin roof.

'I have an idea,' Koi spoke up again. 'If they need representatives, why don't you run, Professor?'

'Ha! You've got something there,' Gurt backed him up.

Koi, gathering enthusiasm, half stood up from his stool and continued in a loud voice. 'Because... um... because the Professor is a great man. He has money and no children to worry him. Wealth is corrupting, so why hang on to it? That's dead right, isn't it Kwahn?'

The person questioned assented with a slow nod of his head.

'Easy dammit. You're looking for trouble.' Kerhn turned to him annoyed.

'They say these representatives are really big. Bigger than village heads; bigger than county chiefs, bigger than district officers, bigger than provincial governors, and what really matters, bigger than the police. Now that's it. You can do anything. Booze, beat up anyone, kick the Chinese in the pants. Who could stop you? You could get even with that bloody Police Sergeat Haut. Just yesterday we laced into each other at the poker game at the chief's house behind the police station.'

Kerhn listened intently to Kwahn rave. He chuckled, wagging his head like a tall bell tower swaying in the first storms of the rainy season. He muttered, 'This here Kwahn doesn't know what he's talking about. I used to be a chief canvasser for the provincial governor. Now I know that anyone who gets to be a representative has to be an important person. Really knowledgeable about money matters.' He paused for a second to reach for his glass of whisky, then took a gulp. 'Even as we are, people say we're bad. You know, if it wasn't because I have some money and did some bullying to help the big guys at the last election, by now the police would have done me in.' He fixed his eyes on Kwahn. 'I can't even be a decent person myself, how could I represent anybody else?'

'That's not right, Professor. I think to be a representative nowadays you've got to be a hooligan, shout a lot, and put people off by cursing their families right back to their great grandfathers. You the bunch running for office last time: no better than us ruffians, shouting around, swearing in the middle of the street. Even if we are a little wild, there are only a few of us. That last crowd of representatives brought in a pack of robbers, hundreds of them. That's why I think the Professor is great for being a representative.'

'It's not easy. I used to be a canvasser. I know.'

'That's it. That's just it! You can be a vote-getter for others. What makes you think you can't be a vote-getter for yourself? Give it a try, Professor, give it a try.' He patted Kerhn on the back. 'If anything goes very wrong, we'll punch them up. So what? Our fists are pretty well known around here.'

'But... ,' the voice of the Professor softened. 'But what will I say to them? I hear those people hungry for office blabbering, lying, boasting of a million and one things. People like me, even if I am a drunk … I was a monk, I studied, if you want me to lie and crow … well, it sticks in my throat.'

Kwahn called for some more whisky. The whooshing of the wind across the tin roof blotted out the whistling of the pines. Whisky gurgled faintly into the glasses. At almost the same moment, each of the four reached for his and drank. Their expressions and eyes were thoughful.

'Golly,' Kwahn groaned softly. 'Professor, you're making too much of this. How hard can it be? I could be elected if I had the money. You lambaste them. You can point your finger in their faces and give them hell.'

'If things go wrong, we'll smash them into the ground,' Koi interjected. 'We're local people. The folks around know what we can do. The odds are with us. Put up a fight. Look Professor, the more they say these representatives are bigger than the police, the more it's worth a go. How many times has Sergeant Huat pushed us around? Maybe it's our turn now.'

Outside the shop, the sun was dazzling. The grey gravel covering the road reflected the light like the scales of those plaster serpents decorating temple steps. Bicycles were passing by. Kerhn stared down the road that thrust straight into the dense forest. The surrounding mountains were faintly visible in the flames of sunshine. His head nodded drunkenly again as a dark green bicycle steadily approached.

'Eh, if it isn't Sergeant Haut.' Kerhn popped to his feet. 'Hey Sarg, I'm a representative. What do you think of that!'

Bicycle brakes screeched.

'Drunk again. Go home. Making a commotion, disturbing the people. I'll haul you off to the police station in a minute.'

Crestfallen, Kerhn dropped back on his bench staring after the grey shirt until it disappeared around a corner at the end of the market-place.

'That's the ticket, Professor,' a voice piped up. 'This isn't the first time Sergeant Haut's bit the dust.'

'In fact we take turns. Sometimes him, sometimes me,' Kerhn mused faintly.

The news that Mr. Kerhn Kianrak, more commonly known as Professor Kerhn, would run for election as a people's representative spread quickly from the end of the market at the beginning of the road right up to the provincial administration building. Government officials split their sides with laughter but the common folk knew only that a candidate had to be obliging and generous and good at passing out whisky, cigarettes and even money, and had to like loud talk about things no one knew anything about, and well … Professor Kerhn seemed fully qualified.

On the day fixed for the nomination of candidates, Kerhn filed his papers, accompanied by Kwahn, Koi and Gurt. No difficulties were encountered. Kerhn paid the deposit of 3,000 baht and handed in a number of photographs taken when he had just left the monastery. From that day on, the little market-place of this frontier province perked up. Cars of various shapes and sizes managed to make their way to the province and helter-skeltered from one corner of the town to the other. For this election, there were almost ten candidates including former government officials, lawyers, titled bigwigs anad grad city folks, most of them from the capital and neighboring provinces. Only Kerhn was a native of the province.

Reputations for handing out money, whisky, tobacco and food established by the last crop of candidates and the lack of farming to be done because it was the dry season brough a heavy stream of people down from the distant hills. The numbers grew with the approach of election day. Night after night the candidates showed their movies, some nights only one show taking place, but on others as many as three stands would compete with one another. Candidates proclaimed their virture as though they were supermen. The crowds milled around noisily from group to group watching to see if anything was being given away and if disappointed would move on to a another circle. It seemed even more festive than the annual fair. Kerhn and his cronies floated drunkenly with the rest of the crowd. He didn't have a chance to make speeches and if he did, wouldn't have known what to say. Thee most he could manage was to make disturbances as things went along. But even that didn't go over so well because the people, still hoping the candidates would hand out money and fearing Kerhn would jeopardize the opportunity, became menacing. One night, two groups of candidates set up their platforms, projectors and screens in different corners of the field. Each of the office-seekers boasted of his boldness, ability, honors, infinite qualifications. Some boasted of having built roads, wells, monasteries and even lavatories. One volunteered to construct houses, plant gardens, build schools and hospitals. The people looked on with interest. Kerhn invited four or five buddies to start shouting from nearby.

'NO GOOD! SHUT UP! NONSENSE! NO...' Before the word was out of him, Kerhn realized he was flat on his back from the force of somebody's fist to which was added a growl, 'We're all waiting for money so what the hell are you shouting for?'

Kerhn, his mouth and ears swollen, an eye closed, staggered towards home with his friends, dejected. 'It looks bad,' he muttered to his cronies while swaying down the road. That night all except Kerhn slept in a stupor. The force of the blow earlier that evening forced his mind to search for a way to get the better of them. He rubbed his mouth and groaned softly, but before dropping off to sleep, smiled.

At dawn, Kerhn, still groggy, got up and staggering a few steps forward stumbled over Kwahn, kicking him lightly in the middle of the back.

'Kwahn, get up, get up Kwahn.'

Kwahn turned over and bracing himself with both hands against the floor reached a sitting position but then fell over again. On the third try he stayed up and squinted about. 'You sure are skinny, Professor,' he mumbled while fishing about for a water bowl. 'Must be from too much drink and not enough sleep.'

'None of your flattery. Nothing physical is permanent.'

Kwahn pulled Koi up from his sleep. The cloudless morning was chilly, the mist tumbling with the pale sunshine. Kerhn looked at his two followers, his eyes showing fatigue.

'Koi, Kwahn,' he started slowly, 'I have found the way to do the loud mouths in. I know that most of the crowd have come because they think money is going to be handed out.' He stroked the still swollen parts of his face. 'So if you go around the market-place and tell everyone that if they want to get money, come to my house. Tell them I'll take them to get the money myself.'

As soon as his henchmen were out of the house, Kerhn went back to sleep. Later in the day he awoke, delighted to find the house was filled with noise and people. He tiptoed over to a crack in the wall to peep out at them: a real crowd, even more than he expected. His face dirty, his clothes wrinkled from sleeping, he stepped outside. Kwahn and Koi led the people with two loud hurrahs. The people echoed them with a roar. Kerhn yelled at the top of his voice, 'All right, all right, my brethren.' Interest focused. 'Now, there are a number of good people with money. They come here wanting to be our representatives...' A brief pause to gather breath. 'They all say they're going to build roads, dig canals, build us schools. Things like that they can do.' Brief pause. 'But compare those things to money, which do we want?' Fan an instant the question hung in the air.

'We want money, we want money, money, money moneeee,' the cry resounded from rank to rank filling the crowd.

'Good, excellent. We've got to go and get the money from them. They can build streets and roads. They need money to do it. They must have money. Where are they, where are they?' he asked provocatively.

'At the hotel, they're at the hotel, the lot of them,' returned the shouts from the crowd.

'All right, let's go!' Kerhn jumped from the porch, but fell over on his face from exhaustion of the previous night's adventures, arms and legs askew in a billow of dust and drawing a good laugh from the mob. He got up quickly, brushed the dust off and strode resolutely in front. A thousand people stretched in a long turbulent procession behind him heading for the small hotel, the only one in town.

Seeing a herd of people approaching, the group at the hotel with the politicians' instinct scurried to dress themselves as befits their dignity. Some quickly pinning on their medals and decorations, in full dress, throats twitching, gave orders to their people to connect the loudspeakers. 'Hey, hurry up, looks like they're really coming this way. See what I mean. The stupidity of the people really pays: it's like a pot of gold.' Some jumped for their beds and began practising gestures for their speeches.

Villagers, who hadn't an idea of what was going on, carried and dragged their kids along into the crowd. The whole body of astonished government officials dropped their work ot look on from the sides. The candidates formed a line in front of the hotel. Kerhn walked straight to them.

'We want to come to an agreement with you honourable representatives,' he began.

'With great pleasure,' the oldest one replied bowing until his body looked like an old shrimp at the end of the rainy season. 'If there is anything at all we can do for you, we will represent you to the best of our ability.' A broad smile pushed out his ruddy jowls as he led the whole group in a bow.

'What have you got to give us?'

'Whatever is the desire of the people of our province, whatever will serve the welfare of the people of our province, that will I do for my fellows until my last breath,' replied a young one at the end of the row winding up with a little bow which brought the others down in little bows.

Without hesitation, Kerhn yelled at his loudest, 'MONEEE, WE WANT MONEY!'

The crowd took up Kerhn's cry.

'Money, we've come for money!' The words reverberated over and over again. 'Money, money.'

The candidates fidgeted. Drops of sweat broke out. Some tried to state their policies and aims. Some began to praise their own past activities and offered plans for the future. But the increasing demands for money prevented them all from finishing. The old noble who had dragged his shrivelled body up from the capital fainted to the delighted cheers of the crowd. Those who tried to speak crumpled their notes in fustration.

The cries grew deafening as Kerhn firmly made his way to the microphone and gestured to the mass.

'All you faithful believers, you've seen for yourselves they're a lot of wind. They'll do everything for us, but how can they do anything when all we do is ask for money and they don't have any to give us? When that's the way it is, how can we believe them? How can we elect them?' His voice was emphatic.

'These fellows who are running for office come from different ranks and classes. That one over there is a knight.' He pointed his finger. 'The next one over there is a sir. And the one next to him is a lawyer. The old one there who almost died a minute ago is a noble. That one there who's hung a lot of magic charms on his chest is a general. All you faithful, decide for yourselves who you are going to elect. Now I used to be a canva... er, that is, I used to go to Bangkok. Now I'll tell you something. A lot of you probably don't know what a knight, a sir and so forth are. Well, I'll tell you. A knight looks after horses and also sometimes feeds and waters chickens, ducks and elephants. They do it at night. I know because I've been to Bangkok. A sir we ought to speak to as 'Sire', and we know that sires are kept for our mares that don't have any foals yet. As for this noble, I have my doubts about him. What kind of noble doesn't wear his proper robes? Maybe he's an ignoble noble.' He stopped to swallow his saliva.

'That one over there who loves those toys is a general. Take a look. Pinning a row of seashells on his chest. Those people are childish. They like toys just like our children. The one who's sneaking away, he's a lawyer, someone who likes trouble where he finds it. No money to give him and you land in jail.'

The crowd listened in astonished silence. Kerhn was still for an instant and then continued.

'Dear friends, the others have done a lot of talking. Today, listen to me. I'm a candidate too. Who was it a little while ago who said he really knows us, really knows our poverty and troubles? Ask him. Brethren ask him. Does he know how many acres we have? Does he know what we eat with our rice in the morning? Believe me, he doesn't know. Empty talk. Now take me. I'll do anything you want. Kick a dog, bash somebody's head in. Anyone you don't like, tell me. Er... uh.' As his eyes lit on Sergeant Huat standing at the side, his voice tempered. 'What I just said … in fact I never did anything like that. I'll end here. Amen. May you have long life, good looks and health, and may the Triple Gems help me become a people's representative.'

From that day, Kerhn's reputation flourished among the people while the other candidates dodged public meetings to avoid the taunts. Some, losing their nerve, fled back to Bangkok.

Election day came and passed without incident. The official results were announced a little past eight in the evening. Soon after, Sergeant Haut rushed breathlessly up to the duty officer at the police station.

'Now I'm in for it, sir,' the poor policeman gasped. 'Mr. Kerhn, he was drunk and raising a row in the market. I locked him up here since morning and now he's the people's representative. I'm not going to be in this district for long, that's for sure.' His voice was tinged with alarm.

'That's bad. That's really bad. Have you released him yet?' the duty officer asked, lifting his eyes from the daily reports. But Sergeant Haut had already vanished.

The duty officer then walked over and opened the cell door. The three of them were sprawled on the floor sleeping. The stench of vomit mixed with other filth wafted out. Locating Kerhn, the officer reached out to shake him lightly but swiftly withdrew his hand when he found his target covered with vomit. He grumbled to himself and used his foot instead, nudging Kerhn gently.

'Sir, sir, mister, hey Kerhn, Kerhn.'

'Huh,' Kerhn drawled. 'Where am I? Give me some water.' He screwed up his eyes. 'Black as pitch.'

'It's night already. You can leave, sir. Please wake up those two gentleman.'

'Eh, who are you talking to, lieutenant?' Kerhn asked bewildered.

'I'm talking to the honourable representative, sir. Please leave. The election is over now.'

Kerhn took some time to wake up the other two, then all three crawled outside. Each drank a bowl of water offered by the police, walked unsteadily out of the police station and disappeared in the darkness. Kerhn still kept to himself the news heard a moment before from the police. His ears were ringing with the words 'honourable representative' spoken with humility by the authorities who had for so long bullied him. The three bumbled through the blackness in silence and crawled up the stairs to the house. Kwahn and Koi flopped down at once and went back to sleep by the stairs. Kerhn rested, his brain agitated but confused. The drunkenness had vanished. He felt airy, as if disembodied. He began to think of things he had never though of before, of the words 'people's representative'. He though of Gurt's words spoken in the cafe. 'A representative is bigger than the district officer, bigger than the provincial governor.' Apart from that he knew nothing. Was that all? Doubt welled. Surely there was something more because he knew that every people's representative had to go to Bangkok. But they must have more to do than just go to the capital. Kerhn began to reflect on Bangkok and its crazy bigness. Didn't this mean he had to go there to live, separated from his own people in a different kind of life? Now what would that be like? The outlook wasn't bright any more. Kerhn had been to Bangkok once when still a monk. He tried to recall the name of the temple where he had stayed but couldn't. The failure preyed on his mind. Anxiety increased as he recollected a picture of a previous representative cloaked outlandishly in a jacket that looked like a whole blanket, with a silly rag dangling from his neck. He mumbled to himself, 'What a fool. You don't know when you're well off.'

The moon and constellations sank in the sky. 'Whew, this world is sure getting hot for me,' he exclaimed to himself. As he went to get a drink of water, the neighbour's roosters crowed their announcement of dawn. Kerhn was afraid of the daybreak. Bleakness was creeping in with it. The bushes and trees were beginning to have an outline. In that instant he made up his mind. Kwahn and Koi were dead asleep. He disappeared into the house for a second and returned, casting a glance and a sigh at his two disciples. Finally, he tiptoed past them, went out of the house and headed straight for the market-place, nothing in mind like a mechanical doll. At the head of the road at the end of the market area he saw a standing truck and heard three people making a noise, so he drifted over. Two young fellows faced him as if he were some night pilferer but beckoning asked for a hand to push the stalled vehicle. In a few words Kerhn learned that the truck was carrying rice and other goods across the border. He helped at once and in a second the engine fired and the truck disappeared in the direction of the glow on the horizon.

No one saw Mr. Kerhn again. No one in the province knows where he has gone. Those who knew turned out to be the reporters from the Bangkok newspapers. Several of the papers ran the story that a fearless representative of the people had his mouth closed by a dark power and that his body was thrown over a cliff for the vultures to pick at. The news item was accompanied by a photo of vultures under white clouds.

Now the little province is busy again. Every day fancy cars of the big boys from Bangkok investigating this mysterious case arrive and take back to the city a policeman or two. One car just went off this morning carrying away Sergeant Huat mutter, 'Damn, now I've had it.'

Big Pay Day

2011-04-21T07:48:00.000-07:00

I got up at quarter to seven this morning. I'd sent my alarm for 6:25am then snoozed for a while. It takes will power to get out of bed, luckily I found it, somewhere. I put on my shoes and went running. My run takes me through the business district of Sathon to and through Lumpini park and then back into the capitalist quagmire of Silom. My run took about 50 minutes. I bought some water and walked into the gym.

I've been going to fighting spirit gym for about a month and a half. The pros: close to my house, nice clean facilities (that goes a long way in Thailand), inexpensive (in comparison to other muay thai gyms), and the head trainer, along with the owner are good at what they do. Another pro is the animals there. The owner has three dogs of his own, two pit pulls and one little weiner looking dog, a bird that doesn't fly (its species are unable) and two large iguana looking things. Having animals around is nice, especially when the animals are taken care of. The beasts are given a fair amount of room to run around in and are given the care and affection that they deserve. I think having pets is difficult, and its even more difficult to adequately care for them. Its nice to see an owner that cares about their pets.

The cons: no free water, not a lot of other fighters, and a little difficulty getting fights. The gym is geared towards recreational and fitness use, not necessarily to fighters so the last two items are not super surprising. That said the trainers are pretty active in sparring, clinching, and boxing with me so its almost better than having a fighter who doesn't have as much experience.

While obtaining a fight has been a little bit of a run around I have one on the 4th of May. It will be at MBK a huge tourist mall that sells tons of discount, pirated, and generally cheap goods. Need some souvenoirs for family, MBK. Need some pirated dvds or software, MBK. Need some electronics and or cell phones, MBK. The mall is located in downtown BKK and has free fights every wednesday night. The fights are generally low caliber and for tourists passing by to gawk at, and hopefully it ushers people into the shopping center to spend their dollars there.

Fighting on the 4th means extending my stay about a week and a half. I'm pretty happy about that as things are going well out here, although of course I'm accruing more expenses than I'd like.

This morning I did pad work with Max, a 28 year old Thai who studied at Abac and got a degree in law. He decided to return to the sport of Muay Thai which he engaged in during his childhood. He is a tricky fighter and has a few simple but effective combinations that we went through. One of them was a very basic right push kick, right body punch. The other which was giving me a bit more problem was a double right kick into a jumping body kick. This series requires a fair amount of momentum and retreat on the part of one's opponent. Ideally the opponent backs up to the ropes and is stuck there for a moment.

After my morning training session I came home, slept, ate and read. The exciting life of a boxer. My afternoon session I worked with Tak the head trainer, and one of the better trainers I've had in Thailand. Tak has a simplistic style that is smooth and effective. He is particularly keen on left kicks. He has had me do some simple counters as well. When an opponent hooks I crash in with my opposite knee or I elbow. Today he told me to especially use my hips and to make space when kneeing. Despite having been told that in the past by other trainers I forgot.

A neat trick that I learned during knee sparring was when Num, the third trainer at the gym lifted his knee under my knee and pushed me forward when I went to side knee him. His knee lifted my leg up and unbalanced me and his push forward made me fall over onto my ass.

I got back up after falling down and had Num teach me the trick a few times. It reminded me of this video.

I'll be sure to write up about my fight, and it will probably makes its way on the internets somehow.

New year's boobs

2011-04-19T10:26:00.000-07:00

Eee Gads, two weeks have flown by already and my ability to write has been lost in the passage of time. Boo hoo. Part of my cramped style is due to a recent trip, I went up to Chiang Mai for the the Thai New Year.

The festival of Songkran is the best public holiday in the world with hoards of people going home to get tanked up and drive their respective vehicles drunk around town. About thirty percent of accidents are caused by drunk driving. According to the Bangkok Post the number of deaths during the holiday dropped by 25 percent. No doubt the decreasing amount of accidents is due to Thai citizens getting more savvy with their motoring skills, probably because of driving school apps on their iphones.
While initially a religious holiday the week long fest has morphed into an elongated party during the hottest part of the year. Things have gotten even more lecherous of late with three young Thai girls, ages 13, 14, and 16 taking off their tops in the Silom section of Bangkok. The area by day is host to hoards of white collar workers, and when the sun sets the night market of Patpong, one of the original red light districts of Bangkok, flourishes, almost as much as nearby Silom soi 4 the Gay ghetto of the City of Angels. Of course the young girls were fined, a hefty 500 baht and were scolded publicly by the moralist demigods of the Thai government. Hilariously the didactic leaders from the Ministry of Culture website had a picture of some good old Thai boobies as part of their masthead.

Wanting to front that Thailand is still pure and wholesome certainly might inflate the windbags that make up the Thai Tourist authority but really who doesn't come to Thailand to be a sexpat? Isn't that what the spectacle of Thai culture is? Whores, and hot weather? Oh yeah, and Muay Thai (whores of a different kind).
Back to my travels... I, and a handful of good friends took an overnight bus up to the northern Thailand town. My friend had to procure the tickets in haste as everyone around the country returns home for the holiday. Bangkok empties out and becomes a ghost town. The bus that we took was posh. Each seat had its own screen to view movies, play classic sega genesis games, and listen to banging beats. Of the four of us riding up together each of us chose to watch "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief," which evidently was a far better choice than Vin Diesel in Fast and the Furious 4. A good friend housed us in a teak abode outside of the city. Teak is a dense and beautiful mahogany wood that was used a lot back in the day. The construction of my friend's place was quite beautiful and fit the laid back green city of Chiang Mai quite well.

The city is quite popular for the holiday due to the moat that surrounds the city center. Hoards of people dragged water from the moat to dump on people. I accidentally got a mouthful of the foul liquid and am sure to die of dysentery any day now. Poo. Poo. My group spent two days playing with water which while fun was also quite tiring. Especially as some of the water was chilled with huge blocks of ice. The water was made cold in huge garbage buckets that held the blocks bought at 100 baht per piece.

I returned on an equally posh bus which provided more leg room and a constantly running series of Thai music videos and comedy.

Read and Review

2011-04-05T06:24:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about being abroad is the free time I have for reading. Over the past few months I've read over ten books. In the last week or two I've read more than five. Oh yeah, I've put in spoilers. If you care about that shit I advise not reading much more.

I began my trip overseas by reading "Sex at Dawn." The non fiction "anthropological" book primarily argues against the institution of monogamy. The book focuses on the failings of marraige and the trappings of sexual chasteness. The authors argue that humans are sexual animals, one of the more sexual beasts that crawl the earth. The book compares man-beasts lecherous nature with those of chimps and bonobos, who are not only our closest biological relatives but also as driven by their genitals as we are. The testicle size and penile length of our close cousins is even compared to ours. Did you know that human males have the largest dicks, far outsizing the crawling gorillas of the jungle? Women have the largest breasts as well. We are not the top list in terms of testicle sizes, Chimps and Bonobos outsize us. Bummer.

Along with the length and size of our loins the authors also talk about other physiological aspects of human sexual nature including women's tendency to be outspoken while in the act of coitus. Why is that? The authors ask. The writers argue that the tendency for women to be talkative is an alert to let other members of the species that she is ripe, and well willing (at least at the time).

The authors also depict societies in which there is no parental certainty as being advantageous to the offspring. The children are well taken care of as there is no validity to the male parent so the responsibility is shared, and so are the impregnation duties in some societies.

The strength of this book is simple it just restates an obvious fact, humans are highly sexual beasts. When we are not fucking, we are wanting to fuck, looking at each other fuck (usually in some sort of mediated form), and planning on who to fuck next. The problem with human sexuality as it is today hasn't been solved by the glorious institution of monogamy, nor has it been doing much better under the rubric of polyamory especially in "radical circles." It certainly doesn't help that capital is always dabbing its finger into the pudding. Until somehow our world becomes a different place, with different mores, its still tisk, tisk, to human sexuality in whatever its social incarnations.
I love short stories. They are short and succinct. I think the talents of a writer can oft be seen in their ability to weave a short tale. F.Scott Fitzgerald never struck me as a short story type. I found his large collection in a bookstore in San Francisco. I picked it up because it was long and I figured it would pass the time whilst abroad. Its been three months since I read the collection. My recollections aren't that accurate. I don't remember each story, nor do I care. The stories are mainly about a middle class man's love and pursuit of an upper class woman. BORING!!! As a caveat I'd like to mention that if an upperclass woman adored me, with more than her love perhaps some financial backing, this working class prole would be happy. Fitzgerald's fascination with upper class women and adoring middle class men has probably a bit to do with his personal life.

My housemate gave a presentation on a Graham Greene essay. The essay was "Can I borrow your husband," or something like that. The story told of a newly wed couple who come to an inn in Europe or some other banal place. The narrator of the story is a writer onlooking the events. The new bride, whose name is Poopie, a rather unfortunate name don't you think, is unaware of the true gender dynamics of what happens. The couple comes to the inn where a homosexual couple are staying, they decide to stay a little longer in hopes of turning the groom. They jaunt about the countryside with the new groom and seduce him.

The seduction and the stealing of a partner continues, well in some ways, in Graham Greene's novel "The Quiet American." The title is quite ironic, as the antagonist is a rather naive and annoying American. Again the narrator is a writer, a reporter in Vietnam. The narrator is dating a local girl, ooh how exotic. The woman has the bare outlines of a personality, with the majority of her character being flushed out by her sister who merely wants her married off and secure. The antagonist, a bastardly American attempts to steal the local girl away. The narrator and the antagonist have a gut wrenching conversation in the trenches and luckily by the end of the novel the antagonist is dead. Thank the gods for that. A dead American is a quiet American.

I've read a couple Ernest Hemingway books now. I think I wrote about "Across the River and into the Trees" The bookstores here in Bangkok aren't that great. The largest one is in Siam Paragon. Their literature section is poor with classics but little of interest. So I picked up another Hemingway Novel. Continuing on the theme of amorous woman; "The Sun Also Rises: Fiesta" follows a stoic narrator, surprise, surprise. The narrator has an affair with a woman who is engaged. Then she runs off and has other affairs with other men. Everyone goes to Spain to some some bullfighting, very macho! Her finance comes along on the fiesta. The narrator, the fiance, a guy she slept with and one more dude go out to together. Bulls are killed. Sentences are short. The woman runs off with a bull fighter. He is bludgeoned by the jealous ex lover (not the narrator). The fiance gets drunk. The woman stays for a while with the matador. He is young, talented, and apt to hit the ceiling of his talent. Their youthful relationship fails. The woman goes back with the narrator. She needs someone. Hemingway's women are so fickle, oh how typical.

In my continuing pursuit of happiness, or some sort of Thai literature education I've scoured the book stores for more Thai literature. Mad Dogs and Company by Chart Korbjitti is the third novel I've read by the SEA award winner and a definitive departure from the other novels I've read by the author. The story follows a few friends as they grow up in and around Bangkok. The friends become hippies and hang out in Pattaya. They have problems with their families, grinding against institution of the family. They grow out of their "situations" and eventually find redemption and the eventual approval of their family to a greater or lesser extent. Like Hemingway's novels the women in this novel are barely there. The women are wives, or mothers with little to any decision making ability. Poo! Poo! I might become a feminist one day if I keep reading about boring women. It was an okay novel if you like reading about partying and working class thai dudes getting drunk. Oh yeah and the ending is quite trope. One of the friends is a writer who has been forwarded some money to write a book, but at the end, the writer doesn't know what to possibly write about and then... an IDEA! Write about life with his friends. How novel! A novel of 510 pages in fact, which makes me wonder if Korbjitti was paid per page.

While out of chronological order, in terms of when I read them, I think Sightseeing by Rattuwat Lapcharoensap is more than worth mentioning. Lapcharaoensap's collection of short stories is by far one of the best english written pieces of Thai literature that I've come across. I highly recommend this book. The first story is quite amusing and presents a different perspective of the farang experience, and dealings with the west in a different light, with perhaps a hint of resentment. Let me hear it kids! That's right Schadenfreue!

The story; "Farangs," opens with a island thai boy. His mother has been jaded by the tourists that come through, with a fair amount of lineage, the boy's father was an army officer that stayed awhile then vamoosed. The mother's bitterness isn't a part of the boy's pysche who falls for an exotic american girl who, gasps, wears a budweiser bikini. What a slut! The american girl has a fight with her boyfriend. The thai boy has a pig. She sees the bovine and loves the beast. The thai boy is smitten. The boy takes her on an elephant ride. He sees her boobs. They have dinner. He brings the pig. Her boyfriend comes along. "Oh I'm sorry about the isaan prostitute darling, it was all just fun and games." She forgives him. They walk on the beach. The thai boy scolds his misfortune and walks off to the beach. He climbs a tree and consoles his fate with his friend. The boyfriend and that budweiser thong come jaunting along the beach. They see the pig. The male goes on a hunting quest. Aghast the thai boy starts to throw hard mangoes at the stupid farang. The thai friend joins in. They hit the girl too. Well aimed! It was nice to read a story that had a go at some farang.

I enjoyed the story because of its different way of dealing with the West. Thai's normally deal with the West in a couple ways. In "The Ambiguous Allure of the West," a collection of essays on colonialism in Thailand, Thongchai Winichakul writes an excellent essay "Coming to Terms with the West: Intellectual strategies of Bifurcation and Post-Westernism in Siam." The title is long, and the essay excellent. Winichikaul describes the main ways in which the West has been dealt with. Winichakul states that Thais have dealt with the West in a way that has created an almost Manichean division between Thainess and the West.
"Bifurcation is based on interlocking series of binaries that now dominate much public discourse.

West Vs Thai
Other Vs Self
Worldly/material vs Spiritual, religious, moral
Outside/outer vs Inside/Inner
Decadent vs Pure
Public, work vs Private Family life
(p.139 Coming to Terms with the West)

The sense of Thai idenity (kwaambpenthai), Thainess, is a crucial aspect of Thailand and this sense of being is oft created in opposition to other identities. Winichakul points this out in his excellent "Siam Mapped," the daily morning radio programs that talk about what is wrong with other countries, and juxtapose it with how good Thailand is. The problems of other countries are evil while Thailand is good.

Winichakul marks the influence of the West, and the lack thereof on the academy. The author hilariously points out the disappointments of Thailand never having been colonized. An extended quote is worth reading:

While Thais are proud of never having been colonized and of not requiring a European tongue as their second language, the effects of the language barrier on Thai scholarship have rarely been considered. It is certainly politically incorrect in Thailand, and probably even a taboo among Thais, to suggest that Siam may have suffered any negative consequences from not having been colonized. However one negative effect has been a greater limitation of the flow of scholarship between European and Thai languages than in formerly colonized countries, simply because there is a smaller number of scholars on both sides of the Thai-Western relationship who are linguistically skilled enough to facilitate the cross-border flow of scholarship as translators, interpreters, or most importantly , as intellectual interlocutors (p. 147 Coming to terms with the West Thongchai Winichakul).

Hilarious! I would be better read in Thai literature if only Thailand had been colonized, aw schucks!

While keeping in the country I read "Bangkok Pool Blues" a short look at the BKK pool scene by Tom Crowley. Its quite good and gives a quick glimpse at the subculture. It also has a few short looks at some of the characters in the scene. Its quite good and succinct.

I've continued on my noir track in general with "L.A. Confidential," by James Ellroy. I've seen the excellent movie starring Guy Pearce, Rusell Crowe, and Kevin Spacey. The convoluted plot follows the careers of three detectives, a thuggish cop, a goody goody, and a third who is quite fond of drugs and scandal sheets. Ellroy's writing style annoyed me at first. It comes across as almost stream of consciousness. The short sentences are brief and non-attached. The narrative was long and complex. It wasn't especially good but it was good to read as I took in during my extended vacation in koh samui.

The most recent book I've read was much better. Iain Banks "The Wasp Factory," is the second novel I've read by the sci fi author, although this novel, his first, is not science fiction. The first person narrative is told from the perspective of a young man, about seventeen years old, stuck on an island in scotland. He's had some sort of accident when he was young and now spends his time blowing up shit and having imaginary battles around his home. While he was growing up into a hyper violent young man he killed three people, according to him though it was just a phase. The story is driven by the arrival of his brother, who went mad.

The older sibling went crazy as he worked at a laboratory during med school. The older brother was taking care of some children in a hospital late at night. Many of the youths were just born and had deformities. The brother was having difficulty feeding one. The baby giggled and looked at him stupidly. The child had a plate on his head for some reason. A fly came out of the plate. The brother lifted the plate and saw, gasp, a handful of maggots that were laying in wait to be born into flies. The brother went mad.

The story is a bildsungroman highlights both ritual, gender, and the awesome aspects of the grotesque. Its a tight ass book focusing on a young killer.

Speaking of kilers I've read a couple of the Dexter series, out of order. The books by Jeff Lindsay are easy pulpy reads which are not nearly as good as the television series. The books are still quite fun to read. I wouldn't recommend them that much.

Along with all the reading I've also been watching a fair amount of tv series and movies. Notable recent watches have been Suckerpunch, which sucked. There were hardly any boobs in it. A lot of violence, mainly cgi. It was meh.

I saw Rango. It was quite cute.

Finally I've been watching Mad Men. Its excellent, and mainly looks at white people's dealings with gender. Of course the class background is quite important and goes largely unspoken as does the relations between people. The show gains its poignancy by what goes unsaid. It'd probably be easy for some hack academic looking for their master's degree to write about the show and Hollywood's portrayal of gender.

Hopefully I'll do more reading while I'm here, once I remember what words mean.

The Rain

2011-04-04T21:34:00.000-07:00

The Don Muang airport is in the north bangkok. The airport is run down. It was built in the early part of the 1900s. It closed for a short time when Suvarnbhmi opened in 2006, but you couldn't tell. The decor is at least thirty years too old. The seats are well worn. A thousand people have sat on the pieces of plastic wearing in grooves.

I purused the books in the small book store by the boarding gates. Oddly the majority of them were Gay and lesbian themed academic novels. One book contained lesbian erotica. I flipped through the pages. It seemed very emotional.

"That plane doesn't look like it will crash," She said as we walked out to the plane. The twin engine passenger plane was large, and weathered like the airport it serviced. We boarded the plane and I opened my book.The flight to Surat Thani was short. Airplane rides in Thailand take an hour, an hour and a half. Its doesn't matter where to. Its always about an hour. I read the novel for a while and then nodded off. My thoughts looping over and over imagining the plane's engine falling off. We would crash into the ocean and drown. I woke up when the plane landed.

We took an hour long bus ride to the ferry building. The seats were filled when we got on the bus so we took the first two empty seats. The upholstery was threadbare. I sat down. The rain leaked onto the seat. The sky had opened up and the rain was falling regularly.

"Its supposed to rain all weekend," she said. "I read the weather report."

"I don't care, it will be fun. I've never been to koh samui before and it will be nice just to go somewhere with you," I replied.

Her mouth smiled slowly. I could see her teeth.

The bus stopped at a ferry building. The boat wouldn't come for an hour. We ate over priced sandwhiches and fried rice. Hers had egg in it. The small cafeteria filled with backpackers. Their whispy beards and repulsive fashion filled the room. I wanted to leave. The ferry came. We got walked over a wobbly plank onto the the boat. The rain made the plank slick. It shook as I walked across it. We went down below.

She sat next beside me. "Every time I travel I sleep the entire way," she said.

She leaned her head against me. The boat bobbed up and down with the movement of the waves. I looked out the window. The water kept falling from the sky. The bay of Thailand's surface rippled.

We arrived and took a mini van to the hotel. We were shown our room. It was large with a hot tub. The next night we sat in the tub. The jets bubbled the water. The rain outside continued. We drank white wine.

We checked out of our luxiorous hotel and sat near the beach. She made a phone call. She looked at me.

"The ferry has been shut down, the road from the ferry has flooded. What do you want to do? If we take a plane from the airport on the island it will cost an extra 4,400 baht."

"We should take the plane. Its less of a gamble," I said. The showers had picked up in intensity and fequency. The downpour was harder. We sat underneath a villa watching the ocean rise. The ocean water was a dirty brown. She saw me look at it.

"Normally the water is clear and green," She said. She hung up the phone. "I booked us a flight for wednesday."

Two more days. We watched Mad Men in the room. I heard saw flashes of light outside. The crash of thunder boomed. I wondered what happened when lightning struck the surface. We took a cab the next day. It cost an extra hundred baht to go to Chaewaeng beach, the main tourist area. The main road was flooded. The roads we went down were brimming with water. Several motorbikes tried to get through. They were water logged. The cars that passed on the street looked less like automobiles and more like boats. They pushed water to the side as they came down the street. I felt the water shake our taxi. It was like being on the ferry again.

We arrived at Xin city in the downtown area. We moved into our room. We unpacked. The rain continued. We got food. We went to bed. The morning brought continuing rain. She called the airport. Our flight had been canceled. All the flights for the day had been canceled.

"All the flights have been canceled. What should we do," she asked me. I looked at her from the bed.

"Let's go to sleep," I said. Outside the water levels rose slowly rising. I wondered if and when they would reach our hotel room. We were on the third floor. Houses on the other islands had been washed away.

"Well have to stay two more days," she told me when I woke up. I nodded. I went to the bathroom. The faucet didn't work. "The power is out."

I looked out the window. Still the rain came down. It changed from a heavy storm to a light drizzle then it would drench the land again. A few people tried to navigate through the water. I looked at them. Their thin ponchos barely protected them.

A half an hour later the Hotel's generator came on. The lights worked, the internet didn't. We walked through the streets. The water came up to my shin, almost to her knees. We waded down the main thorough fare. I thought of Gene Kelley tapping his feet on the sidewalk of Koh Samui.

A note came under our door the next morning. The hotel wouldn't run its generator the entire time as gas on the island had run out. I wondered if we should ration our money. The atms weren't working. I thought about how I should have spent my last few years in a survivalist cult instead of doing muay thai. I looked at her. If it wasn't for the sport I wouldn't be here.

"Its like the world is ending," she said.

"The world has been ending for a long time," I replied.

"Next year is 2012. Sometimes I hope the world ends. Its not supposed to be raining this time of year," she said. She reached her hand out the hotel room door and felt the rain drizzle on her hand.

I took her wet hand and squeezed it. I imagined Gene Kelley and a thousand back up dancers doing synchronized swimming after a tsunami. Fires would burn on broken houses at the highlight, the aftermath of the show would be radiation leaks causing tumors in the spectators.

"Maybe it will end today, maybe it will end tomorrow, arai ga dai," I told her.

The rain continued.

Huevos Rancheros- La Monitas Bangkok!

2011-03-10T22:40:00.000-08:00

My friend El Chavo contributed a guest article! Here it is:

Huevos Rancheros Thai Style! -La Monitas Bangkok!

Its not often I get out of the L.A. area. Other parts of the world scare me. I feel comfortable in the pollution and heat of my wonderful City of Angels, but recently I had some business to attend to in the other City of Angels, Bangkok.

At first I was quite nervous, the long lines at the airport to get my visa stamped did not bode well for this cholo. Luckily they excepted my fake passport, us Latinos sure do know how to forge documents.

It wasn't long until I felt quite at home in the city. Its just as polluted and dirty as at home, and just as hot. It was like being in my garbage can back in the states but without as many awful gringos making my life a mess.

There's even quaint things about it that give it a little more appeal than my city, like the cockroaches that run along the street or the mass tangle of telephone wires that line the roads. These little items really give Bangkok an exotic appeal.

I went out to a meeting, I know, I know, what was I doing at a meeting at the Foreign Correspondent's Club where I was bored to death by some German guy who talked to fast about his new book. Luckily before I fainted my friend took me to La Monita's which is reputedly the best Mexican food in Thailand.

I got to the restaurant which is right near the sky train at Ploen Chit. We walked in and looked over the menu. Bam right there glaring at me was my favorite dish! Huevos Rancheros. How could I say no!?

My friends and I waited shortly for the waitress to come over. I was sorely disappointed that we had to pay for our chips and salsa but marked it up to cultural differences.

My exotic Thai friend asked me "How do you eat that?"
I replied, "Well with Mexican food you just dig in."

I did a little digging and saw that tortilla was one of those cheap ones you buy at the grocery store and it wasn't even fried! The eggs were pretty weird looking, like something you might see on a Denny's menu and then the artificial looking eggs were right in front of me. The beans were okay, and I was glad that it wasn't slathered in cheese. The red sauce wasn't really red but rather their take on it. It tasted more like a regular salsa. The rice wasn't as spicy as I like it but still quite good. The dish cost about 200 baht which is about $6 or $7. my friend got a torta sandwhich which since he has a vegan eating disorder was mainly rice and beans.
Oops looks like my friend took a bite before I could snap a picture, or maybe it was those Thai cockroaches.
Here I am in my new barrell that my Thai friends made for me! They're so hospitable!

Overall the dish was okay. It made me miss home and the good cheap Huevos Rancheros in Lincoln Heights. My friend did tell me about a place where you can get good burritos chimichanga style! Ay Carumba!

888/26 มหาทุนพลาซ่า เพลินจิต ปทุมวัน
888/26 Mahatun Plaza, Ploenchit Road, Patumwan Bangkok กรุงเทพมหานคร 10330

Bad Romance

2011-03-02T19:08:00.000-08:00

"Nakano," I said, pulling on the lanky Japanese man's shirt. "Nakano."
"Wass," he replied. He kept his attention focused in front of him. The rottweiler mutt, Gleo trotted alongside of our small group of boxers.
"I don't want to go jogging anymore."
"Wass?"
"I don't want to go jogging anymore," I said with a sigh. "I hate jogging."
"Me too," he replied with a laugh. "No more jogging!" He raised his fist against the enemies of our condition.
Apisat and Apisit, twin brothers at Sitmonchai began jogging down the Thamaka road. Nakano followed. I groaned and pursued.
We came back to the gym after our 12 kilometer run down the side streets of Thamaka in rural Kanchanaburi.
Upon returning to the Muay Thai camp we sat down on a bench.
"Nakano, Nakano," I said.
"Wass," he replied.
"I don't like Muay Thai anymore."
He laughed. "Me too."

My training here at Sitmonchai is coming to a close as my fight is on sunday. I am slated to fight a much smaller opponent as my original foe cut his finger somehow. Who knows the opponent might be changed last minute again. I'm excited about having training being over with because I am getting burned out on it. In lieu of training this afternoon I have opted to watch Rocky montage's. Until then myself and Muay Thai are having a bad romance.

Click here for the original.

ความเป็น American

2011-02-21T19:34:00.000-08:00

The jeep was packed as it shuttled us to the disco in Kanchanaburi.
"I don't understand you Americans," she said, her indian accent making her statement resonate in the vehicle.
"We have to vie for supremacy. If there is more than one American in the room we fight each other for who can be the real representative of our grandious nation," I replied.
"Fuck, I would be a better representative for America than you," the australian replied. "She would too and she's from south east asia."
"Shut the fuck up before I bomb your country. I'll bomb all your stupid countries. Pricks," I replied.

Graham Greene's "The Quiet American," begins with the death of an American. Greene through his narrator, Thomas Fowler, a British jaded journalist reaching his 50s with a paunch to match, describes the character of the American and how he ended up being... Marrrdeerrred. The american, Pyle, is an idealist who has taken hold of the writings of York Harding, some sort of democratic ideologue who has spent little time in Vietnam where the novel is set. Fowler lives with his lover, a young vietnamese woman named Phuong covering the French war when Pyle arrives on scene. Fowler is realistic about the battle between the nations and uninvolved. Pyle however, being the young idealist that he is, believes in neither the colonialist answer of the French nor in the communism of the asian country he is rather beguiled by the idea of a "third force," which when operational would be more easily maneuvered by the U.S.

While ideologically different, the two also battle over the love/company of Phuong. The 20 year old woman's character is never fleshed out with her decisions being made by her older sister whom is primarily interested in her being married off. She is depicted by Fowler as a woman who seeks security, while Pyle believes that she is a beautiful flower in need of saving. Phuong, herself, speaks little and when she does it is only to ask if Fowler would like his opium pipe filled, or to recount her trip to the movies.

The basic narrative structure reminded me of Greene's other work that I've read recently; "May I borrow your Husband?" In the short story the narrator, who again is a writer, is holidaying by the Mediterranean sea. The hotel he is staying is visited upon initially by a gay couple, and then a newly wed couple. The gay couple swoop on the groom. While the narrator is smitten with the bride, Poopy, he never mobilizes his feelings for her and she remains in innocent oblivion of the sexual change that is occurring in her husband. Where the stories are similar is in the taking of a partner. In "May I borrow your Husband," it is the groom whom is being taken by a gay couple, whereas in the "Quiet American," it is the exotic Phuong being stolen by the idealistic American.

The novel has twice been made into a movie, once with Michael Caine, in 2002 and initially in 1958. The writing is easy with Greene's literary style being simplistic and sparse. The action is steady and its easy to empathize with Fowler and see Pyle as being a delusional twat.

Being overseas I've encountered a slew of internationals, and other ex pats. I've met more Swedes than the small country would seem to have yet few Americans, it seems like we don't travel that much. It is always interesting hearing what others think of my noble nation of birth. It makes me wonder if there is something essential, some inherent qualities or traits of Americans.

Evidently the book recieved good press in Britain but Americans didn't much like it considering its poor depiction of them. Maybe the British were right...?

Do what?

2011-02-16T05:10:00.001-08:00

Things here at Sitmonchai are progressing as they do. I've been training regularly sans two sessions in which I was too sleepy to attend. This valentine's day one of the fighters here had a bout. The fight was in a small town close to Thamaka and the entire crew packed into a mini van to go see the show. Ashima, the small Indian woman who fought, had her fight delayed by a couple hours because there was some confusion as to the actual date of the fight. Evidently her opponent thought it was going to be some other time. The fight was tented in by blue tarp erected on poles giving the venue a real classy feel. The fights were there primarily because of the festival in the wat next door.

The festival was far more titillating than the fights. A crew of guys and I went to the festival for a minute and we saw some extravagant costumes, a male elephant (he had a fucking gigantic dong), cheap wares, and a haunted house. The haunted house was pretty atrocious. As I walked through it people grabbed at my fight. I screamed with mock terror. A small kid who was about 7 or 8 wore a scary mask. He pointed at me and repeatedly said; "Where you from, Where you from. I love you. I love you." I probably should have taken him home with me and sold him into a child prostitution ring.

My fight date was changed to March 6th. I'm not fighting at Lumpinee anymore which is a bit of a bummer, but honestly I just want to fight and get it over with. Training is fun, but its also boring and tiring. I want to go on vacation again and hang out with my friends.

That said I have been trying to focus on fixing shit that I'm doing. I over rotate my hip when kicking which is something that I'm trying to consciously fix.

My trainer here "catches" blows which causes some confusion but also helps me develop my steez. I've been doing a lot of right kicks and left knee combinations which is fun. I plan on doing more knee style fighting/pad work in the coming weeks.

I've been writing a fair amount of letters, but haven't gotten as much regular story writing done as I'd like. Oh well. I'll be sure to get on the fiction though.

In the mean time here is a video of an Isaan singer lamenting how her boyfriend Johnny is going back to America.

That's not my name

2011-02-08T19:24:00.000-08:00

Someone starts the cd and my worries begin. Its not from the shadow boxing. I don't fear the fight, I don't fear getting hurt, instead my phobia is of developing a Pavlovian response to the music. Just like a dog who rings a bell to get food and so loves bells I worry that this old mutt might turn into a fighting machine when The Tings Tings come on. My fists punch the air and I think about kneeing people. I imagine the dim lights of Lumpinee, the smell of menthol, the third man in the ring and my blows landing against my opponent as the lead singer screams "That's not my name!" When I get punched I can only envision myself kicking my opponent back in the arm repeatedly, screaming over and over and over again; "That's not my NAME! THAT'S NOT MY NAME!!!"

We play the same few cds over and over here at the gym which reinforces my actions to music. This can obviously be a good thing, like who doesn't get excited during the Rocky soundtrack, but the Ting Tings? Bummer.

I am slated to fight at Lumpinee on February 26th. Its in about 2 and a half weeks. I have to drop about four kilos which is the only thing that is haunting me. I hate cutting weight. I'm hoping to drop down to 68 or 69 kilos the week before the fight that way I only have to cut two or 3 kilos. Maybe if I quit eating all that fucking rice.

My time here at Sitmonchai has been enjoyable. I've been practicing my Thai a lot and of course have been tested several times on it. Unfortunately my version of Talay Jai is still somewhat stilted sounding. P' Ay yelled at me about it telling me to sing smoother. Unfortunately I'm no Carrabao. Soon though, soon.

Chimatli discovered another good hit with CarCrash International that is worth checking out.

I've also joined twitter on the suggestion of several friends out here. Twitter seems particularly good for news streaming. There is a constant run of information about the recent surge of activity on the Thai/Cambodian border. The conflict has been a rallying point for the nationalistic sect of the yellow shirts. It should be interesting to see what happens. There are rumors of a coming coup, but there are always rumors of coups out here.

I've been following Thai politics pretty closely out here which is interesting. There are a couple good sites I'd recommend:

Khi Kwaii

Bangkok pundit

New Mandala

Pistol whipping and Carabao

2011-01-31T21:03:00.000-08:00

"Matt, Matt," he said followed by several sharp raps on the door. I had been dozing lightly. "Go jogging na, jogging."

I got out of the bed and put in my contacts. I ran some toothpaste over my teeth to freshen my breath. My toothbrush was back in Bangkok, 95 kilometers away, about 60 miles. I opened the door to my shared bedroom. My roommate is a tall skinny Japanese guy that stayed up late last night and got drunk, oh those Japanese!

A small brown table sits right in front of the door for the Thais and the farang to eat at. A few feet further in front is the ring, and to the left are the heavy bags. It is a simple gym, and has the usual Thai glamour to it.

I slipped on my shoes and stretched waiting for the critical mass of folks to start jogging. Today the run was mainly myself, a 15 year old named Tam who led the way, a russian boy and his father. We ran down the streets of Kanchanburi province, mainly along a khlong. The view was uninspiring and mainly composed of roadside buffalo shit, the passing motorbike, and a heap of destroyed spirit houses. After we had ran 5 kilometers we returned to the gym, another 5 kilometers. Then it was the glorious living of Muay Thai.

On my way out to the gym in the mini van from Victory Monument to Thamaka I finished reading Ernest Hemingway's "Across the River and Into the Trees." Hemingway in his usual terseness tells the story of an aged colonel who falls in love with a young woman while in Venice, or some fancy European city. The book opens up with the colonel doing what men do, hunt. The former soldier takes exacting shots at ducks while in some sort of contraption called a blind. When he is not shooting he is drinking gin. Eventually pleased, at least to some degree, with his day of sport he returns to the city where he speaks an endless amount of lovesick babble to his sweetheart. Their conversations are ridiculous and when they are not, they are boring prattles about food.

"Excuse me," he said. "Be comfortable, honey dog, please. You asked me to tell you. (she wanted him to talk about the war.)"
"I'm not your honey dog. That must be someone else."
"Correct. You're my last and true and only love (vomit). Is that correct? But you asked me to tell you."
"Please tell me," the girl said. "I'd like to be your honey dog if I knew how to do it. But I am only a girl from this town that loves you (gag)."
"We'll operate on that," the Colonel said. "And I love you (barf). I probably picked up that phrase in the Philippines."

There are some redeeming aspects to their affair of the heart. He teaches her how to pistol whip a fool!

"Incidentally, Daughter, the weapon, not the old pistol, the real pistol, has missed more people in combat than probably any weapon in the world. Don't ever let anyone give you one unless you want to hit people on the head with it at Harry's bar. ...hit him with the barrel, not with the butt. The butt is awfully slow, and it misses and if it lands you get blood on your hands when you put the gun away." p.184

Sage words Hemingway.

Along with learning how to pistol whip I've also been studying my Thai. Next week I hope to have this song by Carabao memorized as all the trainers have asked me, repeatedly to sing it. Next week I said I would do so.

No Way Out of Paradise

2011-01-23T23:03:00.000-08:00

Boonma lived in a shack, a ramshackle shack. The corrugated iron that served as a roof did little to add charm to the abode. He had built the house by taking a wage advance from his employer, a Chinese businessman. The three hundred baht loan, along with the permission to build on his employer's land allowed him to create a home for his wife, their three children and his grandfather. Yet the very loan that gave him the ability to create his own home made him suffer. The money coming in wasn't enough, especially when his wife became pregnant with their third child, and then grandfather was hurt, unable to work.

Boonma's loan was sold to another man and the underemployed protagonist is sent to sea to work. While on the stormy waters trying to eek a living things at home take on an inevitable decline. The poverty induces mother to shack up with another man, and Sida began engaging in sex work. What does Boonma do when he arrives home again? He rages. He beats his wife senselessly and almost destroys the house at the same time. The battered wife slips out in the night, and soon Sida leaves as well. Boonma returns to work on the seas and the two youngest children are left with grandfather to fend for themselves.

Chart Korbjitti's novel read easily on the raft as I floated on the river. I read the short novel in one afternoon whilst on a small raft in the Kanchanaburi province west of Bangkok. The raft floated lazily along the river Kwae Yai, the same river which was immortalized in the movie "Bridge Over the River Kwai." I was on a group vacation, with 8 other friends. We'd come out to Kanchanaburi and headed for one of the northern parks to spend a couple days by the water, and the water falls.

The simple narrative was made more interesting by the varying third person viewpoints, in one chapter it was Grandfather who was the focus, in another it was Ort, the older brother, and shifting back again to Boonma. Like Korbjitti's other novel, The Judgement, which won him the S.E.A novel award, No Way Out focuses on how inescapable fate is. The effects of karma are clear in Korbjitti's novels. If you misbehaved in your last life, you suffer in this one.

Boonma reflects on the horror of his life late in the novel, "What kind of fate was this? He must have committed a lot of sins in his previous life to have to repay with such suffering in this life, he thought (p. 125-126)."

Boonma isn't the only one to feel the heavy hand of fate and internalize life's current plight as one's own fault. Grandfather too blames himself. "'If I hadn't come to Bangkok at that time,' he continued in silence, 'no one would have had to suffer on my account.' ...The old man's life had been like a pretty piece of coloured material whichsomeone had had made up as a shirt and which, when it started to fall apart from use, had begun to lose its value and turned into a tattered old rag. As time had gone by, it had become dirtier and worthless. His life had been just like such a rag, a lonely, exhausting and worthless life. Now it was gone, waiting to be forgotten." Suffering in life is not only one's own fault but one's miserabalism just shows how worthless your life is. You were born in a squalid condition because you lived a squalid life previously. Poor people deserve their poverty in other words.

Korbjitti adds black humor into the mix with his ending. With Grandfather dead, his wife and daughter gone, and Ort arrested while trying to provide for the family, Boonma takes his fate into his own hands and poisons himself and his remaining son. The son dies from the poison, while Boonma is woken in a hospital. "'Don't try to commit suicide again, uncle. Believe me: death never solves anyone's problems. Stand up to life and fight. Fight with all you've got. And you'll be a winner.' The nurse lectured him with words she had ready- prepared for comforting all patients in his situation." The nurse's words don't echo the predominant theme of karma but humorously invoke agency, an agency which is denied to the working poor, as Boonma is. Her statement is also suggestive of the Horatio Alger myth of the western world, of which she may be trying to emulate herself (Nurses would be far more exposed to western concepts than working poor such as Boonma due to university education).

The novel's close is clear from the onset. The back jacket of the book has its last paragraph written on it: "Boonma was sentenced to death, but thecourt commuted the sentence to life imprisonment because of his full confession. He didn't appeal to the Supreme Court. He did nothing, except quietly accept his sentence. Sometimes late at night, fellow prisoners heard him wailing, like a tortured animal, alone..."

Born amongst ruins Boonma is committed to ruin. His house is destroyed, the iron corrugated roof for which he struggled for is wrecked by workingmen, agents of a the landowner. The land could be further capitalized on and so Boonma's house is easily torn apart. The house that was there might as well not have existed. It was worthless like a used up rag.

Korbjitti's novel reflects the dominant Buddhism mores of Thai society. While spectacular myths such as Horatio Alger keep capitalism entrenched in the western world, Buddhism does its own work in the exotic east. Our good friend Karl has always said, "Religion is the opiate of the masses." The Buddhism of Thai society reinforces class hierarchy by reinforcing the idea that one's fate is one's own problem rather than a societal and structural one.

The novel was a sharp contrast to my lazy vacation.Outside of my temporary paradise was a world that was cruel and fixed. I looked at one of the boat boy's and asked my friend how much he got paid. "About two-hundred baht a day," she said, "but you don't need much to live on out here."

Letters from Thailand

2011-01-09T15:16:00.000-08:00

Bangkok, the eternal city, the city of angels... My plane landed late at night, and it took me some time to be processed through immigration and to the sathorn house. I've been staying with friends whom I've lived with before. They moved from where we were living to a new spot in the silom business district. Next to the house is one of the largest office buildings in the area. While most of the international businesses run down sukumwit, the silom features most of the international banks. Droves of office workers flood our small little side soi during the day to eat at the local side street restaurants. The steady stream of hungry proles has inflated the price of food around here from the reasonable price of 30 baht for a dish to 35 baht. Unbelievable!!!

I've spent the last few days since my arrival having sanuk. This has meant lots of clubs both at appropriate hours and after hours. I've spent two nights this week at the after hours club Wongs, which is located close to the sathon house, a short 40 baht ride. Staying up til 5 am drinking at a bar with friends is an outrageous amount of fun but has been damaging to having a regular sleep schedule.

Along with my exciting night life I've been running and exploring the area. The house is located close to Lumpini park. I've enjoyed running to the park and seeing the serene crab grass landscape. They have a handful of ridiculous exercise machines that are for public use. Old people tend to like the weird contraptions the most, I guess age makes one more excited for oddities.

Coming back to BKK has made me interested in Thai politics once again. A friend and I were able to check out the mass gathering around Central World today. With over 30,000 people attending the protest shows the obvious strength and continuing divide within the country. The protest was peaceful when I was there and mainly were people hanging out listening to Isaan music, and/or the speakers. Former Prime Minister Thaksin spoke at one point via a cell phone call, evidently the red shirts do conference calls. The protest was to commemorate the deaths of protesters last year. There was a violent class between the red shirts and the police in which 90 were injured or killed. There has been an interesting class aspect to the red/yellow shirt division with the red shirts being composed of the peasant class and working class within thailand while the yellow shirts tend to be more middle and upper class.

A friend and I were talking about the take over of space between the two colors. The red shirts have taken over a main center of Bangkok business shutting down the high scale shopping in the area. This impact of local/urban business can be juxtaposed to the yellow shirts take over of the Suvarnabhumi airport in eastern Bangkok. While the red shirts impacted local economy the yellow shirts laid seige to the national and international economy of Thailand. The seizure of planes at the airport damaged travel tremendously and Thailand's economy is bolstered heavily by tourism. Looking at the take over of space we can see the class/cultural differences between the two groups. For the peasantry the appropriation of an urban area can be seen as an attempt to claim a "right to the city," removed from Bangkok itself the peasants have a spectacular relationship to the city. Most of the capital is centred in the city while little goes out to support the areas in which they live. With the growing popularity of the internet in the Isaan area the peasants are gaining a virtual access to the city without a physical port to plug into. The yellow shirt acquisition of the airport was an attempt to wrest national power back into their hands, it can be seen as a "right to the state."

The economic impact of the airport take over and the occupation of the Central World area was roughly the same, according to my Thai friend, a native Bangkok resident. While the economic damage is the same the amount of time the two occupations took have been starkly different. The yellow shirts were far more strategically savvy by taking over the airport causing more damage in a week than the two month siege by the red shirts. The red shirts caused a fair amount of terror though as they burned buildings whilst the yellow shirts engaged in no property damage. This is a class difference as well, poor people are always viewed as more violent than the cultured and non violent rich, who merely engage in systematic violence hegemonically.

The violence between the two camps will probably continue on. This will be unfortunate in the coming few years as the health of the 85 year old King is in decline. The King's reign has been a benign impact on Thailand and his regency has been a visible stabilizer within the country during its series of coups and instabilities. With the death of the King a power vacuum will be created. The next in line is the unpopular second child of the royal family, a son. The stabilizing void caused by his death is also not talked about amongst the Thais as they revere their god status king whom has an Orwellian Big Brother appearance throughout the country and abroad (next time you stop in a Thai Restaurant $10 says there's a picture somewhere in the place with a picture of the King. If not you're probably not in a Thai restaurant).

Politics should be interesting out here to say the least.

While running regularly I haven't been training. Hopefully I'll get to that soon. In the meantime I've been catching up on some great music. My latina musical swami Chimatli has been posting some great jams of late. Kid sister throws some solid beats, while Deux has bitching electronic. I of course like the Sisters of Mercy cover that she put on. In addition to the jams from Chimatli I've been listening to some new electronica. My friend recently suggested Boys Noise. Boys Noise falls into the same camp as Bloody Beetroots, Dj Steve Aoiki, and Mstrkft. Arguably this new "hard" electronic is distinctively punk as noted by my homie over at Dead Time Pacifies.

Given my copious amount of free time I plan on keeping the blog updated regularly going back to my once a week production schedule. Stay tuned for more awesome shit!!!

Depeche Mode

2010-11-08T23:36:00.000-08:00

Roberto Garcia- Boxing Trainer

2010-11-01T22:29:00.000-07:00

Nowhere Girl

2010-10-28T11:48:00.001-07:00

Lucky Day

2010-10-15T14:31:00.001-07:00

Your Lucky Day from Dan on Vimeo.

I still have a soul

2010-10-13T00:25:00.000-07:00

I realize this is an ad for HBO but I still like it, for obvious reasons.

Speaking of which if you haven't checked out the Banksy beginning for the new simpsons...
click here to see it.

Is it recuperation? Is it detournment? Is it post modern irony? Is it all of the above?

David Bryne talks about space and music

2010-10-05T23:44:00.001-07:00

The Tree and the Cat

2010-09-30T10:11:00.000-07:00

The russians obviously make great cartoons.

Dick Jokes

2010-09-28T23:41:00.000-07:00

"Fuck you faggot," the young gay hipster said to me as I sat down. I was taken aback. I opened my book. "I'm just trying to practice a bit," he said. "I'm trying to start saying fag, or faggot like a normal straight guy. Its not really working that well."

I shrugged and opened my book as I waited for sign ups to begin. I'd been to Brainwash, the cafe/laundromat before with a friend. We'd come on thursday for the open mic comedy night. Hordes of aspiring comedians come to the laundromat to drink beer and tell bad jokes. Tonight I resolved to be one of them. I looked up from my book and saw a middle aged man in a trench coat. As he strode before me I noticed that he wore only bondage underwear. "Faggot," I cried.

"Oh my gawd, that was so inappropriate," the gay hipster cried in between shreiks of laughter. "I seriously want to suck a dick, seriously. What's your name?"

I went inside with him and we signed up. I would be number 24 which meant a long wait. Each comedian got roughly four minutes, plus or minus depending on the emcee, Tony Sparks, accounting of the clock. I sat at the front and watched a handful of comedians. Most of them told bad jokes. The funniest joke was; "Who gets full eating pussy? - Cannibals." I didn't laugh but I wrote it down.

I was a little nervous about my own bit. I'd been working on it for a week or so, honing it into perfection, but was worried about the racist comment in it about black people not tipping. I resolved to do the joke when a black woman, who had been sitting in the front of the audience heckling the comedians, bought a round of drinks. She didn't tip.

My bit went as follows.
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I hate my job. I work as a server at a restaurant in Berkeley. You'll never notice my loathing as I'm so good at putting on a happy face. I'm a ray of sunshine when I greet my customers.

"Hi, My name is Matt, what can I get for you?"

This actually translates into: "You fucking terds! Stuff your shit pits as fast as you can til they burst then give me all your money cuz I'm here to get PAID!"

I hate even being there. I always take smoke breaks. I don't smoke but I like to stand outside, it makes me feel all tingly. I hate when people ask me for cigarettes though. I never give my smokes away cuz if I don't have any cigarettes I can't take smoke breaks.

Waiting has made me a terrible person. I've become a compulsive liar. When a customer asks me; "Oh would you recommend this salad?"

I reply, "Its delicious." Even if that salad tastes like ground up baby sauteed in pig shit. Its ridiculous, who asks that? Of course I'm going to say its good, its like asking a prostitute if her vagina is tight.

I've also become racist from waiting tables. I wasn't always like this. I used to be a nice guy with a nice smile, a real ray of sunshine.

Now when someone comes into the restaurant I look at them and see a pie chart over thie heads depicting their spending habits and if they're black, latino, asian, a foreigner, or under 21 that pie in teh sky says; "Fuck You Waiter!!"

I remember the tipping point. I was a liberal guy in Berkeley, the lefty paradise. There is no racism in Berkeley. I had a table of middle aged black ladies and I gave them excellent service.

"Extra napkins, no problem!" "Lemons? I've got them right here." "Tartar sauce for your pizza? My pleasure to serve."

They even got waters for their entire table, which they didn't drink. That's like going to the bathroom and not pissing, or wearing a condom and not fucking a bitch.

I gave them exquisite service. I drop the check and thank them. A few minutes later I pick it back up. I don't open it right away. I say to myself; "I don't believe in stereotypes, I don't believe in stereotypes, I don't believe in stereotypes." I open the book up... Fucking Black People!!!

They put $5 on a $60 check. Its like that 90s rap song chorus is going through their head all the time. "I got five on it!" $5 on a $20 check that's good but $5 on $60 that's less than 9%. Fuck I'm here to get paid.

---1---- I know, I know, its a cultural thing. Its not something you can blame anyone for. Its just not part of the culture to tip well, its like how being cool is not part of white culture.

Anyways this is my first time doing stand up and I thought I'd be really nervous, or embarrassed. I just did the sensible thing and pictured you all naked which is giving me an erection. I don't know if I should be nervous about my boner or embarrassed the my dick is so small you can't see it.
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No one really laughed during the bit. I got off the stage and some bearded dude started talking to me while the emcee talked about how black people don't tip because waiters don't give good service, don't quote me on that though. I also forgot one of the last jokes, marked above with a 1. I probably came across as even more racist than I actually am. Oh well, the plight of being white.

It was a good experience if I did "bomb." It taught me a few things; 1) maybe I'm not funny 2) White dudes making fun of black people is probably just racist and not funny 3) no one thinks complaining about customers as a waiter when you're at a cafe is humorous.

I don't intend on doing another bit. I think I'm pretty happy with how I'll be known after doing this bit, as a racist with a small dick.

Red Shirt Redux- From the Economist

2010-09-20T14:27:00.001-07:00

FOR much of April and May, Bangkok’s Rajprasong shopping district was taken over by a raucous protest movement that was eventually quashed by the army. On Sunday, four months after that episode ended in bloodshed, the “red shirts” were back. Several thousand showed up to chant anti-government slogans, release red balloons, tie ribbons on lampposts and call for justice and democracy. If you squinted, and ignored the charred shopping centre torched during the clashes, it was a vision of the April demonstrations. But Sunday’s influx of protesters did not linger. By evening, the crowd had drifted away, having made their point: the red shirts are back.

Thailand’s prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, has tried to push the tragic events of April and May into the background. He has appointed various committees to investigate the violence and to address social and economic inequities in Thailand. Officials tried to frame the red-shirt revolt as a power play by Thailand’s former prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, who has been accused of bankrolling the protests and inciting violence. Thailand’s economy has picked up steam, defying predictions of a downturn in the second quarter. Mr Abhisit’s supporters hope that continued growth and a large dollop of welfare spending will save him from defeat when parliamentary elections are held, sometime next year.

Sunday’s gathering was a riposte to such glib optimism. Red shirts are still fuming over their rough treatment by the army, which stands squarely behind Mr Abhisit. A popular slogan at Rajprasong was "Stop Killing People". Others made the point that though 91 people were killed, most of them at the hands of heavily armed soldiers, the army has shown no remorse. “We want society to remember that people died here. Everything the government says is one-sided,” said a middle-aged woman. As if to confirm her view, Thailand’s state-run broadcast media largely ignored the protest in Bangkok, as well as a large rally held in Chiang Mai.

The red shirts are no angels. Armed militants emerged from the shadows during clashes with troops; some of the dead and injured were soldiers, including a decorated army colonel. Low-level thuggery has often marred red-shirt protests in Bangkok and elsewhere. The charred shopping centre is a reminder of the chaos they unleashed on the capital's downtown in May. Many Thais are turned off by both the pro-Thaksin red shirts and their arch-rivals, the royalist "yellow shirts", who occupied Bangkok’s international airports in December 2008.

Mr Abhisit rode to power on the back of the yellow-shirt protest movement. He has failed to bring them to task for their transgressions, even while hundreds of red shirts were rounded up and jailed in May. Much of the movement’s leadership is in prison or on the run. Mr Thaksin lives overseas, and flits between countries on various passports, thumbing his nose at Thai efforts to extradite him over a politically motivated corruption conviction. He is among the red-shirt figures facing terrorism charges, though few expect him to stand trial.

Bangkok has been under a state of emergency since April, but Sunday’s protest was allowed to go ahead. That it ended peacefully may give the government room to lift the emergency when it comes up for renewal in two weeks. But that does not mean that the capital is secure. A series of bombings and attempted bombings have been blamed on militants among the red shirts. Thailand’s southernmost provinces have been under emergency rule for five years as troops battle a shadowy Muslim-led insurgency. That conflict shows no sign of ending. The national politics is coming to bear an uncanny resemblance.

Women boxers in India by Ezra Winton

2010-09-16T22:37:00.000-07:00

Anna Sarkissian and Ameesha Joshi are emerging filmmakers from Montreal, Quebec, currently making a documentary in India “on a shoestring budget” about women boxers called With this Ring. The synopsis from the film’s site:

Winning four world titles is not enough to get noticed in India, just ask 27 year-old boxing champion Mary Kom. She could have been a household name by now if she had chosen to pursue a more “ladylike” sport like tennis or ﬁeld hockey. Instead, she is ﬁghting against centuries of tradition in a country that expects women to be sweet and docile. With cropped hair, deﬁned shoulders and a mean left hook, she is anything but your typical Indian girl.

With This Ring lets you step into the ring with members of the Indian Women’s National Boxing Team. From their villages to the podium, these girls quickly rise to the top of their game. At the 4th World Women’s Boxing Competition in 2006, the Indian team makes a clean sweep, winning eight medals and the Championship Team title. They ofﬁcially become the best women’s boxing team in the world. And the most under-appreciated.

Art Threat recently fired off a few questions to this dynamic duo. Their responses, with images, and a sneak peak video of the film are below.

Art Threat: What is this project about and how did you get the idea?

Anna Sarkissian: Since 2006, we’ve been on the trail of the Indian women’s senior national boxing team. They’re some of the top boxers in the world, with multiple world champions in their midst. Ameesha originally found out that there were women boxing in India after seeing their images at a World Press Photo Exhibit. With her Indian heritage (she’s Gujarati), she was really curious to find out how these women were able to pursue boxing when they are expected to marry and have kids by the age of 20. The social pressure to be a dutiful daughter, wife, and mother, is intense. When she found out they were some of the top boxers in the world, she knew there was a story to tell. We talked about going to India, and upon finding out that there would be a boxing world championship in New Delhi for the first and possibly last time, we knew we couldn’t pass up this opportunity. So in November, we booked last minute flights and headed to India. We had no funding, no equipment of our own. We basically begged and borrowed and did whatever was necessary to get ourselves there. It was well worth it and we were able to witness history in the making; India won four world championship titles and was crowned best team in the world.

Essentially, we’re looking at the women behind the gloves. We’re interested in their personal stories, finding out how they have overcome struggles in order to pursue boxing, which can be their ticket out of poverty. Successful athletes are often rewarded with a cushy government job, meaning they would be set for life. Many girls on the team are able to support their entire families with their earnings. As you can imagine, many of them come from small, conservative villages where boxing is misunderstood. Yet once they start winning medals internationally and earning their own money, their families become more accepting.

One of their parents’ primary concerns is that boxing will disfigure their faces, and they won’t be able to marry. It may sound trivial to us to have a cut or scar on your face, but marriage is a pivotal rite of passage in India. Some of the boxers are 25 or 26 years old and still haven’t married. Society views them as old maids. They’ve given up on some of them. You can imagine their relief to find out that Ameesha and I (we’re 37 and 27) aren’t married. We formed some common ground on that front.

People have a lot of preconceived notions about these boxers, who train to “hit other women in the head” three times a day, six days a week, 11 months a year. Even here, when we show our footage, people are startled by their appearance: short hair, defined shoulders, men’s jeans. People will come up to them on the street, asking, “Are you a boy or a girl?” just to rattle them. They laugh it off. They go about their business inside the walls of the training camp, focusing on boxing. They are marginalized by society, in many ways, but they keep training. They ignore the snide remarks and stares because they have their sights set on the next world championship, the Asian Games, and the Olympics.

Publicly, most people said they supported women’s boxing. We would ask people on the street, “what if your mother wanted to try boxing?” They told us they would encourage her to do so. But others were more candid, saying it was degrading for women to wear tracksuits and other cheap clothing when they should be in saris. Others said they would prefer for women to focus on “womanly pursuits” like weaving or pottery. One man said he wouldn’t let his wife box because she would put him in the hospital.

Spring demo 2010 (With This Ring) from with this ring / anna & ameesha on Vimeo.

The site seems a little different than a standard doc film site, what is the plan for the website?

AS: We hope to make people part of the process as the film comes together. Since we’ve been sharing the production experience with an audience on our CitizenShift blog since 2006, we felt that we wanted to continue to have the same kind of relationship during the post-production. We’ve been very candid about the challenges and problems we’ve had in making this film. In a sense, we feel like we have nothing to hide. We would like our online presence to be a warts and all portrayal of the way that With This Ring was made. It feels strange to talk about ourselves in the third person while promoting our film, so we keep things intimate. It’s just the two of us working on this in our free time, there’s no huge bureaucratic production house shaping our words. We want it to feel genuine. Since this is a personal project for both of us, we wanted others to join us on the meandering journey, wherever it goes.

We hope to post more clips as we get deeper into the post-production process and of course we’ll save some nuggets for the actual film. Apparently, there’s this thing called social media that we’re supposed to be utilizing to promote our film. We don’t know the first thing about tweeting but we’re open to the idea.

What’s the best story/moment you have from filming? And the worst?

AS: We’ve been lucky in the sense that we’ve had many wonderful moments. Our film was made on a non-existent budget and we had unbelievable support from the families of the boxers, coaches, and even complete strangers. In India, they have a saying that the “guest is like a god.” You really feel that. We enjoyed more delicious meals at people’s homes than either of us could have imagined. It’s also not customary for two women to travel alone in India, so people were quite nervous about us gallivanting around the country by ourselves. They really went out of their way to ensure that we were taken care of and welcomed us wholeheartedly. That’s really what I’ll always remember about India.

The worst? Upon arriving in India back in 2006, the coaches told us we were welcome to shoot the team – for the day. Somehow, there was some miscommunication and the team didn’t understand that we were coming to India for two months expressly to document their lives. That was a minor roadblock, to say the least. We spent a few weeks waiting outside their training hall, hoping to speak to them. Eventually, we gained the trust of the coaches and the athletes and developed a good relationship with them. Since 2006, we have met up with them in Ontario when they came for a training camp in 2008, spent 10 weeks with them at the training camps in India in summer 2008, travelled to China with them for the world championships in November 2008, and returned to India in December 2008 for a final visit. At this point, we’ve finished shooting and we’re starting editing.

Filmmaker Ameesha Joshi

Ameesha Joshi: One of the best moments was the first day we arrived at the boxing camp in India in the summer of 2008, 2 years after our first visit. Since then Mary Kom, one of our main characters and currently the world`s best boxer, had left the boxing scene for two years after having twin boys. We had no idea if she planned on returning to the sport, so it was absolutely a surprise to discover she had and arrived at the boxing camp the exact same day we did to begin production.   Mary was determined to win her 4th gold medal at the next Championships, which she did! But the best part of her returning was her arrival with a baby in each arm. We got to witness her juggling an extensive training workout while taking care of her two babies. She was often up all night from them crying, but always got up at the crack of dawn with all the other boxers for a grueling workout and their workouts occurred three times a day, 6 days a week. It was impressive to say the least.

There are many of the smaller moments I remember fondly, like getting caught in the rain during an outdoor boxing competition in monsoon season. Sometimes the rain would come down like a waterfall without any prior warning of a drizzle. The chaos that ensued was rather comical, everyone was screaming through the downpour, racing to get inside, many scrambled and crouched underneath the ring for cover. It was seconds before you got completely soaked so you had to move fast. Then there was us huddling under our ridiculously large golf umbrella Anna had brought from home, it ended up being one of the most valuable items we packed that summer, no question it saved our equipment. The boxers ended up continuing the competition indoors, with a makeshift ring, using their backpacks to mark the edges. They always made the best of any situation and there most common response to any hitch or hurdle were always the words ‘ no problem!’   One of the worst times was the whole process in getting special permission to visit the north eastern state of Manipur where Mary Kom lives in 2006. We bought our plane tickets before realizing that non-resident Indians need special permission to visit. The ordeal to get the paper work approved was long and arduous, involving long lineups over many days. We kept pushing back our plane ticket to Manipur without knowing if we would even receive permission in time. We had non-refundable plane tickets back to Canada, and with next to no budget, our schedule was fixed so it was quite stressful, but in the end we did managed to get the permission, and only because a kind Manipuri family we befriended in Delhi pulled some strings at the last minute.   Then there was the moment we arrived in Manipur to find out Mary had just left for Mumbai for a last minute engagement. We were more than relieved to learn she would return three days before we would leave Manipur, and she did everything to shower us with incredible Manipuri hospitality during those precious days.

Your previous short (Anna’s) was an experimental documentary, will this one be as well? And what do you feel are the problems/limitations with more conventional documentary?

AS: It’s a tough business and I can appreciate how incredibly difficult it is to make a good film. I think documentaries are often lumped together as being “badly made” by other filmmakers, with shaky camera, choppy editing and so on. In some cases, people are so focused on the message that any trace of art disappears. Personally, I think Powerpoint is a great visual tool for conveying facts and information – but I don’t want to see pie-charts at the movies. I’m certainly not a master filmmaker, but looking back at some of the NFB box sets from the glory years, I think we’ve lost touch with the art of documentary. They were true technical masters who had a great sense of storytelling. My dream would to be able to combine those two elements in a film (or die trying).

The filmmakers with the boxing team

I’m not sure that our finished product will be television-friendly. We’re wrestling with aesthetic decisions now, trying to maintain our vision without losing our audience. Ameesha and I certainly have a vision for the film that is not entirely conventional. We like long takes, wide shots, slow motion, slow pacing – letting your eye roam around the frame. At the same time, we want our film to be accessible because the stories are important to us.

AJ: In addition to Anna`s comment about our film being accessible is the consideration of audience reactions from different cultures. Although we can’t predict what the majority will think, we at least understand the audience in Canada better than in India, where we hope the film will be widely viewed. It’s very important for us to give these boxers the media attention they need. But in India, where Bollywood is the popular film format, I really do wonder whether the general population will enjoy our artistic approach. I can only hope.

Anything you’d like to add?

AS: A lot! Not sure what else you’d like to know that isn’t on our website…But here’s a description of our two main characters.

AJ: Women`s boxing will be featured as an Olympic sport for the first time at the 2012 Games in London. Having a chance to compete at the Olympics is the ultimate dream for most athletes. All hopes are on Mary Kom, but no question there are other boxers on their team that have the potential to strike gold and make history. We were in India during the last summer Olympics and witnessed how the three Indians who won a medal were splashed throughout the media. I can only imagine that this display of pride would make a significant difference in changing the social taboos surrounding women`s boxing in India.

Boxing Lessons by Gordon Marino

2010-09-16T09:21:00.000-07:00

I offer training in both philosophy and boxing. Over the years, some of my colleagues have groused that my work is a contradiction, building minds and cultivating rational discourse while teaching violence and helping to remove brain cells. Truth be told, I think philosophers with this gripe should give some thought to what really counts as violence. I would rather take a punch in the nose any day than be subjected to some of the attacks that I have witnessed in philosophy colloquia. However, I have a more positive case for including boxing in my curriculum for sentimental education.

The unmindful attitude towards the body so prevalent in the West blinkers us to profound truths that the skin, muscles and breath can deliver like a punch.

Western philosophy, even before Descartes’ influential case for a mind-body dualism, has been dismissive of the body. Plato — even though he competed as a wrestler — and most of the sages who followed him, taught us to think of our arms and legs as nothing but a poor carriage for the mind. In “Phaedo,” Plato presents his teacher Socrates on his deathbed as a sort of Mr. Spock yearning to be free from the shackles of the flesh so he can really begin thinking seriously. In this account, the body gives rise to desires that will not listen to reason and that becloud our ability to think clearly.

In much of Eastern philosophy, in contrast, the search for wisdom is more holistic. The body is considered inseparable from the mind, and is regarded as a vehicle, rather than an impediment, to enlightenment. The unmindful attitude towards the body so prevalent in the West blinkers us to profound truths that the skin, muscles and breath can deliver like a punch.

While different physical practices may open us to different truths, there is a lot of wisdom to be gained in the ring. Socrates, of course, maintained that the unexamined life was not worth living, that self-knowledge is of supreme importance. One thing is certain: boxing can compel a person to take a quick self-inventory and gut check about what he or she is willing to endure and risk. As Joyce Carol Oates observes in her minor classic, “On Boxing”:

Boxers are there to establish an absolute experience, a public accounting of the outermost limits of their beings; they will know, as few of us can know of ourselves, what physical and psychic power they possess — of how much, or how little, they are capable.

Though the German idealist philosopher G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) never slipped on the gloves, I think he would have at least supported the study of the sweet science. In his famous Lord and Bondsman allegory,[1] Hegel suggests that it is in mortal combat with the other, and ultimately in our willingness to give up our lives, that we rise to a higher level of freedom and consciousness. If Hegel is correct, the lofty image that the warrior holds in our society has something to do with the fact that in her willingness to sacrifice her own life, she has escaped the otherwise universal choke hold of death anxiety. Boxing can be seen as a stylized version of Hegel’s proverbial trial by battle and as such affords new possibilities of freedom and selfhood.

Erin Schell

Viewed purely psychologically, practice in what used to be termed the “manly art” makes people feel more at home in themselves, and so less defensive and perhaps less aggressive. The way we cope with the elemental feelings of anger and fear determines to no small extent what kind of person we will become. Enlisting Aristotle, I shall have more to say about fear in a moment, but I don’t think it takes a Freud to recognize that many people are mired in their own bottled up anger. In our society, expressions of anger are more taboo than libidinal impulses. Yet, as our entertainment industry so powerfully bears out, there is plenty of fury to go around. I have trained boxers, often women, who find it extremely liberating to learn that they can strike out, throw a punch, express some rage, and that no one is going to die as a result.

And let’s be clear, life is filled with blows. It requires toughness and resiliency. There are few better places than the squared circle to receive concentrated lessons in the dire need to be able to absorb punishment and carry on, “to get off the canvas” and “roll with the punches.” It is little wonder that boxing, more than any other sport, has functioned as a metaphor for life. Aside from the possibilities for self-fulfillment, boxing can also contribute to our moral lives.

Aristotle recognized that a person could know a great deal about the Good and not lead a good life.

In his “Nicomachean Ethics,” Aristotle argues that the final end for human beings is eudaimonia ─ the good life, or as it is most often translated, happiness. In an immortal sentence Aristotle announces, “The Good of man (eudaimonia) is the active exercise of his soul’s faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue, or if there be several human excellences or virtues, in conformity with the best and most perfect among them.”[2]

A few pages later, Aristotle acknowledges that there are in fact two kinds of virtue or excellence, namely, intellectual and moral.[3] Intellectual excellence is simple book learning, or theoretical smarts. Unlike his teacher Plato and his teacher’s teacher, Socrates, Aristotle recognized that a person could know a great deal about the Good and not lead a good life. “With regard to excellence,” says Aristotle, “it is not enough to know, but we must try to have and use it.” [4]

Aristotle offers a table of the moral virtues that includes, among other qualities, temperance, justice, pride, friendliness and truthfulness. Each semester when I teach ethics, I press my students to generate their own list of the moral virtues. “What,” I ask, “are the traits that you connect with having character?” Tolerance, kindness, self-respect, creativity, always make it on to the board, but it is usually only with prodding that courage gets a nod. And yet, courage seems absolutely essential to leading a moral life. After all, if you do not have mettle, you will not be able to abide by your moral judgments. Doing the right thing often demands going down the wrong side of the road of our immediate and long-range self-interests. It frequently involves sacrifices that we do not much care for, sometimes of friendships, or jobs; sometimes, as in the case with Socrates, even of our lives. Making these sacrifices is impossible without courage.

According to Aristotle, courage is a mean between rashness and cowardliness;[5] that is, between having too little trepidation and too much. Aristotle reckoned that in order to be able to hit the mean, we need practice in dealing with the emotions and choices corresponding to that virtue. So far as developing grit is concerned, it helps to get some swings at dealing with manageable doses of fear. And yet, even in our approach to education, many of us tend to think of anything that causes a shiver as traumatic. Consider, for example, the demise of dodge ball in public schools. It was banned because of the terror that the flying red balls caused in some children and of the damage to self-esteem that might come with always being the first one knocked out of the game. But how are we supposed to learn to stand up to our fears if we never have any supervised practice in dealing with the jitters? Of course, our young people are very familiar with aggressive and often gruesome video games that simulate physical harm and self-defense, but without, of course, any of the consequences and risks that might come with putting on the gloves.

Boxing provides practice with fear and with the right, attentive supervision, in quite manageable increments. In their first sparring session, boxers usually erupt in “fight or flight” mode. When the bell rings, novices forget everything they have learned and simply flail away. If they stick with it for a few months, their fears diminish; they can begin to see things in the ring that their emotions blinded them to before. More importantly, they become more at home with feeling afraid. Fear is painful, but it can be faced, and in time a boxer learns not to panic about the blows that will be coming his way.

While Aristotle is able to define courage, the study and practice of boxing can enable us to not only comprehend courage, but “to have and use” it. By getting into the ring with our fears, we will be less likely to succumb to trepidation when doing the right thing demands taking a hit. To be sure, there is an important difference between physical and moral courage. After all, the world has seen many a brave monster. The willingness to endure physical risks is not enough to guarantee uprightness; nevertheless, it can, I think contribute in powerful ways to the development of moral virtue.

NOTES

[1] G.W.F. Hegel, “Phenomenology of Spirit,” Chapter 4.
[2] Aristotle, “Nicomachean Ethics,” Book I, Chapter 7.
[3] ibid., Book I, Chapter 13.
[4] ibid, Book X, Chapter 9.
[5] ibid, Book III, Chapter 7.

Covenant

2010-09-14T12:35:00.000-07:00

One day I will actually write on this blog again. Until then I will post more music videos!
Huzzah!

Covenant-Happy Man

Like Tears in Rain

The boxer

2010-09-07T02:15:00.000-07:00

Cee Lo Green- Fuck you!

2010-09-02T13:48:00.000-07:00

Today's Jam!

Anxiety

2010-09-01T23:12:00.000-07:00

I'm getting old. I realize that's totally relative, but I can feel it. I can see it. Maybe its my recent injury that has made me feel it more poignantly. While knee sparring with Coke my knee dislocated, or twisted, something happened to sprain the tendons. I didn't jump right back up with youthful enthusiasm, instead my ass sat on the ground for a few minutes. I've spent the last couple days laying in my bed icing my knee taking ibuprofen keeping my patella elevated.

Worry seeps in about my body breaking down before I'm ready for it. I think that's been one of my concerns since my last bout, when I broke my face, I'm not afraid of being broken again; we age and thus we break. My anxiety is about breaking down too soon.

I remember a long time ago hearing older people talk about getting cuts. Come to think of it my grandma would become really vexed when she got cut. I used to think "What's the big deal, a day or two and its gone Grandma." Of course that day was more of a week, or two. Even seven years ago my body was different, I could gnash at myself with alcohol, dash my brains against the wall, engage in the nihilistic destruction of youth, now though my body seems more fragile, more likely to break. My hangovers are longer, my headaches more, and the self destruction seems more self sabotaging.

I don't really know what to do with this anxiety mainly because the worst of the worry is that it is real. What if I don't get to fight again? I knew from the start that I wouldn't be the world's best fighter, nor have the best record, nor be the strongest or bravest, maybe I defeated myself from the start by not having an invicible "winner's mind" by being all too human. I know, like all fighters know, that they have an expiration date. It can come at any time. Realizing that is hard. Any professional sports player must have to deal with that when they get injured. Sometimes there is no last hurrah, no final game, no walking out off the field on one's terms.

It really maddens me, this worry, no matter how real it can be. One of the reasons I got into fighting was because it was a way for me to control my fate. We live in a world we were are tracked. Increasingly every choice we make is a choice that buttresses the world of capital. I don't think that my choices are that important, but I'd like to believe that they are. It doesn't matter how much I study or the personal choices I make more likely than not I'll end up working class or worse with the same problems as my peers or worse. Its not just in what I've read, its in watching my peers.

So what do I do? Sneer at the worrying veneer that attempts to don my countenance? Try to rid myself of worry? No longer engage in dangerous activity and so try to prolong myself a little longer? They just don't seem like choices, at least not the kind I like to make.

Put on the jams that way we can dance!

2010-08-23T11:49:00.000-07:00

A band without vowels, awesome. Their dancing pop sound is pretty swinging too. I heard the first one last night, Heartbreaker. Their video is visually appealing, I mean who doesn't want to be in some random store in Mexico flirting with a latina babe? I do!

Check it out here.

The second video is at first quite understandable, sexy secretary types groping on some milk shakes. The second part is unnerving. Who goes into orgasmic writhing at the dentist's? Maybe when the office has a disco ball and weird pink liquid is pouring down on your body.

Check that shit out here.

The Presets

2010-08-16T17:08:00.000-07:00

All of my People

The Girl and the Seat

Wrong!

2010-08-15T11:26:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to a goth club. There were a ton of goth people there, mainly older rather portly goths. I always thought that goths were supposed to be skinny, tending on the smaller side. Maybe there is a difference between east coast goths and west coast goths, the west side tending to be fatter or maybe that's what happens when goths get old. The whole experience scared me a little, but I guess that's what goths are good for.

Depeche Mode's song "Wrong" reminded me of the experience. The video rules and is worth watching.

No Homo, No fun!

2010-08-11T00:59:00.000-07:00

Theodorakis/News

Flight attendant Steven Slater is walked out of the Port Authority police station after pulling the emergency exit and exiting the airplane.

The plane had just landed, but he was ready to take off.

A JetBlue flight attendant blew his top, grabbed some beer and bolted out an emergency slide at Kennedy Airport Monday - then headed home to have sex with his boyfriend.

After he was bonked in the head by a bag, Steven Slater stunned passengers by spewing profanity and ranting about quitting as the flight from Pittsburgh pulled up to the gate about noon.

"To the f-----g a--hole who told me to f--k off, it's been a good 28 years," Slater, 38, purred, cops said. "I've had it. That's it," he added, a passenger said.

The mad-as-hell steward grabbed a couple of brewskis and popped one open before activating the emergency exit, witnesses told airport employees.

After tossing his two carry-on bags on the slide, he followed them to the tarmac.

Slater - who actually first started working for airlines 20 years ago, not 28 - then walked to the AirTrain, stripped off his company tie and flung it off as bemused passengers watched.

"I wish we could all quit our jobs like that," said passenger Phil Catelinet, 36, of Brooklyn, who was on the flight and the AirTrain.

"He seemed kind of happy about it. He was like, 'I just quit my job.' "

Port Authority police said it took jetBlue 25 minutes to report the incident, allowing Slater time to leave the scene.

Cops found him in bed with his boyfriend when they arrived to arrest him at a beachfront home in the Rockaways with a porch overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, sources said.

He boasted to skeptical cops that he really did escape by chute with his carry-on luggage.

"Oh, yes, I did! I threw them down first and I went down after," he told cops, sources said.

He was grinning as police walked him in handcuffs to a squad car. "He left with a big smile on his face," said neighbor Curt Karkowski.

Slater was wearing a sheepish smile when Port Authority detectives walked him to a waiting van a few hours later. He was charged with reckless endangerment and criminal mischief.

JetBlue would not say how long Slater had worked for the airline, but he wrote on his MySpace page that he was "enjoying being back in the skies" after a five-year break.

"I love to max it out with trips around the world, sometimes on a moment's notice!" he gushed.

Neighbors described Slater as a nice guy, but said he was under some stress. "Steven's mother is dying," said Judy Rochelle, whose son Kenny lives with Slater. "She has lung cancer. She's had two chemos and the prognosis is not good. They were on their way out to California this weekend to settle her affairs."

Rochelle added that Slater "watched his father die of Lou Gehrig's disease not long ago. Steven's under a lot of pressure."

Slater's MySpace page, packed with photos of him posing in his jetBlue uniform, says he beat "alcoholism and substance abuse."

He apparently reached his breaking point on Flight 1052 when a passenger tried to get a bag from the overhead compartment and it clocked Slater on the head, cops said. Words were exchanged, and the passenger cursed at Slater, they said.

After the plane arrived at the gate, he took over the intercom and began spewing abuse.

"We just looked at each other and said, 'What the heck was that about?' " said Catelinet. "I thought, 'Let me get off the plane before they stop us or something.' "

He said he was stunned when he ran into Slater on the AirTrain, bragging about his "take your plane and shove it" stunt.

"It's pretty much the craziest thing I've ever seen on a plane," Catelinet said.

The brother of Slater's partner said he was "dumbfounded" by the wacky incident.

"He's an everyday ordinary guy, a nice guy," said John Rochelle, 39.

Neighbor Janet Bavasso, an ex-flight attendant, said she couldn't imagine Slater going off.

"I just can't picture him running down the tarmac," she said.

A jetBlue co-worker who was on the flight called Slater a working-class hero.

"It's something we all fantasize about," she said. "But we have kids and a mortgage or are just too chicken - or sane - to go through with [it]."

/09/2010-08-09_talk_about_turbulance_jetblue_flight_attendant_drops_intercom_fbomb_bolts_down_e.html?page=1#ixzz0wHYjBp9H

Fed-Up Flight Attendant Makes Sliding Exit

2010-08-10T15:07:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since flight attendant was a glamorous job title. The hours are long. Passengers with feelings of entitlement bump up against new no-frills policies. Babies scream. Security precautions grate but must be enforced. Airlines demand lightning-quick turnarounds, so attendants herd passengers and collect trash with the grim speed of an Indy pit crew. Everyone, it seems, is in a bad mood.

Steven Slater o

The home of Steven Slater, a JetBlue attendant, in Belle Harbor, Queens. He was arrested there after using a plane’s chute.

On Monday, on the tarmac at Kennedy International Airport, a JetBlue attendant named Steven Slater decided he had had enough, the authorities said.

After a dispute with a passenger who stood to fetch luggage too soon on a full flight just in from Pittsburgh, Mr. Slater, 38 and a career flight attendant, got on the public-address intercom and let loose a string of invective.

Then, the authorities said, he pulled the lever that activates the emergency-evacuation chute and slid down, making a dramatic exit not only from the plane but, one imagines, also from his airline career.

On his way out the door, he paused to grab a beer from the beverage cart. Then he ran to the employee parking lot and drove off, the authorities said.

He was arrested at his home in Belle Harbor, Queens, a few miles from the airport, and charged with felony counts of criminal mischief and reckless endangerment.

“When they hit that emergency chute, it drops down quickly within seconds,” a law enforcement official said. “If someone was on the ground and it came down without warning, someone could be injured or killed.”

In a statement, JetBlue said it was working with the Federal Aviation Administration and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to investigate the episode. “At no time was the security or safety of our customers or crew members at risk,” the company said.

According to his online profiles, Mr. Slater has been the leader of JetBlue’s uniform redesign committee and a member of the airline’s in-flight values committee. Neighbors in California, where Mr. Slater grew up, said he had recently been caring for his dying mother, a retired flight attendant, and had done the same for his father, a pilot.

The contretemps on Monday unfolded as JetBlue Flight 1052, a regional Embraer 190 jet, landed at Kennedy around noon — on time — with 100 passengers aboard and pulled up to the gate, said another law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing.

The official offered the following account:

One passenger stood up to retrieve belongings from the overhead compartment before the crew had given permission. Mr. Slater instructed the person to remain seated. The passenger defied him. Mr. Slater reached the passenger just as the person was pulling down the luggage, which struck Mr. Slater in the head.

Mr. Slater asked for an apology. The passenger instead cursed at him. Mr. Slater got on the plane’s public-address system and cursed out the passenger for all to hear. Then, after declaring that 20 years in the airline industry was enough, he blurted out, “It’s been great!” He activated the inflatable evacuation slide at a service exit and left the world of flight attending behind.

In short order, his brick two-story house on Beach 128th Street in the Rockaways, just off the ocean, was swarmed by detectives and uniformed officers from New York City and the Port Authority. “It was like there was a hostage in there,” said Curt Krakowski, who was working on the deck of a house across the street.

Mr. Slater, Mr. Krakowski said, “had a smile on his face when the cops brought him out, like, ‘Yeah, big deal.’ ” Mr. Slater was taken to a Port Authority police building at the airport and was expected to be held overnight.

One person familiar with the investigation said JetBlue took more than 20 minutes to notify the Port Authority police, allowing Mr. Slater time to get home. A spokesman for the airline declined to comment when asked about the delay, and a Port Authority spokesman said, “In matters of criminality, the Port Authority Police Department should be notified immediately.”

The episode is the latest round in what is seen as an increasingly hostile relationship between airlines and passengers.

A few weeks ago, an Air France flight attendant was arrested for stealing the wallets of first-class passengers. Last year, a Canadian singer parodied United Airlines on YouTube in a series of songs about how the airline broke his guitar.

A new study by the International Air Transport Association found an increase in instances of disgruntled passengers and violence on planes, with the chief cause being passengers who refuse to obey safety orders. By the same token, frequent-flier blogs echo with tales of “flight attendant rage.”

While JetBlue’s flight attendants are not unionized, a spokeswoman for the Association of Flight Attendants, Corey Caldwell, said anxieties were common on planes. “Anyone who has traveled since Sept. 11 understands that being in the cabin is stressful these days,” Ms. Caldwell said.

The portrait of Mr. Slater that emerges from interviews with neighbors and friends and from profiles on MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn shows a man with mixed feelings about his job.

Photographs show him in the mountains of El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico and sitting behind the wheel of a convertible. “Steven Slater has visited 22 percent of the countries in the world!” the MySpace page announces.

Yes, and Pittsburgh, too. “Chances are I am flying 35,000 feet somewhere over the rainbow on my way to some semifabulous JetBlue Airways destination!” the MySpace page says. “Truly, some are better than others. But I am enjoying being back in the skies and seeing them all.”

A former roommate, John Rochelle, said Mr. Slater was seldom home. When Mr. Slater was not working, Mr. Rochelle said, he was usually in Thousand Oaks, Calif., a Los Angeles suburb, caring for his sick mother.

A neighbor there, Ron Franz, said Mr. Slater also cared for his father as he was dying from Lou Gehrig’s disease. Mr. Franz, 72, was hard-pressed to explain Mr. Slater’s actions on Monday. “It could be the pressure of his mother’s illness, because that’s not the type of behavior or conduct that Steve exhibits,” he said. “He’s a very conscientious, responsible individual.”

But a former flight attendant, Janet Bavasso, who lives next door to Mr. Slater in Queens, found nothing mysterious at all.

“Enough is enough — good for him,” Ms. Bavasso said. “If he would have called me, I would have picked him up.”

Imperial Bedrooms

2010-08-04T20:45:00.000-07:00

A week or so ago I went to Barnes and Noble. This is rather a banal store but that day I was excited because Bret Easton Ellis' new novel "Imperial Bedrooms," was out. I picked up a copy right away. I brought it to the cashier and told her I was excited about reading it.

"Cool," she replied. "Do you have a Barnes & Noble card?"
"No," I said.
"Would you like one? It save you 10% on your next purchase of $30 or more."
"Nah."
"Do you need your parking validated?"
"Nope. You're pretty good at the list of things you have to say to customers."
"Thanks," she replied in a dead pan voice. "I'm also good at dealing with the constant rejection."

The minimalistic novel is easy to read with its terse style. The bareness of the writing allows its salient yet unsaid emotions pour forth. The exuding feelings mainly deal with the lead character, Clay, a successful screenwriter's rampant narcissism. Ellis points to Clay's neuroticism with his opening quote of Raymond Chandler. "There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself."

Clay returns to L.A. just as Ellis returns to the same characters as he did previously in "Less than Zero." "Imperial Bedrooms" is a sequel to Ellis' first novel of glamorous vapidity of young rich kids in the 80s. The kids do coke, do each other, and listen to the Pyschedelic Furs. Its awesome. "Imperial Bedrooms" is set in modern times and in a the oh so modern world of Hollywood (not the town but the spectacular ambiance).

The novel is dark and empty. This is depicted early on when Ellis describes the view from the balcony of the main characters condo.

"The view is impressive without becoming a study in isolation; it's more intimate than the one a friend had who lived on Appian Way, which was so far above the city it seemed as if you were looking at a vast and abandoned world laid out in anonymous grids and quadrants, a view that confirmed you were much more alone than you thought you were, a view that inspired the flickering thoughts of suicide. (p12,13)"

The majority of the characters in Ellis' first novel abound and the feelings are the same. Clay moves around without a moral compass, and has a variety of ambiguous relationships. His primary relationship is with a young actress whom he has the hots for, but her agenda is unclear. She stays with him for a week but its unclear completely why. Clay has promised that he can get her a part in his upcoming film, in which he is the screenwriter, but the producers nix her due to her poor acting ability. He strings her along as he becomes not only fixated on her but also emotionally dependent.

Clay and the girl fall out eventually due to a variety of soap opera incidents, for example; she's revealed to be a former prostitute from a highly selective service and has slept with many of his vapid friends. His vapid friends have also fallen madly in love with her, coincidentally enough.

The novel also demonstrates Ellis growth as a writer. While retaining the minimalistic style of his first novel he also describes a vivid and surreal scene of violent debauchery reminiscent of the infamous "American Pyscho," made famous not for the movie adaptation, nor for the gratuitous violence but for the lengthy rants on Genesis and Phil Collins.

What is also interesting about this novel is the use of technology. The main characters repeatedly use email and text messaging as valid ways of communicating with each other. Most contemporary novelists seem hesitant to talk about the way in which modern tech has changed the way in which we talk to each other.

The end of the novel, this isn't a spoiler by the way, is much the same as the beginning. Nothing has happened, the compass still spins directionlessly mad, the vapid despair of life in modern society is retained and the main character still clings to the safety of narcissism. All too true.

Check out Details interview with Ellis here. I enjoyed the interview

Marathon

2010-07-31T16:59:00.000-07:00

Last week I ran the san francisco marathon, which was 26.2 miles. The first twenty miles or so were pretty good and then my knees started to really hurt. The constant impact on my joints made my knees feel rubbery. I finished the marathon in 4 hours and two minutes, a respectable time. You can see a video of me finishing here. I also looked at my race results. Overall I placed 1797th of 5802 people. Within my age group (25-29) I was the 254th of 609 men my age. Not too bad. I doubt I'll run for a little while. Oh yeah you might be able to see some photos of me here.

Marxist Geography and Devo

2010-07-25T22:18:00.000-07:00

Marxist Geographer David Harvey gave an interview on BBC show Hardtalk. The interviewer is annoying and attempts to navigate Harvery into typical spectacular statements. Harvey is a pretty standard Marxist in his politics, advocating electoral reform, and if need be taking power in the streets. He is interesting in his analysis of capitalism impact on space. The following interview is a C+ in my book. Worth watching if interested, can be ignored. His thoughts on utopia are pretty good, as are his ideas of human development.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

More importantly than Marxist Geography is Devo. Today's offering is the excellent Devo hit "Girl you want." Those girls are babes!

Devo also makes awesome music for this one!

Beautiful World

New Stuff

2010-07-23T08:55:00.000-07:00

New piece up on Resonant City. Check it out Here!

Walnut Creek in effect!

2010-07-19T09:45:00.000-07:00

Dreamy girl from oakland riots- m4w- oakland downtown (missed connection)

2010-07-13T10:27:00.000-07:00

we both reached down for the same pair of looted jordan's and i knew we had a connection. i could just make out your deep blue eyes from under that bandanna but i knew something was there, a connection.

i totally let you have the shoes, by the way <3>

Straight outta oakland

2010-07-12T11:58:00.000-07:00

Fly Colton Fly

2010-07-12T10:54:00.000-07:00

NASSAU, Bahamas – The alleged "Barefoot Bandit" will be charged with illegal weapons possession and other crimes in the Bahamas following his weeklong run from authorities in the island chain, the Bahamian police commissioner said Monday.

Possession of an unlicensed handgun is the most serious of a "litany" of charges that are expected to be presented Tuesday when Colton Harris-Moore makes his first appearance before a judge, said Police Commissioner Ellison Greenslade.

He said Harris-Moore did not fire at officers during his capture Sunday just off the island of Eleuthera. The commissioner said the suspect spoke with police and understood his predicament but declined to say whether there was any kind of confession.

"He's very eloquent, obviously an intelligent young man," Greenslade said at a news conference.

Greenslade said earlier that charges filed in the Bahamas will take priority over those in the U.S. Monday is a holiday on the island chain, however, and Harris-Moore was not expected to make his initial court appearance until Tuesday at the earliest.

John Henry Browne, a lawyer asked by Harris-Moore's mother to represent her son, said the theft and burglary charges in the Bahamas are relatively minor but that alleged possession of a gun at the time of his capture could complicate the case. He told CBS' "Early Show" that the 19-year-old fugitive should waive any challenge to extradition and try to return to Seattle as soon as possible.

If the charges are consolidated in federal court Harris-Moore is looking at potentially four to 12 years in prison, he said.

"These are all property cases," said Browne, who hoped to speak with Harris-Moore by phone Monday. "There's never been any danger to any human being other than Colton himself."

Browne said he hoped to speak later Monday with the suspect, who as an adult will decide himself who represents him.

Emily Langlie, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Seattle, said that her office would seek to extradite Harris-Moore to Washington state and coordinate with local jurisdictions about how his case would proceed.

"There are obviously many jurisdictions that would like to prosecute him," she said.

His mother, Pamela Kohler of Camano Island, Washington, issued a statement expressing relief that the manhunt for her son had ended.

"I am very relieved that Colt is now safe and that no one was hurt during his capture," Kohler said. "I have not yet been able to speak to him. It has been over two-and-a-half years since I have seen him, and I miss him terribly."

Harris-Moore had stayed a step ahead of the law — stealing cars, powerboats and even airplanes, police say — while building a reputation as a 21st-century folk hero. But his celebrity became his downfall.

Witnesses on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera recognized him and called police, who captured him Sunday after a high-speed boat chase, Greenslade said at a celebratory news conference in Nassau, the capital.

Greenslade said shots were fired during the water chase, but he did not say who fired them. He said Harris-Moore was carrying a handgun that he tried to throw away.

Another senior police official, however, said police fired shots to disable the motor on the suspect's stolen boat, and that Harris-Moore threw his gun in the water. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case, also said that police recovered a laptop and a GPS locator from the suspect.

Police flew Harris-Moore in shackles to Nassau. True to the nickname, the teen with close-shorn hair was shoeless as he walked off the plane wearing short camouflage cargo pants, a short-sleeved shirt and a bulletproof vest.

Harris-Moore is blamed for several thefts in the Bahamas in the week since allegedly crash-landing a stolen plane there.

The 6-foot-5-inch (1.9-meter) Harris-Moore had been on the run since escaping from a Washington state halfway house in 2008. He is accused of breaking into dozens of homes and committing burglaries across Washington, as well as in British Columbia and Idaho.

He is also suspected of stealing at least five planes — including the aircraft he allegedly lifted in Indiana and flew more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) to the Bahamas, despite a lack of formal flight training.

Some of the actions appeared intended to taunt police: In February, someone who broke into a grocery store in Washington's San Juan Islands drew cartoonish, chalk-outline feet all over the floor.

Through it all, his ranks of supporters grew. Some of his more than 60,000 Facebook fans posted disappointed messages Sunday, while others promoted T-shirts and tote bags with the words "Free Colton!" and "Let Colton Fly!"

Even some in the Bahamas had mixed feelings about his arrest.

"I feel like it would have been good if he got away because he never hurt anybody, but then he was running from the law," said Ruthie Key, who owns a market on Great Abaco Island and let Harris-Moore use her wireless Internet connection July 5.

"He seemed very innocent when I spoke with him at the store. I don't think he'd hurt anybody," Key said.

Island police had been searching for the teen since he allegedly crash-landed the plane on Abaco, where he was blamed for at least seven burglaries. The search expanded to Eleuthera after police there recovered a 44-foot (13-meter) powerboat reported stolen from Abaco.

Victims of the crimes Harris-Moore is accused of were happy to see him in custody.

"These people that support him, they've never been violated by having him break into their homes or businesses," said Joni Fowler, manager of a cafe on Orcas Island north of Seattle where Harris-Moore is accused of taking as much as $1,500. "Just knowing he has a huge network of supporters makes me really worry about the state of this country."

Fowler said she hopes Harris-Moore's arrest and upcoming court appearances will deflate his mystique and fame — "once everybody figures out he's no god."

Shauna Snyder, a private investigator on Whidbey Island near Camano, said she set up a legal defense fund for Harris-Moore at the request of his mother. She said that although she didn't know how much had been raised so far, the fund has been getting donations.

Dont change a thing for me! INXS

2010-07-03T13:49:00.000-07:00

Berkeley versus the World

2010-06-29T16:48:00.000-07:00

I had lunch today in berkeley at a downtown thai-vegetarian spot. The food was okay and as I was talking to my friend I remembered why I dislike Berkeley so much, it is boring without a night life and most of all it has pretensions to be a garden city (The sustainable city here)

The idea that you can green your city is a preposterous one and ignores what a city is; a vast landscape of concrete. The buildings, the roads, the infrastructure of modern cities are cemented into the ground. By introducing trees, plants play pyschosocial roles, as stand-ins for natures.

"Simultaneously evocative of the raw, dark power of forests and the generous perfection of the Garden of Eden, trees symbolize man's uncomfortable relationship to the natural world. But this is an inversion of the natural order. Wild nature, or what may be left of it, seems all but removed from collective experience. Instead our cities become dioramas, providing us with the safe experience of, and carefully pruned effects of, nature in episodic demonstrations and specimens."
The Infrastructural City (I'm part of an online reading group. The latest chapter on trees can be looked at here.)

The greenery of Berkeley gives the residents the illusion that nature is still with us. Obviously there are benefits to having trees in modern urban environments; "A single mature tree can absorb carbon dioxide at a rate of 48 pounds/year and release enough oxygen back into the atmosphere to support two human beings. In one year an acre of trees can absorb as much carbon as is produced by a car driven 8,700 miles, roughly the same number of miles that an average driver in California drives every year." (Infrastructural city)

Yet despite the pyschological, and environmental benefits of trees in urban landscapes I can't help but feel as if its a big facade. Cities are not environmentally sound, we look at any city and see the slow suck on nature; Vegas and LA's constant need for water are good examples. I don't think that you can have ecologically sound cities in the same way that you can't have working green capitalism.

Furthermore there is nothing "natural" left, the urban sphere of society now borders every wild preserve touching it with its civilization. The majority of earth's inhabitants now live in urbanized areas now. The city is everywhere.

That said I like the blight of industry, I realize that it is unsound, violent, not "sustainable" and creates ugly angry people. I think there is a raw honesty in the landscape of the city desert that is West Oakland. I'd rather the thugs of west oakland to the bland hippies of berkeley.

OMD- Electricity!

2010-06-25T00:17:00.000-07:00

Like a Natural Woman

2010-06-23T10:34:00.000-07:00

As much as the portrayal of gender diversity has been provocatively acknowledged by Thai audiences, Teerawat Thongmitr of Shade of Divas ladyboy troupe still hope for changes for the better, and more doors of opportunity becoming available for transgenderists.

Shade of Divas PHOTO: YINGYONG UN-ANONGRAK

"While male and female actors are commonly cast as different characters in showbiz, when it comes to transgender or transvestite roles, not many producers care to cast the actors. They usually just take the same old actors, let alone adopt scripts that would break the stereotypes involved with the issue," said outspoken transgenderist Teerawat, who prefers to be addressed as Tina.

At the end of last year, while performing a small showcase with her friends in Udon Thani, Tina began to take such thoughts more seriously, and the result was the birth of talented ladyboy group Shade of Divas.

Comprised of members with different career backgrounds - emcee, fashion stylist, former ladyboy band member - as the leader of the group, Tina explained that the idea of the project was also ignited by the fact that she found great talent among her friends, and uniting as a group could possibly gain the attention of others and offer them a chance at success.

"Most people have had very little contact with transgenderists or transvestites, and they usually assume that katoey work only as make-up artists or cabaret performers," she said. "But, actually we exist in various corners of society. Every year, many of us graduate with good degrees or possess great talent, but there are only limited careers available to pursue," said Tina, who received a degree in Fine Art and works as a graphic designer.

Amatya ‘Lukpad’ Chaiyakam

"We hope to create a group or an agency for transvestites and transgender women. For those film or television producers out there, if you are looking for a 'unique' katoey character, you know where to go now," said Tina, laughing.

On top of their full-time responsibilities, members of Shade of Divas have continuously been bombarded with offers for gigs, from modelling to dance shows. According to Tina, for such a new and small project, the feedback has been beyond expectations. Earlier this month, Tina fulfilled her dream by impersonating her admired diva Christina Aguilera as part of a promotional campaign in Thailand for the star's new album. But her most coveted offer came when German theatre director Nir de Volff was in Thailand to stage his debut physical theatre at Patravadi theatre early this year.

"Together with some friends from Shade of Divas, I attended the auditions for the show," said Tina. "Luckily, I was offered the chance. The experience of being part of the show was amazing."

Entitled Ministry of Truth, the performance was inspired by the famous reality show Big Brother, and has gained rave reviews and filled audiences. Tina was allowed to be herself and offered her ideas in order to develop the script with the other performers.

"The show centred around a mixed group of Thais and foreigners who shared days and nights together in a house, with one to emerge as the winner. My role was to express my thoughts on being a transgender woman. I found it fascinating for a show to dig deeper in the issue of gender, going far beyond the usual portrayal of ladyboys. As my first professional acting role, it was a great challenge, but I was so glad to be part of it," said Tina.

Teerawat ‘Tina’ Thongmitr performs in the theatre production, ‘Ministry of Truth’.

"More importantly, while working on the show, I learned to appreciate foreigners in the way respect you for who you are, regardless of your gender. If you have good ideas to share, they will listen to you," she added, noting that although Thai society is amazingly open about issues of gender, there is still a gap in equality to be filled.

"Working as a graphic designer, there have been a few cases where clients seemed to have liked my ideas, only to change their minds when they learned of my sexuality," said Tina.

After the groundbreaking success of the performance in Bangkok, Tina and other cast members of the Ministry of Truth travelled to Berlin last week as the show was commissioned to stage under its new title, On Air, at Tape Pub and Gallery, with the premiere scheduled for Friday.

"I feel lucky to have been given the chance to go to Berlin, I will see if any opportunities arise out of the Shade of Diva performances," she said.

At the photoshoot, Tina introduced 'Outlook' to the magnetic members of the group. An owner of flawless skin, a petite body and a little voice, Amatya "Lukpad" Chaiyakam, who is rather hard to imagine as a boy, was the first to share her story.

"When Tina told me about the Shade of Divas project, I thought it was a great idea to be able to work with our friends and start a strong community among transgenderists and transvestites," said Amatya, who was crowned the first runner-up at Miss Alcazar in 2005 and the winner of Miss Alcazar Lip-sync Contest 2008, marking her name among the top transgenderists in showbiz today.

Tay ‘Taya’ Peeraya, known as Cool Venus during her days with Thailand’s first ladyboy group Venus Flytrap.

Born to a Chinese family with a father who once served as a soldier, Amatya has been through a tough time fighting for her identity.

"My family runs an elephant show in Pattaya and when I was a little boy I helped my family business by riding an elephant and being a tour guide for foreign tourists. I was really good at it and, at that time, my parents thought I was going to be the one to continue the business in the future," recalled Amatya.

"It was very difficult at first. I began wearing make-up during junior high school. My family, my father in particular, couldn't stand it. We would fight often," she said. "I was very obstinate, and he eventually realised there would be no turning back for me, and stopped fighting it."

After years of guilt, she finally made amends with her parents. While competing in the Miss Alcazar beauty pageant, she took to the stage and apologised to her parents for the past and thanked them both for their support and understanding.

"Now, my parents introduce me as their 'daughter'," she said, flashing her sweet smile.

Besides being a member of Shade of Divas, Amatya is among the top performers at the Alcazar, one of the leading cabaret shows in Pattaya.

On the other hand, another member Tay "Taya" Peeraya, has a different background story.

"I was blessed for never having to struggle to be who I am," said Tay. "My family has always been very supportive."

While completing her degree in Textile Design in Australia, Taya followed her friend to attend another renowned transgender beauty contest, Miss Tiffany, and ended up with the first runner-up title in 2005. Shortly after, Taya became a member of Thailand's first ladyboy group, Venus Flytrap.

"I have always love singing and dancing, so being part of the group has been a great experience," said Taya, who currently works as a presenter of an entertainment programme on cable network Live TV's Fame Channel.

This year, her contract with the group has reached the final chapter, however, with the emergence of Shade of Divas, and Taya hopes to be able to do more of what she loves doing with her dear friends.

While the group is waiting for the completion of its official website, Shade of Divas can now be reached at its temporary house, http://www.facebook.com/shadeofdivas. And, an opportunity for other transgender women and transvestites to become new divas is now open.

"Although, all our members have been through a beauty pageant, it is not a prerequisite to join the team. What we need most is talent," explained Tina.

"To make others understand and accept us, we must show them our capabilities," she added. "And one day, a change for the better will come. Who knows? In the future, a member might be the first transgender women to play a born-woman character."

An Ode to the S and a cry of the M

2010-06-19T16:36:00.000-07:00

I haven't been that into Adam Ant but recognize his talent. He was actually a fierce competitor with Crass back in the day. The synth pop group hated Crass, and vice versa. Crass was too hard nosed with their politics, Adam Ant didn't give a shit about anything. The battle is recounted in The Story of Crass which I reviewed a while ago.

This is a recently found gem. Who taught you to torture!?

When I met you you were just sixteen
Pulling the wings off flies
When an old lady got hit by a truck
I saw the wicked gleam in your eyes

Your sadistic suits my masochistic
And there's a whip in my valise on yeah

Who taught you the torture?
Who taught ya?
Who taught you the torture?
Who taught ya?
Who taught you the torture?
Who taught ya?
Who taught ya?
Who taught ya?
Who taught you?

Describe the special punishment room
Over my garage,
There's a whipping post, a vertical beam
You have to be in charge*

I paid a packet
For a new straight jacket
There's a whip in my valise oh yeah

Who taught you the torture?
Who taught ya?
Who taught you the torture?
Who taught ya?
Who taught you the torture?
Who taught ya?
Who taught ya?
Who taught ya?
Who taught you?

You put my head into the stocks
And then you went to choose a cane
But hey, your cat has got nine tails
You like to leave me lame

I can't thank her, my Sunday Spanker
There's a whip in my valise oh yeah

Who taught you the torture?
Who taught ya?
Who taught you the torture?
Who taught ya?
Who taught you the torture?
Who taught ya?
Who taught ya?
Who taught ya?
Who taught you?

I'm also a big fan of Iggy, especially when he was with the Stooges. Raw Power is a great thrashing garage album! I was thinking of this song the other day when I was looking at my young asian friend. She's naive, impressionable, and horribly moral. I'm pretty sure she's going to hell!

Synth Britannia

2010-06-17T09:36:00.000-07:00

Nuit Blanche

2010-06-14T15:22:00.001-07:00

Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

Blocking all lanes

2010-06-13T13:35:00.001-07:00

I've been part of a reading group for a few weeks. Its not a physical group, but rather one from the internet over at mammoth blog (here). The book, The Infrastructural City, contains a series of short, and pictorial essays about L.A. The latest chapter is about traffic. The author makes an interesting point about the history of traffic.

"Tracing the history of the word, traffic originally referred to the movement of commodities. Only in the last two centuries did it explicititly take on vehicles and people. In terms of the modern defnition, we are traffic (which reminds us that it was once quite acceptable for one to be a "computer" or a "typewriter.") If course we don't talk that way: we say that we are "in traffic," but we never admit to being traffic.

...The automobile, the capitalist vehicle par excellence, promises freedom while the often-fustrating experience of driving leaves us feeling quite out of control. We hold on to the idea that although we might be stuck now, there is a way out. But what if our agency were underpinned by an organizing, computational mechnanism? We stop. We go. WE turn. We yield. What if these were not simply rules to follow (code as law), but instructions to follow (code as program), an instruction that gives a green light."

The first paragraph points to the commodity aspect of travel. The car is "the capitalist vehicle par excellence" not only for its high price in gas, maintenance, highway cost, initial sale, but also in that it is a moving commodity from one point to another. Driving is movement from and to different points of consumption. This fact is schellacked over not only by the idea of freedom, pointed out by the second paragraph, but by people's lack of desire to be reified. This latter point is seen in the idea that we are stuck in traffic and never we are traffic. Reification is the process by which human relations are turned into things. The traffic jam is a thing, a social process, that happense to others that we are not a part of. By keeping ourselves separate we alleviate the burden of culpability yet the world works according to the laws of constant reproduction. Here I'm reminded of Fredy Perlman's "The Reproduction of Everyday Life (here)."

Are we responsible for traffic jams or is it a process of the machine? Tools are not neutral and carry with them their own way of interacting with the world...

Goodbye Ian Curtis

2010-06-11T16:08:00.000-07:00

The other day I saw a picture of my friend in a Cold Cave shirt. I remember watching one of their videos on his blog then forgetting about them. In a recent wave of torrent downloading I went back to the band. I enjoy their low fi sound. Obviously they've been extremely influenced by one of my favorite bands; Joy Division along with New Order. Their synth pop style probably comes from the latter while their vocalizations and mood the former.

Its worth noting that the lead singer of Cold Cave was a sXe kid whom dropped the edge and became a full fledged drug toting hipster. Do this mean that all kids who break edge make better music?

The beginning of this song sounds pretty similiar to Q Lazzarus' "Goodbye Horses," made famous in "Silence of the lambs."

Cold Cave plays the idea of gender in this video, a trope in these modern days for sure but its still a pretty good song.

What I see in Cold Cave is the way in which music returns to itself. The bands that we love and admire disappear, they are recreated by later generations, a perpetual reincarnation.

Music Round up

2010-06-08T08:12:00.000-07:00

Camouflage- Love is a shield

The Chameleons- Swamp Thing

Are Cameras the New Guns?

2010-06-03T20:31:00.000-07:00

In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer.

Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.

The legal justification for arresting the "shooter" rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent states also include an exception for recording in public places where "no expectation of privacy exists" (Illinois does not) but in practice this exception is not being recognized.

Massachusetts attorney June Jensen represented Simon Glik who was arrested for such a recording. She explained, "[T]he statute has been misconstrued by Boston police. You could go to the Boston Common and snap pictures and record if you want." Legal scholar and professor Jonathan Turley agrees, "The police are basing this claim on a ridiculous reading of the two-party consent surveillance law - requiring all parties to consent to being taped. I have written in the area of surveillance law and can say that this is utter nonsense."

The courts, however, disagree. A few weeks ago, an Illinois judge rejected a motion to dismiss an eavesdropping charge against Christopher Drew, who recorded his own arrest for selling one-dollar artwork on the streets of Chicago. Although the misdemeanor charges of not having a peddler's license and peddling in a prohibited area were dropped, Drew is being prosecuted for illegal recording, a Class I felony punishable by 4 to 15 years in prison.

In 2001, when Michael Hyde was arrested for criminally violating the state's electronic surveillance law - aka recording a police encounter - the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court upheld his conviction 4-2. In dissent, Chief Justice Margaret Marshall stated, "Citizens have a particularly important role to play when the official conduct at issue is that of the police. Their role cannot be performed if citizens must fear criminal reprisals…." (Note: In some states it is the audio alone that makes the recording illegal.)

The selection of "shooters" targeted for prosecution do, indeed, suggest a pattern of either reprisal or an attempt to intimidate.

Glik captured a police action on his cellphone to document what he considered to be excessive force. He was not only arrested, his phone was also seized.

On his website Drew wrote, "Myself and three other artists who documented my actions tried for two months to get the police to arrest me for selling art downtown so we could test the Chicago peddlers license law. The police hesitated for two months because they knew it would mean a federal court case. With this felony charge they are trying to avoid this test and ruin me financially and stain my credibility."

Hyde used his recording to file a harassment complaint against the police. After doing so, he was criminally charged.

In short, recordings that are flattering to the police - an officer kissing a baby or rescuing a dog - will almost certainly not result in prosecution even if they are done without all-party consent. The only people who seem prone to prosecution are those who embarrass or confront the police, or who somehow challenge the law. If true, then the prosecutions are a form of social control to discourage criticism of the police or simple dissent.

A recent arrest in Maryland is both typical and disturbing.

On March 5, 24-year-old Anthony John Graber III's motorcycle was pulled over for speeding. He is currently facing criminal charges for a video he recorded on his helmet-mounted camera during the traffic stop.

The case is disturbing because:

1) Graber was not arrested immediately. Ten days after the encounter, he posted some of he material to YouTube, and it embarrassed Trooper J. D. Uhler. The trooper, who was in plainclothes and an unmarked car, jumped out waving a gun and screaming. Only later did Uhler identify himself as a police officer. When the YouTube video was discovered the police got a warrant against Graber, searched his parents' house (where he presumably lives), seized equipment, and charged him with a violation of wiretapping law.

2) Baltimore criminal defense attorney Steven D. Silverman said he had never heard of the Maryland wiretap law being used in this manner. In other words, Maryland has joined the expanding trend of criminalizing the act of recording police abuse. Silverman surmises, "It's more [about] ‘contempt of cop' than the violation of the wiretapping law."

3) Police spokesman Gregory M. Shipley is defending the pursuit of charges against Graber, denying that it is "some capricious retribution" and citing as justification the particularly egregious nature of Graber's traffic offenses. Oddly, however, the offenses were not so egregious as to cause his arrest before the video appeared.

Almost without exception, police officials have staunchly supported the arresting officers. This argues strongly against the idea that some rogue officers are overreacting or that a few cops have something to hide. "Arrest those who record the police" appears to be official policy, and it's backed by the courts.

Carlos Miller at the Photography Is Not A Crime website offers an explanation: "For the second time in less than a month, a police officer was convicted from evidence obtained from a videotape. The first officer to be convicted was New York City Police Officer Patrick Pogan, who would never have stood trial had it not been for a video posted on Youtube showing him body slamming a bicyclist before charging him with assault on an officer. The second officer to be convicted was Ottawa Hills (Ohio) Police Officer Thomas White, who shot a motorcyclist in the back after a traffic stop, permanently paralyzing the 24-year-old man."

When the police act as though cameras were the equivalent of guns pointed at them, there is a sense in which they are correct. Cameras have become the most effective weapon that ordinary people have to protect against and to expose police abuse. And the police want it to stop.

Happily, even as the practice of arresting "shooters" expands, there are signs of effective backlash. At least one Pennsylvania jurisdiction has reaffirmed the right to video in public places. As part of a settlement with ACLU attorneys who represented an arrested "shooter," the police in Spring City and East Vincent Township adopted a written policy allowing the recording of on-duty policemen.

As journalist Radley Balko declares, "State legislatures should consider passing laws explicitly making it legal to record on-duty law enforcement officials."

Wendy McElroy is the author of several books on anarchism and feminism. She maintains the iconoclastic website ifeminists.net as well as an active blog at wendymcelroy.com.

Shrooming Cage Fighter Ripped Friend's Heart Out and Face Off, Allegedly

2010-06-01T11:59:00.000-07:00

MMA fighter Jarrod Wyatt has been charged with the most violent murder of the year after allegedly cutting an 18-inch hole in sparring partner Taylor Powell's chest, tearing his heart and tongue out, and ripping his face off while shrooming.

According to the Sgt. Elmwood Lee of California's Del Norte County Sheriff's office, Lee arrived at the scene of carnage to find Wyatt covered in dried blood, uttering "I killed him."

Lee was able to cuff Wyatt without incident, and then he proceeded to look at the body on the couch. The body had had the majority of its face removed, and an 18-inch incision in its chest cavity. Lee said that he did not attempt first aid because he could see the man was dead.

In continued rambling, Lee said that Wyatt told him that "Satan was in that dude."

Lee said that Wyatt told him he'd done some bad things, and that he'd cut Powell's heart out and burned it because he felt that Powell was still alive and he was trying to "stop the devil."

Wyatt's lawyer says his client suffered a "psychotic break." The prosecutor says cutting out someone's heart, tongue, and face takes a long time and thus proves sustained intent. Hopefully Wyatt pleads out, because forcing jurors to look at these crime scene pictures will cause the worst case of heebie-jeebies ever. [NYDN, Times-Standard]

All that was once directly lived now moves into representation

2010-05-28T22:56:00.000-07:00

This evening was eventful. I met up with my friend on the train and we went to MOMA, then we went to White Walls, a gallery on Larkin between O'Farrell and Geary, a stones throw from the home bums and massage parlours of the tenderloin. The urban gallery was showing a collection of art by Blek Le Rat and Above, both street artists. Blek Le Rat is a predeccessor to Banksy and uses stencil graffitti to promote his message, which has a situationist slant.

"The spectacle says nothing more than 'what is good appears and what appears is good.'"

With price tags at a rock bottom price of $600, and ranging up to $45,000 (with the average costing $15,000) the once subversive movement of street art, stencils, and the social commentary that they implicitly carried has been caught back up in the order of things. This has been pointed out before by the "splasher," a new york city vandal who caused a ruckus by defacing the street art of Shepard Fairey, Banksy, Swoon and others, validly. [More on the splasher here.]

Blek La Rat posted one of his infamous stencils of a homeless man lying on the street on the outside of the building, inside on a piece of canvas the piece cost $39,000, his advertising of homelessness as an aesthetic makes it acceptable, and quite expensive! I could pay for my college loans with that profit margin, or 8 years of my current rent. I wonder if his model got a stipend!?

He should certainly be praised for having turned abject poverty into a gratuitous money making enterprise, a spectacular feat! The image on the outside of the gallery doesn't speak of irony- that the homeless could be sleeping across the street, or in front of the building, but rather is a marker of safety. This style of street graffiti, while originally being a detournment of public space, has now been recuperated and serves as a marker of gentrification - the dislocation of people in the interests of capital. It tells the population that the area is now aesthetic with the beauty of refined low brow art. The kids in tight pants can feel okay walking around late at night! Finally!

First came the street artists with their stencils, but I wasn't a street artist. Then came the galleries, but I wasn't a hipster. Then came the bourgeoisie but I wasn't bourgeoisie. Then came the increase in rent that I couldn't afford anymore!

This is my skull on muay thai

2010-05-22T13:33:00.001-07:00

The thought of suice is a powerful solace; by means of it ones gets through many a bad night

2010-05-19T03:02:00.000-07:00

The noose is stagnant before me. I thought it might sway with some unknown breeze, as if my very presence would cause motion. There is no movement. There is no cause. It just sits there. I get on the chair, I pulled it in from the dining room. I wish I could say how it all feels but really it feels like choking.

Fate always favors the brave and the brash. I've been neither. Fate is a cruel mistress even when one has the favorable attributes, so I've submitted. I've let the lacerations add up and compile, this time though I know the odds. The first time that I walked off the bridge I didn't know that the odds of survival were one in ten, this time I know. I sat at home for three weeks rolling my ten sided dice, an aftermath of my dungeon and dragons days, and only once did it hit the one. I know that when I step off this bridge I will die this time. My foot goes forward with my chances.

Wearing kerosene to a nightclub is odd, but so is wearing a scented perfume. I'd been wearing the odor of pyrotechnics for some time when she looked at me. She didn't so much look as just merely toss her cigarette and follow its path. The inevitable path led to me in flames, and unrequited, unquenchable fire.

The Chauffeur

2010-05-13T23:23:00.000-07:00

If I was to be reborn I'm pretty sure I'd want to be reincarnated as a member of duran duran. Another reason why is this video.

The Future has been looted in advance- Mike Davis

2010-05-11T10:29:00.001-07:00

The betrayed generation

In My View column by Mike Davis, January 2009

Our societies are supersaturated with unrecognised anger that can suddenly crystallise around a single incident of police abuse or state repression. Yet although the seeds of revolt have been so flagrantly sown bourgeois society seldom recognises its own harvest.

In Los Angeles in 1992, for example, every teenager on the streets (or, for that matter, every cop on the beat) knew that Armageddon was coming. The widening faultlines between inner-city youth and city government should have been visible to even the most naive observer: there were weekly mass arrests, innumerable police shootings of unarmed kids, indiscriminate profiling of youth of colour as gangsters, outrageous double standards of justice, and so on.

Yet when the eruption occurred, in the wake of the court verdict that exonerated the police who had almost beaten Rodney King to death, the political and media elites reacted as if some secret, unpredictable force had been unleashed from the depths of the earth.

The media (mostly flying overhead in helicopters) subsequently attempted to manage the world's perception of the riot by drastic simplification and stereotyping: black gangs were in the streets burning and looting. In fact, the Rodney King verdict became the nucleus around which very diverse grievances coalesced.

Few of the thousands arrested were actually gang members and only about a third were even African American. The majority were poor immigrants or their children, arrested for looting diapers, shoes and televisions from neighbourhood stores. The economy of Los Angeles was then (as today) in deep recession and the poor Latino neighbourhoods west and south of downtown were most affected. But the press had never reported on their misery, so the "bread riot" dimension of the uprising was largely ignored.

Similarly, in Greece today, a "normal" police atrocity has triggered an eruption that is stereotyped as inexplicable anger and blamed on shadowy anarchists: when, in fact, "low-intensity civil war" seems to have long characterised the relationship between police and various strata of youth.

I have utterly no qualification to comment on the specific Greek conditions, but I have the impression that there are important contrasts with France in 2005. Spatial segregation of immigrant and poor youth seems less extreme than in Paris, but job prospects for petty bourgeois kids are considerably worse: the intersection of these two conditions brings into the streets of Athens a more diverse coalition of students and young unemployed adults. Moreover, they inherit a tradition of protest and culture of resistance that is unique in Europe.

What do Greek youth demand? Surely, they perceive with ruthless clarity that the world depression forecloses traditional reforms of the educational system and employment markets. So why would they have any faith in another iteration of the social democratic PASOK and its broken promises?

This is an original species of revolt, prefigured by earlier riots in Los Angeles, London and Paris, but arising from a new and more profound understanding that the future has been looted in advance. Indeed, what generation in modern history (apart from the sons of Europe in 1914) has ever been so comprehensively betrayed by the patriarchs?

I agonise about this question because I have four children, and even the youngest understands that their future may be radically different from my past.

My "baby-boom" cohort bequeaths to its children a broken world economy, stupefying extremes of social inequality, brutal wars on the imperial frontiers, and an out of control planetary climate.

Athens is being widely envisioned as the answer to the question, "After Seattle, then what"? The anti-WTO demonstrations and the "Battle of Seattle" in 1999 opened a new era of non-violent protest and grassroots activism. Now an entire cycle of protest has come to an end just as the Wall Street boiler room of globalised capitalism has exploded, leaving in its wake both more radical problems and new opportunities for radicalism.

There is a danger, of course, in overstating the importance of an eruption in a specific national setting - but the world has become kindling and Athens is the first spark.

A Glowing Review

2010-05-07T01:03:00.000-07:00

“All the world’s a stage, and all men and women merely players; they have their exits and entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.”

William Shakespeare As You like It

The young waiter dons the wares of his profession; a white shirt, a tie, black pants, with matching shoes. His face his clean shaven, his pockets full with pens and his personality is shellacked with a smile. He goes to the table and acts out his performance with the regularity of a professional, he knows his lines, and repeats them accordingly. The illusion cast by society is set, the restaurant is draped in hospitality, the actor moves about with ease, and the process proceeds ad infinitum according to the rule of capital.

Outside the floor the young actor engages in other moments of mimicry. While one motion on stage is for survival the other is for pleasure, for play. It is here in the moments outside the world of work that I was able to see a young mimic in movement.

The small play house, brought together by PianoFight, is located in the financial district of the mission in San Francisco. Amongst the towering artifices to business lies a small stage. One enters via a street level entrance, the only mark of entry is a sandwich board that announces the evenings events. The night’s performance was part of Shortlived, a 13 week competition running in SF and LA. The competition features several one act skits. The audience votes on the skits and through a tournament style elimination one play is proved the most entertaining spectacle.

Rob Ready and Dan Williams, founders of PianoFight, let the curtains rise to humorous antics and give aways. The two gave gifts out to audience members who correctly answered questions in regards to the play structure. When asked how many plays there would be I screamed out “Obama!” My populist non sequiter won me a can of Budweiser. I left it unopened, not to be drunk until the above went forward with his promises to the mensch… I would die a thirsty man.

The first play of the evening was a romance of sorts. A young couples are at a mechanic’s. The woman’s auto has been fixed by a mechanic who seeks to overcharge. The woman is indignant, her beau seeks to gloss over the mess and get on with life, no matter the monetary cost. A fight ensues, a make up, and the curtain drops. Entertaining enough for its length.

The second performance was more cumbersome to the mind. A young man and woman were spot lit on stage. They engaged in a conjoined monologue recounting their days as serial killers on the run. The woman was dressed like Uma Thurma in “Pulp Fiction,” while her male love interest was garbed as a blonde haired “Ramones” punk. The young punk forgot his lines, and the woman two thirds of the way through the lengthy act engaged in a slow dance on the stage reminiscent of the cinematic moment when Thurman sashays for John Travolta. The two danced together with choreography. I grew bored in my seat, sucked into it with ennui.

The third play was an interesting idea but poorly executed. The play “Inner Dialogues,” had two young men meet up at a coffee shop on a first date. The two didn’t engage in actual conversation, but rather their inner thoughts were spoken aloud. One character’s thought process was blatant while the other were more muddled, it seemed as if he was in actual dialogue. The ending, of course, had them speak what they were actually thinking, a painful trope.

The last play, which I viewed as the herrpunkt of the evening had the spotlight shone on young Joe Scheppers, our favorite waiter, and his straight man, Cooper Carlson, in Maybe Tov. The play written by Pamela Davis had Scheppers as the visual dynamite in the tragic comedy about a young man, who just MAYBE engaged. His confusion is set immediately as he discusses with his pal the circumstances of his pseudo proposal. The hilarity is in the ambiguity of a pivotal point in our young actor’s life, a moment that I found not too funny as my many proposals to the ladies of the world have been shot down in cold blood! Cruel! Cruel World! Yet my ability to truly empathize with Scheppers was what made the play rewarding.

Scheppers brilliant performance was in taking on the role as if it was his own, he wore the skin of anxiety like he wears his waiting outfit, but with more exuberance. What really made the play worth seeing though was not the act, which shone so brightly that it lit the darkness of my soul, but in seeing Scheppers afterwards. His eyes lit with eagerness, with a peak of performance. He was a man who had achieved a goal, beautifully, a goal that weren’t as rote as the motions set out by work.

More Music!

2010-05-04T00:28:00.000-07:00

Nothing like being a sappy white guy that gets butt hurt over a girl.

Totally unrelated I've been listening to Television the last couple days

This is how I feel about me and my "peers," all their blank stares really get to me and my over-aged teen angst.

Pop Music

2010-05-02T22:21:00.000-07:00

I go through phases with bands, and with music. Lately I've been listening to Vampire Weekend. They're okay at best. They have two catchy songs, the ones below. They remind me of UB40 the pop reggae band of the 80s.

UB40!!

Don't Touch me!

2010-04-27T12:38:00.001-07:00

Don't Touch Me

Dj Meikee Magnetic | MySpace Music Videos

Don't Touch me!

2010-04-27T12:38:00.000-07:00

Don't Touch Me

Dj Meikee Magnetic | MySpace Music Videos

Edwin Valero- Boxer - A murder, a suicide, and a bad tattoo

2010-04-24T22:15:00.000-07:00

CARACAS, Venezuela – Former boxing champion Edwin Valero, who had a spectacular career with 27 straight knockouts and flouted a tattoo of President Hugo Chavez on his chest, hanged himself in his jail cell Monday after being arrested for stabbing his wife to death, police said.

The former lightweight champion used the sweat pants he was wearing to hang himself from a bar in the cell, said his lawyer, Milda Mora.

Valero, 28, had problems with alcohol and cocaine addiction and struggled with depression. He had previously been suspected of assaulting his wife and was charged last month with harassing her and threatening personnel at a hospital where she was treated for injuries.

Valero's 24-year-old wife, Jennifer Carolina Viera, was found dead in a hotel room on Sunday, and police said the fighter emerged telling hotel security he had killed her.

Valero was found hanging in his cell early Monday by another inmate, who alerted authorities in the police lockup in north-central Carabobo state, Federal Police Chief Wilmer Flores told reporters. He said Valero still showed signs of life when they took him down, but they were unable to save him.

The former WBA super featherweight and WBC lightweight champion was a household name in Venezuela and had a huge image of Venezuela's president tattooed on his chest along with the country's yellow, blue and red flag.

A man whose fists carried him from poverty in a small town to fame, Valero's all-action style soon earned him a reputation as a tough, explosive crowd-pleaser, and his last victory in Mexico in February over Antonio DeMarco brought his record to 27-0 — all knockouts. Venezuelans called him "Inca," alluding to an Indian warrior, while elsewhere he was called "Dinamita," or dynamite.

Valero had a turbulent disposition and had been in trouble with the law before, for violent incidents and problems with alcohol and drugs.

Last month, he was charged with harassing his wife and threatening medical personnel who treated her at a hospital in the western city of Merida. Police arrested Valero following an argument with a doctor and nurse at the hospital, where his wife was being treated for injuries including a punctured lung and broken ribs.

The Attorney General's Office said in a statement that Valero was detained March 25 on suspicion of assaulting his wife, but his wife told a police officer her injuries were due to a fall. When the boxer arrived moments later, he forbade Viera from speaking to the police officer and spoke threateningly to the officer, prosecutors said in a statement.

A prosecutor had asked a court to keep Valero in jail, the Attorney General's Office said. But a judge instead allowed him to remain free under certain conditions including that he appear in court every 90 days, said Mora, his lawyer.

Mora told The Associated Press that after the incident Valero was held for nine days in a psychiatric hospital in Merida, where he underwent police-supervised rehabilitation. She said people close to the fighter posted bail on April 7 and he was allowed to go free.

Valero's manager, Jose Castillo, criticized authorities for failing to act more forcefully to prevent the killing.

"I asked the authorities not to let him out. He needed a lot of help. He was very bad in the head," Castillo told reporters. "But they let him out. They were very permissive with him and because of that, we're now in the middle of this tragedy."

Mora, however, said of Valero: "He was the only one responsible."

She said that the Venezuelan government had arranged for the fighter to attend a drug and alcohol rehabilitation program in Cuba. He had missed a flight to Cuba earlier this month and was scheduled to fly there soon, she said.

The fighter had police escorts who were charged with protecting him. But last week he slipped away from those escorts, leaving his house near Merida with his wife and saying they were headed into town, Mora said.

Valero stayed in touch with his manager by phone but it was unclear how he and his wife turned up days later halfway across Venezuela at the hotel in Valencia, Mora said.

While police suspected Valero was battering his wife, "the only person who could report it was her, and she told her family that he never hit her," Mora said. "She wanted help for him."

Valero also "adored his wife," Mora said. "We were very close to him and we knew there could be this sort of outcome because when he became conscious of what he really had done, he wasn't going to be able to bear not being close to Carolina."

Mora described the fighter as hyperactive and said he suffered from depression. She said in jail the authorities took away his jacket and his shoelaces to prevent him from using them for a suicide attempt, and that he used his sweat pants instead.

Before his death, photographs showed Valero being led away in handcuffs, then shielding his face by pulling down his cap.

The fighter's 8-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter have been staying with their maternal grandmother, Mora said.

Valero had fought mainly in Japan and Latin America because he had trouble obtaining a license to fight in the United States. He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in a motorcycle crash in 2001, and until the law was changed recently, most jurisdictions refused to grant a license to a fighter who had sustained a brain injury.

He was also charged with drunken driving in Texas, and despite efforts of his promoter, Top Rank, to secure a visa for him, the U.S. government denied his application because of the pending charges.

Valero claimed his application was denied because of politics; he was sympathetic of Chavez, a fierce critic of the U.S. government. U.S. officials say they cannot discuss individual visa cases.

Valero appeared as a special guest at events hosted by Chavez and was lionized by some of the president's supporters as a national hero, while some critics accused him of avoiding punishment for past problems due to his links to the government.

Valero's is the third high-profile suicide of a former boxing champion in the past year.

Hall of Famer Alexis Arguello, the mayor of Managua, Nicaragua, was found dead at his home in July of a gunshot wound to the chest. A few weeks later, Italian-born former super featherweight and junior welterweight champion Arturo Gatti, a naturalized Canadian, was found strangled in the Brazilian resort town of Porto de Galinhas. His wife was arrested as the prime suspect in the death, but authorities later ruled that he committed suicide.

The World Boxing Council lamented Valero's death in a statement, saying he had "happy years" in boxing and that his record will go down in boxing history. The council also said it hopes to help create a fund to pay for the education of Valero's two children.

WBC president Jose Sulaiman has said Valero was replaced as WBC lightweight champion in February after he expressed a desire to compete in a higher weight division.

Promoter Bob Arum, the founder of Top Rank who had been promoting Valero, said the fighter had never displayed such behavior and was "very polite, well spoken, sort of funny."

"It's obvious now, in retrospect, that he should have been institutionalized during this period, but it's silly to play the blame game," Arum said. "Now in retrospect, he clearly should have been getting help."

Waiting for Zoey

2010-04-21T10:48:00.001-07:00

I went to L.a. and wrote about it.

Three beers

2010-04-21T02:44:00.000-07:00

The car was dark. Its interior was lit by the street lights. The door opened. Shoes scuffled on the parking lot tarmac. The brightness of the motel sign was a brilliant neon. It drew wayfarer's like a moth is drawn to a lightbulb. The keys opened up the room. The bed was blanketed, and tucked. The two pillows on the bed were plumbed. A television sat silently across from the bed on a series of drawers, waiting for a spectator. The shower was hot, no one else was showering this late at night. The tepid water tank could handle the heat of one shower at the late hour. The warm water rained down. The soap lathered then fell into the drain. The complementary towel was made slightly damp and hung back up. A shirt was buttoned, pants that were slightly wrinkled were put on, and a razor that could cut away an evening's beard laid fallow.

The bed sank under a man's weight. The television came on from the response of the remote. The news of Los Angeles filled the room. The glow of the screen filled the room. The audio occupied the room.

"Amid the worst economic downturn since world war two the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is planning to increase fares for the first time in two years to help offset a $204-million gap in its operating budget for buses and rail systems..."

The liquor was dissolved in the mouth. "Whim is a hard thing to beat," the bartender had said. "I haven't seen you in a long time, what are you doing here? No matter, what will you be drinking?"

The liquor burned in the stomach. The dizzying effect of alcohol was only felt after the fifth. The jukebox swayed back and forth in time to music. "Is there an escape," the bartender asked without moving his lips. "Can you possibly get away from her? Coming back here, its just an excuse. You're drawn to her like a bee to pollen."

The ceiling spun for a moment then focused. The white ceiling danced with images. It faded into darkness. The dark of night still hung in the sky the closed window shades unneeded.

There was a knock at the door. A short staccato. The room reverberated with the noise of another series of knocks. The bolt was undone with suspicion. The room was lit with her presence.

The white blouse clung to her, like her skirt, both forever hugging her body. The heels of her shoes were sharp points and inch high. The stockings hit the short dress. The lines of the leggings ran long. The coat was momentarily on, then put on a chair. The chair waited for more clothing to be put on it longingly.

The room filled with voices.

"You have obligations."

"I am here anyways."

"You didn't want me before, and I don't want you now."

"We are stilted lovers."

"Who said we were lovers."

The chair was covered with more clothes.

"I like the hidden. I like unsaid lovers, I like being someone, then the real me, some more authentic person shining out saliently in secret."

The room reverberated with sound of flesh.

"You think I'm opaque?"

"Its like we're in a bedroom. In the bedroom is a bookshelf, and a window. Very normal. The bookshelves take up the majority of the room, but all the inhabitant ever wants to talk about is the view out the window."

"I like the feeling of your chest."

"Why are you here, you are obligated."

"Its so far."

"What about the distance between us?"

"You're here to serve a purpose."

Commands were given. They were obeyed. The room brightened with pleasure. The bed was filled with afterglow.

"We can stop at any point."

"We're not stopping at the spot I want, we're stopping at the point that you've regulated. You chose to meet me here, we could have stayed somewhere else where all of this wasn't possible. A parking lot, a friend's house, a church..."

"I don't want you talking about me."

"I thought we were talking about me, how egotistical I am."

"You have a mouth like a crocodile. Your smile is as wide as a mile with the same intent."

"As the reptile or as in the distance?"

A finger ran along soft tissue. Eyes looked on other eyes.

"My heart has four chambers."

A hand was placed near a beating muscle.

"Each chamber pulses regularly, for a long time the fourth chamber was shut down. My blood was poisoned. The chamber broke down out of disgust. I could taste the poison in my throat."

"I've only been so honest with one other person."

"I can taste the bile in my blood. "

"Do you talk about me to other people?"

"No, not really, maybe."

The overhead fan spun quietly. Goosebumps appeared on skin. A body searched another for comfort. The other body lay fallow.

"The thing I like about you is that I know you're going to fall for me."

Broken glass

2010-04-19T20:01:00.000-07:00

Dear Faithful readers,

I realize I haven't posted in a week and more. I will be posting shiznit tonight. In the meantime check out this essay I did for the muay thai blog. Broken Glass

sincerely yours,

Matt Lucas