The Lambda Calculus

Not that I'm not particularly South-Asian, merely a blood inheritor and even then from a weird Portugese anomoly state. Hell, I'm not even much of an immigrant.

And it's not like M.I.A. is in any way speaking for me, as an artist or a Tamil refugee or a Londoner or anything. It's just one of the few proudly South-Asian things that feels neither appropriated and defensive (local Indian-derived youth culture) or inaccessibly exotic (Trilok Gurtu, Vanraj Bhatia, truly south-asian people.)

That she's a gumbo of genuine British and Sri Lankan existance probably helps, as does her melting of agitation and pop, the personal and the political, strife and good living.

Reinstalled my work machine, figured with the move and various other chaos I'd take the time to switch off the rather lame Debian install I've gnarled into a useless heap into that ArchLinux distribution I like so much.

Interesting point of trivia, ArchLinux is the first operating system since OS/2 v2.11 way back in 1994 or so that I haven't wanted to move away from. In the what six months I've been running it, or is it more, I don't remember if I first tried Arch in Attichouse or Christyhaus, I've been tempted to wipe out some user mistakes but I have little or no complaints about the distribution itself.
So, uh, hurrah!

Due to some guy in the CSC, I've switched back to KDE. It integrates really well with XMonad, 4.3 is actually usable instead of promising, and I've given up trying to get sane sound and power functionality via my own terrible scripts or the even worse GUI-independant ones.


When it comes to doing work stuff on my work machine, I've learned something truly wonderful ... GNU Screen handles serial ports, so doing 'screen ttyS0' connections to the product I work on! I didn't want to use what I used to use, this weird server thing that's optimized for multiple people on different computers connecting to the same serial port. Apparently Screen can handle that anyway.

My coworker also tells me that there is some magic way of making screen my login shell, and having it so that any time I open a text terminal on my computer I'll jack into a giant screen hive-mind where any commandline or text application is accessible and switchable via an internet connection. It's pretty much what I do right now, except sometimes when I'm working on the machine itself I forget to start the process within screen and have to restart it.)

Sorry this doesn't make any sense.

Apparently there's also cryopid which in some nasty way I don't want to know 'freezes' a program and 'thaws' it out, so I can save program state even across restarts. It sounds nasty, but I'm intriguid the way you'd be simultaneously fascinated/disgusted by a bad bad man.

Don't get me wrong, in no way can I be called a knitter. When I go home I will have to punch my own sex in order to restart my second project, a simple cabled hat, which I keep fucking up because I have no head for increases.

But, but, the advantage to even my most precursory understanding of clothes-crafting is that I can stare at some pretty young thing on the street and sexualize not only their flesh and mind and voice, but also now their choice of external appearance. The more 'typically feminine' abilities I come to learn, the more I can internalize that mystical Platonic ideal of feminism which I can thus better objectify.

In the new office for the second time. Did I ever tell you I'm in a new office, 2somethingsomething Frobisher instead of Hell Northfield-upon-Highway-85?

Anyway! I was originally pissed because
a) Frobisher is more north than Northfield.
b) It it as distant to the north-east as the old office was to the south-west
c) I'd be saying goodbye to my lovely east-european cafeteria ladies (we shared tears and well-wishes and they gave me a free blueberry danish! Which I promptly spilled all over my face and shirt like a champ, bluekakke)
d) Cubicles
e) I can't leave the lights off anymore.

But I showed up to unpack my shit on Friday, and I'm rather impressed. I never felt the old office to be cramped despite having three people per office, but the new place really does feel expansive. It's industrial (an old warehouse or factory or something), so when I look up I see tubes and wires and steel-cut fans.

I also see skylights, skylights and windows provide most of the light at the moment. There are flurescent lights hanging around, but they seem to shine up and reflect instead of directly beaming at us. As such, I don't mind them all that might and I'm a bit excited to see the office after sundown.

I can hear the fans, the vents, wordless humdrums from conversations, keyboard clicks across the horizon, the clicks of heels across concrete floors. In a word (Yes!), I feel safe.

The cubicles are pretty swanky. Except for the one team that attempts pair-programming, our offices are slighty more than one third of the old, and now everyone gets their own. I have more desk space than I can dream of, and cabinets for my food and textbooks. The walls are high ... too high, I can't stand up and peer over them and I still feel awkward yelling for a team-member when I'm right beside another team.

Actually, I feel a bit lonely now that I'm not in one roomical unit with two other people. They're my neighbours, sure, but you get so used to glancing your eyes at a certain angle and seeing their head or their foot ... I can hear them, I can hear voices from across the office which is so comforting, steps now, but I can't see any of them in my little exposed cocoon. I guess I feel together with the giant hive and yet isolated from my former office-mates :S

Most importantly, my biggest fear was that I'd have to have my back to my opening. The desks are designed, however, so that you sit facing the 'hallway' and your monitors can be pushed back behind the little fold obscures your desk until you're standing right in the 'door.' For ergonomic reasons, one of my screens can be sort-of seen to people walking up and down my section's aisle and since I'm sitting sideways I suppose the two people behind me could sneak up. But they have little reason to as they aren't on my team, and if they pull off some kind of coup I probably deserve it. The important thing here is that I'm following good Atriedes habit, my back is not to the door (even if my front isn't either.)

I was worried about das bus, but the 31 can be caught RIGHT OUTSIDE my building in both directions! If I time it correctly, I can even take the 35 from uptown, suffer the lonely trawl through various suburbias, and get dropped off five walking minutes from my destination. Squeeeeeeeeeee. It's pretty bikable too, if I start from Conestoga. On virile days I'd go up and down Bridge street, but there's no good way to get home since I have to cross Highway 85 at some point.

--

That's about it regarding my office. Sometime this week I'm going to switch my work machine to Arch Linux.

Some of my knitter/crocheter/macrame/two-spirited/qurious/queer friends are into using yarn for graffiti and I cowardly support them by assisting sometimes.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/naleag_deco/sets/72157622683345027/

Bad dreams.

Woke up and rode to Zeller's at Bridgeport in an uncharacteristic fit of physical enthusiasm. Bought a laundry hamper and -- oh my goodness oh my goodness oh my goodness -- micro-fibre clothes for dusting. Bought a bottle of wine, Naked Grape's Cabernet Sauvignon because I didn't see their Shiraz behind the clerk lady.

Planned on spending this weekend doing mostly housework, thought I'd augment it with simple meals and a bottle of wine and some songs to sing alone. I think I can easily handle half over a fll day, but 75% is pushing it a bit. I could be more efficient.

--

Saw "The Government Inspector" with Vanessa (and not seeing alfedenzo / math_foo but perhaps they were sneaky) and it was as enjoyable as Gogol should be. Some of the actors had really open faces, the kind Ricardo Montalban used to have. A lot of them had really nice ascots and hats, hats I want to make and wear.

It's getting ridiculous. I'm not an avid knitter or anything, don't think I think about knitting all the time. But now I'll walk down the street and check out a woman's face and follow her scarf or sweater down. Sometimes I'll watch porn and spend the entire time admiring their socks or cast-off clothes. "What a pity", I'll say, "I'd really like to know how she shudders in that shirt."

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I want a burger but I don't want to go outside. This is a dilemma.

Today I walked into Cafe 3 and asked the staff what they thought about Bob Dylan's concert (it had been mentinoed before.) I then listened to em sweep the floor and both describe how the performance wasn't as energetic as she'd like and how Dylan still manages to mean everything and so much. Then I asked for some spring rolls.

The spring-rolls were custom-made because the regular materials were out of stock. Apparently some customers get particular if a cheese or a topping is switched, but the majority appreciate it. I have signed over my permission for improvisation at any time.

As I left I said "Goodbye X, see you around." One of the other staff had mentioned the name the last time I was there, so I tucked it into my head. The staff was a bit knocked by this, ey retorted with "Yeah, see you .... later this week?" I presume this was because nobody knows my name. It was nice to pointedly trip up someone like that.

--

Bought a book on knitting socks at the knitter's guild, it seems like something I'd make use of.

Watched M. Butterfly yesterday, a few hours after Stardust Memories. It was delicious. In many ways the opposite of the Allen flick. It was brutal and gross in a way, but the core was beautiful in the exact way Rene describes Pucchini's opera as being. I especially loved the little clues throughout the movie , those deliberately selected sentences that explicitly described the open secret (between playwrite and viewer) that the opera singer is in fact a man. I especially loved the ending, which mirrors the opening excerpt from Madama Butterfly (the one where she kills herself), where Rene the Frenchman dresses up in japanese women's dress and performs the same excerpt. Except here it is the Frenchman killing himself while mourning for the Oriental man who does not deserve him.
Role reversal constantly rears its ugly head as various "feminist" "reimagings" attempt to make their point, but here is the one case where the reversal has been made genuinely, where through supposedly total submission the stereotypically asian femininity winds up colonizing and destroying the fatally devout European imperialist who would rather die than resolve his love with his decimation.
And of course, it answers nothing about the battle of the sexes. It answers nothing, as all fine art should.

--

Went for a walk last night listening to Fuck Buttons, didn't return home until the album ended. Like Autechre, it wasn't music but was instead an aural representation of something, my mindset or mood or something else too difficult to grasp. It was perfect, I closed my eyes and stopped paying attention to everything. The outside world synchronized in rhythms of Fuck Buttons, it was as it should be (in album sequence).
Alternatively, I was once again okay the the outside world.

Fuck this week's daystar and the last. Fuck. Fuccccccccccccck.

I came home to Serenity, being played by my housemates. My housemates are always doing something, just chilling out, watching westerns or listening to music or asking me to cook or whatever. Did I ever tell you I kind of love my housemates? They form homes. Or a home, at least.

Serenity is kind of shit though. It doesn't hold a candle to the show, too focused, too glossy, too serious, too epic ... but watching it again .... it doesn't have a soul, either. It does all those movie things but is gaunt, unfleshed, like an empty squirt of masturbation it only exists because we need something but can't find the real thing anywhere, anymore.

I have a music addition. It was handleable with CDs and downloads, but vinyl is just too much. It's all I can do just limit myself to desert island picks. My desert crate is half a century, probably. I bought Astor Piazzolla 's "Tango Zero Hour" despite not owning it on CD. I broke my own commandment regarding vinyl. What do I do now?

But for that waste of moment, I ran into Adrienne closing up MoT Waterloo, and I talked with her about T.S. Eliot and Eliot-era books and suburban/subrural hellholes for a good half-hour before she kicked me out to work. That was probably worth it, as all little moments are.

Now I'm going to listen to Avalon on $1.00 vinyl, which is about how much it should cost for its pricelessness.

A 70/30 blend of Allen and Fellini.

The people who introduced me to this movie, and Woody Allen in general, hated this movie, the people I'm living with now adore it.

I adore it too, I want to say it's my favourite if only for anticipating Guy Maddin's "My Winnipeg" twenty-seven years early. I think, however, that one's appreciation of this movie, perhaps of Woody Allen in general, says more about one's character than anyone's taste in art. But what do I know about art?

One either gets what he's talking about, nostalgically, shamefully, or one thinks he's full of unrealistic shit. And this is why I both enjoy this movie and feel terribly saddened by it, I guess. Woody Allen is perhaps the the closest thing I have to a physical role model. But even then, I can't always abide his personality. Or perhaps, better said, I wish I wasn't self-conscious or self-aware(?): if I wasn't so, perhaps I'd steal that same personality and produce some fine-tasting mistakes out of my obsessions.

Thursday we held and informal stitch'n'bitch in Whole Lotta Gelato, where I taught myself how to ball yarn. While doing so I began to feel the yarn, as it were, anticipate how it wanted to curve and fall. Like with a car or a a fun code project, I forgot who was the manipulator and what was being manipulated.  That was good.

What was bad is that I haven't been able to advance more than three rows before realizing I've screwed up and frogging(?) the entire project. This was supposed to be an easy contrast to my month-and-a-half-long scarf!

Was approached twice about my knitting at Seven Shores. The wait staff said nothing about it but we did talk about Bob Dylan for a bit.

Found out I have mutual friends with the Matter of Taste crew, and we joshed which was pretty awesome given our otherwise customer-server relationship. Word of the day: Ho-rista.

--

Watched "A Few Dollars More" with Catherine. She found it via youtube, which meant we had to watch 37 fragments in order. It felt like the digital analogue of a set of film reels, except with extremely clumsy transfers.

This has simultaneously been one of the shittiest and most wonderful weeks I can remember surviving through. The question of polarity depends on whether it's dark out or not.

--

I have to reformat my Pre. Well I don't have to, but I think it might get the voice-call subsystem to work again. How'd that happen?

--

I'm going to go home and put the Sex Pistols on the turntable and follow it up with some Manics and Black Saint Sinner Lady. I'm going to ask anyone in the house at the time if they'd like to gob with me.

My first knitting project, a cabled scarf for Arianne, was completed at about eleven twenty-something this evening.

I invited one of my coworkers to craft night and he learned to knit, kind of with my help but I'm not the greatest teacher, just comic relief.

My housemates did not show up though, two of which were expected and the other I hope was not because I neglected him in any way.

A few friends are confiding in me how they're hitting relationship issues where their boyfriends are pining for ex-lovers or desired lovers, doing a bad job of either accepting the relationships they are in now and that their emotional vestiges aren't really going to go anywhere. You know, emotional adultery. I know many claim it even worse than physical adultery, but does the non-reciprocated nature twist the knife even sharper because the dude is choosing a guaranteed losing battle over guaranteed returns?
It's weird because those boys are committing an old crime of mine, and I can't help but imagine that what I say about these boyfriends is what I'd say about myself. And I can't bring myself to condemn them what they are going through, I can't say that they are necessarily bad men, in fact I kind of feel for them given how little a man is prepared to handle his own feelings, although I do have to advise these women that the men deserve what these women will hopefully throw at them.
Because I was selfish and cowardly then, I am a better person today, perhaps even a great person.

Anything I write here will sound of contradictions, but that's only because I have forgotten that I don't prescribe to intrinsic moralities. When I remember, I shall shudder through waves of emotional import that can only be linearized into the logical 'meh'.

My brother is a giant dick right now.

He's not the only one, either. He's one of three guys I know who are currently screaming at women they want to bone because those girls are currently dating someone else. Not really because the people they're dating are in any way detrimental, but because the dicks are coming up with excuses as to why that girls should date *them* instead of reality. In the most passive-aggressive and grind-target's-self-worth down way possible.

Which is lame. The brother element, however, is still getting me, it still irrationally irks me that my brother secretly hates me for essentally getting out of Brampton and being friends with above girl, I think. He's also doing it in ways which reminds me of my dad in the evil times, which leads to other past hangups.

But I've been doing a compare, and you have to ask yourself: The rest of the D'costa males are all chuffed stagnating in Brampton, how is that different from my stagnating in Waterloo, being yr average computer scientist except the golden handcuffs are to a city and not The Corporation?

kousu accuses me of embellishing stories all the time to serve my purposes, which is totally true! My defense is that this journal is not synoptic but a kind of fiction, a tale not as things happened but how I choose to remember them. But I accuse my dad and brother all the time of twisting rhetoric and events to suit their world view and justify their own failings. I genuinely believe that I can do what I do as a form of performance art, turn my existence into one of fiction, but I have to make sure I'm not doing it merely to stroke my own ego, to justify my undeserved self-worth. I have to be doing it to strive to be more than what I am. If I'm going to do it, since I don't think it's intrinsically wrong.

I also have to make sure than when I place the women I place on a pedestal on a pedestal, I'm doing it not to find people who will accept my cult of personality but because ... I like placing things on pedestals and celebrating them. It's like ... take Sinister Sean. He is just a man, but I hope in this journal he is a demon, he is unliving, he is beyond life. I love making my friends more than human, less than human, I love placing them in the ranks of Bajoran Prophet where each person represents a voice of my own psyche. I mean who am I to write about their lives but what they bring to mine?
But this has to be done correctly. dont_ask_me_why the person's true essence must never be erased or wiped in order to reflect my personality. She must retain a sense of difference from me, a sense of who she is independant of me, even though her actions often amplify thoughts of my own and are muted against my own subjective quirks. Does that make sense? I produce pedestals and symbols as much as my D'costan kin, but they must not be objects to ride my agenda upon but must be totems and shamans in my attempt to better myself. Does that make sense?

I have no defense for not being in school, except to ask if it's good enough that I'm learning Haskell and Walter Benjamin and trying to write like a composite of how I'd write if I was every other writer I've ever respected. I have no defense for being sedentary in Waterloo, except to note that I've helped with raves and play backgammon with weird cafe characters and an spreading the word of knitting and gender politics for contentious reasons that ideally benefit others. I don't think these hold up under the sheer awareness of what adventures I can have, what I can achieve and attain if only I reach out for it.
But at least maybe you won't find me vapid and/or a hazard to others?

Went out for Halloween for the first time in years and went out in a costume for the first time in years. It was Katy Perry, although a bunch of people thought I was Zooey Deschanel. Photographic evidence suggests that I cannot blame them.
In all honesty, seeing as I'm neither as pretty nor as white nor as thin as Miss Perry, I more resembled Callie from Grey's or even perhaps an unsassy L-Word Kit Porter  There are pictures of me somewhere but they have yet to be uploaded.

Mr. Bigglesworth III did not have a bottle-opener so I could not lubricate my way into hot pants and tank tops via bottles of Chimay. Conversely, I did not need alcohol to break into why Katy Perry/Justin Timberlake are the pinnacles of contemporary culture or describing the horrific wonder that is the male lesbian. Some women I haven't met before (and some I have!) listened attentively and contributed vigorously to the discussion. A youngish lady in a fetching bee costume ran up me and said a) "Gaelan D'coasta I have not seen you in a while!" and b) "Oh you are knitting that is wonderful I knit too!" That was rather pleasant collection of sensory perceptions.

Mr. Bigglesworth's party was quite fun. I haven't seen a bunch of people approximating my generation of math students in a while. The company was a pleasant balance of new faces and the familiar. The host's costume was a simple death mask and business attire but he carried it so well it may as well have been a cel-shared rendering of his true self.

I was sitting quietly on the bus, gently chiding a university stydent for loudly (and obnoxiously) complaining on buses about high school kids who yell loudly and obnoxiously on buses. At some point one of those high school targets screams and says "Ewwwww that girl there she don't shave at all, so naaaasty." The rest of her group, who have long noticed, only grin and giggle. I pop my goateed head forwards and say "Honey, I got so much style I don't need to shave" and she screamed even more. The rest of her crew terrorist fist-jabbed me and a good time was had by all.
By being a bad woman form of woman and yet still a man, was I flaunting typical gender roles or merely enforcing them?

--

Speaking of being a bad women, I debated performing in Mr. Biggles' impromptu talent show w/ "I Kissed a Girl." When you think about it, the combination of goateed male in cross-dress asserting his straightness through a sly quasi-lesbian torch song would have been pretty excellent. You know, it would have been a minor "fuck you" at those who seem to think that the only victims of heteronormativity are women or queers or women queers. (Ignoring of course, the contradiction in that the normativity still absolutely blows for those who aren't inconvenienced by it either way but its inconvenience is so relatively minor compared to what the women and queers and non-asians have to face.)
But I can't really sing as well as Katy Perry, andeveryone else involved had real talents, and I'm not a drag artist nor a mime nor do I intend to be. When you think about it, drag artists themselves don't really celebrate the female form so much as parody it. Is it another form of objectification, except this time a reasonable sacrifice made so that men can celebrate their once-unaccepted effete natures?
A rather charming audience member expressed her regret at not being able to sing, but then comforted herself at being so good at mingling across the various social groups, a conversational artist, a performer who multicasts instead of broadcasting. She then volunteered to improvise simple drum rhythms for a performer's self-written song, but I won't begrudge her that.

A brief joy of dressing as a women is that it seems to provide me license to feel up and be felt up. Plenty o' ladies absolutely adored the ability to squeeze my orange-wrapped-in-tissue breasts, and roared in laughter when I got mildly miffed at a guy who squeezed them too hard and caused me to lactate, and hung their fishnetted or bare soft legs across my hips in group shots.
I suppose, in some sense, I am opening myself up for an pastiche equivalent of the accepted objectification I usually impose over women I glance at on sidewalks? There also seems some joy in offering up my breasts to be judged as valiant but losing efforts against the supple real McCoy of womanhood.

--

Afterwards a friend Matty was holding a mini-rave in his garage. The first half-hour was kind of lame, as I didn't really know anybody and didn't feel like dancing along with everyone else. I just sat in the corner feeling both ugly and dopeish. But at some point someone sat beside me and we just talked about how we really enjoyed parties like this and how we don't dance, and where we were from and how we got here, etcetera. dont_ask_me_why then collapsed on top of me to crochet and sit down and the conversation slowly died, which suggests that I might have just had my first inadvertent cock-block, heh.

The party was really chill, I traded a lot of names with people, everyone was really friendly for people who I'd never met before. It was almost teknivalish in how it was eternal bombardments of sound mixed with a really relaxed chill-out scene. Most of the party was spent in a knitters/crocheters' group while random people from the party came out to talk to us! I was complimented fairly often on my scarf and asked to if it could be touched, which was pretty awesome.

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dont_ask_me_why and Cassie crashed at my place/bed (I brought two women home, w000000); when they woke up I managed to get Andrew my housemate and Catherine my housemate and Cassie cuddling on my bed while debating who exactly I dressed up as. My house has really gotten onto the cuddling thing; for one thing everybody loves Sinister Sean, and when I half-jokingly told them that he's open to cuddling anyone Catherine just ran out of her room and sat on his lap. They're generally in social circles that are more ... political, or socially guided, or something (they're all children of English ex-pats, does that make sense?) so I think they see my friends as a kind of release. Andrew especially is trapped as a nice easy-go-normal guy trapped between vigorous feminist Zoey and whatever the hell I am, he seems to enjoy the relatively safe vehicle we offer into what's pretty weird to be offered to a guy, affection without attached gender politics. Later on my housemates chided me for not inviting them to whatever parties I was going to to.

The rest of sunday was spend chillaxing on our new couch and watching people play video games. Also, I baked a pie for the first time. It turns out I don't like store-bought pies because I dislike crumbly crusts. My own pies were very smooth and chewy and as such, delicious.

This morning I, walking to work, I enumerated through the various superstitions and tics I used to constantly fret about during high school and university.

A few examples, which I'm tempted to rationalize but even I get bored at the resulting paragraph:
1) If I daydream even once about a desire, it will not happen.
2) Listening the number of ways I would end "The great tragedy of the world is..."
3) Using a person's name in conversation is creepy and reeks of ulterior motive.

I was enumerating through them because I idly remembered the first one listed; it's been forever since I actually stopped myself on that principle. I can''t think of recent examples of minding the others, either. The last instance I remember was just before Christmas holidays, Fall term 2008. I suspect the tics have sublimated but I can also think of many times where I've actively flouted them.

The one that still holds is 3), which came up yesterday when dont_ask_me_why asked me why kousu and I refer to each other as "dude" all the time. And even now, at Matter of Taste I make a point of greeting the staff by name, because it's the only way I'll remember them. I made a mild joke about Fong(?) the owner today, to his face, I feel so accomplished :P

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When did I make a pact to actively fight depression? July, I think. Since then my acute periods have lasted at most a day or two, with some degree of active resistance though it isn't always pre-meditated. This week has been the first time since then where the despair has tasted of the high-school / university era, but after two days of moping I accidentally stumbled across some Reboot and sang along to Roxy Music and I think I can good-naturedly handle how I am a superficial failure.
Today I've been mouthing along to Berlin-era U2, a traditionally huge warning sign that I'm purring to heal.

--

If I may be allowed to spiritualize it, depression is the internal reminder that I wish to die. Everyone else comes across their little deaths now and then, seeking them out or tying them down or riding from circumstance to circumstance, but since I don't have that same aptitude I have instead mastered the little rebirth. I find new faces in TV or movies (or books odd circumstances and people who I absolutely adore, more often) and, when those faces match some ideal in the back of my mind, I change -- through force of will -- my own to approach that ideal. Depression might be the indicator -- accurate or otherwise -- that I have remained in my natural state of stagnancy too long, that I must shift into the novelty now because it is so unnatural to me to go anything except onwards, slouching towards Babylon.

--

This might be why Halloween has traditionally bugged me. You see, I haven't worn a costume since my lovely (and convincing!) Klingon 'do which lasted me from Grade 7 or so until first year, when I stopped being enamoured with the franchise. I tepidly wore a Jesuit Priest robe after that, the only thing that attracted me the next year, but I felt so awkward pretending piety that I gave up.

I always want to dress up, I so resent my WPIRG/GLOW friends who design costume parties at the tip of a hat, because I can't bring myself to spend for a wig and outfit and things that I'll wear once, maybe twice if I find the opportunity to reuse. I realize everyone thinks I waste my money on easily pirated/thrifted media (which I do, within reason and within my right, so fuck you), but that I'd never wear a costume again (that seems stagnant) really bugs me and I don't know why I should put in the effort.

I mean, I spend the rest of my year designing costumes in the realm of mind which better serves my figure. Why should I waste resources fighting on terrain which I'm sure to lose? Maybe that is the reason in itself, so says my anti-depression squad! To fight a losing battle is to surely die, to die is to be reborn!)

I'm fat and I've been a meat-eating non-biking slob since falling sick before thanksgiving, waaaaah.

I watched Coraline with my housemates on Monday. They needed a break from Grey's Anatomy.

The DVD came with 3D glasses, only three, one of the household members who were present.

It was as a dark children's movie should be, a wonderful place I would very much like to visit a la Pan's Labyrinth or Hyrule.

I've hung around film-student people enough that, beyond the Brechtian, I can pick out a reasonable snippet of auter theory and camera angles and symbolism and yadda yadda. At least in snooty films, where auters are throwing us giant arrows I suppose.
My housemate, every so often, would go 'Oh! I can't believe how masterfully Tim Burton has chosen every little detail to represent oppressive motherhood! Look how these symbols all jive to his entire body of work!

And I was very impressed and it all made sense to me, except researching it later I discovered that Tim Burton wasn't involved at all. Neil Gaiman was, so perhaps she was half-correct after all.

--

It was running through my head the entire time and I feel a bit sorry, but Coraline would grow up to be a really cute raver.

So I kind of got tired of only having Radiohead and Grizzly Bear and Elton John and James Taylor (though not the Portishead Third) so I decided to get my own set of records for the Merantz.

I intended on going with JAPANDROIDS and The Big Pink, awesome musical experiences that would seal my brand of culture without being too far from the collective musical mood.

Apparently what people want on vinyl are old chestnuts, not pieces relevant for the times. Instead I walked out with
Yes - Close to the Edge
Roxy Music - Country Life
The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat. (Yes, this may have been influenced by what I've been reading.)

I don't feel very cool, but when it comes to clumsy rituals which unify a contingus block of music into bipartite experiences, these are certainly at the top of my private list.

I'm already dreaming of Daydream Nation or Metal Box, this is not good. But happily I can't think of anything more than that I'd care to invest such time and resources into.