2010/01/30

Benji the Hater: Make Your Face Behind Closed Doors, Please

Benji Says:

I fucking hate these chicks that are in so much of a hurry that they have to put on make-up on the train. I don't give a fuck how fly you are, that shit makes you look desperate, ho! That shit embarrasses me for you. Either wake up on time and fucking fix your face in the privacy of your own stupid home or just deal with your natural face, which quite honestly isn't helped much by make-up unless you're about to get your picture taken; if you're cute then you're cute and if you're not then you're not, you don't really expect to fool me. After all, its powder and lipstick not fucking CGI! Get it together ladies. You heard it from me, Benji!

2010/01/29

Music Video Fridays: Sum of Summer

I love this video and I love to love Donna Summer. This song is Kylie Minogue at her best and Donner Summer not even trying. The blonde guy dressed in all-tight-all-white is awesome! He looks high off his mind, then again I would be too as this song is Ecstasy as a melody, not to mention in the 70s Donna Summer was brown cocaine. Seriously though, this song is beyond sexy, beyond seductive; I feel like a mosquito who bites a vampire. Whatever that means.



And this is Donna Summer at her best:


2010/01/25

Wash it All Away

Its a perfect rainy day. Ideal for staying in doors and lazing about. As the scum gets washed away outside, as metropolitan grime and filth are sucked down gutters and drains, what should i employ myself to for the majority of this wet day before heading out later? Not sure if many are familiar with Anjali's song "Rainy Day" but listening to it would definitely be part of the first few things I do after finally ascending from bed. There's also the affair of breakfast and a banana-peanut butter milkshake I've had my plots set on. The rest is up for grabs but will most likely involve more music.

2010/01/19

Confessions of a Crap Artist: If You'd Been a Dog...

KNIVES OUT

Job searching is depressing, I'm quite unmotivated; and what some might be shocked to hear is that I'm okay with being unmotivated. Just to be clear, I mean unmotivated with job searching, not life! Life is very inspiring but job searching is like walking around looking for an available knife to be stabbed with. Only no one wants to stab you unless you are a certain type of bleeder, better yet unless experience has proven you to be a certain type of bleeder. So even if you are what they're looking for, it counts for nothing unless someone else says it for you, like a previous knife that can vouch for you.

I still haven't mastered how to pretend to be excited about being bled. Analogy aside, there is nothing that I want to do as far as jobs are concerned. Not only is there nothing I want to apply for but there's also nothing I want to learn, or study to develop some sort of career in a certain field or another.


I'm sick of the whole affair. I got to figure something out because a man gets to certain age where he deserves the face he wears, and I don't want to deserve that face that might await me on the other side of that mirror. Its a tired face, an accusingly cold face, with regrets hiding in every wrinkle like water collecting into erosion.

2010/01/14

People Thought Honey was Made by Magic!

What's better than honey? A honeybee. Has anyone, any artist, inventor, or craftsman created anything as good as honey, ever? No.

I want a honeybee the size of a bull dog as a pet. I'll name him Aldous, or her Pollie. We'll get into wild mystery solving adventures, (think Scooby-Doo but with a non-talking giant, buzzing honey bee). I'll feed him/her honey nut cheerios, golden grams, honey buns and we'll hang out watching TCM with good old Robert Osborne introducing each feature. "Hahahaha," my honey bee and I will whip our heads back laughing at yet another classic, witty comment from Bob. Robert Osborne will of course eventually join our mystery gang.

In the evening I'll walk Aldous/Pollie and he/she will buzz frantically when someone plays Feist's song Honey Honey.

2010/01/11

How Far, Icarus, How Far?

FALL FOR GRACE

The story of Icarus is one that I've had as of late, very freshly in the fluency of thoughts. The story resonates an ongoing truth, analogously, about Man. We are that creature that will fly too close to the sun, regardless of how good a thing we have we will carelessly push passed safe and destroy even ourselves to savor happiness. At least that is my interpretation of the myth of Icarus applied philosophically to Man.


Found in any addiction, any vice or obsession, its the echo of Icarus' fall, cloud through cloud, ending in a death-pounding plunge into the Icarian Sea. He could not contend himself with flight, an achievement in itself so marvelous that following his father, Daedalus' instructions or precautions would have proven alone, a reward. The reward of flight. But Icarus took advantage, saw an opportunity and decided to withdraw the most he could from the experience. Of course, he paid with his life yet when he flew--Good God, how he flew! It could never be said that in comparison to Daedalus' flight, of the two it was certainly his son, Icarus who flew. Freely, with the confidence and command of a naturally winged creature, that is how Icarus flew; while Daedalus remained a human flapping wax wings and thereby remaining alive, survived his son.

Taking this myth and applying to it, one of the current and more obvious areas of human ingenuity to which Icarus may play as a perfect analogy, I find myself conflicted. Conflicted because upon reflection to Man's daring and careless innovation, I at times feel like a Daedalus rather than that plunging, screaming, wingless man falling his last seconds of life away. The good example of today's "wax wings" is found in technology. The wax wings themselves were a technology and Daedalus, known for his ability as a master craftsman (earlier, he had designed the labyrinth for King Minos to trap the Minotaur). Technology alone is not the harmful flight. Tools are helpful by definition and their utilitarian function has helped to in turn, define Man. We are after all, a tool using animal. But so long has passed between the wheel, fire, and spear to maglev trains, space travel, and atom bombs; we are approaching a peak to the Information Age. We are approaching Singularity.


And there my friends, is when the sun is too close and we heed not the previous warnings or the consequence of flying farther and faster with wax wings. In the myth, I side with Icarus. I side with the idea that no limits should hinder experience; that Man must push beyond, regardless of what consequence may result. Even if you expire yourself in the process, you at least lived a moment to its fullest and most possibly, dangerous potential. This being my stand, one would furrow their brow to see me swiftly transformed into a scolding Daedalus when Singularity is brought up. My position changes, I believe, for a very valid purpose. Singularity is so perverse, so destructive to the idea of what Man has been as, that its hard to compare it lightly to a pair of wax wings when its more analogously accurate to compare Singularity to a highly evolved suicide method.

Of course, my conflict is much deeper. After all, a man with wings is just as perverse as downloading your mind into a computer. I am farther removed from the Icarus myth to be at all shocked by it but I assume part of the thrill in the story was applying Man domain over an unnatural and therefore exotic tool (wax wings). There is absolutely no difference between wax wings and Singularity. And still I am a practical Daedalus who sees only a minimal mean to an end, while Icarian engineers see a new playground, a new opening to peek through the eyes of a god, a careless creator.


Try as I will I cannot be upset with the Icaruses of my time because there is no separation. There is no division of Man, where this side is Icarus and the other Daedalus. Man is a unified experience of the Universe, what one man creates, all Man creates; what one man is bound to do all Man is bound to exercise. There is only the collective representation. So it is logical that I include myself as part of that Icarus that happens to be 21st Century Man. Elemental as I am to this 21st Century Icarus, one can see why I understand. I can pardon the reasons--reasons, which I feel need not be apologized for in the first place--but I mourn. I prepare myself for that fall. I mourn for everything that came before that descent, all the heights and cleverness that lead to the creation of wax wings. I mourn for that falling creature who flew too close to the sun; who had a good thing before becoming curious about what was further up and unsatisfied with playing it safe. Falling the last seconds of his life away.

It Looks Bleak

I really hate to sound like that dude everyone avoids because as Aesop says, he has "prophetic opinions but can't remember where his drink is." But a phone named Nexus One scares the hell out of me! Its just too cocky to name a phone Nexus One, as it is to name a phone Android. The next step would be to use the phone as the brain of an actual humanoid...And when the Nexus Six arrives there will be no Rick Deckards, and it will be far beyond the point where it was already too late.

"If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes."


A good friend once told me I have a love/hate relationship with technology where something like a new phone creeps me the hell out but the same innovation applied to an electric musical instrument bedazzles me into supernova sprinkles. This is true! Its my hypocritical cross to bear. Maybe I should ease up and not worry but I don't want to go out of fashion, I don't want humans be a thing of the past. Combine the Nexus One and Singularity, how much space is left for the flesh?!