some More Desultory Cerebrations

a Dilettante ~ an amateur or dabbler; especially , one who follows art or a branch of knowledge sporadically, superficially, or for amusement only.
~ an admirer or lover of the fine arts

it is said that 25 million Africans have hiv/aids. what they don't tell you is that in 1985 aids was redefined in Africa so that it could be diagnosed Without a test. Thenceforth, diseases common in Africa could be called aids. How many cases of aids compared to other diseases? Who knows.

i often don't look at things like they are risks, i look at them as experiences, like today, i had the chance to experience going to court dazed, and talking to a bunch of sheriffs, bailiffs, and a judge. Was there a risk, possibly, but the experience was worth more to me.

my hidden agenda is to amaze myself

Do you feel attractive when i'm with you?
I feel real, real, real unattractive when i'm with you. ~the toadies

i find the college girls that used to be very attractive and skinny(before college), but now have gained some weight(mostly from alcohol), but still wear tight shirts that show their bare pudgy midriff -> Hilarious

i sit and sulk and wait and smoke my sorrows away

Making me happy is often my first priority.

Happiness is a goal i seek in everything i do

While growing up you are never that sure about yourself, and you rely heavily on others and their influences. But i can finally say that i am independent of others influences. I know who I am, what I am, and what I want to be.

Microsoft only addresses and fixes the top 20% of problems with it's software.

Why can, approximately, 90% of college women Not walk around outside in the winter without getting the bottom of their pants wet and with salt stains - Lots of guys have pants that sag and touch the ground and yet our pants rarely get wet and get salt stains.

Be good, and if you're not going to be good, be careful.

~photography shows and describes much more than it can explain
~everything is worth looking at and photographing
~whatever it is about pictures, photographs, its just about impossible to follow up with words. They don't have anything to do with one another.
~lets stop at the liquor store and do some business
~reality is dreamlike, photography is real ~ since reality is constantly fleeting but photography stays around.
~photography has nothing to do with words. Art- you can love it and appreciate it, but you can't really talk about it, it doesn't make any sense.
~quotes by william eggleston

My dog, Rusty, has gotten old. He is 14 , i believe. Currently, he has many tumors, the largest is located under his armpit, which affects his walking and his breathing. His eyes have gotten very cloudy, we think glaucoma. He also has signifigant hearing loss. He also has doggie dementia, so he's getting a little senile. He has obviously become more sad, stressed and less playful. Furthermore, lately when you want to pet him or lay with him, he simply shakes and gets very stressed and nervous and freaked out. But i just smoked with him and he seems so much better. Alot happier, less nervous, and very sweet. When he was younger he would always snuggle with us and fall asleep. He unfortunately hasn't done that in many years. Currently he is snuggled up next to me asleep.

i plan almost nothing, except outfits

i am frequently a non-conformist who almost always looks for my own straightest line.

Memory is the enemy of wonder ~ Michael Pollan

Cremaster

Over the past week, the Cremaster Cycle was playing at a local theater. The Cremaster Cycle is a 5 part film that matthew Barney wrote and directed. They are Art films in the truest sense of the term. There is almost no narrative, and everything is very Abstract. The films are named for the Cremaster muscle which the male body uses to raise and lower the testicles. The five films progress from a state of undifferentiated gender (a fully ascended cremaster muscle, represented by the floating Goodyear Blimps and other symbols), through the organism’s struggle to resist gender definition, to the inevitable point where maleness can no longer be denied (complete descension of the cremaster and release of the testes).Here are some quote's from reviews about the Cremaster Cycle ~ ~ ~

~ A half-vegetable, half-man creature with a fleet of Jacobin pigeons attached to his gonads. A nattily attired, red-haired goat dude tap-dancing a hole through the floor of a pier. A woman in a closet in the Chrysler Building chopping potatoes with blade-enhanced platform shoes. A racetrack where the jockeys ride horses covered in rotting flesh. Thanks to Matthew Barney, I no longer wonder what these images would look like. Instead, they are now in my head... festering.
~ the Cremaster Cycle is unparalleled as a wildly opulent piece of grandiose head-fuckery. It's a phantasmagoria of breathtaking beauty, surreal horrors, nightmarish gore and even a piece of crass slapstick involving a pesky pint of Guinness.
~ As with all of Barney's films, translating Cremaster into words is a disservice to the elevating intensity and intrigue communicated through sound and imagery.

It's simply amazing watching a film that makes everyone see the same thing differently. While these films are definately not for everyone, i would highly suggest to anyone vaguely interested.

Fucking Oscars

Unfortunately, my plans for sunday night feel through, i was supposed to hang out with this girl named Jenny but she cancelled cause of the 3 inch snow storm. Then to make matters worse, last night the Oscars were on. While i love film, ironically, i hate hollywood movies and the oscars with about as much passion as a love almost all other types of film, except for maybe bollywood films, because those are basically just indian people trying to make hollywood films anyway, and cause there indian ;) But like a moth toward light i am drawn and so i watch the oscars. i generally watch the oscars, and every year that i watch i always end up angrier and angrier as the night progresses. Last night was, surprisingly, no different. While i didn't agree with almost any of the nominations, and actually hated many of the movies they nominated, the main thing that upsets me more and more during the show, is that it is so blatantly a commercial for hollywood for several hours. The oscar awards are simply a device hollywood uses to advertise their movies, and their stars. The Academy is made up of a variety of people who work for one of the 5 movie studio's in hollywood(there are only 5 companies that release hollywood movies, each of those 5 own almost all of the smaller ones), obviously they will only nomiate their own movies, and that many votes will be traded and bought amoungest those running the 5 studio's. There is no way the best performance wins, in almost every category the biggest name wins, or the name of an up-and-come'r that hollwood wants to mold into a star, such a keira knightley for best actress. For example, in the best supporting actor category, George Clooney was guaranteed to win, it was his first nomination and his perfomance didn't matter, the hollywood film industry needs him to be a classic male movie star, such as cary grant. Or in the supporting actress category, there is no one who could claim that Amy Adams wasn't amazing in Junebug, i didn't even like the film, but she simply stole every scene she was in, but alas Rachel Weisz won, and she was good in The Constant Gardner, and i enjoyed that movie a lot more than junebug, but there is no comparison between the two roles. Another thing that bothered me greatly was that Memoirs of a Geisha won 3 oscars, the same amount as brokeback mountain and crash won, i didn't see the film and i definitely don't plan on seeing it, the main problem i had with the film when it came out was that it was a Japanese story set in Japan, but all the main actresses were Chinese, and most of the male actors where Chinese aswell, then to top it off almost everyone behind the camera were not Japanese either, almost all were from america. Furthermore, the movie was almost universally panned, with a common argument being that it didn't seem very authentic, and my favorite critique being that if you have seen any Japanese films then you will notice many aspects of this movie that are not authentic or traditional. One of the oscars they got was for costume design, surprisingly the people who did the traditional japanese costumes were two white americans. That pretty much sums up many of my problems with hollywood and the oscars.

Museum and not the Art Museum

I haven't been to the Milwaukee Public Museum in many many years, last time i think was during high school for some reason, maybe even middle school. Last week Monday, John and Winters were going to the Museum, i assumed they meant the Art Museum, but alas they meant the Public Museum. But that was ok since i hadn't been for quite a while, and i thought there would be some good photo opportunities. Some opportunities are thus presented in this entry.

bands i don't Fast Forward through on my iPod, currently

Aceyalone ~ Magnificant City
Aesop Rock ~ any album
Andrew Bird ~ The Mysterious Production of Eggs
Animal Collective ~ "Sung Tongs" or "Feels"
Antony and the Johnsons ~ I am a Bird now
Animal Collective ~ "Fingers Crossed" or "In Case We Die"
Arctic Monkeys ~ Whatever people say I am, Thats What I'm Not
Autechre ~ any album
Beanie Segal ~ The B.Coming
belle and sebastian ~ the Life Pursuit
Birdman ~ Fast Money
Bobby Dylan ~ almost any album, other than the new stuff, obviously
The Books ~ "The Lemon of Pink" or "Lost and Safe"
Bright Eyes ~ Digital Ash in the Digital Urn
Broadcast ~ HaHa Sound
Cam'ron ~ Purple Haze
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah ~ Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
The Clientele ~ Strange Geometry
Clipse ~ We Got It 4 Cheap, vol 2
CocoRosie ~ La Maison de Mon reve
Dane Cook ~ any show
DangerDoom ~ The Mouse and the Mask
Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds ~ Live at Luther
Devendra Banhart ~ any album
The Ditty Bops ~ The Ditty Bops
Dizzee Rascal ~ "Boy in da Corner" or "Showtime"
Dogs Die in Hot Cars ~ Please Describe Yourself
Donovan ~ Greatest Hits
Dungen ~ Ta Det Lungt
The Earlies ~ These Were the Earlies
Edan ~ Beauty and the Beat
Eels ~ any album
El-p ~ Fantastic Damage
Fatlip ~ The Loneliest Punk
Feist ~ "Let It Die" or "Monarch"
The Fiery Furnaces ~ any album
Fiona Apple ~ Extraordinary Machine(Jon Brion Version)
Fischerspooner ~ Odyssey
Flaming Lips ~ Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Four Tet ~ any album
Franz Ferdinand ~ any album
Fugees ~ the Score
The Futureheads ~ the Futureheads
Georges Brassens ~ any album = Constantly perfect for any situation
The Go! Team ~ Thunder, Lightning, Strike
Guru ~ Jazzmatazz vol 1, some of vol 3
Harry Nilsson ~ The Best of Harry Nilsson
IAM ~ "Anthologie" or "Revoir Un Printemps"
Imogen Heap ~ i Megaphone, Speak For Yourself
Iron and Wine ~ any album
Jack Johnson ~ "On and On" or "In Between Dreams"
Joanna Newsom ~ The Milk-Eyed Mender
Johnny Cash ~ Unearthed
Jurassic 5 ~ any album
Kaiser Chiefs ~ Employment
Kano ~ Home Sweet Home
Kathryn Williams ~ Relations
Keane ~ Hopes and Fears
Kings of Convenience ~ any album
The Knife ~ Silent Shout
Kraftwerk ~ Minimum Maximum
Dominik Eulberg ~ Kreucht & Fleucht
Le Peuple De L'herbe ~ Cube
Lemon Jelly ~ Lost Horizons
The Life Aquatic Soundtrack
Lightning Bolt ~ Hypermagic Mountain
Lil' Jon & the East Side Boyz ~ Crunk Juice
M.I.A ~ Arular
Madvillan ~ Madvillainy
The Magic Numbers ~ The Magic Numbers
The Magnetic Fields ~ i
Mahjongg ~ RayDONcoNG
Menomena ~ I Am The Fun Blame Monster!
MethodMan & Redman ~ Blackout
Mike Jones ~ Who is Mike Jones?
Milla Jovovich ~ The Peopletree Sessions
Mu ~ Out of Breach
My Morning Jacket ~ Z
Mylo ~ Destroy Rock & Roll
Mystikal ~ Prince of the South
Nellie McKay ~ "Get Away From Me" or "Live at Aldrich Museum"
The New Pornographers ~ any album
Nick Drake ~ any album
The Royal Tenenbaums Soundtrack
Nintendo ~ Theme songs from about 50 NES games
The Notwist ~Neon Golden
Of Montreal ~ Satanic Panic In The Attic
OOIOO ~ Gold & Green
Panic! At The Disco ~ A Fever You Can't Sweat Out
Patrick Wolf ~ Wind in The Wires
Paul Wall ~ most albums
Peaches ~ "The Teaches of Peaches" or "Fatherfucker"
Petra Haden ~ Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out
Postal Service ~ Give Up
Quasimoto ~ The Futher Adventures of Lord Quasimoto
Radiohead ~ any album
Roisin Murphy ~ Ruby Blue
Royksopp ~ Melody A.M.
RZA ~ The Formula of the Cure
Sage Francis ~ A Healthy Distrust
Serge Gainsbourg ~ any album
The Shins ~ any album
Slim Thug ~ Already Platinum
The Smiths ~ The Queen Is Already Dead
The Streets ~ Original Pirate Material
The Strokes ~ any album
Sufjan Stevens ~ any album
System of a Down ~ any album
Tangerine Dream ~ any album
The Unicorns ~ Who will Cut out Hair when Your gone?
Vincent Gallo ~ any album
Vitalic ~ ok Cowboy
We Are Scientists ~ With Love and Squalor
The White Stripes ~ any album
Wilco ~ Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Wolf Parade ~ Apologies to the Queen Mary
Yeah Yeah Yeahs ~ Fever to Tell
Ying Yang Twins ~ United States of Atlanta

Wow that was ridicoulous, i feel like a fast forward through alot of songs while i listen on shuffle, and looking through the list of bands in my library it looked like there wouldnt be that many on this list. i was wrong. I have always wanted to have a part on my blog for "Now Playing" a la Mr. Hemauer's, but alas i generally listen on shuffle which means i am now playing like 20 some various bands. I thought this would be easier, but this took like 2 1/2 hours, so much for saving time.