Things I've heard or read this week

it's on youtube.. isn't everything these days.
hey I can't talk long, I've got diarrhea.
I wish I was that type of person. You know. The kind that writes out their feelings, then it's all okay.
The real story of a life is the story of its humiliations.
I wish my anus had teeth. I won't elaborate.
I hope I never see Britney Spears' buki-luki.

And just so people won't think my ears are completely in the gutter along with my mind, I actually had someone use this quote in a conversation with me this weekend.

"Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens." - Carl Jung

All this commercialization
No, not Christmas. I haven't celebrated that in over 4 years. I'm no humbug, but I'm at the point of being oblivious to the whole spectacle. I'm either away in the tropics or home enjoying the quiet.

Back to the story. Commercials.

I was out trawling youtube for a set of commercials that became a phenomenon in the U.K. Levi Jeans. The best one of all, imo, is the 'Tainted Love' ER one.

The chick dancing on the table towards the end makes me think of Miranda Bailey on Grey's Anatomy. Yes, I watch it. yes, I like it. Anyway, a very well done ad, considering this was way back in the early 90s.



While out browsing for that I came across another Levi's commercial called 'Moonbathing' which made me smile as me and my cousions used to do that when we were kids thinking we would get paler. Childhood logic, go with it. However, We never had such groovy music to do it to. "Screw Loose" by Tipper is the soundtrack. There is a shorter version of it that was broadcast on t.v. Who knew that even commercials get a 'director's cut' these days?



Incommunicado
I drove somewhere way out in the desert this week and my cell phone didn't drop service like it usually does. I searched to see if I could see a cell tower or something out on the "Nothing Lives Here Flats" and my eyesight is good, but there was nothing. I got a bit perterbed by it. A bit paranoid, wondering where the tower was... hidden? Where are they? They're out here watching me and I can't see them... I ate a twix and drank some red bull. And then was a bit miffed because I wasn't out of range. There is something nice about not being able to get calls and it's not your fault, moreso than when you purposely turn your phone off. (Does anybody ever turn their phone off anymore?) and the freedom of it. You get back in range and say "oh yeah, sorry, I was out of range," and you feel good saying it, like it means you actually go somewhere and have a live beyond the safety fence of the city limits. You feel grown-up, no longer holding mom's hand to cross the street.


So I drove across the desert holding mom's hand. So to speak. What a complete wuss.

Tacnik et in glorium quom no tecnik. Or something

Pinocchio's got wood
OK so I lied back there. I do send Christmas cards out. But I do it as a defense so no one cottons on to my blasphemous, atheistic, almost satanic practice of "life sans xmas". I've got 60 cards, envelopes, even the stamps and they've sat here on my desk for 3 weeks and I still haven't written them out or gotten them to the post office. Sometimes I get so angry with my procrastination that I think that I need to kick myself up the ass. And then I decide I'll kick myself tomorrow.

You are a number
When you died I thought clocks would stop. I was a little annoyed that they didn't, it seemed disrespectful. I still had an unopened email in my inbox from you and didn't know if it was right to read it now, with you being gone and all. It's still there. I heard someone got a birthday card from you a week after we put you n the ground. You said 'Happy Birthday, I love you!" and all they could do was cry when you thought it would make them smile. I started my regular purge of numbers from my cell phone the other day. And I saw yours in there. Not used in over 9 months, and now never will be, your family shut it down after 'it' happened. We all started calling it 'it', it just seemed easier. We didn't want to think of the moment when you moved from 'is' to 'was' and everything we knew was all we would get, nothing more to be added. Apart from a birthday card or an email. I thought about all the people who might not know, all the people you'd met and how you'd affected them. People who got someone stopping on a freeway at night to help change a tire, or the someone stopping to help them pick up groceries from a split bag in the parking lot. Then I thought about people who had walked over your footprints on paths and trails around the country, I wonder what happened to your hiking boots? So I sat there looking at that number, the one I would never call, and your name displayed in Helvetica bold. I never knew a font could look so rude. I wanted to press delete and then confirm yes and be done. But sitting there I knew I wouldn't. Today I went out and bought a new phone.

Well, I thought it was time to let some of the light escape from under my bushel. No comments on my bushel please. The paragraph above is from a one-man show I wrote (and got to perform a couple times) about three years ago. It consists of a series of spoken pieces that switch back and forth from 1st person recollections and life POVs to one individual remembering childhood events and things happening in the news. You start to see a pattern emerge as you realize that everyone (not all the parts are from the same person) is involved in the 'day' that 'it' happens. The main character is the one who dies. That piece above is one of the two 'epilogues', a friend who is seeing the 'ghost' of the person but not in supernatural ways and the other is his mother who speaks last about her son who was like some 23 year long Christmas and now it's gone, January is synonymous with the future - bleak and new. I was encouraged to share it by a friend who said putting it in the public domain would free me from something. And yes, this is me being vague. But at least she will stop nagging me about it.

Eyes wider than wide
It's called disbelief. I read this story today about how 'circumcision is the new solution to AIDS' and I just about had a stroke. This is just the kind of irresponsible and craptastic advice that I would expect to come from the cakeholes of spokespeople for the whole abstinence movement.

But I guess this crud did... it came from the National Institute of Health. Even some loopyfruit U.S. government piehole said in the article:

"Prevention efforts must reinforce the ABC approach — abstain, be faithful and correct and consistent use of condoms."

Be faithful? This moralizing of an international problem is nothing short of politicizing death and manipulating it, grist for the fear mill. I shouldn't be surprised, but I can be dismayed.

I don't doubt that it's possible that in certain segments of the world such genital modification might help prevent HIV transmission but the ONLY thing proven to consistently and effectively work in slowing the dread progress of this pandemic is


That we feel the need to impose a morality statement on not just another continent but literally hundreds of cultures, where people are less 'acclimatized' to western speak this message could become a dangerous 'opt out' clause or justification for condom usage in the prevention of all STDs.

Once again, your government fucking things up in another country.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 14, 2006 at 3:25 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.