There’s no new way to go

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Starfucker – Mystery Cloud

Everybody should do in their lifetime, sometime, two things. One is to consider death. To observe scowls and skeletons and to wonder what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up. Ever. That is a very gloomy thing for contemplation, but it’s like manure. Just as manure fertilizes the plants and so on, so the contemplation of death and the acceptance of death is very highly generative for creating life. You’ll get wonderful things out of that.

Our brains create algorithms for every action or process. When we repeat something, we just reach back to a pre-written formula and read the script. That’s why we use less cognitive capacity when playing video games than sleeping. That’s why we can groggily follow a routine after we wake up but before we’re conscious of the world around us.

Unexpected changes to the world mean we have adjust — revisit the algorithm and either tamper with the code or write a new one for the new situation. That’s why it’s easier to pick up new habits when the rest of your life is in flux. If you want to quit smoking, just move. Your brain gets in algorithm-writing mode and lets you input new data (such as, “I don’t smoke cigarettes”) with less of a fuss. It’s stressful and exhilarating.

Today, after I dropped Goon off at the place she’s crashing, I put my headphones in. They are HiFiMan re-0s. To distinguish left from right earbud, they have a tiny letter engraved on them, but unless there is blaring lighting, I can’t make it out. A week ago I snuck into a Popular and used a sharpie to draw a big red dot on the right earbud, but I’ve since rubbed it off. It was 1 a.m., so I blindly shoved the earbuds in and started driving back home.

It’s surprising how a little thing like hearing the left-panned audio in your right ear can disorient you. I felt upside down. I felt like I was spinning counterclockwise. I felt lost.

[Reptilians.]

Note: My roommate says the name Starfucker is a reference to anal sex. I don’t like that. It feels crude. I like to think the name refers to sexual intercourse with literal stars. I like to imagine human genitalia rubbing against nuclear-fissioning plasma. This note carries no real significance, but, well, you read it anyway.

Posted on April 1, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments »

I will find a crowd and blend in for a minute

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The Mountain Goats – Get Lonely

A second finding is that adult TCKs are also somewhat out of synch in aspects of their lives outside of education. Throughout their lifetimes there are subtle differences between them and the American generation that came into adulthood in the same historical period. Not being like their peers is usually of great import (and sometimes extremely painful) in the late teens and twenties, but it is of lessening centrality with increasing age.

How long does it take for TCKs to become adjusted to American life? The majority of our adult TCKs, including those over 65, report mild to severe difficulties with what has been called “re-entry problems” or “reverse culture shock.”

This area is rich in literature and a number of reorientation programs have been established by overseas schools, the organizations which sponsor the parents abroad, and international centers of colleges and universities. The programs help the young people through the transition to living in the U.S.

The answer to the question of how long it takes them to adjust to American life is: they never adjust. They adapt, they find niches, they take risks, they fail and pick themselves up again. They succeed in jobs they have created to fit their particular talents, they locate friends with whom they can share some of their interests, but they resist being encapsulated. Their camouflaged exteriors and understated ways of presenting themselves hide the rich inner lives, remarkable talents, and often strongly held contradictory opinions on the world at large and the world at hand.

[TCKWorld / Get Lonely.]

Posted on March 27, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments »

The Jigsaw Jam

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Flicker on, flicker on like a train at night. [The Jigsaw Jam.]

Posted on March 23, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments »

The soft spot on a piece of fruit

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Craig Finn – Not Much Left Of Us

I saw my sixth grade teacher today. She has cancer now. Has for a while. I haven’t seen or talked to her for a decade and a half.

She was shuffling through the mall, green shawl tied around her bald head, leaning heavily on her husband. He’s some 10 years her junior and has always carried a boyish energy. Now graying, face drooping, his gait still bounces – heels eager to leave the earth. He was smiling oddly. Like he was proud to be parading around his wife, or maybe proud to be showing her the world which has become increasingly his own domain whereas hers is the dimly lit living room, a damp cloth on her forehead, or Lysoled hospital halls.

I didn’t stop them. What does one say to someone dying of cancer? Besides, I didn’t want to take out my headphones mid-song. “There’s not much left of us. The part that remains is rotten and bruised, the soft spot on a piece of fruit.”

[Clear Heart Full Eyes.]

Posted on March 22, 2012 - Tunes - 1 Comment »

What comes after this momentary bliss?

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Beach House – Myth

Swag is a particular performance of masculinity, a style of cockiness that can be traced back to the classic, white masculine swagger of someone like John Wayne. In modern times however, swag is more associated with the dominant pose of urban black men, who, through hip-hop and other cultural forms, have influenced expressions of masculinity amongst non-blacks as well. Swag, in other words, is the product of a deeply American merry-go-round of racial posturing and borrowing.

It’s also a defining but contested attribute of the modern NBA. When the league enforces dress codes amongst the players or when fans complain about “too many tattoos” on the court, these are essentially reactions to swag, which is to say, reactions to the perception of an excess of blackness. When columnists like The Daily Beast’s Buzz Bissinger discussed the NBA’s “race problem,” this is what they used to mean… at least B.L. (Before Lin).

For Asian American men, the fact that Lin exhibits swag is important because it validates a desire to lay claim to the conventional masculinity that many feel has long been denied them. Emasculation is a long-standing, dominant trope in pop culture representations of Asian and Asian American men; suffice to say, it is a tricky and conflicted subject, something that could — and has — filled books. Therefore, for those Asian American men who feel like masculinity is a club that everyone else has membership to, someone like Lin is a godsend, not just because he’s performed well in the NBA — one of the grand stages of contemporary American masculinity — but because he’s done so with swag. Those displays, such as wagging a blue Gatorade-tinged tongue after hitting a big three vs. the Jazz, confirms he’s “one of us,” not the kind of emotionless, inscrutable figure seen in so many Orientalist caricatures. This is an irrational fear anyway; Lin grew up in the Asian American Mecca of the Bay Area, he’s told interviewers his favorite player growing up was Latrell Spreewell, and even if his favorite groups are mostly Christian rap and rock artists, at least he likes hip-hop. But it’s not just enough for him to tell people this; swag is showing it.

[LA Review Of Books / Bloom.]

Posted on March 21, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments »

When attack is your only defense

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Posted on March 20, 2012 - Videos - No Comments »

Mercy me

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Posted on March 20, 2012 - Videos - No Comments »

I’m alive, except for the inside

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Craig Finn – No Future

I find realization through coitus. Through [the] conjugal I am angelic somehow.

The only problem is the navigation of two vastly different psychological states — the pre-ejaculatory male psychology and the post-ejaculatory male psychology. I’m a different person after I’ve cum.

Before I cum, I’m kind of saucy, filthy, dirty, animal-man thing. I’ll do it out. ‘Yeah, let’s get lost together; let’s become one. We are the flesh! Try the sewing machine, the anaconda, and introducing: the matrix. They’re all there. I’m going to make you hear color. I’m going to make you see sound. We’re going to die tonight!’

Then after I cum it’s like, ‘Oh my god what have I done?’ A sense of profound existential angst. A sense of loss. The idea that somehow I’ve let my mum down.

And that is why I’m baffled by the British phenomena of seagulling. Seagulling is a craze — if we can call it such — in British schools where post-(evidently)-adolescent boys, post-pubescent boys masturbate and then ejaculate into their own cupped hand, go up to a school friend or a teacher, and say “SEAGULLING.” [*Makes flicking/flinging motion with hand*]

Now I’ll be the first to admit that that is bad manners.

But that is not what intrigues me. I am intrigued by their ability to navigate these undulating psychological states. How can a schoolboy get from the pre-ejaculatory psychology to the post — such a tumultuous, undulating, unsure terrain? I can’t cope with it [and] I’m a man; he’s just a boy. How do they do that? How can they cope with that profound journey? How can a boy — a boy! — be masturbating and think ‘fucking hell, I’m gonna cum, I’m gonna cum, oh fuck me, ungh, I’m gonna fucking cum, *orgasm sounds*’, [pause] ‘one day I will die’, [pause] ‘SEAGULLING’?

[Russell Brand / Clear Heart Full Eyes.]

Posted on March 12, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments »

Fill your pockets up with earth

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Tom Waits – Singapore

Somewhere in Singapore, lost forever, likely crumpled and vomit encrusted in some cranny of an overpriced hostel one stop along the purple MRT line away from Dhoby Ghaut, is my best shirt. [Rain Dogs.]

Posted on March 7, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments »

I’ve got to be strong

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Retribution Gospel Choir – I’m a Man

My tongue burns easier than most. I consider this a deficiency.

The Revolution EP, free:

Posted on March 4, 2012 - Tunes - No Comments »

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