Robusto digs Reality

Beauty

2009-09-24T19:33:00.003-04:00

We went to Orinda, near the Oakland and Berkeley (East Bay, baby!), and we got a whole slough of pictures from our friends the Bensusens. Rea Bensusen went with us to New Zealand on our last trip and now we have the pictures to prove it!

Anyhow, right now I am living in Carmel, CA. It is one of the most beautiful places in the world, although the more I live in different places, the more I realize that beauty is so relative. If one keeps an open mind, there is intense beauty to be found everywhere. Cities like New York mingle the strange beauty of urban landscaping with pockets of exposed nature. In NYC, this can be seen in the jagged rock formations of St. Nicholas Park and Central Park, or in the Bronx, near City Island. And of course, New York has urban sanctuaries of culture, pockets of thriving subculture and its incomparable diversity on display in every corner of the city. Meanwhile, Carmel, which has very few of the urban charms of New York, does have the cypress groves of point lobos, the moody Pacific with its constantly rolling fog and churning waves, the gulls, cormorants, herons and other birds crowding the water - a cornucopia of sea life; Then there are the ingenious twists and turns of highway 1 and the magnificent homes and concourses that make this area a hotspot for the rich and famous. And that's just coastal Carmel.

Bottom line: There is a lot of incredible beauty in this country, and I could talk endlessly about all of it, but I wont, because you would get annoyed with me.

Open letter to the McCourts: Continue to Disregard Previous Open Letter

2009-06-14T19:17:00.002-04:00

Okay, so Ned Colletti can remain a part of the Dodgers family. Sorry Ned. The Dodgers have a tremendous record this year. It's like therapy for all the unnecessary anxiety I have put myself through being a Dodgers fan. Just because they never put it all together in the last two decades doesn't mean that I have to bite a belt every time they leave the bases loaded.

So I might as well enjoy the great record and the fact that we have young players who we have actually allowed to come to their prime as Dodgers (all the best, Paul Konerko and Pedro Martinez). This is one of those funny cases of cutting the budget being a good thing. The Dodgers picked up some great veterans last year - shalom Brad Ausmus! - and this year they are perfectly willing and able to platoon players who are playing sub-par - shalom Juan Castro! Plus, they no longer like losing streaks!

And I have to give my respect to Jonathan Broxton, who I believe is officially the new scariest pitcher in baseball (now that Randy Johnson has become old school). I am glad Vinny has gotten a chance to announce this season. It's a nice reward to him for all the games he spent avoiding saying that Dodgers were playing like crap over the years.

Birthday Sex should be renamed

2009-06-14T18:13:00.005-04:00

The song 'Birthday Sex' is sure great. Not only does it contain a subtle critique of standard sex ("we're changing positions," singer Jeremih cleverly suggests) but it contains an elegant product placement for Mo-easy, which I assume is a new alcoholic drink with the date rape drug already in it.

Wait, internet research shows that this is just a street-savvy way of referring to Moet, which is obviously a shout out to LVMH (Louis Vuitton, Moet and Hennessy - the urban music trifecta), which has officially gotten hip hop more ass at this point than both drug money and the false offer of instant celebrity. Way to go on the milestone LVMH!

I mean, let's face it, you only have one birthday a year, so the song is really about a once a year booty call (or multiple if you have a hard time holding onto a sex partner). So once that birthday rolls around, then its like "just 364 days to go before this song gets me some again! Wait, is it a leap year?"

I mean couldn't you call it something like "Payday Sex," "Bill Pay Sex" or "Semi-Annual Checkup Sex"? At least then you would get more chances to have celebration sex. You know "Celebration Sex" wouldn't be a bad name except the syllables in that title would make it really hard for T-Paine to synthesize Jeremih singing it. Not sure he can squeeze in an extra two syllables and still sound like a robot. "Celebration Sex" is nice because then you could do a little retro sample of "Celebration" by Kool & the Gang. And, you could justify sex at any time, since "there's a party going on right here/A celebration to last throughout the year."

Now I know what the people behind this song are saying: We are making boatloads of money on this song, so shut up, you effete over-educated schlamil! But to them I say: I don't want to have to get a new sex partner every time I want that song to work, and I don't want to be distracted from sex by the thought of my facebook birthday reminder email. But that's just me, I'm sure.

Open letter to the McCourts on Ned Colletti: Please Fire Him

2008-06-04T01:15:00.003-04:00

I do not usually write baseball entries, but I am desperate.

Ned Colletti, the General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, must be fired as soon as possible. Simply put, he has failed the Dodgers. He has spent a lot of money while allowing the team to descend into a state of unwarranted mediocrity.

Here are the people he has signed for the Dodgers who have gone on to under-produce:

Jason Schmidt - injuries
Bill Mueller - retirement
Nomar Garciaparra - injuries
Andruw Jones - injuries and terrible (multi-year) slump
Rafael Furcal - injuries

Here are the players whom he had no reason to expect numbers in proportion to the salary they were offered:

Julio Lugo
Mark Hendrickson
Wilson Betemit
Ricky Ledee
Randy Wolf
Luis Gonzalez
Mike Lieberthal
Roberto Hernandez
Esteban Loaiza

How many shortstops does a team need? How many Center Fielders? Why pay players a great deal of money when they have a history of injury (Nomar), surgery (Schmidt) or bad performance (Jones), who force the healthier, more consistent players to change positions (Juan Pierre)? Why entrust the team to a person who has found a way to turn the dugout bench into a Chavez Ravine branch of the Federal Reserve?

The Dodgers have hired a great many veterans in the last few years, and their young players have been the primary support and production. This is one way to keep young players on the team, but it is not a way to win a championship.

Please, Mr. and Mrs. McCourt, fire this man, before he digs the franchise into a deeper hole.

A new term for sustainability

2007-04-20T14:00:00.000-04:00

On WorldChanging.com, Mike Lin has written a call to action to revise the term "sustainability," while I do not like declaring the death of terms, concepts and ideas in general, sustainability is a terminally static term.

Consider it: All the term describes is the capacity of a situation to be perpetuated - how long can this or that remain the status quo? Sustainability is a fine term to describe the need for a relative reversal of people's move to shorten our collective attention spans and to waste our collective resources, but it is not inspiring.

What if we replace sustainability with something simple like "Earthly," "Alive," or "Human". A culture that seeks to see in the world a setting of great value, of intense power. We need a movement that recognizes that the world we live in is not indifferent and has throughout it evidence that modesty, clarity, cooperation and interoperability are essential values for shared survival and for the thorough appreciation of the beauty and sensitivity of a stunningly diverse planet.

Now I will write straightforward

2006-11-17T19:46:00.000-05:00

Blogging is so fun. I love it. Its like writing in a really personal way, only you invite the reader to get distracted.

Go ahead, follow my link.

I dare ya.

The truth is that there is a lot of garbage out there on the web. In order to survive as a webber, you have to be part spider. If you are any part fly, you will be sucked of your life, by way of debilitating computer viruses, identity snipers and other nerve-inducing anonymous entities.

I don't know what's going to happen in terms of net neutrality. It seems pretty obvious that, despite the democrat-run senate, we are looking at a culture that is driving head-on into "private-sector" politics. This is seen by many to be a good thing. Certainly, corporations have the power to do a lot that public interest groups, governments, and private citizens don't. But, of course, corporations are only after profits. Does this not bother a lot of people in a serious way?

It ought to bother a lot of people. After all, profits don't leave much space for anything that isn't predetermined. So, if you like independence, you had better fight for net neutrality, otherwise doing things your own way will most likely be really annoying.

On an entirely different note: Donald Sutherland is advocating for McDonald's House Charities on an ad for Grey's Anatomy. Why do the celebrities hop on board for corporate sponsorships? john Goodman does Dunkin' Donuts. Sylvester Stallone does... pretty much whatever he can get. Same with Christian Slater... Its almost as though these celebrities don't have any sense of commercial perspective. I mean, if you start doing shit, who's to say that you'll get too many opportunities to do quality in the future. More to the point, they might not recognize it when it comes.

Actually, its not an entirely different note. Charity is now done through the biggest corporations; "Good" media is sponsored by the biggest corporations; pretty much, if you want to have a good time in this world, you either have to set your own standards or you have to cope with a blast of commercial enterprise every now and again.

You know the whole commercial thing wouldn't bother me so much if I didn't care about all the poor people who are totally disenfranchised, and the environment that is being more and more systematically mined of everything in it to feed consumer culture's drive for profits and consumers' drive to fill that aching hole in their souls. Most of America has given up on finding a solution to this conundrum, figuring that our best bet is on watching to see corporations' "self-interest" turn to protecting the world.

The clock is just going to tick and tick and tick...

In the meantime, have you heard about sustainability(academic studies)? Or what about sustainability (NGO)? There's also sustainability (environmental justice)? Did I mention sustainability (yippie sustainability haven)?

Once people are done calling me names, let's start working on a culture that heads us towards a future that we all want to live in.

Fighting myself for the American Dream

2006-05-09T00:16:00.000-04:00

I don't really know what happened in the last 24 hours, but I think that I am officially in a languid frame of mind.

Maybe it was the episodes of the television show: Curb Your Enthusiasm. Maybe it was the sensation that I am in a sanguine ice floe of spiritual tundra. Humphrey Bogart and Marlena Deitrich are doing a tango in my heart. Seductive, curling whisps of malaise are unfolding about me in the cafe of my soul. I am adrift in the luxurious fin de siecle apholstery that enfolds me in this part of my psyche. This is the retirement community of my heart.

This is the Fort Lauderdale of my spiritual landscape.

On a more positive note, I interviewed a person in Spanish today. I can gladly report that I understood a fair amount of what he had to say. He was a nice fellow. And he was very patient with me.

I can state without a shadow of a doubt that speaking Spanish in today's USA is important. It's not just important: those who don't speak Spanish are missing out on the most vibrant part of American culture.

Let me ask you this (in light of the liklihood of no one responding to this post, I will answer this question myself.): What group of Americans has really gotten together and said "hey, you guys, stop being jerks!" The Spanish speaking Americans. Who has marched through the streets saying it? The Spanish speaking Americans.
Who has elected presidents who are saying it? The Spanish speaking Americans*
Who has started really effectively using alternative energy and eco-tourism? The Spanish speaking Americans**

* "Americans" used with its more reasonable intercontinental referent.
** For the sake of brevity, "Spanish speaking Americans" is used to refer to Spanish and Portuguese speaking Americans.

There is a lot to be said in this culture of amazingness about the people who say: "Hey, could you please live up to your name?"
I was proud to be an American walking down the street in NYC, surrounded by people waving various flags and chanting that soccer chant. I truly was, because the truth is, these people are the ones who express our communal love of this country.

They really want to be here.

I, for one, am proud to be part of a country that people are passionate about.

The people in this country who are fighting for the rights of immigrants are fighting for the American dream. Meanwhile, our money is being ciphoned into tropical banks (as well as that hole in the middle of the EU where all the money goes.) Let me say this: I am not into war. I will not take sides. But will Carl Icahn bank with me? Not in this lifetime, buster.

My advice to super rich people: calculate the amount of money you will need to make you and your family comfortable and happy for the next 200 years and then donate the rest of it in local infrastructure in the United States (re: TAX DEDUCTION). I am telling you, with a 200 year nest egg, you will still have plenty to give Los Angeles a great subway that will take many cars off the road, you will give enough to pave all the streets in San Antonio. You will give enough to make sure that what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas (please, for the love of God), but most importantly, you will give enough so that Americans can really get some skills taught in the schools.

By the way:

Someone has taken sick.com, and it is neither a comedy nor a fetish/death metal page. We are living in scary times.

On a sidenote, I am proud to declare my funk lifted.

Best to you all!

Asking and listening

2006-03-09T01:09:00.000-05:00

I started talking on NYC subway cars, thanking people for using public transportation. It was kind of a lame move, but I wanted people to remember that public transport helps keep the city moving without putting a whole lot more cars on the street. It was definitely an act of desperation and has gotten pretty much no support.

In rethinking this, I came to a better idea. I am now interviewing people about the environment. I don't ask loaded questions if I can help it, just open ended things like what images do you associate with the environment, and what sort of connection do you see between your social and religious/spiritual upbringing and the environment. Stuff like that.

I've learned some amazing things, like how bad the air is in Jawalpindi, Pakistan, and how powerful planting a tree in the back yard can be, and how teenaged girls are eager to say whatever comes to their mind about the environment, calling it "roadkill" or "an abundant willow tree" or "the circumstance that influences all our decisions." I have learned that the environment is seen as great beauty, but also extreme cold. It is amazing and harsh, and people love its animals and its trees and they know about its causes.

The key is and always will be getting the conversation on the right topic: the environment, that part of the world that we all share. It includes a lot, so conversation can go in a lot of directions, just keep listening.

The day I spoke on a train

2006-02-17T12:32:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was the day i spoke on a train. I was on The Metro North Railroad heading up into Westchester from Grand Central Station. I debated whether or not to do it. I had to motivate myself to not wait forever and not hold my tongue and not worry too much about how people would react. I goaded myself until I felt I had no other choice. I waited until the ticket collectors had left the car and then I stood up in the middle of the fourth car of the six-car train and called people to attention.

"ladies and gentlemen, I would like to make a brief announcement. Please be aware of the environmental impact of your purchases. I just really wanted to say that."

That was my announcement and it was heard by at least some of the people on the train. The woman sitting beside me when i returned to my seat put away her New Yorker magazine and congratulated me on doing something good. We talked until she got off the train two stops later. She had thought that what i was saying was good, and she believed in "the power of one". So clearly, I was just doing what was natural. She had been dozing off before I got up and started talking at people. She also spoke of manipulating: how i would have to manipulate the media environment to draw people's attention to Environmental causes. We agreed that people are living detrimentally to the environment, but she felt it was best to use conventional means to get my point across.

I disagree, because what I did by standing up was to stand up to the manipulations that abound in our society, the manipulations that caused many of the people on the train to think

1. This person standing up is some nutcase.
2. This person standing up is some kind of hippie.
3. This person standing up is an alarmist or a terrorist.
4. This person is just selling me a bill of goods like all the other hucksters who stand in the subway cars with their hats out looking for a handout.

These reactions help people trust the New Yorker over someone standing in their line of sight talking to them directly, mouth to ear. That may be for the best, but i don't want people to drift through their days thinking that noone actually cares, that no one actually thinks that they can have an impact.

My speech, however brief, had answers to these reactions.

1. I spoke politely but firmly. Briefly and self-consciously. If I were a nutcase, I wouldn't have been so conscious of the intrusion that I was making on these people's lives.

2. Let's face it, I am a hippy. I wear a beard, have a heavy conscience and hug trees. That being said, I spoke to new Yorkers about money matters, and hell, if I am a hippy, at least I am flexible enough to show some understanding of these peoples' reality. After all, the train I was on was passing through Scarsdale, average home price - over $.5 million.

3. I think it might be a relief to a New Yorker to have someone get up in front of them on mass transit and NOT take them hostage. It happens far too often on our TV sets and in our movies and other facets of fake life. Lets draw the line between fake life and real life by showing that I can make a general request, transmitted voice to ear, and then sit down and shut up about it. I asked people to be aware, not to worry or to feel guilty. My statement did not have anything to do with an apocalyptic vision unless that vision was already in the listener's head, which is none of my business anyways.

4. Whatever I gain from this announcement is also gained by all the people who heed it. I am not asking peoipel to give me anything or to buy from any particular company. Of course, I am asking them to think green, which benefits someone like me who intends to work green, but that's far enough down the line that I think its a safe bet.

I still got some avoidance from people who were clearly unsettled or annoyed by my interruption, or just thought I was another voice in the din of opinions. Perhaps, but in this case, they could at least see the person who was talking to them, if they so chose.

Either way, I think that I am going to have to try this again, using a different rhetorical tack. After all, there are over 20 million people in the New york Metro Area and I cross paths with thousands of them over the course of the day.

Have an ecologically sound day.

Adjustment

2005-12-28T01:32:00.000-05:00

I dunno, since, as I update this blog very infrequently and I have generally nothing of any general interest to say, I can confidently stride into blogville, pull out my e-six shooter and fire off round after round down the streets and hear nothing but oooeeoooeeoooo wah-wah-wah, I will be blunt.

There is no way that a person can be well-adjusted. There is no way that a person can walk around in America and be comfortable. There is no way that a person can work in a place of business and not be fucked over by some image coming through over the radar dish, telling them to buy a blender that can make cooking ten times easier. That's just the breaks. It just makes me feel sad that there are huge swaths of our fine country (I live in the United States of America, FYI) that are simply too poluted to walk the streets in. I mean, its not that people don't do it. But those people generally don't have a choice. I mean, there are parts of the Bronx where grafiti is just a natural bi-product of the oxygen/brick chemical reaction. Sad but true.

Fact: Old people in Spain who live far up in the northern mountains are getting satellite dishes installed on their sun-baked tile rooves. Good work, Hollywood. You got a real buyer there. Those people are going to keep the media industry rolling. But the joke is on you, Rupert Murdoch, because as soon as a cut rate satellite dish company comes out, they are going to be all over that like dieters to angel's food cake cookies.

Fact: Swedes on cruises from Helsinki to Stockholm love to read Danielle Steele novels translated into Swedish. That's right, they have Danielle now. And we thought we had her all to ourselves. Jokes on us, she was playing us. This whole time... No I'm not crying, these are sweat glands under my eyes. They just get inflamed sometimes.

Fact: Europe is named after a cow.

Fact: I am pretty much out of facts.

Fact: I have discovered that you don't need to have any facts to write sentences that are explanatory. You just need a linking verb.

Oh yeah, so I was saying that its really impossible for a person to be adjusted to a society like this one (once again, I refer to the USA). You have to remember, if nothing else, that this is a society built on not adjusting. Look around you and you will see everywhere the cracks in the facade. (Full Disclosure: the previous sentence was stolen indirectly from Jean Baudrillard). Anyhow, my point is this: we are not in an "adjustment" society. People are all too happy to change themselves in various ways and then celebrate (through sever punishment) their rapid, often dangerous swings back to their natural selves. We are a self-medicating, self-help, self-service, self-support group society that selfishly self-annhilates through a suffocating inundation of garbage. And I love it!

No, really, I do. I mean, there are moments when I wonder how people got to be so blind to the world outside of their heads. But then I just go home and put on the TV and all that wondering just goes away! Like Magic! But in the end, I still love America, not for the people ,but for the dogs, because American dogs are very straightforward, amiable creatures. If you piss them off, they let you know. If you feed them, they become lasting friends, and if you come home from a horrible day they don't hold it against you.

Oh who am I kidding, this is a farce! This whole thing is a farce! Oh dear lord! Why are we one phase away from revolution but always revolving back into FAO Schwartz?! Why are we forever listening to the same muzak (copyright, muzak corporation not retained for this usage, all pending lawsuits should be filed with my lawyer Aaron Abramowitz (disclaimer: may not be a real lawyer, or if real may not know who I am))? Anyhow, let me say this: I am not against making a buck, even though I know someone had to die or get needlessly exploited so that that buck could be worth something. I can tell you this, I like being able to come home to a warm house at night and sit in front of a glowing piece of plastic and move my hands while little shapes appear in the two-dimmensional space before my eyes.

Aww shucks. Now, I'm blushing.

Map of the online world

2005-12-22T16:31:00.000-05:00

I haven’t blogged in a while.  Today, I look at my email and I realize that I am just a drop of water in the ocean of bloggers.  I am my own drop, but to you, fair reader, I am still merely one of many.

That is why I say to you, fairest, dearest reader, go out and read.  Read like you have never read before.  Read from voices both shrill and syrupy, read from the blogs of blogger and the live journals of livejournal.  Read and absorb people.  Do not simply absorb text, think about who we are as a people.  If you are a parent you should know that now 57% of teens have created web content, either a blog or a website.  This is the sort of thing that gives a person pause.  It makes you wonder.

Let me please wonder aloud for a brief instant.  We have an online society now.  A database of people’s thoughts, methods, and attitudes that only seems to grow.  We have moved beyond just cataloguing websites and have moved on to tagging things.  This is an entry about people, teens, society, the internet, livejournal, Google (in the age of tags, one must name-drop).  Beyond this, though, we are in a time in which perspective over the internet will be a hot commodity.

Thomas Friedman, oh emblem of American “internationalism” (by this I mean, Americans who talk about things outside of the borders of the United States, however reductively), yes, I daresay, THE Thomas Friedman, has deemed our world now “flat.”  Whatever the merits of this point, I can say this: a web-resource that permits people to see, perhaps in an interactive graphic, a map of online content would be far from remiss.  It would downright rock.  I would love to be able to scour the world of graphic designers’ websites in a format that allows me to localize them.  Mouse over a part of a roadmap and a tree of design sites flowers before your eyes.

At this instant, by articulating this idea, this simulacrum of a web-experience, I am anticipating, as Baudrillard might comment, that there is already something or somebody attempting to fulfill the parameters of this fantasy and that I can probably find such a website although it almost certainly wont be what I have envisioned, unless someone has gotten ahold of a wide array of detritus and made bitmaps of them.  Clown costumes, mounted antlers, rings and teeth dug up from peoples’ backyards, you know, all the good stuff.

So fulfill my damned simulacrum, people.  Do it!  Do it now!!!!!

And email me the link when you’re done.

Anyhow, I still dig reality.  Sometimes too much.

My website

2005-12-09T22:36:00.000-05:00

Here's my site. My spanktaculous new website (Which is unfortunately lacking in quality) I know. I know. It sucks. don't you just wish that it were good? I really wish it was good. I really want a better website for you to enjoy, but I can hardly say that there is anything worth enjoying about this. Or at least nothing that could elicit a guffaw, chuckle, or whatever kind of noise would be applicable to something pleasantly stimulating.

I love it.

And that is not my real signature.

I have a lot of work to do before I am as good as those other bloggers, all 20 million of them. Its just a big old blog-filled spirogyro out there. People write about all sorts of spackle and shine. The spine of our society is quickly becoming virtual. Let us all now pray that someone comes up with some sort of good way to blog.

Blog, what a damned nuissance of a word. Why not Lork or Brom or Molx. I like Molx. Its catchy and human. People are animals, remember. I am typing on this keyboard with fingers, and to me this is surreal. Perhaps this is the hallucinogens speaking, but I think that man is somehow out of his league when attempting to discourse with machines. I mean, we have a lot more in common with gorillas. But you don't see so many people staring at Gorillas and pushing their buttons. Well, actually, I guess that's what zoos are for.

But the point is this: computers are full of joyous zeros and ones. According to the human genome project, now we too are full of jumpin' zeros and ones. There is a stinking vein of crap in this logic. It is very fetid. Veeeeeery fetid. After all, let us consider the facts: I am wearing a shirt, and according to the matrix this is composed of zeros and ones. According to reality this was a garment composed by Chinese and Mexican women and children who have gotten blisters and have been hungry. According to the matrix this has something to do with the mechanical monsters that are feeding on all of our bodies.

Say what?

I guess I am on the side of the evil robots.

That is why my zeros and ones are not as joyous as are those of the hacker in Prague who is drinking a mochachino on the Charlesbridge and watching me type this (virtually).

But by the time he reads this, I will already be a better blogger than his mother!

Oh dissss!!

Wait, why is my keyboard failing?

What's happening to my zeros and ones?!

NoooOOOooo!!!!

I ain't goin our like that.

2005-11-11T16:02:00.000-05:00

My love brought me a cherry/
That had no stone.
My love brought me a chicken/
That had no bone.

It is at this point in this sweet song that bluto blutarski smashes the guitar from which it was wafting (reference only valid for those who have seen the film 'Animal House').

And so goes my interaction with the Macintosh G5 computer which is currently smashing my sweet iMovie project in the midst of its solemn iterations on the poetry of garbage.

Is it that iDVD does not want the world to witness my spectacular DVD menu? Why does it forsake me with its inability to encode my audio? Why?!

Oh, that technology might one day rule us all, and that we may evermore need updating so that we can be up to speed.

We shall never be fully up to date.
Woe be unto the Earth for it is still running on an outdated platform.

I must admit that I have comparatively sped through the process of aftereffects. Its just a bit easier than making a movie from proverbial 'scratch.' What is scratch?

Something about my lack of impeccable organizational skills matched with a very primitive lack of patience has left me with an uncomfortable sense that man, no matter how well-dressed is less removed from the primitive ape than he might hope. Fortunately, I like that I am not too far from a primitive ape. Primitive ape is kind of my forte. I dig primitive ape. If only I could smash this computer without having broken the law and getting kicked out of school.

Well, primitive ape will have to wait.

Maybe one day it will meet space monkey, perhaps in a black hole....

stop, children, what's that sound?

2005-10-21T10:57:00.000-04:00

Sadly, I have not posted much in recent days (weeks), and I apologize to my avid reader.  Tybe, I am sorry.  So, I would like to announce that Citibank has stolen my idea and made a commercial about a man being collected by a garbage truck while he is desperately looking for something in a garbage can.  It was not an old man, nor a saint, I do not believe, but I cannot be sure, for the television was muted at the time.  Suffice it to say, one will have to take my word for it that I did not take the idea from them, because those people at Citibank have pooped my party.  Boo-hoo.

Here is an overview of the sounds I have recorded thus far (many more to come):

Dialogue of a couple of guys from my media theory class discussing anonymity and lack thereof on the internet.

“Narration” of Saint Ted of White Plains as voiced by Ted himself – mumbles to himself, coughs of varying degrees of phlegm, and a brief description of his state of affairs leading up to the day in question.

Some space defining sounds that I have recorded include the clang of the dumpster and the squeals, beeps, whirrs and mechanical announcer of the train.

Time-defining sounds are the sounds of the garbage truck collecting, compacting, driving around, the sound that awakens me many a morning.

I think that the predictive sound that I would like to use (which I have recorded ad nauseum) is the sound of the truck kicking into gear and grinding loudly away.  I have heard that sound many many times over the last days and weeks, and I think that it will provide a nice transition with a taste for inevitability.

In terms of music, I wanted the hollowness of subway music.  I recorded a pan-pipe flutist playing My heart will go under, and other hollow hits in the subway, the sound getting closer and farther away and hidden beneath the arrival of a train.

For energy, I tried to record a super intense frenetic hip-hop type drummer in the subway, but when I hit record the microphone was off without my knowing it.  So I had to settle for a face-paced, but comparatively much more tame subway drummer to try and convey hectic, manic energy of a sick and desperate man.

In terms Figure/Ground, I have recorded the mumbling narration of Ted in part on the scene, and I have him walking near a dumpster coughing and wondering who the man is who is using the dumpster that he is trying to scout out.

Sound perspective is represented by the garbage truck, which I recorded close up and from far away.

Cheese Ridge Evaporation

2005-10-14T17:55:00.000-04:00

She done gone to heaven!

Tybes everywhere

2005-10-14T17:34:00.000-04:00

Ahh photoshop.

The End

2005-10-14T15:14:00.000-04:00

The dumpster was returned to its original location.

The End

Making T.V. worth its salt.

2005-10-06T13:37:00.000-04:00

Ahhh, Self-help!

Do you think that it is just as important to write as it is to read? How important is it to think personal thoughts in response to the thoughts that reading and watching and listening triggers in your head? From my point of view, it is important for all people, not just artists, to express as much as they take in. I think of media consumption much like eating. If you don't exercise, then all the food you eat is just to fill your stomach and provides you with a heavy blanket of fat to keep you warm and immobile. Similarly, if you do not work creatively with all of the ideas and attitudes thrown at you by the various media that you absorb, then you will be awash in experiences that keep you from reacting directly to your situation and from understanding and expressing your own ideas. So T.V. might keep you from getting too upset about how hard you work or how awkward social demands are on you, but it also forces you to pretend that you are not upset, that it doesn't matter or that you are really upset about something else altogether.

You might say, Robusto, I bust my hump to enjoy my entertainments in the peace and quiet of my home. Don't go ruining it by telling me to do more work. To that I say: after only a short time of analyzing your media intake: perhaps three or four one hour conversations with a friend or colleague, you will find that you have established a new source of energy, something not only worth your time, but fun. It's fun because you get to choose what these tv and internet ideas mean to you.

If you want to be able to think quickly or act quickly, you had better challenge the media you take in. Find a way to use it. Find a way to incorporate or reject the ideas.

T.V. and Magazines and the internet generally offer you information as though it were essential truth or completely frivolous fantasy. It is neither, but a sort of half truth that tries to keep your interest but also makes you bored at the same time.

Try to take the stuff of the media and make a couple of truths out of it. What do you think is true? This is hard to come to. Try to make a half truth.

Try to make something of your ideas.
They are yours, after all.

Just do it.

Images from the exhibition

2005-10-01T01:12:00.000-04:00

When the Punctum is the Studium

2005-10-01T01:08:00.000-04:00

Patriotism is a veil. It shields you from certain unpleasant facts. Take for instance the civil war in El Salvador from 1979-1991. As Americans, we can take a look at the civil war as a sort of shame. We might have heard senate hearings on C-Span (unlikely) in which our leaders contested the numbers of reported dead. We might have heard something about how the war has lingered on and on. Perhaps we might have even heard somewhere, or seen something about how American interests in the area have prompted our support of one side over the other. But we see it all through the gauze of our cultural mesh. Unless you distinguish the veil from the event, you will never be able to see the situation for yourself.

Before you go throwing away a perfectly good piece of linen, though, you might consider keeping it for a handkerchief. What you will see, when you look at the images presented at El Salvador: Work of Thirty Photographers, at the International Center for Photography, may leave you needing a rag for your tears. To abuse Barthes’ terms, the photographs of the exhibition are heavy with puncta. It could be a small girl in a sundress on a junk-laden street – a setting that could as well be a back alley in a poor area of Charleston, South Carolina. It could also be a soldier’s ornamental belt buckle - something you might find for a few dollars at Urban Outfitters. It could be a boy’s unbuttoned shirt as he stands by a water fountain. There are elements of the image that leave their imprint upon you by triggering your personal somatic-emotional experience. Through this sort of engagement, this photography will place your triggered feelings into El Salvador’s roads, churches and hillsides where the people who suffer everywhere are not just strangers. Without your personal attachment, these people might not transcend the studium: their significance is tied to your willingness, your desire to absorb their faces into your memory. They can be either victims or individuals, soldiers or boys (often looking to be 12-14 years old). Their faces, postures, the shadows on their teeth and under their eyes may follow you through the other galleries and out into the streets of Manhattan, or they may fold succinctly into your catalogue of atrocities documented and witnessed. From the way I reacted, I think you will find these people to be quite human and irrepressible.

A lasting impression is achieved by a collaboration between the photographer and the subject. There are, to my mind, three interplaying levels of the photograph, roughly related to the foreground, middle-ground and background of a representational visual field. My words for them are the inward, the impassive, and the outward. In one image from the El Salvador exhibition, terrified Salvadorians reach out imploringly to the photographer. In this case, the most potent element in the photograph, the vectors, all push back in the photographer’s direction. The picture being taken is therefore a heavily inward activity. The photograph is well framed so that the imploring faces have plenty of noseroom, but are emphatically presented in screen-right asymmetry. The photographer has stifled his urge to help these people (who are at risk of being trampled) in order to take this picture. The result is that the photographer makes himself passive, makes the picture vulnerable to these aggressive subjects, and the viewer receives the image as though these people are reaching to grab him or her. The viewer is left to internalize the feeling the subject had wanted to impress upon the photographer.

The impassive is an element of a picture in which the photographer engages in a conscious relationship with the subject, who in turn does not reveal all. In this case, the applied aesthetics can only hint at the interpretation sought by the photographer and by extension, the audience. This is the mystery of the picture: the thought on the mind of the child cradling his malnourished belly in Kenneth Silverman’s Las Vueltas. Also impassive is the fierce look in the eyes of the soldier in that same picture, who sets the tone and reflects what the gun barrel at the right edge confirms forcefully – the photographer’s presence in this place, like the civilians’ is perilous, and by association, so is the viewer’s, for that matter. This, to me, is a common element in war photography, in which the situation is unsteady and the picture reveals an uncanny pause in the chaos, as though a short-term truce has been established by the diplomacy of the camera.

Finally, the “outward” elements in the picture are aspects that warrant analysis, but do not or cannot demand it. These are generally framed by the photographer to be absorbed by the audience. A dazzling use of this aspect can be seen in the truck-full of arrested members of popular political organizations in a picture taken by Michel Phillipot. This group has been made to form a pile in a truck-bed like so many bales of hay or animal carcasses. They are closed into the square framing of the truck, and the viewer finds himself closing them into the form made by the soldiers surrounding them. At first, we are not sure of what we are looking at until we grasp that what we see of the detainees are their wrinkled pants and lower legs, face down, showing the scuffed bottoms of their shoes (the confrontational force of the bottom of the feet was something I explored in my own pictures).
The outward elements need the audience to enter into the visual field and interpret, but once interpreted, the elements remain in the mind, held there by the viewer’s implication in analyzing them. The photographer has entered into this situation defiantly and captured it in a way that asks the audience to work for their meaning. The subject has little to do or say on the matter. This is highlighted by the soldiers, who gaze away stoically. In this case, the audience is asked neither to be impressed by the situation (as with the inward elements), nor to defy or confront it (as in the impassive), but to step into it and take part in experiencing it with the photographer.

Please indulge a few words about my own work to prove a point. As I tried to build images out of a few ideas and Zettl’s aspects of Applied Media Aesthetics, I found myself lost analyzing reality. I found myself unwilling at times to even lift the camera to my eye and catch, for instance, an elderly woman bent over her shopping cart, even though I might have been a great distance away. Thinking about subjects as sources of index vectors and as closing into a square, and fussing over the lighting to create flatness or silhouettes was helpful, but I came to understand that photography is as much about the photographer as the subject. When I was ready to take good photographs, I did. All I had to do was stand my ground against my own inclination not to face the situation with my lens. In a sense I found that photographers are very much “agents of death”, as Barthes’ notes. I found myself catching an impression of an instant that has ended. I have marked the end of that instant and that element that will now only be part of reflection. The photographers in El Salvador had a goal: to bring back images to stir foreign audiences into a response to the civil war. They stuck with it and used their skills to fight the war of framing the war. The photographers victimize these people by capturing them in images that reflect some current experience to the viewer, but have long since passed. The moments that the exhibition takes us through are no longer timely in their original context, yet, they last upon our memories like tragedies and memories of the deceased. We cannot help but feel like they will be repeated, that they are elements of a human history.

I think that the best photographs, like Barthes suggests, include a convergence of multiple elements. I like my photograph of my girlfriend passing by an old lady on the street just beneath a sign reading “use two lanes”. It is a bit literal, but it captures a moment with a certain amount of music in it, as though it could continue and lead somewhere and there could be noises and sensations in the air. To me the most lasting and, in the case of El Salvador, devastating pictures are those that contain elements of the inward, impassive and outward in symphony. One such picture is the one entitled La Fosa, by Harry Mattison. A man emerges from the center of the frame, showing his bare back and mane of black hair. He holds a standing baby, dressed in baggy second hand clothing, in his one outstretched hand. They are surrounded by children and adults who are impressed by the spectacle and caught in a moment of suspense as to how long this can last before the baby topples. Yet about half of the crowd is looking not at the spectacle of the standing baby, but at the cameraman behind that spectacle, leaving one to ponder: which is the more essential spectacle? The precarious life of these people, or the photography that enters into their world, is impressed by it, impresses it with an outsiders’ interpretation and yet discovers that they are individuals, to some degree unknowable. Are those people looking at the camera simply wondering what that machine is, or are they confronting us as an audience, asking us what we are going to do about it?

Judge for yourself. And leave the veil behind.

The Back Yard - A fiction exercise

2005-09-30T01:20:00.000-04:00

I look back at this relationship, and I can’t remember how it started. It wasn’t that candle-lit dinner that we watched from the back yard of that house in Sherman Oaks. It’s somehow so poetic to be watching strangers enjoy some intimate moment from their own back yard. That was the moment our relationship got serious, as we clamored over one another to get out of the back yard, falling over a yellow spinning sprinkler. We were already into something by then. You and I got the idea hanging out at the pharmacy. I was behind the counter, and you were there taking forever to buy a case of pastilles. That’s when you stopped being just another face and drooping body that school dragged in front of me every day. I can remember how you used to look. You were pretty new to school, so you hadn’t developed a persona yet. Just in from Canada, you were wearing jeans and a t-shirt. You had a nasty looking cast on your arm, with pins coming out of it and what looked like an intricate pulley system. Of course you weren’t as gaunt as you are now.

So I guess it was a good thing that you didn’t fall on that arm when we were in those peoples’ back yard. You hadn’t been the one who had wanted to do this thing. It was really me pushing you. But, you know it was worth it, because we just sat out there in the darkness, with no real risk of getting caught. You were just getting into one of your Xanax moods. I think that it was when you pulled out the paper bag from your jacket pocket that we had worn out our welcome. The reason, I know you didn’t fall on the arm that was broken at the beginning of the schoolyear was because that was the arm you were using to gingerly hold the bag to your lips as you wheezed into the thing. The crinkling that came with the bag inflating was a lot to deal with. It got me nervous. I was surprised how calm I had been until then.

I remember, you started to wheeze when the people were getting done with their romantic dinner. They had been holding hands across the table, and the man in his red sweater leaned in, slowly, and kissed the woman on the cheek. I remember it looked like he took a bite out of her, because his lips were so drawn and tense at the sides. And the woman, doing her best to look elegant had her hair bobbed in the front and long in the back. She couldn’t hide the sunken cheeks and severe forehead creases of someone who had spent too many hours contemplating spreadsheets and pocketbooks and calendars. The man got up and moved towards the back yard, and you wheezing in my ear was the last thing that I needed, and I decided it was time to go, and I turned and walked right into you in the darkness.

All I can say is thank god for soundproofing. I often think that people like those have soundproofed heads. So we just went out after that. Driving around in your parents’ SUV, we hit up Norms on the West side. It was a long, winding drive, and I sunk into the seat with cold, sweaty palms against my thighs in my pockets. It was a long drive, but that’s why you have a multi-disc changer. It wasn’t so bad, listening to the Rolling Stones live show in the mid-eighties. It was kind of a sad experience actually. Speaking as a Stones nerd, Charlie Watts sounded like he was still in rehab and drumming from inside of an iron lung. But that was just it, we were drumming through our own lives in the iron lung of an absent culture. I think that’s when we pulled over to take a hit from your little plastic bong.

So that’s where it became us relying upon one another. When I needed you to feel like I could do whatever I wanted, even though I never got much farther than sitting in peoples’ back yards. I think that you needed me to remind you that you can take a lead role in a story. All you had to do was be a host to my whimsy. It was so much harder back then to get any traction on the world. When you went home, your house smelled like the same sour disinfectant that it smelled like when your parents bought the place. And you just accompanied them to dinners in front of the television or trips to fine dining in strip malls where your Dad would explain why he picked an Australian wine, and your mother was letting her lazy eye fall all over the room as she chewed through the bottle before dinner arrived.

I was sitting at home at about the same time, just sort of digging my ass into the sofa, slowly growing to be more and more like the dogs, who were in the process of unlearning their training. Since my older brother had graduated and gone off to college in the east, I was pretty well on my own. At this point, things were really starting to unwind and my parents were exploring their personalities, so I was just watching their lives unfold in front of me.

Give me another hit. Now lets go get some food.

Art - a word dogs know and use all the time.

2005-09-27T23:25:00.000-04:00

This is what I think art is: art is communing with the mystical world.  No wait, don’t scoff, I’m serious.  Art is mysticism.  Art is the work that certain people do that brings other people into a communal spiritual place that is a broader form of communication in one way or another than the day to day.  It’s spiritual.  So if you can get your audience to step out of their own shoes for a moment, and they don’t just sit there wondering why they are not in their shoes, then you have made good art.

You are still scoffing.

Seriously, I mean, I’ve gotten to a point in which I am pompous enough to go to an art gallery and get insulted by the way that a curator presents an exceedingly pessimistic view of reality, or the way that certain art galleries are filled with people who don’t look at the art.  The worst to me, however, the thing that ticks me off the worst, is when nobody responds to the art.  I mean, I am a pompous, self-diagnosed artist.  But can’t people react to the stuff in front of them?  I mean, half of the art today is so controversial, so overtly provocative, that it takes an act of will to stymie a reaction.  At least for me.

Okay, let’s face it, that’s probably just me.  And I don’t generally stymie my urges to respond, unless some dude in a black jacket tells me to shut up or get out.

But still, somebody has to be out there that says, well, conventions be what they are, I am sufficiently concerned about this video of children having sex that I will try to consider why the artist did this.  I guess its someone like me who just starts talking to the people around him about what the work means and how it makes me feel.  Other people just don’t presuppose anything about the other people milling about in the gallery.  Its just me and the old folks, and occasionally a really strange guy who will continue to follow you around long after the conversation has run its course and you are running away.

Okay, so I can see how this can get weird.  I can see that.  I admit that there is a weirdo factor going on, but I posit that the weirdos will become a less prominent feature of the gallery discussions circuit once it takes off.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking: Robusto, listen, if everybody started talking at a gallery, then it would be impossible to concentrate.  Especially at a place like MoMA (the newly re-opened Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan – worth several looks [take it a floor at a time – that will be six visits at $20 a visit.  {On second thought, just become a member for $70}]).  My response to you is this: I just want you to react to the art.  Let the art become a communication rather than simply a force of nature.  You know, the artist is interpreting the spirit world, they are not the biggest experts on the subject, and if they get you talking, then you stand a chance of getting something out of the experience and sharing it with those around you, which is rarely a bad thing.

Okay, except when you start talking confrontationally to a very large businessman who begins grinding his teeth when you stand next to him, or a woman who has her arms crossed forbiddingly in front of her and a thirty pound handbag dangling from her wrist like a mace.  These are tell-tale signs.

But yeah, just remind yourself that art is spiritual and that it is showing you how to detach yourself from the real world in an interesting new way.  In the case of African art, it often communicates the exact opposite effect, but most of us wouldn’t know that because it is meant for a very specific audience.  So just be amazed by the spooky faces and outlandish masks, and don’t concern yourself with the rituals that give meaning to that artifice.  But wait, isn’t going to the gallery a ritual of sorts?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm…

Yeah, I guess, but white walls, people in black jackets and a crowd of distracted strangers don’t get you into the moment quite as much as rhythmic chanting, elaborate masquerades and scarification.

Just some thoughts.

Le photographie

2005-09-26T11:36:00.000-04:00

This blogger thing is a pain in the ass. I had some illustrative pictures uploaded, but they were lost. So this is without benefit of visual aids.

Anyhow, I don't so much like reading how i should take pictures and then following the rules, but after doing it, I certainly feel like I have a bit more framework for thinking about framing and picture taking. Its pretty nice. I like the feeling of working through my problems and making progress. I just don't like the feeling of being made into a guinea pig. So I made my girlfriend be my guinea pig.

This project presents my primary dilemma with this class. Do I get all formal and make a project that I am ambivalent about, or do I get personal and make a project that doesn’t conform. I am by nature a perfectionist and a non-planner. No matter what, though, in order to achieve what I want in this sort of class, I have to plan ahead, learn the basic rules of the tools so that the rules don’t confine me, they set me free (hallelujah!!). I am good when I am involved and boring or worse when I use an excuse and opt out. With this project, I didn’t really learn all there was to know about digital photography before I got into the actual project.

I was pretty cocky. I should have been a bit more hen-like. Certain moments found me entering into that strange photographic zen state in which one sees clearly through the view finder, thinks instantaneously about balance and composition and pushes the button at an interesting time.

That was very nice. Often I realized that my best pictures I hadn’t even experienced, because I was so absorbed in what was going on in front of me. Then later, I could look at peoples’ poses and the scenery. It was sort of like the way that people do all sorts of interesting things when they are young and then when they are old they reflect upon those interesting things instead of continuing to do new interesting things. Is photography is aging me prematurely?

This project has gotten me thinking seriously about photography. I should have given more time and taken more pictures without flash or of interesting subjects outside at night. I like to experiment with the camera but the way that I did it, caused me a couple of late nights that I should have not forced myself into. That was bad. What’s worse is that many of my pictures are out of focus. I have to be ready to do my work, not my leisure activities during the day.

I am starting to think about the idea that photography steals the soul. This might account for the way that people tend to cringe or at least brace themselves into a pose when they know they are being photographed. It also reflects in part why people are so haggard in this country, because we live in such a capture-happy culture, people are on guard and security and cleanliness obsessed. The world has to be just right, the world is a dangerous place where anything can and will be used against you by political and emotional terrorists. As Loudon Wainwright sang (probably quoting someone else), people are all dying to be on T.V., to escape being free. It’s all very Erich Fromm. So, that is my rationalization for taking the second option. I wanted to consider the interactions between myself and the people around me. It could have just been that I was shy, but I don’t like to think that. Instead, I was boldly confronting myself by using the impersonal, aggressive action of photography and learning to use it humanely.

My girlfriend turned out to be a perfect case for this study. I started out very clinically following her around and making her stop what she was doing and pose for me. In the process, I began to grate on her nerves. Eventually, for the photography as well as other items on the proverbial laundry list, she got mad at me. She chewed me out for being hyper-critical, and then we got into an absurd kind of fight in which we don’t yell at one another, she just pretends that I am not there at all, makes plans to leave and hang out with someone else, then we make up after I tell her I will try to be a better person in the way she wants me to be better.

I must admit that the fight was mostly about things other than photography, but for my being in a coldly photographic frame of mind: distanced from subject, observing, non-committal. That mindset really made the fight bigger. In the end, I wound up taking more humane, more loving and careful pictures of her, during the fight and once we had made up. It turns out that taking good pictures can be done, but you need to put in the work and focus to do it. I guess it is nice to know that people can change, at least in the short term.

Time Management

2005-09-25T14:05:00.000-04:00

It's after 2 PM and I haven't had breakfast yet. Bah humbug.

Anyhow, last night my love and I went to a benefit concert for Katrina victims put on by the New Yorker. It was an amazing concert. Great actors and writers read from the writings of other great writers, or occasionally, their own writing. Also, many New York and New Orleans-based musicians gave performances. I can't believe it cost $50 a ticket. It was a really heartfelt play at a synthesized race politics. Still, the sea of faces was immaculately white at the intermission. The performers were an interesting mix, but in general there was an awkward line, the white New York of Lou Reed, and the black New Orleans of Buckwheat Zydeco. The black performers really pleased the white crowd - albeit with flares of racial tension provided by the incomparable Toni Morrison, reading Flannery O'Connor, Lou Reed, Kevin Kline singing from a black man's perspective and Terrence Howard, reading Mark Twain as though Mr. Clemens were a negro himself.

While I was in a meandering line for the scant lavatorial resources at The Town Hall, I wrote the following about my ambivalence towards the event:

So many and so expectant are the faces waiting to be entertained by these performers. That we may, in the dark hall, blend together our white and their black. And in return for their propulsion of this admixture, we give them our money to help rebuild.

Forgive me, I am tired and in lined between a man in hemmed-in jeans for the bathroom. I am amidst town hall, historic and brimming with the mottled shadows of aging white faces. Those shadows, now being stretched away, are held in fineries and cradled to ease in civility, until they rest, face and fold as one, in dream if not in waking.

When Kevin Kline played the piano and sang "they're trying to wash us away", he played with our heartstrings and our frayed nerves, because there was the distinct sense that he was taking on a black perspective to show camaraderie, but also in the spirit of blending, of empathy in the vortex of racial ambivalence. After all, is the face of New Orleans, or for that matter, the whole area, white or black? I can tell you that despite the audience at The Town Hall, the face of New York is a shade far darker than ivory.

But the music was amazing. Buckwheat Zydeco was my favorite and a fitting final act to a show all about how necessary it is for white people to work through the slog of division to do something good for people with all that they have. When Buckwheat called out "are you having a good time?" it was a high-spirited demand, because if the people in this crowd weren't having a good time, then there was little hope for those who weren't so regaled with such luxurious entertainments.

The show reminded me that I had always wanted to go to New Orleans, and that without the spirit of New Orleans, there would be very little fun in America. After all, the confrontational, hot energy of New Orleans, its expanded realm of possibilities and its ability to function amidst the urban and social decay that so fills America is what gives all of America's manmade diversions their gloire. Disneyland, Vegas, Memphis, even Hollywood are all fed by the antic energy and moral amorphousness that has been bred for generations in New Orleans, the impossible city. Like America's great artists, New Orleans is a city that has thrived in evading the fact that all that very little stands between life and death, between high times and doldrums. And we could all use that knowledge better in this country right now. After all, who knows how much longer we will be a great power in the world? Lets enjoy it and make great things before the storm clouds come and we have to run for shelter.

It's 3 now and still no breakfast.

Presenting, the love of my life

2005-09-23T00:40:00.000-04:00

This woman is the greatest!!

She is very brave as well.

If she looks haggard, I assure you it is all due to my influence, and a little bit from law school.

For the record, thus begins my faceless portrait of my girlfriend.

More photos to come, including labels.

2005-09-19T11:02:00.000-04:00

Digi-bashing

http://www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/georgie.htm

Welcome to the digital mudslinging era. In this joyous era, one can take out one's frustration on replicas of the public leaders who fail our litmus test for taking responsibility for their actions. The only real reason I don't enjoy this website as much as I could is because I start thinking about how much I am like Bush: I don't really let myself work too hard, I don't make many sacrifices for my ideals. I am constantly thinking about how much I am like Bush in that i take regular vacations and am unwilling to do menial labor just because my family members say that I should to "get my feet wet". I am always wondering "wet with what?" Either way, the big difference between Bush and me is that while he is trapped/hiding in an oppressively religious/ socially darwinistic social circle, I am much freer. I am living the life I have chosen, taking a few of the consequences and aware that there are more to come. I don't know what Bush is aware of, but I can tell you this. From the way he behaves, he isn't very interested in actually becoming the decision maker in his life, and I couldn't live with myself if I weren't at least trying to be that person in my life. Even if I were a cripled person who couldn't speak or eat, I would try and liberate myself. If not physically, then mentally.

Perhaps that is what is so existentially communicated by the above website. Bush is a person who has learned how not to be crushed by the many blows that his position is subject to. In fact, his administration has helped him take as few lumps in life as possible. Every time he gets hit, he bounces away, usually babbling a few words, and looks for a hiding place. When people say Bush is stupid, I am very concerned because he lives by a principle that people in this country, especialy the well-educated, tend to hold higher than booksmarts: protect ya neck.

Parents, this is why kids listen to hip-hop: better advice for the world of competitive freakonomics. In this society, the media is the best sort of parent for kids not at the top of the social hierarchy, because, as Marshall McLuhan said - media is a numbing agent. Numbness is a fine option in lieu of parents who can't or don't protect their children, ease their pain, or help them recognze that there in the painful world there are some great things worth getting to on your own, with your own will still intact.

If you enjoy lifting digi-Bush and flinging him away like a damp rag (as you can do at the above link by clicking and dragging), I urge you to consider one thing: if we don't find a way to keep this country a fun and exciting place, then we are going to have one more bush-like president after another. Because while we are cyber-beating digi-Bush, he is out there perhaps in the oval office, going about his degenerate business. So go dig reality.

Peace.

2005-09-14T02:49:00.000-04:00

I had an elaborate posting to put up, but let's cut the sentimental doodoo. I am writing to all those people out there who have lived by someone else's taste and know that they have their own.

I am writing to all those people who feel like they want to take part in reality, but don't get much of a chance because reality only gives them a cramped pigeon hole to work with.

Mainly, I am writing to the people out there who are themselves, not lost or hiding in the shell of another personality, just themselves. As my lady delight puts it: "you know, A PERSON."

I am well on my way to becoming a full grown person, but for the moment, I am just Robusto. And Iam trying to figure out a few things.

For instance, is it me or is the end of the world being taken all too seriously as an option for the future? I mean, its a funny joke to say the world's coming to an end, but what's the point of getting all serious about it? If you are going to do something to keep the world from being miserable to live in, that's great. Just keep the end of the world a joke, as in the following:

A cat, a mouse and a dog walk into a five star restaurant. The maitre di sees them and says " good evening sir and madam, dinner for three? And the dog says, no thanks, the world is about to end.

This is much funnier, in my oppinion, than the alternate version in which the cat kills the mouse, the dog kills the cat, the Maitre Di kills the dog and a person at a nearby table says "I didn't know there would be a buffet tonight!"

Another thing: people are very defensive nowadays, especially white people. It's good to do things that remind people that they can still talk to one another, smile in each other's presence, and even laugh. I would love to see more flat-brimmed cap and jersey (or mock army fatigue) wearing African American males between the ages of 18 and 35 laughing and smiling on the subway, talking to balding white males of the same age bracket who is causing this laughter and smiling, and sharing in it. I would also love to see white businessmen from the ages of 45-65, wearing pinstriped suits, cologne and fancy watches that they are compulsively checking decide at certain points to try to entertain the people around them. They could do this by smiling, starting up conversations, or even a small dance. If one of them carried a jaw harp in his breast pocket, this would not be a problem. Unfortunately, their watches are very needy, apparently. I would love to see more Chinese tourists reaching out to shake the hands of white people on the street. I would love to hear women in transparent sunglasses, with glossy, streaked, straightened hair and cleverly sliced up clothing from the age of 15-45 talking about how when the sun rises over the mountains in Alberta, the Earth seems to open up and their hearts once again awaken to the shivering thrill of morning.

I think that will be the hip thing next year.