Swank, Frank and Blank

As You Like It at the GPAC

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 04:04:15 GMT

A thing much overlooked in most Shakespearean criticism appears to be his remarkable aptitude for show-stopping musical numbers. This weekend I went and saw As You Like It performed by the Bell Shakespeare Company, and was treated to not one, not toe, but THREE blow-out song-and-dance pieces, complete with Morris dancing and live instrumentation. Granted, the definition of "live" might have to be stretched a bit to include a synthesiser orchestra being piped in while one of the actors in a non-speaking role bashes away at a snare drum and an old Roland, but you get my point.

Really, the musical numbers were a bit much. A few of them were reasonably entertaining, especially the lower-key ones, but when things are propelled into the realm of full-on productions complete with soldiers goofily leaping over sticks and shepherdesses in stars-and-stripes hot pants tango-dancing, it can get a bit silly. I wish they'd scaled it back a bit to be less tacky.

Anyway, the performances were all quite good! Especially Sakia Smith and Lexi Freiman as the female leads. Damien Ryan's Jacques was pretty good, too, although he became the subject of a strange subplot inserted to critique current attitudes towards same-sex marriage as a way of compensating for the Happily Ever After ending. That was a little ill-considered, I thought. The cross-dressing priest and all that - they rewrote some of his lines and everything. Very strange. I thought the subtler stuff with Jacques worked much better - they made him gay, in an not-especially-overt way, and had him try to kiss Rosalind-as-Ganymede. Then, when he went into the monastery at the end, it had the weight of Implied Meaning and Back Story. So I liked that part.

Speaking of the cross-dressing priest, I must say that Touchstone started-out pretty likeable, but after a while Ed Wightman became so scenery-hungry it became sort of a alarming. I guess the play was trying to convey frenetic energy and a kind of burlesque attitude, but by the end it had lost some of the momentum of the earlier scenes, and was heading to a place I didn't want to follow it to. Which is as much Shakespeare's fault as Bell's. The play has some great lines and set-pieces, but it's a bit uneven overall.

The best "part that probably wasn't in the original" parts were probably Touchstone the fool travelling through the forest, where he is frightened by people acting like animals (including putting chairs on their heads to imitate stags), and Camilla Ah Kin's cry of "No John, we haven't rehearsed this part I don't know how to do it" as she was roped by Touchstone into doing a ventriloquism set. Touchstone is played by Ed Wightman, so I don't really understand that at all, unless she was talking to the director.

All in all, it wasn't half bad. Some parts of it were excellent (any time that Rosalind and Celia were on stage together). The crazy approach is probably closer to how it would have been played in Shakespeare's day anyway.

7/10 I guess.

As for other things, I have a 2000 word essay due today which I haven't started yet, a presentation due Wednesday which I haven't started yet, and a 200 word essay due Friday that i, need it be said, haven't started yet. I'd like to say that I never used to have this problem, but I'd be lying.

In other news, Somewhere, Anywhere by New Buffalo is absolutely beautiful. I've listened to it six or seven times since Saturday.

And I have gas.

Things Which Are Hard

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 07:45:28 GMT

WRITING is hard.

I am currently undertaking a project to write 14 decent songs in the month of February, and record them as demos. The recording part isn't essential but I'd like to do it anyway, just plunking them out live into a tape player and then maybe putting them on the computer later.

You may not think that writing 14 songs would be hard, but I would like to draw your attention back to the decent part. So far I have only one song that I am mostly happy with, and the meter shifts around on that one like sand in your underpants. I also penned a 15 stanza folk ballad about a child being stolen by the fairies and irresponsible parenting, which I consider substantially lacking. And a bunch of stuff about family matters. Anyway, most of it is fairly shoddy, although at least it manages to avoid a using cliche phrases most of the time. If nothing else my guitar is improving in leaps and bounds.

RIPPING JOHN DENVER ALBUMS is hard.

You wouldn't think it would be, but I lost my stereo for god knows how many hours, I have to listen to it hiss away when I'm by this computer, and I have to rush back in here every 20 minutes and flip sides. Then I have to burn them all to CD. Feh! I say.

FACING DEMONS is hard.

Metaphorical demons, mostly. See the first two paragraphs. Real demons are also hard to face, but in a different and less immediately vexing way.

LIVING AT HOME is hard.

On the one hand, you get your washing done for you and have access to satellite TV. There's company and things are fairly pleasant. On the other, all the deep-seated rage which we suppress in regards to our parents comes boiling up and you find yourself constantly muttering expletives under your breath and hating your father for not being the kind of person you wish he was.

ALGEBRA is hard.

Obviously.If you disagree you're probably a spalien.

Also lately, I have been listening to Bob Dylan again. You know what I hate about Bob Dylan? it is impossible to listen to the music of Bob Dylan and not try to emulate it. This is a problem, I feel. On the other hand, his stuffed has helped me to overcome a few problems in the productivity department.

fffgug

Hippity-Hoppin

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 04:03:07 GMT

Last year, I downloaded the advance leak of Ear Drum by Talib Kweli, because I'd heard some good things. I thought it was okay, but sort of boring and lacking in the sounds department. And Talib Kweli's lyrics aren't good enough to justify a lack in the sounds department. Also, for some reason, Kweli's flow was out of time.

But now I have reacquired the album, and this time the sounds are tip-top! And his words are in time to the beat! I mean, it's not stellar, but it's enjoyable. I'm kind of getting tired of a lot of this new stuff aping that damned Big Kanye West Production stuff and the tinkly pianos and EVERY FUCKING HIP-HOP ACT WANTS TO BE JAY-FUCKING-Z. Fuck Jay-Z. How many fucking versions of god-damned "99 Problems" do we need? And how many "Jesus Walks"?

Fuck Lupe Fiasco too, for good measure.

I don't actually hate Jay Z and Kanye West. But I am angry anyway.

Perhaps this is most condensed occurrence of the term "fuck" in anything I've ever written.

Okay now I've gotten angry at this album because the sounds are too good. Everything is so dense and sort of annoying. Damn it. At least there hasn't yet been a sped-up, high-pitched Al Green sample.

I have mixed opinions. I should have bought that copy of De la Soul Is Dead I saw in the -$10 bin.

Damn.

Dance-O-Rama (a thing I made)

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:59:24 GMT

[[ WE'VE GOT MORE FUNK THAN A TOURING DRUG BAND ]]

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 12:59:47 GMT

They have a damned fancy website. Good luck!

OHCHRISTOUCHFUCK

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 07:25:49 GMT

We went to the beach today. I gave a thirteen year old girl a flying clothesline and then I sprained my ankle. I am currently hobbling around the house on a cane.

As penance for my profanity, here is the fifth best mix I've ever made

http://www.thojit.kundor.org/lastfm/januarybodyparts.zip

1. Funkadelic - Free Your Mind... And Your Ass Will Follow
2. Architecture In Helsinki - Heart it Races
3. Groove Armada - I See You Baby
4. Dan Deacon - Trippy Green Skull
5. Broadcast - Corporeal
6. Four Tet - Smile Around the Face
7. Grandadbob - Open Mouthed
8. Grinderman - No Pussy Blues
9. Can - Mushroom
10. Bjork - Mouth's Cradle
11. Shriekback - My Spine is the Bassline
12. A Tribe Called Quest - Clap Your Hands
13. Future Sound of London - High Tide on the Sea of Flesh
14. Clark - Night Knuckles
15. Cocteau Twins - Feet Like Fins (Otherness Mix)
16. Air - Biological
17. Bjork - My Spine (Evelyn Glennie Mix)

I need to listen to more house music.

It looks like I'm moving to Geelong

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 01:23:54 GMT

Or back to Geelong, it being my principle place of habitation for many years and my preferred City to Live In.

People who write Geelong of as some sort of scum pit or industrial hell hole have either never actually been to Geelong, or drove through it once three years ago on their way to the Great Ocean Road and decided that it was all like Corio. Which is sort of like saying that all of Melbourne is like Footscray.

Anyway, I am going to study at the Deakin branch in Warn Ponds, which is utterly enormous, and stay at my Dad's for a couple of months until we get sick of each other and I bugger off to a share house.

It's all very exciting. I even get to pay a month's rent on the house I'm currently living in, only to move out in a week.

In other news, I still don't think much of New Years. And I kind of think that both my dad and my sister are arses.

Paying for the death of French porn stars.

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 18:09:27 GMT

Just recently I watched Grapes of Death, a wonderful French zombie film from the golden age of genre films (the 1970s). I did not watch it on my laptop however, because my infuriating DVD drive has become even less accepting than usual in regards to the discs I try to play in it. I can't even watch my copy of Blood and Black Lace anymore! I payed 20 bucks for that movie (not counting postage)!

Anyway, Grapes of Death is an excellent and very strange film filled with wooden acting and things that don't really make sense. A pair of young women are attacked during a train ride by a lunatic covered in open sores. One of the girls is killed, but the other (the brunette, naturally), escapes and spends the rest of the film wandering around the French countryside being menaced by people who have been rendered murderously insane, pus-oozing well, sort-of-zombies. Really they aren't zombies at all, so much as they are just people who've been driven mad by the pesticide trace elements of which have found their way into the local wine stock. Anyway, this is a good thing, as it gives a break from the usual zombie formula of long periods barricaded up inside some large building culminating in the destruction of the safe haven due to bickering on the part of the humans. That was good in Night of the Living Dead, and I guess ripping it off for a few million other movies seemed like a surefire idea. it might have been, twenty years ago, but my previously undying enthusiasm for the formula has begun to waver slightly.

Anyway, this all leads the brunette, whose name I've forgotten, to hang-out with a blind chick, almost get murdered by the ludicrously attractive Brigitte Lahaie (really, the woman is astonishingly pretty), and then team-up with a couple of sane fellows who pack rifles and dynomite and make the final trek to the town where she was supposed to be meeting her fiance.

I liked it! It's beautifully shot, the French countryside is nothing of not a novel setting for a zombie movie (although, I guess the fact that the whole outbreak of lunatics is caused in large part by grapes could give it some sort of tenuous link to The Day of the Triffids, if one were squinting and also drunk - and hey! Both films have blind chicks in them!), and the decidely weird nature of the threat itself makes everything all the more disconcerting. I especially like that aspect of the film - despite being a thoroughly gory film with lots of boobs and blood and boobs covered in blood, the central horror of the film comes from how weird everything is. I wouldn't exactly call Grapes of Death a horror film of ideas, but Jean Rollin does manage to create a very curious atmosphere, where everything becomes quite nebulous and alarming and creepy synthesiser music plays as people run through pointy rock formations and lots of fog. Rollin also manages to pull this off better than a lot of the big-name Italians (although i wouldn't begin to say that the film as a whole is as good as something like The Beyond or Suspiria), by creating a dream-like and fragmented scenario within a landscape that doesn't clash with it at all - i.e. a plotless and languid film doesn't seem nearly as stupid when the scenario does not require a plot and people are roaming through the green hills of Arcady. This probably makes it seem slightly less weird at times than it actually is, but it also stops Grapes of Death from seeming as silly as it sometimes actually is.

That said, I really wish Rollin had kept the politics as a subtext in this film. The conversations between the brunette's (what was her name?) two rescuers just come-off ham-fisted and dumb, and seem to be taxing the film-makers' abilities as writers of dialogue. it definately seems that this film came-off as well as it did because it coasts by on images and actions more than writing.

That said, I do like some of the writing! I think the best stuff remains unsaid, like the very subtle set-up for just why (apart from the obvious reasons) the brunette (Elisabeth! I looked it up) does what she does at the end of the film. When people open their mouths it can get pretty silly.

Anyway, I would definitely recommend the film. It's technically excellent (especially the gore effects - I'm still trying to figure-out the mechanics of that pitchfork scene), a fun premise and many of the better aspects of 70s horror without too many of the downsides. It's not exactly a masterpiece, but it works quite well.

Also, my CD player keeps refusing to play my burnt CDs. I am irked. There are only so many times that I can listen to Led Zeppelin IV before growing tired of it (five times).

No Good Writer's Block Blues

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 11:32:21 GMT

The following song was originally recorded by Blind Willy "Lightning" Johnson, back in 1935, and made famous by a 1956 reworking by jazz-pop quintet Chester Best and his Forward Feet. However, Best modified the lyrics slightly to focus upon the looming threat of Communism, and as a consequence I have followed the original recording.

Well I sat down to write, the words wouldn’t come
When it came to narration seems I had been struck dumb

I’m struggling hard
I got the Writer’s Block Blues again
I’m struggling hard
To do a damn thing with this pen

It’s not so much making a plot or a pun
As actually mustering wherewithal to get things done

I’m struggling hard
With those ol’ Writer’s Block Blues again
Guess I’ll be alright
Come a day or ten

Guess I’ll be alright
When the words come back again

Damn it

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:45:42 GMT

Every time I try and use my laptop DVD player it seizes-up halfway through a film. If it even starts at all. The other night we tried four different discs in it before having to resort to using data-CD with Suspiria burnt on it. And to add insult to injury I can't figure-out the timing on the subtitles I downloaded for my copy of Sholay.

Pah.

In other news, my novel is not really working-out. Unsuprisingly. At 3,000 words it has gone through several orgies, a number of P.O.V. changes and a mangling of the history of gun powder.

Also, I've decided to embark on a campaign of self-education. Much like last Summer, I intend to spend my time in the air-conditioned comfort of the library watching VHS copies of old movies.

And who the hell keeps stealing all my food. Half a loaf of bread and half a green capsicum.

Fhneh.

In closing! Though it saddens me, I have decided to leave-off growing a moustache.

Sometimes I read books

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 11:53:37 GMT

Just now I have finished one of them - Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburo Oe.

It's a rather depressing book, and perhaps also a slightly muddled one. The gist of the plot is that a troop of reform school boys in wartime Japan are evacuated to a remote mountain village. Once there, however, the villagers are taken with panic over the perceived outbreak of a plague, and abandon the boys, barricading them inside the village.

How everything plays-out inside the actual village, during the perceived outbreak, is simultaneously the most interesting part of the book an the vaguest. The crux of the book seems to be using plague, and the paranoia and obsessive cleansing it incites, to examine that aspect of Japanese society which allowed them to end-up where it was in the mid forties. Hence the title - comparing nipping the bad buds early to getting rid of the bad kids before they can, according to the grown-ups, inevitably grow into bad adults.

Of course, the part where the kids are trapped in the town just goes to show that they probably wouldn't grow to be any worse, and might actually turn-out better, than their captors.

All in all I liked it pretty good. I was just sort of expecting a Lord of the Flies rip-off, to be honest.

It's also sort of interesting that these themes are still being examined quite a bit in Japanese fiction today. It doesn't take a lot of effort to find many, many points of comparison between this and Battle Royale, for example, although the plots have no really similarity.

And the ending is bleak.

I would heartily recommend this book.

Perhaps I should found a book club?

FINALLY

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 04:56:54 GMT

We have finished the Revolver tribute album. After two long, sweaty months of beating mournfully at our string instruments, an album has taken form. A lot of people dropped-out, and some new folks got co-opted, but in the end everything more or less turned-out as I had hoped.

I have been living with these songs for the past couple of months, but I hate to think of the complete and utter mind-buggery that would arise in someone coming to this fresh and untainted.

We will be debuting it soon!

Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Shady Masturbators

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 04:33:39 GMT

Well it seems like the school year is behind me. I've got nothing but time! That time is mostly being filled-up with NaNoWriMo and that novel we're writing.

It is my turn to contribute to the latter, and I'm feeling very nervous about it. I have no idea what to do! Maybe once I've actually read the latest chapter I'll have a better handle on it.

I've finally cooked-up a solid idea for my NaNoWriMo novel, also. I used to have this character named Lucinda Carlton who I cooked-up after reading a bunch of Masamune Shirow and Peter F. Hamilton and then going to see Kill Bill Volume 1, and I've decided to resurrect her for this project. It's amazing how easy it is to slip back into a character you haven't written for four years. Probably because she's very generic, but anyway.

The opening scene has being thrown out of a space station six hundred kilometers above Mars, with only an hour of air. The key tension comes from the fact that her body is being destroyed by the vacuum, and even if she doesn't die of asphyxiation she will burn-up on re-entry anyway.

I think she will run into a satellite. It is ridiculous and ham-fisted but this is my stupid action novel and I will write it how I wish.

Also also, my sister has moved-in. She overslept and missed work today so we are going to go for a walk to the Swiss bakery and buy ice-creams.

Why they keep me away from the stereo at parties

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:05:16 GMT

Click the image! It's a link -

I am pretty proud of the cover.

What is this, Cute Overload all of a sudden?

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 07:47:25 GMT

They are kitties that talk!

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:52:33 GMT

Also I am in a low way.

Not quite sure why, but I am.

Thought I'd put that out there.

I think I suffer from the opinion (wrong or right - who knows?) that nothing I say ever really has any impact, and that no-one holds me in their mind once I leave their line of sight. It's not an uncommon feeling, I suppose.

Which winds-up with my sitting on my bed at twenty to twelve, strumming minor-key chord progressions and ad libbing songs that rhyme "rain" with "pain" a lot.

I am seeing my family tomorrow so that will be nice

.

Well I really have no idea what the deal was with this one

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 12:20:20 GMT

I had another dream. In this one, I found a chanteuse living in a freezer. This was odd enough. The doubly strange part is that the chanteuse had transformed into a small, mouse-like creature covered in fine grey hair. She had become encased in a dense shell of ice as protection against the cold, and gradually transformed into this rodent across many years. I carried her about for a while and eventually the ice melted and she woke-up and recounted her history to me. She then sang me a number of songs, but I don't remember how they went.

Novels are trying

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 11:19:22 GMT

I have made several tentative essays at my NaNoWriMo novel, but so far little has come of it. The idea for the guy in the castle seemed promising at first, but I'm beginning to doubt its longevity. I originally planned to write an epic folk tale, but I'm not really sure what's happening with that. And earlier today I took a chance on some stream-of-consciousness fiction but that failed to engage me at any level.

So.

I guess I will stick with the Castle Guy, and his having a bunch of guests show-up and spin yarns.

And, apparently. I don't like Richard Wagner. They are playing his stuff on the radio and I'm sure it's great live with sur-titles, but it's just a load of overblown wank. But I also dislike Mozart so I guess that makes me an iconoclast.

In other news, I have discovered that I am sort of tired of being coy.

Hurray!?

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 14:19:48 GMT

School is finished, sort of! I have to do this annotated bibliography but that shouldn't take long. My professor insists that she took time in class to explain how to do it, and wrote that we should complete it in the assessments hand-out, but in fact it is not listed in the hand-out and I missed only one class this semester, and have no recollection of this being mentioned. Many other people have made similar mistakes.

I would put this in the unit survey but I already completed it.

In other news, I have decided that I don't know enough about Bollywood. My friend Jayaprakash lives in India but he doesn't really watch many Bollywod films or something, so he's no use. Anyway I bought Don on DVD and I'm very excited.

Tomorrow my sister moves-in! She is a strange girl and will probably lose her job and have to move out again in a month but we are all optimistic. She was confused and dismayed by the discovery that most share houses do not allow one to keep pets.

I have started my NaNoWriMo novel. It is about a man who has a castle and then people talk about themselves. It is less compelling than it sounds.

I'm running out of things to say. Oh, I know.

I have started a blog to talk about music I like, because no-one needs me to go on about it here.

I have a proper website but am too lazy to finish building it.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 08:21:12 GMT

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I just had an Arulpragasm

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 03:32:17 GMT

ALBUM OF THE YEAR, GENTLEPERSONS

I am two months late on this, but there is a Public Enemy-shaped hole in my heart that has been filled.

Big and smooth and oh so colourful. Of all the musicians with a distinct visual aesthetic working at the moment. M.I.A. is probably my favourite. The film clip to "Jimmy" is the best thing.

WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Although "Mango Pickle Down River" is perhaps just a little too close to being a remix. But I like the Wilcannia Mob so I'm okay with that.

Really, this is a true fist-pumper.

I have been contacted by a former classmate

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 01:04:20 GMT

About bible salvation, of all things.

I'm still not certain it's really him, but he sent his number and he has a distinctive voice.

Should i call it?

How do you throw a dance party?

Tue, 30 Oct 2007 02:21:18 GMT

So what's the low-down on orchestrating a hoe-down?

I cannot dance, but this needs to happen.

My stereo is broken, but this needs to happen.

There will be rave-ups, dank grooves and silken swings. Masochistic mazurkas and a volatile Viennese. Frenetic frugging and a suicidal square dance.

Can you move over a Davis groove? Does Quincy Jones make you rattle your bones? Will R.D. Burman get you twistin and turnin? Can you shake your booty to Fela Kuti? Does De La Soul make you rock and roll? Are the Fall like a siren call to cut the rug of that old dance hall? Does Joy Division hit you like nuclear fission? Cause Giorgio Moroder's a front-end loader full of beats that'll have you movin your feet, and if you can't jive to Iggy and the Hive then I'm presumin that you'll dig Gary Numan. Hell, let's all break-out the OMD, dropping red cordial over ecstasy. Depeche Mode's a road that I'll willing to walk and it leads me stright into some old-school Talk Talk. Then we'll all catch the vibe of some Tribe Called Quest, hit the hay to RZA and get some rest.

My hip-hop name is DJszko Holokost

A work of rare beauty

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 08:20:18 GMT

Someone (possibly real, possibly not) is slightly creeped-out by the lead singer of Throbbing Gristle

Also, my room is full of spiders.

Songs my Housemates Enjoy

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 03:06:13 GMT

I'm not entirely sure what "poppin" ones booty constitutes, but it sounds more than a little painful, possibly even fatal. Although it has given the world the following couplet:

"You poppin' that thing like a Luke video
Mesmerized by the sound and the way the flutes blow"

Yes, exactly, Marques Houston.

Other song highlights include rhyming "feen" with "cream" and aplauding a woman for her difficulty in finding pants that fit. West Coast rap has obviously progressed a long way from the days of NWA. Of course there's another, related song called "Pop that Pussy" but the title alone gives me nightmares.

Anyway, I was always more of an East Coast man. Native Tongues FTW.

I asked one of my house mates the other day if she thought it was weird that so much of the music she listened to was misogynistic. After I explained to her what "misogynistic" means, she wandered off laughing.

In terms of other great poets of modernity, I've been getting reacquainted with my Sylvia Plath. I only have Ariel, but it's a fine book. My sister has a Complete Works which I bought her, and since she's moving in with me in a couple of weeks I intend to steal it from her. "Lady Lazarus" may be the ultimate poem of empowerment through self-loathing. And her horror elements almost manage to be genuinely frightening, although I think that heavily structured verse works better for that, as it captures the reader and bludgeons them into feeling (see: Poe, Baudelaire, the Romantics in general).

"Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air"

Totally. Bad-ass.

Although there is a problem in that a lot of girls seem to latch onto this sort of poetry because it creates such a powerful and romantic image of self-destruction from without and within. My lecturer in first year told the story of how they had to stop teaching her for a while because young women were getting caught-up in it and doing themselves in. I suppose it's a pretty attractive image - Plath topped herself and gained immortality, validation as an artist and revenge against her cheating spouse. Some 16 year old club-bunny with a spray can up her nose puts the shards of a mirror through her wrist and destroys the lives of herself and everyone around her. Not to say Plath didn't manage likewise, but it's a thing people overlook. It is strange that there is such a culture of romanticised self-destruction in our society, both on the part of men and women.

By a similar turn, as inspired by a lame imvu ad right by this text box, at what point did "expressing oneself" become synonymous with "dressing like a member of the Used"? Christ, teen culture. thirty years ago we needed Punk and Hardcore to get rid of the pompous crap masquerading as the majority of "progressive" rock. Now we need something to get rid of the pompous crap masquerading as punk music. I would say that we should look to Electronica except that the electronic boom preceded the mainstream punk boom by several years.

I'm running out of things to say. But let it suffice to note that I hate most counter-cultures and I want to dress in a nice suit and listen to Air while reading Italo Calvino novels and eating curry, and only then will I be happy.

To homework! But first, to buy pegs!