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Friday, July 11, 2008
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pimps don’t commit suicide
Category: Music
check out my friend Aaron, he rocks: Freeway
7:49 AM
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Thursday, May 29, 2008
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War Inc.
Current mood:  disappointed
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities
Well, it wasn't very good. It was terribly predictable and not nearly as random as the reviews had led me to believe. Still, you have to give them props for making an effort to make a war movie that wasn't a pro-war, bang-em-up, propaganda film. I'm sure I'd watch it ten time before watching the latest Rambo film. Hilary's growing up, but she's still a kid. Of course she's turning 21 this year. And John Cusack looks nearly as old as I feel.
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Currently
watching
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Southland Tales
Release date: 2008-03-18
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10:43 AM
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Wednesday, April 30, 2008
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we were never friends
...we were comrades, and frankly, it kind of sucked, I was almost as down then as I am now
have I used this one before: how can you laugh? when you know I'm Josh...
Been gone a while. Probably be back for a while. Seems to be my way with myspace
signed onto facebook today for the first time in a while. it's different because some of my former comrades are still my friends there and it suggests people to invite to be my friend who I use to actually interact with all the time
I don't know why I'm writing this so you may just want to stop now.
I interacted with a six year old for a little bit today. It was an odd experience. I tried to engage him a little. I don't have much experience with kids. [I shouldn't use experience in two adjacent sentences.] But we were in such totally different worlds it wasn't going to be easy. I'm not getting at the heart of the matter. Which is frustrating.
I miss the comrades. Well, most of them. But I can never go back. I wonder if any of them miss me. I doubt it. One of them is still one of my readers, officially anyway. Good luck comrades!
I gave the six year old some of my co-worker's stickers. I hope she doesn't claw my eyes out. He put them on this pink piece of paper I'd given him. He also drew a bunch of lines on the paper. One of the stickers had a dog holding a sign that read, "I Love You." It broke my heart, just a little.
A friend of mine comes back from Mexico tomorrow.
Two weeks from tomorrow is my last day at my job.
I poked somebody on facebook. It was amusing because we'd had sex, well rather a lot of sex, over one weekend about a year ago and the message came up saying, "you've poked so and so." She was considerably more responsive that weekend than on facebook.
It's surprising just how little I write about sex on myspace.
SEX
that should drive up my ratings
7:55 PM
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Monday, March 10, 2008
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I cry in my beer... and God laughs so hard she shoot tequila out her nose
Category: Life
Spike: ... I lie awake every night--
Buffy (exacerbated as Spike is a vampire): You sleep during the day!
* * *-- So you're back on the cryptic?
-- That's not a very interesting question.
-- Oh pray tell, what would be an interesting question?
-- Why are there so many songs about rainbows?
-- Somebody thought of it...
-- Yeah, and someone believed it...
-- And look what it's done so far...
8:45 PM
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Tuesday, February 26, 2008
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Happy Birthday... you’re fired...
Category: Life
So first, let me say thank you to those of you who wished me a happy birthday, it's nice, despite whatever protests I might give in the 3D world and especially in light of the fact that I've been utterly absent from myspace for a little while now (an absence that's likely to continue for a few more days at least).
Second, I wasn't actually fired, in fact, I'm still working and have every reason to believe I will be for the next 10 weeks or so. But I did find out I won't be keeping my job after that. It's a disapointment, and a pain. But we're suppose to look at these challenges as opportunities in disguise... aren't we?
Alright, and for an ado, I will imitate one of my students:
Peace.
7:44 PM
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Tuesday, February 05, 2008
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Forget the election, let’s talk about something important:
Category: Writing and Poetry
Lolita.
Last night I received this email from a dear friend:
She was his flippin STEPDAUGHTER?!?!
Someone needs to kick his ass; seriously. I thought she was 15, and a stranger, which--hard as it is to say--is better.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080201/od_nm/woolworths_lolita1_dc;_ylt=AgLEbDUwsZ5WndhpWWigKJes0NUE
I responded with this:
Does it help that he married her mother in simply in
hopes of getting closer to her?
By the by, the narrator does get his ass kicked, kind
of...
15 and a stranger might have been, better... but the
whole point is the narrator, Humbert, is a monster.
She responded with this:
jeez. 12? i can't talk about this. nabokov's a jerk. humbert's an ass and a criminal. and you're twisted for reading it so many times!
Where to start?
Art isn't its subject. A painting isn't the objects it depicts. A song isn't simply its lyrics or its title. And literature isn't just the events it describes, not good literature anyway. Each has form has elements, melody, shading, language, which, when done artfully, raises it above the mundane.
Is the fact that Lolita deals with the delusions and crimes of a pedophile reason enough to dismiss any merit it might have? Does the fact that Nabokov demonstrates, repeatedly, that Humbert is an evil man redeem the book at all? Maybe not. And I don't want to insinuate that sadistic crap can be legitamized by florrid prose, but can the form, the style, the strata of the work raise the work above its subject? And again, does the subject matter? Humbert is like Alex from A Clockwork Orange. He's smart, he's charming, and he's sick. I know a lot of people who would disagree about that second one. And they, for the most part, can't watch that movie. But I still think it's a great movie. Most readers come to Lolita for purely prurient reasons. And most are disappointed. If you're looking for sex, well, one why would you read a book whose narrator is a pedophile? And two, you're better off going with Anne Rice or Penthouse.
I'm on the spot here. I'm amazed every time I read Lolita. The language, the structure, the deceptive humor and the all too real pathology. Humbert constantly rationalizes his behavior and a careless reader is likely to buy his rationalizations. Obviously my friend has never read Lolita. Does she have any right to judge it? I've never seen a Roman Polanski film. Not because he had sex with a 14 year old. I just haven't. I use to be a big Woody Allen fan, but after he did what he did with his step-daughter I found I had no stomach for the man or his work. And I know a number of people, mostly women, who won't see either of these guys movies on the basis of what the men have done. Is it fair to assess the work, especially if you haven't even seen/read/heard it, on the character of the creator? Does it make sense for me to be able to watch a movie or read a book that depicts a monstrous and evil character but not to be able to look at the work of a man who is monstrous and evil?
* * *
My title here speaks to why I made for a poor socialist: I'm not a materialist. I believe there is something beyond the physical world, and it's more important than the material/physical/mundane.
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Currently
listening
:
Father Figure
By
George Michael
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8:31 PM
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Saturday, January 19, 2008
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Burnt Offerings
Category: Religion and Philosophy
In high school I knew a guy who sang for a band named Burnt Offerings. He was a terrible singer and his band sucked. Ten years later I dated then cohabitated with a girl nine years younger than me. I've been working out the numerology with Dante, Beatrice and Hilary Duff. I've been twice Hilary's age twice. How often does that work out?
Today I walked to my local Rose Garden (its called the Oakland Somebody Whose Name I've Forgotten Memorial Rose Garden) and made an offering of three pieces of chocolate, that were rather precious to me, to a voodoo whore goddess whose name I've forgotten. I apologized for having forgotten her name during my prayer. I will not repeat the prayer here for fear of diminishing its potency.
After that I went to Ace Hardware to buy a nail. I have a Dos Equis mirror from when I worked in a liquor store that I'm going to finally hang up in my kitchen after having lived here for nearly five years. On the way out I gave a dollar and my change from the nail to the crippled old black woman who sells the Street Spirit outside Ace. She doesn't look anything like how I imagine the voodoo whore goddess.
Next was the grocery store where I bought three frozen pizzas, a bottle of Odwalla Mo' Better and a wine opener. I've been cleaning out my apartment since the last flood, throwing out stuff that's been taking up space for the last five years. This includes a half dozen wine bottles that have been improperly stored since I moved in. But I didn't have a wine opener. My ex wife kept it. What I did not buy was oven cleaner. I'm now preheating my oven for one of the frozen pizzas and can smell the smoke from the droppings of old pizzas as it fills my apartment. I'll open some windows.
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Currently
reading
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The Divine Comedy: Volume 2: Purgatorio (Galaxy Books)
By
Dante Alighieri
Release date: 31 December, 1961
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11:27 AM
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8 Comments - 8 Kudos
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Friday, January 18, 2008
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This is what God looks like when she’s not laughing:
Category: Writing and Poetry
* * *
-- Today I had lunch with someone and the conversation found its way to promises. I said, "A promise is like a dare to God to put you in a situation." I was told it was brilliant and asked to write it down.
-- I know.
-- How could you know? You weren't there.
-- I know everything you know.
-- I'm so unhappy.
-- Please, everyone knows that. Seriously, what's so wrong with your life?
-- Remember Fred in Carpe Nocturne?
-- Oh not with the cryptic again, I thought we'd gotten past that.
-- Well what am I suppose to do, write a trilogy?
-- That would be a start.
-- Do me a favor.
-- Anything for you sweetheart.
-- Lie to me.
-- I just did.
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Currently
watching
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Angel - Season Three (Slim Set)
Release date: 28 November, 2006
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9:14 PM
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Tuesday, January 15, 2008
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Responding to Hunter S. Thompson
Category: Life
Never hesitate to use force. It settles issues, influences people... right in the middle of a conversation, just swat some motherf------ across the room. Make his blood shoot out in big spurts... I used to go out looking for punch-ups... these weren't fights. There was nothing personal about it. I didn't hate the people...It was good American fun. It was all frivolous. There wasn't any right or wrong.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
So a while back, when I was in Grad School. We had an assignment to do a report on something we read that we considered a guilty pleasure. I chose Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Hunter S. isn't viewed favorably in academia.
The above quote is actually from something posthumously published in Playboy. So which should be more embarrassing, the fact that I read Hunter S. Thompson or that I actually read something in Playboy?
Now I'm no pacifist. Some would argue that violence is always an act of evil and I'd like to believe that. But I don't. Once, when I was still a member of the Internationalist Socialist Organization, a fellow attending one of our public meetings asked if the organization would support a violent revolution. One of the comrades responded, "We would like to see a non-violent revolution. But it would be naïve to imagine that those in power will give that power up without resorting to violence and we will probably have to respond in kind." But I can't get behind the idea of random acts of violence like Hunter promotes. And this is just one of the things that makes Hunter a bad model for me. The biggest problem with Hunter, for me, is also what I find most appealing about him, and something I most want to change in myself. His misanthropy. I actually want to embrace my fellow humans. And then there's the whole suicide thing, which I really need to stay away from. And somehow these things are all tied together: as much fun as my friends and I had quoting lines from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in high school one is struck when rereading Hunter by how little fun he seems to be having himself. He who makes a beast of himself may well get rid of the pain of being a man, but it appears to me that he also gets rid of the joy.
10:00 PM
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4 Comments - 6 Kudos
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Friday, January 11, 2008
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warm up & frak the democrats
Category: News and Politics
to be or not to be?
that is a question...
I pulled my MA thesis out this morning. Check out the synopsis: "The Red Hat Diaries follows a man from early adulthood into a mid-life crisis concentrating. The narrative concentrates on his ..." They gave me a master of arts for writing something with these kinds of errors in it...
Hmmmm... let's see, what else? I'm bored. I appear to have stopped drinking soda, guess it's time I update my myspace profile.
I just read a shockingly lame comment on another person's blog and have realized I hate everyone who thinks they know anything.
Oh, Frack (I think they spell it differently, but I like this spelling) the Democratic Party. I have an African American student who's very excited about Obama's (I don't care if that's the right spelling or not -- I guess that says something about the value of my MA...) candidacy. So I guess it's good there's a black candidate since it might give some hope to young African Americans that they too can grow up and stick it to the workers of the world and participate fully in the destruction of the planet and subsequently the human race. Does anyone else remember the cover of Spy magazine from back in 1991 when Bill Clinton was first running for president with Hilary Clinton's face pasted onto the body on a dominatrix?
Why do people insist on buying into the lesser of two evils argument?
I'm still bored.
7:10 AM
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8 Comments - 6 Kudos
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Wednesday, January 09, 2008
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God yucks it up: I skin my knee
-- I thought you'd stopped with this?
-- I guess I thought I had too. But every time I think I'm almost out, you pull me back in.
-- Hey, don't blame me.
-- Well, don't imagine for a moment that I'm taking any responsibility for this.
-- What was that essay you were reading last night on?
-- The failure of contemporary American men to grow into traditional adult roles due to the effects of advertising in a consumer culture.
-- A convenient scapegoat.
-- I wish I was dead.
-- Don't say that.
-- I think Hal Hartley is more inspirational than Joss Whedon.
-- He's got a fuller head of hair.
-- I suppose I should make some self-deprecating remark in the style of one Allen Königsberg.
-- That guy gives me the creeps.
-- You and every woman I've known in the last ten years.
-- Well she finally wore a skirt.
-- You call that a skirt? It went down to her ankles.
-- But it wasn't a dress.
-- You know what I really hate.
-- The president? Capitalism? Triplets?
-- Yes, Yes and Yes. But what I was going to say was skorts.
-- Even plaid skorts?
7:06 AM
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Tuesday, January 01, 2008
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sick again
So this is the 4th New Year's I've spent home in bed sick. No, not because I had too much to drink. So that's 20% of my adult New Year's.
My head hurts, sinus pressure, sore throat.
So let's talk resolutions:
1. Some kind of excercise regime.
2. Daily writing regime.
3. Go somewhere.
4. Be free of all credit card debt.
I know, I know, resolutions are a perfect recipe for failure. But it's not like not making resolutions has proven all that effective.
So anybody else have something they want to fail at?
11:50 AM
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12 Comments - 6 Kudos
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Monday, December 31, 2007
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The reason Hillary Clinton will be the US president is...
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural
I know what you're thinking: Did Josh, the formerly caustic comrade completely lose his way and become a Democrat? No. But last night I had a dream that I'd been invited to a dinner at the White House and Hillary Clinton must have won the election as I was sitting at a table with Chelsea Clinton. Chelsea and I were getting wasted. Neither Chelsea nor Hillary Clinton have ever been individuals for whom I've had much affection. This seems like a good point to retell the story of the last time my grandmother came to visit us in California. I was helping her with her Yahoo! Mail and there was a picture of Hilary Duff. I commented, "Oh, there's Hilary" and my grandmother responded, "Oh thank God, all this time I thought you were talking about Hillary Clinton."
Neither Hillary or Bill Clinton were anywhere to be seen amongst the $1000 a plate guests. Chelsea was drinking champagne and I was drinking scotch. We were discussing the Bolshevik revolution when she put her hand on my knee. I looked around again, and now we were the only ones there. I looked at Chelsea and she put her hand on the back of my neck and brought me in close to kiss me. Who'd have guessed Chelsea Clinton would be such a sloppy kisser? There was saliva everywhere and she almost choked me with her tongue [Editor's note: this turned out just to be Josh drooling in his sleep]. There were no more talking parts in the dream. And I have to say the various guest rooms in the White House were considerably nicer than I had expected.
9:42 AM
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Sunday, December 30, 2007
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Divorce Song
Category: Writing and Poetry
As soon as I cupped her face in my palm I flashbacked to the conversation where she told me she just wanted to be friends and I said, "I can't pretend I'm not feeling what I'm feeling. I just can't. But I promise, I'll never try and take your hand and hold it. I'll never try and put my arm around you. I'll never try and cup your face in my palm and kiss you." She smiled and that was the end of that part of the conversation. I understood I couldn't let the thing linger so I asked, "So do you watch any kind of sports? I don't know many women who do. But I do know a few." She didn't.
But the flashback didn't stop me. I leaned in and kissed her lightly. Her lips were thin, and a little cold. There was a slight scent of clover. I'd never smelled her before. I don't know if she wanted me to. If she wanted the attention, maybe just for that moment. But she let me.
And when the night was over, I understood what it meant. I understood I couldn't take it back even if I wanted to. I'd boxed up our friendship and buried it in the ground. I went home and tried to write a poem. The first line was, "Is it better to have lost and never loved than to have never lost at all?" But the irony of it was poisonous.
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Currently
listening
:
Exile in Guyville
By
Liz Phair
Release date: 21 December, 1999
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10:00 AM
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Friday, December 21, 2007
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Friday afternoon at Starbucks
Current mood: tired and aggravated...
Category: tired and aggravated... Life
So I'm at Starbucks and I forgot my headphones. To my left are two men playing chess and discussing the theory thereof. To my right are two men one of whom is mumbling to himself, but I haven't dared to look and see which one it is for fear that it may provoke a conversation. Better he mumble to himself. Otherwise I'm tired and aggravated. My apartment is an antiseptically scented environ with the gentle background rumble of 4 jet plane engine like fans. And WTF is up with the music at Starbucks? It's like they've trolled pop culture for the most tedious efforts at being innuocous, which rather than fading into a relaxed ambiance, provoke a kind of eyes dripping with blood murderous rage. Or maybe I'm just having yet another bad day.
Tomorrow my mother and I embark on a 14 hour drive to Arizona to visit with my Godmother and her husband for about a week. So should anyone wonder why I'm not around myspace so much, that's why. Wish me luck.
2:13 PM
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