This is a pretty scary story Robin told [inlink]robin,214[/inlink] about getting mugged on Franklin Street. With all the vitriol of my new conservative curmudgeon phase, I say we form an Angry Horde, maybe get some pitchforks, torches, that kinda stuff. We can mob the street looking for her assailant but, like any good angry mob, kick the shit out of some completely innocent bystander who is not related to the crime in any way. Then mob justice will be served.

Seriously though, I hate to say shit like this, but maybe young women should have someone walk them to the door? I know I always wait when I drop a woman friend off at her house to make sure she gets inside safely. I hate that I, we, have to be more paranoid, and I hear myself thinking vaguely lascivious warnings like "so much more than your purse could be stolen". I don't want to live a life of fear, but here it is, women getting their purses stolen on a street we wander down drunk all the time.

As for cops, I'm not opposed to calling them when the shit goes down, which is why I bad-mouth them a lot less these days. I feel like a hypocrit when I'm all like "fuck the po-lice" then call them as soon as someone is lost in a blizzard or something. That's what they should do for society, I think.

But Steve Kurtz has been smacked down by the thought police-- the protectors of paranoia, the propigators of permanent war. I was thinking the other day about how they put Ulysses, the book, on trial for obsenity. Wily Ulysses won out in the end. But only because the judge had a smidgeon of subtlty and aesthetic sensitivity. What I keep hoping is that Steve will get some judge who has enough sense to say "This is Art, not Terror!"

Congrats to all the nascent non-smokers, but I thought the lung crusties were really cute! I heart you, my leetle lung crusties!
[inlink]paul,1257[/inlink]

Did anybody happen to notice that the handover we've all been waiting for happened on Monday? Where was I? Why wasn't I told? I'm beginning to think this government of mine doesn't want me to be part of its descision making process at all! Hmmphh!

Signed,
the young curmudgeon

On purpose. Before even taking my coat off. Who knew? I'm middle-aged. Getting naked at dawn on a work night just struck me as well... pointless. God that's how old I am. (I hear all the youngsters in the house hooting "pointless is the point!"). I see a long line of bookshelves for this librarian, stretching into infinity and my approaching decrepitude. What's that sonny? You're looking for "The Eight Moral Pillars of Alienated Labor?" Why that's just down this aisle (said in a scratchy granny voice... pretty much what I sound like now after a night of smokin' and boozin'). My knees are creaky, my tongue is mossy, my eyes are shot through with oily red veins. From now on I'm staying inside like a good recluse and dedicating myself to bizarre, reflexive artworks. Am I too young to be a curmudgeon?

So the morning after the co-op prom (still chaste not chased!) I drove to PA to visit my fam. It's so nice to live close to them after being away from home at various schools since I was 13. It's strange to think how much of me comes from them. I really feel like "one of a type" when I'm with them. We look alike, talk alike, think alike. I feel really conscious of obvious family stuff like that now that I'm here in Buffalo and older.

We ate good food (courtesy of the Tastee Freeze (mmm... wing dings) and the Fireman's chicken barbecue. Basically out of what we ate we could have reconstructed a hideous chickenzilla with 6 breasts and forty wings.) And watched depressing movies, Cold Mountain, and House of Sand and Fog, the latter of which I highly recommend for some gut wrenching catharsis.

My sister and I talked about why we don't have more ambition. We decided that ambition is too much work. And besides, for people like us, sometimes just getting out of bed and going through the day is accomplishment enough. (We're a little melodramtic, in case you didn't notice.)

So I'm back today and went to work. Making a Flash animated book of a Japanese folk tale that has a kind of word-by-word bouncing ball effect for a literacy project. Except the bouncing ball is a duck. Long story. Anyways, in the process of making it I went down to the main branch of the library at the suggestion of my friend Tim (an awsome poet and playwright, maybe another journal entry) and took out a bunch of music from Japan, which is so beautiful and various. I know at first it all sounds the same, but there really are different types... Shinto ritual music and geisha music (another journal entry) and Koto music and wild drum music... it's not all twang twang toooot toooot trust me.

I also took out a CD of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. He's from India. I want to live in his music. It makes me feel so alive. If you haven't heard him before please go out and find something. He's fairly popular, with stuff in all the "world music" sections. Jewleh Lal! Jewleh Lal!

I spent the afternoon reading "The God of Small Things." Me and all of Buffalo. Heh. But as Terry and others have said, it is truly wonderful. Too bad I took a nap afterwards and had some profoundly bizarre dreams. It's hard for me to shake off a weird dream sometimes, I kind of have an aftershock effect that lingers all day.

So to any E-peepers who have read this far, and who have met me face to face, would you be interested in a camping trip to the Strip Mines in my home town this upcoming weekend? My cousin called my sister and asked her to be part of her daughter's (my cousin's) first camping trip. I figure every seven year old should have a crowd of rowdy twenty-somthings on her first occasion, right? The one drawback is that my cousin can be a little bitchy, but all the more reason to come in large numbers. Anyways, I know a lot of us have talked about a camping trip, and we pretty much all have Monday off. And the Strip Mines are heavenly, see Matthew's journal [inlink]matthew,261[/inlink]. Email me if you're into it, and I'll see if it will work out.

I'm working with a prof from UB on a proposal for a conference on surveillance. We decided to do reality television, one of the subcategories. Here is the abstract I wrote. Props to my friend Brian, who lent me the tapes of the show, and actually kinda gave me the idea. Here's the link to the Swan site:

And here's the abstract:

Fox's reality show "The Swan" comprises diverse perspectives of spectatorship which organize it into modes of surveillance and theatricality. The participants in this beauty pageant have several traits in common: most are young, married women; though few have positive male presences in their lives. Their main similarity is their exaggeratedly negative impression of their bodies; thus they submit to the drastic cosmetic surgery, psychological evaluation, and imposed isolation the contest requires. Because of their dysmorphic body views, they figuratively cannot "see" themselves. Upon entering the contest, they are not allowed to look at themselves in the mirror during the transformation. Literally, they cannot see themselves. The viewer however, has a panoptical view of the entire process, from graphic depictions of surgery, to close-focus intimate interviews and candid hand-held digital footage. These documentary views are highly contrasted with the heavily filtered, theatrical interludes with the specialists: the glamorous surgeons, dentist, personal trainer, and therapist who undertake the clinical and psychological overhaul of the contestant. In the end, she is "revealed" in a staged setting, seeing herself for the first time in a mirror that is dramatically concealed behind a red velvet curtain. The viewer's perspective is behind the two-way mirror. We see her seeing herself for the first time. Almost universally, her first observation is an expression of misrecognition, exclaiming "Is that really me", while looking at her observer. These modes of spectatorship highlight the disconnection between seen and seer, and the unreliability of observation in a society based on surface and spectacle.

About a week ago I shaved/naired off all (well, most) of my precious polemical body hair. Sorry to everyone out there who sent me "Yeah Grrrrl" messages. Basically my theory was that you should never be so dogmatic in your ideas that you don't occasionally question them. Plus it was a feeble attempt to get laid. So much for that! Anyways, now I find myself missing my furriness, so last night about 4 am I made this little testimonial from some pictures I took documenting the process:

Here is a picture of the painting that I recently finished. Still learning, still dreaming. I have some pictures of Niagara Falls taped up, next I'll be a Bathing Giantess!

So last night I saw one of the best shows I've seen in Buffalo. The Evens, Ian McKaye and Amy Farina, rocked in very "quietish" manner at Soundlab for a full house. If any of you are old Fugazi fans or general DIY punk enthusiasts then the sound might have suprised you. It was like McKaye had sat down and thought long and hard about... Belle and Sebastian?! I'm kidding! It wasn't that limp wristed. Anyways, if you missed the show, this morning I've been looking for mp3 to download and found one in a cool place we should all go to and support. Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore has helped start an online label called Protest Records where you can download free tunes by your fave rage bands. The Evens are on Volume 2, a song called On the Face of It they played last night. The last lines of it are "that's the tragedy/ of the strategy/ of looking out for number one". And for all you Kimya fanatics out there (by that I mean Paul :) her classic hit Anthrax is on Volume 5. There's also Chumbawumba, DJ Spooky, some Sonic Youth, but of course... all good stuff that loves life and hates fascism. As Ian McKaye said last night in one of his guru-esque monologues to a crowd that hung on his every word, the world needs more mind-expanders.

Ray Charles

1930-2004