I’m going to try to get in the habit of posting again. Rather than trying to catch up right away I thought I’d start small and just talk about some of the things that are going on with me right now ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

I first heard of Bikini Kill when I was a sophomore at SUNY Purchase in 1992. There was a feature on them in an issue of SPIN magazine with Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten on the cover that I nicked from the campus library where I worked. I described Kathleen Hanna as a "sexy, scary girl who pogos while singing about sexual abuse." I cut out the ( Read more... )

I’ve deeply drawn to the films of Lars Von Tier. There’s something about his worldview that validates the pessimism about human nature that I feel as a chronic depressive. Stephan Rylance’s review of Von Tier’s lastest movie, AntiChrist, really clarified this aspect of Von Tier’s work for me.

The Agonies of an Antichrist by Stephan Rylance

( Read more... )

I’m not sure if I feel like a different person these last couple of weeks or like I’m finally myself again.

Everything isn’t happy happy joy joy all the time of course, I’ve had a couple bad days and I’m still trying to get my eating back on track my mood has been good and I have energy and ideas.

I haven’t been doing much writing ( Read more... )

St Patrick’s Day has been called Chicago’s Mardi Gras in the worst sense of the term. It’s basically a trashy, touristy drinking binge. While St Patrick’s Day isn’t actually until tomorrow, around here the party started a couple days early. On Saturday I was driving to work at 7:00 a.m. when I spotted my first reveler in gilded green plastic ( Read more... )

This past week Blossom Dearie and Lux Interior, two very different musicians who’s work I very much enjoy, passed away.

Lux Interior was the front man of the seminal punk band the Cramps.  In the music of the Cramps, sexuality lurking beneath the surface of early rockabilly and B horror movies exploded to the surface in a gyrating, hiccupping ( Read more... )

Ten years ago, on October 12, 1998 a twenty one-year-old University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard died after several days in a coma following a brutal attack.    An investigation was launched, arrests were made and it was revealed that the motivation for murder was Shepard’s homosexuality.  There was, of course, more to it than that.  There ( Read more... )

I’ve been reading Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, which is essentially a biblical style mythology/history of Middle Earth.   It’s proving slow going on account of all the unfamiliar words-names of characters, races, and places.  Because of my learning disability I’ve never been able to “sound things out.”  Since I can’t do this my method of reading is ( Read more... )

For someone who’s supposed to be watching their spending I’ve gone to way too many movies over the past couple days.  Eastern Promises on Thursday then on Sunday after I finished work on a whim I rode my bike to Landmark Century Cinema and caught a showing of Across the Universe.

Across the Universe is a musical about the 1960’s where the ( Read more... )