647660 biting th feed that bites you: lostcosmonaut

lostcosmonaut

647660 biting th feed that bites you

Jul 01, 2011 14:33

booyakasha. I clean out Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine's litter box tonight, completely, as I aim to do monthly. I wait until just after Kevin has done all his business; set th kitchen trash bin outside on th back stoop; dump th litter box's contents into th bin; pour three glasses of water into th box; swish it around in there; dump th dirty water in th backyard; and den scrub th box's interior first w/ wet paper towels, den w/ dry paper towels; and den let it air-dry for a couple minutes before refilling it w/ fresh, fresh litter. This'd be simpler if my apartment building had a hose out back, which it doesn't -- which seems illegal, don't you think? I sweep up th residual cat litter from around th cat box and surrounding areas, and den ah haul th trash bin liner full of heavy waste down to th dumpster a couple blocks away and hurl it w/ unnecessary force into th void, thus completing a labour of incomprehensible love which Kevin will greet w/ th usual inscrutable blinks. He will notice that th cat box smells fresher, no doubt, but this improvement will go unremarked, as he prefers to speak only when something is, in his eyes, unjust or an asspain.

"Look @ you," I say, "w/ yr cat-fur-coated sofa, and yr nap w/o end, and yr igloo-shaped stupid cat box. Nobody loves you."

"That's just words," he says.

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Nine hundred miles away and a month sooner, @ his mansion in Isleworth, FL, Shaquille Rashaun O'Neal announces to th press his retirement from professional basketball. His beat-up knees make getting up and down th court @ th necessary pace an impossibility. Th last time I see him try to run in a game, he looks like a man using 80% of his strength to keep from crapping his pants. He's 39. It's worse (more alien) than Christopher Reeve in a wheelchair. After th press conference he goes upstairs into th master bathroom, unfurls his penis, and urinates into a Japanese electronic toilet. Th disturbance of th water's surface triggers th toilet to play Beyoncé's "I Care". Shaq tweets w/ one hand, aims his mighty stream w/ th other.

I'm old only compared to Young Shaq, he thinks. College Shaq. Bringing Down th Backboard Shaq. Compared to Old Shaq -- Grandchildren Playing Soccer Shaq, Fat as Fat Marlon Brando Shaq, Hard of Hearing Shaq, Dead Shaq -- compared to them, I am Young Shaq. He shakes th last drips of piss off and visualizes a future in which a thousand cloned versions of him dominate a growth sector of a world economy that is dependent upon genial humour combined w/ astonishing acts of strength and grace.

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I don't know, you know? I don't know. Do you know? Den there is th story of Terrence Malick sexting pictures of th contours of his tree of life, hugged tightly by boxer briefs imprinted w/ th Eagle Nebula, to a young mistress. "Dont mbate," she sexts back, "save it for when i get there i will b job u so nice you jizz will hit the ceiling". If she stares just right, she can see inside th nebula th profile of her petite grandmama rocking in a rocking chair, cradling a rifle, protecting th universe from men w/ black hats and bad intentions. Grandmama always said, "It takes one to beat one," meaning, When it comes to enemies, do your homework, child. It's all right to get punched, but never get suckerpunched. Grandmama had loved Grandpapa w/ her whole heart. A physicist consumed by his work, he'd suckerpunch her now and again, over th years, being cold, remarking offhand upon her intelligence, her dress, her hair, comparing her to other women, drinking -- he'd had a temper just cool enough to let him strike her weak spots w/ casual precision. When he was warm, which was four times out of five, he was th sun, not only hers, everyone's. He had travelled extensively in Asia. Though generally quiet, Grandpapa was possessed of a versatile archive of anecdotes and jokes, which he'd happily share if prompted. A change would come over him then -- a vein on his forehead would pop out, his hands were puppets, he'd do voices, and his calm wouldn't return until he and his audience were hurt from laughter. Th girl'd never had th nerve to ask Grandmama if Grandpapa had strayed outside of their marriage. She thinks, Nahh, my Grandmama was the most beautiful and smartest and most loving woman in the world. Den she thinks, But what if he met a beautiful and brilliant young physicist who looked like Rita Hayworth in a white lab coat wearing glasses, and they had to work together for long hours on an intense study of the creation of stars in another galaxy, just the two of them, looking at images of stars for hours and hours, doing hot and heavy mathematics, growing bleary-eyed and vulnerable? She prefers not knowing. Anyhow, whatever happened, his great crime -- th one that broke his wife's heart -- wasn't infidelity, but dying @ 49.

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It's 2011. I'm writing little reviews of books and movies on sites that combine social networking w/ th documenting and organizing of personal consumption data. I'm not making movies of my own or typing in my Internet diary. Th lack of creative practice saddens me and makes me generally nervous and hateful, though in other ways I'm th happiest I have been. It's th Internet: now everyone fancies himself an artist and a critic, and th tools make it so. Everyone's a journalist and an armchair activist. Everyone's a sharer and a liker, and th social networking sites have devised methods of quantifying attention received, of paying psychological rewards to people who share, such that sharing in itself might confer a semblance of th social status that once was attained only by making art or @ least translating art in a way that helped others find their way into it. Now the technology speaks for us: "You guys, here's this image I like. Love me." Th images come a-tumbling forth from every direction, unhindered by context, narrative, idea, or feeling. For those who believe that context is for th weak and narrative is th opiate fed to us by those who enjoy th class structure just as it is, th unharnessing of th image is th dream fulfilled. We don't have to pay for it. We don't have to buy a $6 bucket of heart attack popcorn. If I want to specialize in narwhals fucking adult babies, nobody can tell me that I'm sick and wrong -- block, filter, ban, delete -- and my friends of similar persuasion will bless me daily w/ affirmations that I'm righteous and right. My feed will be full of retro nostalgia, future worship, cats being assholes, cats getting pwned, obscure sex goddesses, and bad things happening to total strangers. My feed, my world. Time does not function in here. Give me a bowl of cereal, a bottle of wine, and a wi-fi connection, I'll make this day into night in a blink w/o getting up off my fat ass once. My sideblog is named "Fuck Yeah Bad Things Happening To Total Strangers". Soon, there'll be no one left who's not a connoisseur of something.

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MEANWHILE ELSEWHERE
★ Have you read a book made out of paper lately? According to my Goodreads I have read 104 books so far this year. Three of those have been books w/o pictures, I won't be tamed. ★ Listen, if you woulda told me five years ago that Youtube would soon be my main way of discovering and enjoying music, I woulda said, "Th place w/ th cats and th lip-synching?" ★ Marlon Brando flirts w/ everybody, man or woman, but especially women. It's like a long time ago God gave Marlon Brando an awesome responsibility, and Marlon Brando's been taking care of business ever since, making people go loose in th knees since ancient times, embodying th sovereignty of forces beyond our perception or control. Watch th Maysles Brothers' 26-minute documentary Meet Marlon Brando, learn something about eye contact. ★ Werner Herzog reads aloud from a Cormac McCarthy book on a radio show, and finds himself being transported by th implacability of death and th savagery of th Texican landscape. He's getting old as fuck now, will he ever soften up? ★ A pretty girl @ th Melechesh/Rotting Christ show is dancing furiously, gyrating, throwing horns, not caring when meatheads get spun out of th mosh pit and bump into her, not caring if she looks too happy for th music's oppressive riffs, not caring that she's still in office clothes. Take yr beauty to th next level by being lost in what you're doing. ★ Thanks to th wife I'm now eating better and healthier than I have ever eaten before -- sodium is down, sugar is down, fiber is up. W/o getting neurotic, I have trained myself to be mindful of my balance of protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Th rules are simple enough for me not to have to think of them. Read labels before buying. No HFCS. Eat less. Choose food over processed food. Any time you can eat foods that are leafy and green, or fruits that are orange, yellow, or red, or things involving almonds and whole grains -- do it. My beer gut's gone, my digestive system's happier, I'm spending less and enjoying every meal more, I don't have to suffer th spiral of self-loathing that comes from eating half a tube of Pringles in one sitting for no reason, and all it has cost is that now I sometimes talk about fiber unselfconsciously, exactly like a person who's old as fuck. ★ One of th sites I've been using for reviewing, MUBI, has a feature called "Filmography" that's actually somewhat nice to look @ and blessedly uncustomizable. All it is is a collection of stills from films you've seen w/ yr brief (420 characters or less) comments superimposed on th stills. Typing under such space constraints has given me practice making sentences denser and more allusive. Th longer a movie review gets, th more likely it is get cliff-noted by a reader's brain; keeping it brief cuts out that middle step. ★ By far my most-watched vid of th year is one that has been out there for close to 5 years and has attracted more than 14 million hits. I haven't thought too hard about why "Drinking out of Cups" can withstand multiple consecutive viewings in an era when culture is designed to be fungible and expendable -- any kind of meditation or deliberation here seems to go against th spirit of th project.

Click to view

When viewing "Drinking out of Cups" it's probably best to let yrself go and feel whatever feelings you're feeling. ★ Advice from a book I was reading while on th toilet: Reading on the toilet tends to increase your time spent on the toilet, which increases strain on you batty. Do not read on the toilet. ★ If I could draw, my comix would definitely not look like this:

★ A survey of sources inside th pet care industry has shown that 100% of female petsitters are interested in rifling through their clients' medicine cabinets @ least once. Of th male petsitters surveyed, 0% had rifled through th medicine cabinet, and 100% had given their clients' pathetic CD collections th once-over. (Th sample size for male petsitters was too small to draw strong conclusions.) Whether women in general are drawn to medicine-cabinet rifling, or whether such impulses are peculiar to th petsitting profession has not been determined. It's a big world of other people's houses out there, and th data will never be enough.