The Rainmaker Confessions

2010: Year That God Was Dead

2010-12-30T05:05:00.001-08:00

There's a.

There's a. There's a.

All children grow up...except one.

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." So said Marx in 1852.

"At 12:01 AM, exactly one year ago, I remember I was standing on the edge of Arthur's Court - the neighborhood I grew up in. All the three story houses glowed with Christmas lights brightening up their grand backyards and driveways to accommodate boats and suburbans..."

In the very last moments of December 2008, I stood at the edge of my neighborhood facing a vastness more alien and assuming than I'd ever known, sensing somehow I'd later wish it was a year I could have skipped. Here, in the last moments of 2010, I indeed find myself wondering, but more about 2010.

And yet, both because of my choices and because of things outside my ability to choose, 2009 and 2010 will go down as an interwoven single thread of two strands, as if they are together one year. One terrifying, exciting, incredibly wasted year.

There's a.

Well, maybe not a completely wasted year. In the spring of 2008, I saw the ocean for the first time, the Atlantic Ocean. It was like an encounter with a god, or a black hole, or some cosmically and epically unknowable thing, and in May 2010 I flew over it to England. I learned a lot about myself while I lived in London for six weeks I never could have learned otherwise, and yet I'd never have pictured myself really traveling to and all over England...

"Small wonder that when a gay guy comes along weeks later claiming to have visions and revelations from God about my life, I don't believe him."

Oh. Wait. Because last year, I met somebody who did see me traveling to and all over England. And I didn't really take him seriously because that was prefaced with the phrase, "God revealed you to me..." I do have to wonder if I might have taken that young, black, and respectful guy more seriously if it was with a crystal ball. Or maybe the I Ching. Or...oh, fuck, what's the difference, right?

Because it's December (and, in the story of my life, it's apparently one of "those" Decembers), and it's the last moments of 2010, and spiritually, emotionally, mentally, and physically, I couldn't be farther away from where I was in the last moments of 2009. Which is to say: I feel I'm almost exactly where I was just as 2009 was moments away from beginning. Which is to say: I don't find myself necessarily wishing there was time to skip time, but that time in fact did skip, and I'm wondering where the fucking hell the past two years of my life went - other than, not to put too fine or metaphorical a point on it, straight to fucking hell.

What does hell look like, anyway? Well, I can tell you what it feels like: there's something, like a blink. Something goes out, then it returns, but slightly different, and it's difficult to see the difference until -

"Even now I try to remember the last three months and everything only comes in snatches. The checks bounced, the record player skipped. There was a power outage so brief you wouldn't have noticed except for that slight delay on all the clocks around the house. Absolutely nothing happened, and everything that did happen occurred all at once."

See, the thing is, when I start to look back, things really do start to repeat themselves. The first time it's pathetic and empty, and ultimately kinda sad, lost and nothing can be atoned for. The second time, though, it's all forced and hammy, theatrical and outrageous, and ultimately like the most banal comedy you can imagine.

"A mysterious alien thing too tiny to see has come from nowhere, invaded my throat and wrapped my body in so much continual pain that I'm prevented from even whispering."

I had such strange resolve when I found that the virus was back again, in my throat. I was weirdly resigned to enduring last year's pain again, even if it had to be for weeks again. And so the only thing that truly disturbed me was not that the sickness might have returned, but that it was over in less than a few hours of its discovery just by a slight brushing away. Like that, I was cured, it was over. That's also what happened last year...but it took much, much longer than a few hours for it to happen.

There's a. There's a. There's a. There's a. There's a. There's a. There's a. Th -

There's a kind of feedback loop, and just when you start to detect there's something wrong in the way you've been keeping time, reality quickly rearranges itself. You aren't in control. Of anything.

"Go to hell, Everything. You have confused the mother living fuck out of me."

That sounds a little like the way my little brother described Inception to me a few days ago, when he was telling me it was the movie that got him to think the most this year. I've heard similar from many others, and I wish I could say Inception was just as mind-challenging to me. But the funny thing is something far more pretentious challenged me more: the Joaquin Phoenix film I'm Still Here. I think it's a film that will haunt me for a bit longer. Along with other films this year like it, such as Black Swan, it's gotten me thinking about a lot of things I don't like thinking about.

"I suppose things don't seem all too different since the spring. I still write out my musings in the company of strangers who drag their American Spirits and their Marlboros, bitching about professors and bosses. I still improvise fragments of a blues tune in the shower when the roommates are out. I have a Pendelton whiskey in the freezer and a gradually emptying box of Lucky Strikes on my table. I check my mailbox even when I haven't ordered any cartel from Amazon to stick my fix. I measure out my indifference with myself and my life in Facebook sessions and regular size scalding cups of sweetened Americano. These all are symptoms of my summer waste. The buzzing, the static. I spent more time in love with all the distractions and decorations my Visa could afford my boredom."

In the blogosphere and elsewhere, I've heard the 00s called "The Decade of Broken Dreams." I can't help but wonder if we haven't gotten over it yet. As Americans, anyway. But maybe it doesn't matter, because I obviously can't. Obama's in office, and...and what? Wasn't that election time filled with, as Zizek notes, such Kantian enthusiasm for the future? It was infectious. I think everybody had that enthusiasm, and not just for the election - for our own individual futures. A week ago, I was with a friend who made an accidental turn down an old street; apologizing, he said, "Sorry, I guess it was 2008." I replied in joking, "Well, hooray - Obama just got elected." We laughed then, but I later wondered if there's ever anyone else who sometimes catches themselves wishing it was autumn 2008, and you're counting down to November 5th. Because I do.

Zizek certainly has much to say about that, but to me, it goes beyond just a failure of revolutionary tendencies, and I mean on a personal level. If anything, that was this year for me, and what makes films like Black Swan and I'm Still Here so haunting to me: I'm asking myself what happens after the party ends, after the world ends, and after God is dead. Who's excited and hopeful then? If you find there's no God, does it necessarily follow you find there's no Satan, either?

"I could see the beginning of things, and I could see myself in the middle of some eternally marching time machine, with a million plans and every possible kind of lie. And I saw how it could end, everything - the big capital End of everything."

That's what happens - you meet the Devil. And meet him I did, in London. Trouble is, he didn't take "Leave me alone, holy fuck" when I ran into him - he followed me across that gigantic ocean. Back here to Happy Valley, Utah/America, where young people were committing suicide.

There's a........

Ah, right. Suicide stories. Those too. "If there is a God, and He is loving - more to the point, a 'perfect' God, and His command is a 'natural' one, then how did it make any sense that a 'homosexual' even exists? I felt like an anomaly, some hiccup in the Great Eternal Plan, and marriage was a holy recreation of Beckett's frightening endgame. And it felt sickening to literally be a freak of 'nature' every minute of every day. The ultimate concern was not whether or not I could 'overcome' the attractions, but whether or not I could live happily with myself and my choice long afterwards. And, as ever in the Church, we are talking about forever here."

So here I am now, going on four years later. And not a lot to show for it, it seems. Kinda like I wasted years of my life away.

It's just suspicious, and not just the missing, god-shaped hole in my memories. It's the synchronicity. It makes you paranoid, uncomfortable. And it's everywhere. No pun intended - if the Devil doesn't get me first, Nothing will. Nothing maybe already did. Do I even remember anymore? Time has already broken down and in the future, be it twenty minutes from now, twenty hours, or twenty days, this entire entry has already become meaningless.

"But then something happened in the Neverland."

Right. There was that.

Everywhere and nowhere. Everything at once. And then nothing. Last December. I think I like to pretend it was terribly important, and I think I do that because it's easier than learning the real lesson of What Happened, which is the question I asked just before the apocalypse hit my retinas: "What's the difference between all these stories I keep telling myself?" And now I live in a world of the aftermath. Religion doesn't prepare you for this. And neither does atheism. Medicine, science, art - nothing prepares you for what happens next.

There's a bridge.

Ah...well. That much I have figured out, I guess.

There's a bridge. It's black, and cagey. And I'm at the end.

That's what the future looks like. It looks like goodbye. Like a few tears, then the punchline. Maybe birth, maybe death. Like history repeats itself - first as tragedy, then as farce.

All children, except one, grow up. "To die," he once said, "would be an awfully big adventure!" I hope so, Peter. I hope so.

Satan Stops At Bethan Green [England Season]

2010-06-05T17:21:00.000-07:00

"You know I've seen a lot of what the world can do
And it's breaking my heart in two..."

My father takes my mother's hand. I think she's crying. We don't know it yet - and by the time my parents do, I'll have crossed the dateline and time-traveled into tomorrow - but all this rain coming down is going to become a snow storm. The airport murmurs. Say it, Cat.

"But if you want to leave, take good care
Hope you make a lot of nice friends out there
But just remember there's a lot of bad and beware -
Ooo, baby, baby, it’s a wild world..."

Leave synchronicity to 4 AM car radio, right?

When I was a child, my mother tells me, I was a smiling, laughing child. But he is not someone I can remember. Now, my latest stories have ancient charms, and my older stories are in newer drag. And where are these families? Ah...there is so much hostility in me. And the devil needs a new name. Why not a “yes” and a remembering? Must I forget? What can I love? What will I find to love? Such questions at 30,000 feet, tracing a line to a star.

A map. The changing clocks. The concrete offering stability. The sky a window above a window, light finding such ways down, down, to the elaborate wandering here. In corners the rascal beards, reptilian noises...

MIXTAPE TRACKLIST: “GLOUSTER ROAD”

1. “Devil” by Stereophonics
2. “Deadwood [Live In Belfast]” by Matthew & The Atlas
3. “Zero [Live On Letterman]” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
4. “There’s No Other Way” by Blur
5. “London, London” by Cibelle feat. Devendra Banhart
6. “Gary” by Stages of Dan
7. “The Boyfriend Song” by The Momeraths
8. “No Way” by Pearl Jam
9. “The Last Kiss” by Thomas Tantrum
10. “Last Day of Magic” by The Kills
11. “Zorbing [Live On Jools Holland]” by Stornoway
12. “So Here We Are (Four Tet Remix)” - by Bloc Party
13. “England [Live At The Brooklyn Academy of Music]” by The National

*EXTENDED "DEVIL'S CUT":
1. “Devil” by Stereophonics
2. “Memory Of A Free Festival, Pt. I (Old Brompton Edit)” by David Bowie
3. “Zero” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
4. “Woah, Billy!” by Lucky Soul
5. “Mother’s Best Child” by Stages of Dan
6. “London, London” by Caetano Veloso
7. “There’s No Other Way” by Blur
8. “Within The Rose” by Matthew & The Atlas
9. “I Can Change (Stereogamous Remix - Short Edit)” by LCD Soundsystem
/ INTERMISSION

10. “Wide Eyes [HibOO d'Live Version]” by Local Natives
11. “A Single Cup of Tea (Bedroom Demo Version)” by The Momeraths
12. “No Way” by Pearl Jam
13. “That’s The Way” by Led Zeppelin
14. “Last Day of Magic (London’s Listening Edit)” by The Kills
15. “Zorbing” by Stornoway
16. Exit Mix: Bowie’s “Memory Of A Free Festival, Pt. II” + “So Here We Are (Four Tet Remix - Camden Edit)” by Bloc Party
17. “England” by The National

*features more local London music stretching from Camden Town to Islington, like Nate Maingard, Lucky Soul, and Yan Yates, but also random bits from Belle & Sebastian and The New Pornographers (even a weirded out Snow Patrol) that also made an impression on me during the "Satan Stops At Bethnal Green" story. Also includes a live version of my theme from 2010, "Wide Eyes" by Local Natives. This is the mixtape I edited and created myself and burned to a CD given to me by the Atherton Lin boys.

Futures 2010

2009-12-31T06:02:00.000-08:00

Written on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008. What I believed I would say in December 2009:

"...If love came, I wasn't fooled again. I didn't go searching for it; it only came to me, and in whatever form I took. What was most important was the love I could find in revisiting old friendships...and with any hope, one in particular has ideally and finally arrived at the place I've always wanted it to be. With any further hope (and likely a lot of luck had something to do with it, too) there was at last a place I reached with my father, and most importantly with my mother. I have come to be comfortable with where I stand about God. My choice to either stay or leave the LDS church was not coercion or performance. I made my choice based on what I want most and what I need most. I didn't come to some kind of all-encompassing, self-righteous enlightenment. I only reached a point where the questions were no longer so pressing, or so urgent. I'm satisfied with what I found, even if I still haven't found what I'm looking for."

-----------------------------------------------------

Friday, December 31st, 2010:

What. A year.

I'm so close to finishing my major. I might need to take a few classes in the spring, but after that, it's basically in the bag. Math class was both easier and harder than I thought it'd be. My graduation present to me is a vacation. Ticket to anywhere, Japan maybe. "I never really gave up on / Breaking out of this two-star town." I can almost taste it.

I finally got eating right. Raw foods - what a novel concept. If I'd known it would've felt this good, I might've started earlier than this year. Investing in a vegetable juicer instead of buying chicken strips at the cafeteria...what an idea. It was a rocky start, and I probably still have a bit to go before I can give up fish - to be gay is to love sushi, after all. But once I got over the cheese hamburger crave, it was surprisingly easy to get used to.

Finally, a screenplay. With luck, a couple. With more luck, a film. Whoda thought. I think that all the stories I've kept inside since I was young are gonna finally get the chance to be shared, now that I'm getting my ass off the proverbial couch. Speaking of which...it's so nice to have gone a solid year with no TV.

Got in touch with my feminine side and woke up all those sleeping princesses I grew up loving and even dressing up. "Lady Matilda"...Don't know where to go with it, but dressing in drag is not nearly the scary, vain and bizarre thing I always thought it was. It was actually a lot of fun. I don't know if I'll ever tell my mother, though.

Love came, as it usually seems to, in the summertime. But this time was different because, this time, I refused to settle. What growth came of that relationship matters only in that I learned more about myself and whether or not I'll ever find "The One" - any futures for that relationship are either already determined, and were from the start, or they've have already twilighted away and it was just another sunny experiment. And that's okay.

So many of the things I've always wanted to happen for me...actually did happen this year. Finally saw U2, finally went to the Festival of Colors, finally learned a song on a twelve-string guitar, finally finished East of Eden. (And I'll be damned if I didn't whittle down at least a couple of pages of the rest of my reading list.) And I can say all of that in Spanish and Japanese. But this year had so many challenges. It was difficult to make choices about my past, even though I've been anticipating it for so long. I don't know what can be said about those I've known the longest in the Mormon Church. I'm sure that I've offended some, and I know that in one particular case, I may never be able to see or talk to him again.

But at least I've done everything within my power to let those who care and were concerned that this was the only way. I couldn't figure out my spirituality by investigating Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, etc. without also giving scientology, astrology, magick and all manner of paganism a fair chance as well. (At least I can finally read someone's cards.) But none of that would have meant much if I hadn't also, with equal measure and all the full furvor of my teenage years with Talmage, Nibly and C.S. Lewis at the bedside, studied out atheism. I've been exposed to it for the past few years, but at no other time in my life did I really read and reason with it as this year. And what a learning experience.

I know I'm all over the map. (My poor mother.) But this is the way it had to be. And the reasons are rooted in the mere existence of my creative voice - a voice I'm still trying to find and control: my identity is constantly shifting. I'm here one day, then the next day I'm completely gone. I don't know who I am, and I never have. It may be another while, maybe even years, before I can know. But I might never discover who I am or where I came from, and this has always been my struggle. I was called "Paradox Kid" in junior high. But this year, I finally broke through the shapelessness of myself by coming to an understanding with how my memory works to influence my personality, and how I can create something out of that ocean always inside me. Hard work, but I can confidently say I got somewhere.

And there's still so much more work to be done. More places to go and things to do and people to see. I have to continue to find how my voice works, and what I can do. So bring it on, 2011. Matthew A. Jonassaint never knew so little, or looked so good.

2009: Year That God Forgot Me

2009-12-27T18:43:00.000-08:00

New Years Day 2010...

At 12:01 AM, exactly one year ago, I remember I was standing on the edge of Arthur's Court - the neighborhood I grew up in. All the three story houses glowed with Christmas lights brightening up their grand backyards and driveways to accommodate boats and suburbans. The city mayor lives two houses away, and just behind us an orthodontist who owns two German shepherds and was the first in our neighborhood to have a plasma screen TV. A bit to the left is a director at NuSkin and a few doors down from there is the owner of a Zion's National Bank. His wife owns a classy dance studio in the basement. If you go further down the street, you'll find a Marine family, a BYU professor family, and a chiropractor family. A fenced up majestic world, carved from pristine whiteness and heft of landscape, winding lovely in righteous twirls, made of houses and covered with ice.

A year ago, I stood standing at the edge and mused to myself aloud that I'd be standing here again in 2010 wishing that 2009 had never happened. Just a feeling. Likely brought on by a decade's worth of college cynicism and all-around broken national faith in the future. I guessed that I'd look back on 2009 wondering if it was a year I could have skipped.

At the time, there was little sign of what 2009 would bring. Admittedly, I was still angry and scared at what my breakup with my first boyfriend might mean, with all its deconstructions and devaluing of everything I was raised to believe I was not capable of ever having, or feeling. My only job was to act out what was assigned to me. There was an agenda to follow, after all. But then along came a redhead in a pickup truck, who could play the cello and give you such a kiss, and he denied me - my friendship or my past with him - for a better but dying man, ex-Army and hiding in the mountains. And all those hand-me-down ideas about everything had to change.

So 2009 didn't look like a recovery period or a time to resort priorities. It looked like a Nothing. But I hoped things would turn up. I sensed change coming. And as I was accustomed to, I believed this change would come about from some temple castle glowing in mountainous dark night, or a promise at the end of "that" small blue book, or a lonely faithful moment on my knees at my bedside. Or maybe Erik would come back and make everything right again. Or maybe nothing would happen at all. But I couldn't have guessed it would actually be a long, timeless and spaceless chain of the weirdest and worst times of my life.

I never knew I'd find myself little more than a month later on the floor of a bar, convulsing after that "one more" menthol American Spirit. Propelling curses and reckless shame at a ruined castle keep, a snowing sky and invisible God. Racing down the highway in too much black pain to think about anything except the week-old memory of a friend coming home from the streets of New York, with his honor folded neatly for everyday wear. Even after swearing then to abandon the bottle, months later I'd be back on the floor, vomiting, shivering, shirtless. In a personal place without emotion, without beauty, and without time. And cradled on that damn floor by people who really shouldn't care about me.

A penthouse apartment, an abandoned field outside of town. Secrets, and even more secrets. A dark blue hotel room, a Wisconsin bathroom. She takes a long drag on her cigarette, looks at me, and says with a cackling laugh, "You look a bit overwhelmed!" As the banker turns me away, I mutter, "I guess I won't get that ticket to New Orleans." There are sounds of vomiting from my bathroom and now he's begging me to see his boyfriend, but he can't stop laughing so much. She's telling me in a rowdy campus hallway that prostitution is now the only way she'll make it through school. There's a sickly old voice with gray whiskers around the mouth and jeans stiffened by dirt, telling me to get out of the car and keep quiet, so as to not wake neighbors. "Matthew," she says, her voice glassy and strained, "Brother Pratt's been arrested. For raping a girl." I hear furious yells through the walls and the Guinness to get me off the floor and the hell out the door. The surging crowd lifts the girl above swaying heads to latex glove hands, and the medics carry her away strapped to a board as mud splashes and the band plays on.

The train rushes by and I feel walls around me tremble. A mysterious alien thing too tiny to see has come from nowhere, invaded my throat and wrapped my body in so much continual pain that I'm prevented from even whispering. He puts his hand on the cool steel of his gun as he reassures me he knows the gospel of Christ as taught by Joseph Smith is true, but can't say the same about the Mormons. There's a firetruck outside flashing all my living room in blacks and reds with a pulse. She only lets herself look at the Kansas City photo for one moment before gently closing the drawer, and no one ever sees it again. "You're such a good cuddler," says boy with a body he stole away from Greek gods, and I taste his salty-sweet tongue on my side of the bed. I'm sinking into a chair and feeling the uncountable elephants in the room when the boy in the bandana has finally had it up to here with curiosity and yells at my face with a weird smile, "DUDE, are you FUCKING HIGH YET?" The midnight sky is scarred for one blinking moment as a ball of fire strings to a hot white light and falls down, down to the western horizon. She can't look at me, only at the ceiling, and she says, "A lot of people are about to die."

I still don't know how I got a straight divorced man to make out with me in the lobby of a Hilton. I've been dragging so much secrecy, guilt, loneliness and anger inside of me that finally when on Halloween I watched a David Bowie get handcuffed and led away, after both of us had been turned away from a house of God to hands of the law, something inside me finally snapped. Cave paintings, comic books or stained glass windows? Birthday parties, pride parades, church sermons and elections...or masks, makeup, theatrics and temptations...what's the difference. Small wonder that when a gay guy comes along weeks later claiming to have visions and revelations from God about my life, I don't believe him.

Go to hell, Everything. You have confused the mother living fuck out of me.

But then something happened in Neverland. About a week ago, after days of not eating or sleeping, I finally collapsed on my bed...but I actually went somewhere. I could see the beginning of things, and I could see myself in the middle of some eternally marching time machine, with a million plans and every possible kind of lie. And I saw how it could end, everything - the big capital End of everything.

I can't explain it. And I can't talk about it, not yet, anyway. But I'm wondering if this year is closing on more than just a decade of my life. I wonder if it's closing on an entire era of existence, an entire way of life.

A boy lives in the house at the very very limit of Arthur's Court, where the large fence meets the city streets. He moved from Riverside, California when a great friend of mine had to move away. Riverside moved into his old house. We became very close, and maybe too fast. He was someone I loved more than my own life. But this world tells us that love can very rarely be nonsexual if it's with someone we're not related to. And this world tells us that if it is a feeling towards someone the same gender as you, it's either love, sexually, or it's lunatic crime and sin. So with religious fervor, I pulled that old sleight of hand, and I fell in love with a beautiful, strong, handsome and virtuous idea of him, of who he could be for me. But Riverside didn't have enough strength to keep up with my little magic trick. In a few days now, he'll leave on his LDS mission to jungles below the equator. And without knowing it, he'll take a lot of my old and dying intangibilities with him. A door is closing.

When I was a sophomore in high school, the stage technicians and actors used to call me Moses, because I was in charge of opening and closing the giant red curtain, and in order to do it I had to use a wooden two by four on this old machine. I remember watching, memorizing every blinking instant of the final moments in each scene, and how every time it never plays out quite the same way. It's the same words, the same clothes and the same boys and girls on a very wide and black stage, and out in the outside blackness is an ogling audience. The moments are composed of musical notes and chapping paint and makeup powders, always the same because of practice, always different because of time.

And just before time and audience can pin it all down into some singled finality, I shut the curtain on everything, and the illusion can be preserved for me alone, behind the curtain, where everyone is frozen for that exact second before the abrupt rushing around to the next performing instant for the darkness. So I memorize the moment for tomorrow. And then it ends.

Wanted: The IKEA Couple

2009-10-18T02:26:00.000-07:00

The PERFECT couple. They wear their relationship like war paint everywhere they go. Smiles are teethy and wide and just LOVELY. He keeps his hair gelled. She wears big crystal globe earrings and dresses in whites, pinks, and blues. Go as Jim and Pam from The Office for Halloween and give out copies of The Color Code for Christmas. Everybody, from corrupt politicians to the weekly weed hackers, is JUST SO NICE. Milk and sugar each other with theatrical politeness and traveling show affection everywhere they go. Speak in quiet secretive tones around each other and speak up, sometimes too loudly, when around others or in public - especially if they find something FUNNY. Everything is FUNNY. Love sharing food and feeding each other. Preface sentences with what he or she "said the other day" because it was just so SMART and WONDERFUL. "The world would be a better place if everyone was as HAPPY as we are," they advertise when they hold hands and walk in the middle of hallway, or kiss and giggle loudly afterward while in the library. They make the air claustrophobic with their billboard romance. They seek to be observed and objectified. PERFECT.

I too wish to be PERFECT. Let's have a threesome. Let's explore positions. It'll be GREAT.

Wanted: The Sk8tr Boi

2009-10-14T01:11:00.000-07:00

Has a fake gold watch. Wears name brand shoes without socks and a black baseball hat. His tan makes him comfortable and he is empowered by his smart haircut. He always looks impatient in class and fiddles with his pen; prone to doodling black and white geometrical shapes on paper or desk. His longboard is stickered in loud slogans and menacing symbols. His jeans are tight enough to wear him and his white Hanes sell his ass crack. Addresses females by attending to their gender ("Babe, baby, girl, little girl") and attributes status to males ("Brother, bro, dude, man, boss"). Doesn't like to cause a fuss, won't speak up unless watching an athletic event or bragging about last night's sexual exploits. Usually seen doing pathetic tricks outside the library or bumming a cigarette in the parking lot.

I need someone quiet and complicit to work for me. Do my homework for me, man. Bro, work my job for me. Dude, buy my groceries and weed my yard. Be my bitch, Sk8tr Boi.

About "Polaris"

2009-10-06T15:40:00.000-07:00

It's been a major pain, basically. But I finally have a new blog on WordPress, and you're welcome to check it out.

It'll probably get a different title at some point. Ideally, it'll be the place where I can blab about movies and put politicking rants, as well as randomness about my life in general. This blog will continue to be the vent for my creative shamblings and offerings and whatnot.

That's all.

Wanted: The Straight Guy Closet Case

2009-10-05T18:35:00.001-07:00

A ruthless Trekkie. High attraction to nonwhite girls - even and especially if they have blue or green skin, use a golden staff, can fire a plasma blaster accurately and read your mind. Suffers from the unrequited love of pale and malnourished anime girls with pink hair, loosened ties, tiny skirts and whopping tits - but dislikes talking about actually "doing it" with women. His wrists and hands are the only muscles that receive exercise (due to rapid joystick movements late at night in front of the computer); he may look normal and fit when facing him, but when viewed from the side his surprise rotund belly makes him look like a Who. Typically quiet but will laugh loudly (if nervously) when the right Star Wars reference is made. Indecisive. Needs to roll a twenty-sided dice to choose what to eat, what to wear, and what to do with his meager paycheck. Walks like a dinosaur and has a sauce stain on his shirt. Often red in the face but not from yelling or exercise. Owns wooden samurai swords. Rarely leaves his house or apartment except for a Beto's run or to pick up the newest game on the Top Ten list. He wears his socks too high.

I'm looking for a model for my photoshoot. I will use incredible lighting and color. Photoshop will clear your blemishes and whiten your teeth. The photos will be posted in sororities and on the "women for men" section of Craigslist. Pay negotiable.

"Sediment Strikes The Atlantic"

2009-10-01T18:09:00.000-07:00

You, restless,
revealing delicate
dregs of stomach hairs - you stretch, and
my nervous
eyes steal a view.
Your morning
stubble doesn't give a damn.
Be dissident in my house. We can share
my bed.

Aeolian winds now, excitedly
static, touching tongues as they busy
past to carve crests and peaks
of mountains,
snowy, feeling guilty
of their own terrible beauty.
Glaciers grace
slow and - one day plume
mists of sand into
oceans, into sedimental memory.

When your lips are still
dampened with our pungent beers,
resume your stories. We
observe the parking from a
safe distance.
You are
pointing your anger at newspaper
headlines again.

Freckles
bronzed and
dirty scatter
into place
when you come
closer. Then are you - bright
spots of headlights dashing
electric along ebony
veins of highway or
careful butter spread on Monday
morning toast or
choirs of infant laughter dispelling
in nurseries or Time settling
everything.

Me.
I asked
what histories you'd
spoken of to her
yesterday.
"He's so sad now,"
she said.

Transmissions From B.S.S.S. (Broken Shooting Star Satellites) During The Suicidal Hurl Towards Earth

2009-09-16T16:27:00.001-07:00

Dear Heath: I only know now that you aren't my muse. You aren't my Superman. Now I know that you aren't my god or even the source of my inspiration. You are an inspiration to me nonetheless, though. So why am I crying out to you?

I'm crying out because you are nonetheless a mouthpiece for my muse. I do not travel by day, but under cover of the night. Therefore I must trust the guiding reflecting lights in the sky until I have prepared myself to face the more brilliant sun light. You're one of many pieces of a fragmented tale I am trying to remember. You are one of many things I copy and imitate in order to better learn how to birth and create. Until I can do it on my own. I won't, however, make the same mistake I usually do and mistake the model/example "thing" for the "thing-in-itself." Helpmeets are necessary supports until full flight is possible, right? Crutches are transitory instruments. There can be a virtue in a one-night-stand.

So I will give you more of my attention. I've arranged things with Turvy already; I'll take my time back because I create Turvy to kill him, and I kill him to create him. I will stop trying to force my creativity out of my memories and find my altered state of conscience in the current moment and seek the inspiration there. Because I am there. Am me. Am Turvy. Am the Flash, Am Superman. Am that lightning bolt epiphany, am that death and that life. I am you, Heath.

So I can't keep staking my hell in the past or my heaven in the future; all I have is now. All my life, I've been waiting - waiting on "that" moment, waiting for a Superman. Now, I'm gonna stop waiting. By this December, I want to have gotten farther away from the static and have found a few frequencies worth tuning into. In three months time, I'd like to be just a little more prepared and closer to the morning's light.

But if not you, then who is my muse?

I'm not sure right now, old friend. I guess we'll find out in just a moment.

Now here I go screaming wildly as I unclench my fists, open my eyes and relax for the impact.

To Turvy (the Elephant): A Speculation...

2009-09-16T16:25:00.000-07:00

If I could wind down the clocks just a bit right before this fall semester starts so that I could have a chance to speak with you, this might be what I would say.

I suppose things don't seem all too different since the spring. I still write out my musings in the company of strangers who drag their American Spirits and their Marlboros, bitching about professors and bosses. I still improvise fragments of a blues tune in the shower when the roommates are out. I have a Pendelton whiskey in the freezer and a gradually emptying box of Lucky Strikes on my table. I check my mailbox even when I haven't ordered any cartel from Amazon to stick my fix. I measure out my indifference with myself and my life in Facebook sessions and regular size scalding cups of sweetened Americano.

These all are symptoms of my summer waste. The buzzing, the static. I spent more time in love with all the distractions and decorations my Visa could afford my boredom. It was a serious affair but things haven't worked out. You have been weighed and measured, Turvy, and I love you very much. But I have to kill you now.

It's the way. You know that by now. You are my time, and my time is a thread in Time when heard echoing down the hallway. My passage in this life lies between two doors to the dark, and I have sneaked a peek into both. I worry that I'm not there (where? There...), but I really am. I have been before. And I will be moments from now, too. I will be remembered. I will stain Time with myself, and you are going to help me. And for the very first time, I realize that I'll be remembered not because I fear being forgotten, but because I have the choice to be remembered - the choice to be alive. If only I can get my ass off this couch.

So you will be electrocuted. All I do is say the magic word, like Billy Batson must when calling for Captain Marvel, and there will be shock and lightning to turn me into something new. But the lightning must strike you. The moment of epiphany belongs to me but you must suffer for it. Even die for it. You may be my own, and my creation, but all stars have their moments before they burn out.

But in some places in this world where you've been, they do say that Shiva is your father. Others say you are the only son of our Father Abraham. You will be brought back to life during Death's immaculate dance. You will be saved by the hand of God at the very last second. I can only speculate that in some way or another, I will wake up tomorrow morning to find you in the room. I imagine that your face will be sad and that you will be smiling. And we will begin again, inseparable, until the very, very end.

I suspect so. I suspect so.

Static.

2009-08-31T23:35:00.000-07:00

"All I know is that my mind is blown / When I'm with you...when I'm with you..."

Summer 2009: the summer that time forgot. Even now I try to remember the last three months and everything only comes in snatches. The checks bounced, the record player skipped. There was a power outage so brief you wouldn't have noticed except for that slight delay on all the clocks around the house. Absolutely nothing happened, and everything that did happen occurred all at once.

One way to describe it: "Static." is probably, in terms of consciousness expansion, a sequel of sorts to "Cottonfire" but it's a spiritual sequel to "Chain of Memories" (summer 2005) and a thematic sequel to "A Neverending Story" (summer 2006).

When you soundtrack three months of your life with the antic bubble gum camp of The Flaming Lips and the religiously feverish and blasé melancholy of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, you start to really play with notions of language and sound. Additionally, when you only read mythologies, creation stories from various religions and comic books and basically nothing else for a while, there's this weird sort of germination that occurs in your creativity.

I can't explain. One moment I remember a boy barely out of high school suddenly leaning in to kiss me in the passenger's seat with all the moxie in the world, and the next thing I remember is spasming on a bathroom floor, vomiting and being carried by strong hands. Next I see a fight with my mother over the phone, and then things seem to rewind (or fast forward) to girls from high school coming up to me in church thanking me for something I didn't really mean to write. I go backwards and then my sister is calling me, nearly in tears, over my boyhood hero and then forwards again to my boss telling me, "I'm sorry but I have to let you go." I hear bombastic and ridiculous guitar and a beer-bitter voice surrounded by choirs. I see red and blue streak across a sky and a thunderbolt striking my mailbox. I'm drinking Corona at a wedding, then I'm standing in pouring rain watching men dancing in cages while a drag queen raises above my head in a firetruck ladder. I'm sinking deep into the chair in my living room, then suddenly dancing like I've suddenly discovered for the first time that I have legs, awkwardly tripping and jumping all over the apartment. A slightly mentally disturbed man with a pony tail leans in to kiss me outside my door while on the other side I'm bringing the young man's head closer to mine. I'm sitting on a curb smoking my last Lucky Strike and then I'm taking a shot of whiskey to toast to my unemployment.

I just don't know what the hell happened.

re: "COTTONFIRE" ...

2009-08-13T04:34:00.001-07:00

It's important to realize that the phrase "existential crisis" doesn't really cover it. It's the closest term I have found to describe the experience; there was certainly a crisis and imminent, lethal peril was very real, as I was suicidal, and the resolution to the crisis can be described as an existential one. But ultimately I don't know that the term can accurately describe just what happened. But I'm here to state, for the first time, a coherent narrative of "Cottonfire," which (in my soundtracks and written entries) is the "title" attributed to my 2007 summer, from the first week of May to the last week of July.

The name isn't meant to be necessarily cryptic. To begin with, often when I was in the car or walking around during those months, I would see little tuffs of cotton seeds floating aimlessly around all over the city. Later, the cotton would somehow become associated with the Tree of Life in Aronofsky's The Fountain - and I think it was more of a connection to Clint Mansell's score; I'd listen to that haunting piano and the strings and somehow it'd match up with the dance of the cotton seeds. Additionally, the name alludes to the 2007 Milford Flat fire (called the biggest recorded fire in Utah history) and the PG fire (curious to me because of its simple ignition - a lawnmower blade striking a rock). On the day the firespreads overlapped the most - the former near Saratoga Springs and the latter on the foothills below Squaw Peak - there were two giant pillars of fire and smoke as the sun set, one pillar in the east near my house (at the mouth of Provo Canyon) and the other in the far west across the lake.

So the imagery has something of fragility to it, my awkward metaphor of life and death that describes, in one symbol, what happened to me two years ago when my life almost inexplicably changed - inexplicably precisely because I still can't figure out what started my own fires.

It was definitely a countdown built from a few different factors. Most specifically, I was taking an Ethics and Values class from an adjunct professor named Ethan Sproat. At the time, I was (almost) completely devoted to serving a mission for the LDS church. The class wasn't necessarily forcing me to drastically change my religious views, but reading Nietzsche was a big mindtrip for my Peter Priesthood attitudes. My British Literature class may have added something as well because we were beginning to dip into heavy modernism and postmodernism, so I was spending some time with Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, T.S. Eliot and Salman Rushdie. In time, later that summer I read Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground and The Trial by Franz Kafka. So that was all forcing me to face some nihlistic (lack of a better word) concepts and concerns I'd spent most of my life being told I needn't worry about.

On another level, my music taste was radically changing (which may not sound relevant, but it was a huge deal). Up until that summer, I listening almost exclusively to Yellowcard, Hoobastank, Fall Out Boy, Dashboard Confessional, etc. But Spider-Man 3 was coming out, and so was the film's soundtrack - this will sound weird, but every time a Spider-Man movie has come out, my music tastes have changed to each soundtrack (after the first, I stuck mainly to mainstream alternative, like Nickelback, Creed, Evanescence and Sum 41). But after the soundtrack came out, I started listening to Wolfmother, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Killers, The Walkmen and Simon Dawes...and these "indie" rockers lead me to rock 'n roll roots; soon I was listening nearly every waking moment to Led Zeppelin, The Who, Fleetwood Mac, The Doors, Bob Dylan (it would take me until after I moved out to truly love him, though) and - eventually replacing Linkin Park as my favorite band - those Irish boys, U2. This 60's, 70's and 80's rock music somehow captured both the physical heat and the spiritual conflicted heat I was experiencing that summer. I watched the PG fire erupt on Squaw Peak as the sun set while listening to "Exit" from U2's seminal The Joshua Tree; the song sounds like a scene from Capote and describes the quietly violent story of...well, you can find out yourself here.

It's worth mentioning that I also spent most of the summer reading Homer's Iliad. In addition to the recent acceptance of R-rated movies into my house, my summer felt rather violent due in part to reading about the Trojan War for three months - however, the important thing is how by the end of the epic, my beliefs about human nature and concepts of love, divinity and destiny were drastically changed due to reading about Prince Hecktor and Achilles.

The escalation of problems in my family were a factor. Our family was struggling pretty badly financially and along with my sister I had to work the summer at Convergys, accompanied by my Kafka and Zeppelin, contributing most or all of my paycheck money to basic necessities like gas, food and even toilet paper. While I was privately nursing unsettling doubts and paranoia about the Church, my parents (my mother in particular) began taking a fairly negative position about early church history, particularly regarding Joseph Smith's little-known polygamous marriages and the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Soon almost each night our kitchen TV would be playing a fat red-haired man ranting anti-Mormon sentiments. I really through the whole thing that the Church was an uncrossable line for me, until one night my mom was watching the PBS documentary The Mormons and I saw the following clip:

That statement (I promise not taken out of context), taken for granted at the time, would echo very deeply in my mind for weeks as I struggled with my ultimate personal battle: my same-gender attractions. Because desirous as I was to serve a mission and "overcome" the attractions, I would still lie awake in bed at night pulling my hair out over the complete horror of the implications: did God really want me to be alone? Even if I eventually found a girl to marry, could I love her? And could I give her what she needed? Tales abounded of men I knew who were unhappy, even with children. A story of a man who could not arouse himself around his wife, and in her frustration she gave him permission to have a homosexual hookup, just because she hoped it'd make him happy. A story of a man who couldn't let down a decades-old porn addiction. Men who prey around on Craigslist asking for BYU RM's to come over when the wife's not home and fuck in their garments. Men who never told their wives prior to the honeymoon that female sexuality wasn't a turn on. Men whose (ultimately mislead) notions of masculinity and femininity seemed troubling to my 19-year-old mind. I couldn't continue clingling to my boyhood perspectives like security blankets.

The stories were everywhere, and none of them seemed to be what I wanted from the Church. The ultimate concern was not whether or not I could "overcome" the attractions, but whether or not I could live happily with myself and my choice long afterwards. And, as ever in the Church, we are talking about forever here.

In the face of that unadulterated uncertainty, that paranoia and doubt of having joy in this life, I was hearing on my left hand that the LDS gospel, the leaders and members were untrustworthy and on the other hand I was being told that I could never question. The years had taught me complicity; now, however, there was a strange shift and I was beginning to realize that I'd spent my life "settling" for what the Church was telling me. I became angry at the illogical façade of it all; reality seemed a joke. If I was "supposed" to end up with a woman, how did it make any sense that I couldn't be attracted to a woman? If there is a God, and He is loving - more to the point, a "perfect" God, and His command is a "natural" one, then how did it make any sense that a "homosexual" even exists? I felt like an anomaly, some hiccup in the Great Eternal Plan, and marriage was a holy recreation of Beckett's frightening endgame. And it felt sickening to literally be a freak of "nature" every minute of every day.

Given everything I was hearing on all sides, nothing made sense and I didn't feel like anyone understood me. I couldn't go to my parents (for reasons obvious and listed above) and my closest friends were either ignoring me because of my increasing depression or on missions across the globe. The lonlieness broke me, the countdown terminated and the culmination of these several factors, discernible and indiscernible, finally mounted to a rebellious - and perhaps even more illogical - conclusion: obviously, if I couldn't fix myself, then I simply had to kill myself. And soon.

It started slowly; I found a way to expose the blades on the cheap Bic razors we had in storage and I would sneak into the bathroom at night, turn on songs in reverse, and slowly draw. I only scratched at my wrists themselves, but soon there were very visible scars on my shoulders and legs. I rationalized that somehow I was bracing for the real pain, death itself.

So there was some elaborate planning. It would be at the end of the summer and it would be the most unexpected thing in the world. I had the entire morning of the day planned out. Friends and family would wake up to find notes and emails. I researched several methods before settling on one. There would be rope I could buy. And there was a bridge. The Provo River is sewn with a batch of footbridges all over and one of them would be my own end. I knew the knots. I would jump off the bridge and after my neck would snap, the rope's support would break away from the bridge and my body would fall into the river. I would wait until before sunrise to leave my house, head down to the river, and jump.

There wasn't much "talking myself into it" but there was more over the actual act of the choice itself. My problem was that while I was constantly thinking about suicide and planning for it, I couldn't be said to have been suicidal. My problem was that as desperate as I was to end my life, every time I came to the actual deed, it was like suddenly entering a vacuum in a wide and neverending desert, or climbing up walls. There was nothing to stop me, and yet something very clearly was stopping me. I don't know how to explain it. Every bone in my body wanted me to end it and I had every capability and opportunity to end it. But something, somehow, was in my way every single time. And this only infuriated me more - I felt even more incompetent that I couldn't control anything about my life, even how I would die. One more thing I somehow could only half-ass and never get right.

There are three music albums that came out in early 2007 which would narrate the weird "death" journey/ritual I acted out throughout the three months. First there was Welcome The Night by The Ataris, which detailed lead singer/songwriter Kristopher Roe's own existential crisis after his divorce (which I learned from his own mouth, after interviewing him with Lindsey at their St. Patrick's Day concert in SLC). This album conceptually narrated my own crisis and the album ended with an affirmation of the inevitability of death. Hence, the next album was Linkin Park's Minutes To Midnight and opened with the result of this affirmation: defeat and the choice to commit suicide. The album follows the slow process of saying goodbye to friends, examining the reasons for the choice while building up for the act along the way, and the last song is the dying breath of a victim of violence.

The third album was the most important: The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance. The very first sound on the album is the decline of beeps on a heart moniter. As a concept album, a story is told about an unnamed character called The Patient who dies of some sort of heart complication (openly interpreted as medical or related to the girl sitting at his side). Part of the mythic setting of the story is that death comes to you in the form of your most precious memory. The Patient's most precious memory is seeing the city parade with his father; hence, death comes for him in the form of a large goth parade that takes him on a Dickensian journey through time and space visiting various dying people in the form of memories - from a church revival, to a cancer boy, to the first World War, to a mental hospital, to a high school massacre, to a final confrontation with his father - all the while learning about life and death. The album ends ambiguously: by the final number, either The Patient has learned to accept his "life" in the hereafter, or at the moment he becomes at peace with death he suddenly wakes up in the hospital bed to find that the entire thing was a dream.

What this "narrative" did for me (particularly The Black Parade) in addition to all the philosophy was show me that while I didn't fear death, I actually wasn't necessarily afraid of dying, either. Ultimately, I was afraid of how I, as a person both spiritually and physically, would become irrevocably altered by the pain that would accompany the calamitous act. But one thing I took from U2 and The Fountain was that pain is intricately connected with life: pain is a physical signal of growth, conducive to being alive - a physical reaction to life itself. I wasn't afraid of dying - I was afraid of really living. And in the face of life itself, the choices were always mine.

When the appointed day came, the sunrise found me on the edge of the bridge. But that was, by itself, the only thing that had gone according to plan. It had begun to come apart when I sat down to write my "last letter" to my best friend serving a mission on the other side of the country. It wasn't until then that I remembered he had asked me one day in high school to never kill myself because it would be "tramautizing" and affect him for the rest of his life. I didn't want to believe that people would actually care about me being gone, but it wasn't until I'd sat down to write his letter that I realized that even if others did miss me, that wasn't the point. The point was that in this life, we make connections with others, and part of that connection is having faith. Pain is a part of every relationship, be it friendship, a romance, parental or otherwise, and I would have to accept that in order to accept myself and come into my own in this world.

As the sun came up, it became increasingly clear that whatever was inside of me willing me to live, it was stronger than any mere evolutionary impluse lulling me to reproductive priorities with a girl, or any carnal lust for masculinity and male bodies. It was stronger and much more clear than any of the darkness I'd endured since high school and the recent bouts of doubt and paranoia. It was some sort of light inside that just wouldn't die, inadequate and trite as that description is. What it finally came down to would affect me for years afterwards.

As I stared at the water, I began to work out images of myself in the future being with a wife and having a family. I could make myself in a nametag on a mission in the water. I strained my eyes for images and felt complete faith in a road that lay ahead of me. With that, I turned and walked off the bridge back on the sidewalk and headed home. I snuck back in my house, went to my room, and fell asleep.

I would later talk about visions and dreams, and a little after that I would even believe myself. But did I actually see the future in Provo River? Of course not. But what I'd done was much more incredible. I had actually created that road I'd put faith in. I'd created my own potential future and then tried to act it out - created it literally out of thin air. The implications wouldn't hit me for a long time - not until I'd already fallen in love with a girl for the first (and perhaps only) time in my life. But I'd realized that it was possible to create my own destiny. That for the first time, my choices were not preset by old men sitting in a SLC building or by teachers, historians or even friends and family. For the first time, I felt like my life was truly mine. It was an incredible feeling that had me walking on air the entire way back to my house.

Like Kris Roe and Allen Ginsberg wrote, this life is a passage between two doors, and perhaps we can't understand life while living it at the same time. But there are things to discover and other things must be earned. There are unspeakable horrors and there are breathtaking miracles. Nietzsche and Bono, vita femina - life is a woman, and she moves in mysterious ways. But if heaven is so great, then why this postmodern obsession with living as long as possible, retaining youth? I'm in no rush to get there; if there's one thing I've cherished from the five times I've read the Book of Mormon, it's Nephi's statment that "Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy." No matter what path lies ahead in life, it will always be one I carve and pave for myself. My perspectives on life, death, the nature of reality and everything else have become drastically different because of these realizations. While it's taken me this long to finally sit down and write down a basic summary, I have to constantly remember what I learned about myself during my Cottonfire summer two years ago.

Maybe Just Avoid District 9

2009-07-17T04:51:00.000-07:00

Is there anyone out there besides me who didn't particularly like District 9?

I know Joanne Kaufman over at Wall Street Journal didn't. Neither did Kyle Smith at New York Post (and I love his "kill-or-be-krill" jest) or J.R. Jones at the Chicago Reader. Heck, even Ebert and I both have the same dislikes with the same movie for once. But for the most part, their critiques are brief and don't really give details. So here I go.

Let's start with what should be appreciated. Because really, you've gotta hand it to an August blockbuster that grosses over $35 million in its first weekend when it's got unknowns for a cast, relatively simple set production, not based on a comic book, video game or novel and its only real name credit is a man at the helm with a name stamp somewhere in the last ten years of pop entertainment. One film tried to do that earlier last year: Cloverfield. Like District 9, it was plenty hyped with a cryptic trailer as well as extensive viral marketing in addition to billboard signs. It came out at an unconventional time for a big-budget movie, it had the potential to spurt out spin-off films or tie-ins, it was about aliens, and it was produced by J.J. Abrams from the hit shows Alias and Lost. And nobody seemed to care about Cloverfield.

But at least Cloverfield's story lost its pretentiousness quickly. Cloverfield wanted to take the "alien blockbuster"/"disaster movie" genre* (see also: Independence Day; see also: Armageddon) and deconstruct it a bit; instead of big names starring as scientists or military personnel - usually men - who save their estranged families and the world, it told a street-level story of snobby teenagers who get trapped in the big mess of things, and all of them wind up dead by the end - including the guy who saves the girl, plus the girl. By itself, that's pretty predictable, but not usually in an alien blockbuster. Cloverfield also broke conventional norms by being shot cinema vérité style to give the film a more realistic look and feel. However much Abrams wanted to break from normal alien movie narratives, though, none of those methods employed ever got in the way of actually telling the story (unless, of course, you didn't like its predictability or you were one of those people who got vertigo in the theater from the HandiCam style and blew chunks).

District 9 has several similarities. The vague trailer teased audiences with the name "Peter Jackson" for months preceding its release and was greatly hyped with billboards and Web sites. It plays out documentary style, talking heads and all. I believe that it also tries to break away from conventional movie sci-fi structures.

In some ways, it succeeds, because District 9 certainly raises a lot of interesting stuff. Take, for instance (spoilers ahoy), the allegorical nods to apartheid, the "final solution" to move them all to a giant concentration camp of tents, or the protagonist's progression from small tuna working for the Man and leading a basically uninteresting life to - contrary to how most of these alien movie heroes react - become progressively cruel and selfish as he inches closer to his objective, even to the point of becoming cowardly and turning tail running during the final battle. It certainly raises interesting questions about humanity as an identity, and the film does a great job of realistically portraying how the world might actually react to an alien immigration. There are some moments in the film that had me gripped to my seat, like when the scientists force the protagonist to kill an alien. The film even has a touching father-son story. I can get teary-eyed at few things, father-son stories being one of them - and mostly in weak/simple films like Signs or The Lion King.

But from there, the film goes nowhere. And that makes me more frustrated with the film rather than hate it. As soon as the credits started rolling and I wanted to talk about these things, the longer I reflected on the film, the more it started to flake away and fall apart. And I don't mean story-wise. The story, when isolated and packaged for a Reader's Digest version, is pretty straightforward. But the internal logic itself doesn't work; several parts of the story rely on seemingly arbitrary plot points or devices that are either entirely unexplained or rely on heavy interpretive analysis from the audience. I can definitely handle the latter (The Fountain is my favorite movie, and I never see it the same way twice, so I'm not unfamiliar with films that demand a lot from the viewer). But the former aggravates me to no end, and it was my main complaint with Slumdog Millionaire (and I'm the only one I know who disliked that film, other than Salman Rushdie).

Like (again, spoilers) when the protagonist is wheeled into a room full of dead aliens (some in pieces, and a talking-head shot explains that no human has ever bonded to an alien and lived. This made me think that the room was full of failed metamorphosed human-aliens, and yet this was never explained. A friend later postulated that the room was actually full of aliens that had been kidnapped and subjected to testing. I'm open to that possibility, except the movie didn't provide much evidence to fully argue that, either. The movie had moments where you had to infer what was going on, which I'm usually fine with, except that too many times I had to say, "Well, maybe this, maybe that" instead of "The film gives A, B and C, so therefore this is what happened." Too many "maybe's" and your "clever" story starts to look like a spaghetti sieve. And I wasn't surprised by any of the "twists," including the transformation from alien to human.

And not being surprised by District 9 is funny because so things felt so random. You mean to tell me that the aliens are the only ones can operate their weapons, and the weapons are powerful enough to literally explode their enemies, and there are tons of these...and the aliens either don't use them to take over or they sell them for...cat food? (Um, cat food? Giant shrimp from another galaxy are in love with cat food? And calling them shrimp is about the only explanation for the ethnic slur "prawn," because the movie never tells me the how or why.) One friend pointed out that the film mentioned the aliens were likely low-level workers on the ship, which might be interesting enough to make sense, except that raises all sorts of questions like where are the other aliens who actually piloted or lived on the ship, and even then the film only raises that as a hypothesis. If the mothership was always operational, then why the hell do you need the fuel? (And the film never really tells you what the fuel is actually made from or why it takes twenty years to make.) Unless the "ship part" that fell is somehow part of the cockpit, since it can operate as one once it docks inside - but the film never tells me. How did humans learn their language - and, more importantly, how did the aliens learn English - in twenty years without writing anything down (which is one place where that "Well, they're workers" theory starts to look even weaker)? How did the aliens get human-sounding names like Christopher? And if human-sounding, why so English when the film is set in South Africa?

And speaking of the setting, when I stopped to think about it, Johannesburg felt more like a gimmick than a setting. It's interesting to see an alien movie taking place outside a big American city like New York for a change, and the allegorical reasons seemed appropriate to somewhere in Africa. But from there, it felt like that's the only reason to set it in Johannesburg, and trying to be so special is a bad reason to set any story. Change a few minor details and the story would've played out the same way in Russia, London or hell, New York. One thing I noted was the voodoo on alien bodies in the film which, again, is an interesting concept of how alien immigrants might impact local culture and/or religion, but from there the ball gets dropped because the voodoo felt like more of a reflection on South Africans being kooky witch doctors than anything, which starts to bother me when I think about using superstitious South Africans as a mere plot device. A friend suggested that Johannesburg was a good setting because Johannesburg has a very diverse culture and society where several immigrant groups are packed into shantytowns like sardines in a can, making it a giant melting pot where aliens could fit in. This is a good theory and it's definitely interesting...except the film doesn't do anything with it.

The editing of the film itself bothered me, too. There are a few places where you can tell they got sloppy - there's even a place during the climax where one character was barking orders, then crouching down to snipe out a building, and when the scene cuts to an explosion, the next shot of the character has him back on the other side standing and barking orders instead of crouched where he was. And the oh-so-realistic documentary style was poorly handled and ended up feeling like another gimmick. The film couldn't decide if it was a documentary or a typical sci-fi thriller because the film actually told the story both ways; most of scenes were told in normal linear film fashion, which felt weird because it would switch back and forth between styles from start to end. It wasn't necessarily confusing, but it felt weird.

Maybe I'm just an oddball when it comes to sci-fi films; one other thing that significantly separates Cloverfield from District 9 is that I'm the only person I know who really enjoyed Cloverfield. But I'm really not that particular about having answers spoonfed to me and usually prefer to be kept guessing during a movie. I feel like I could keep going with pointing out the weak spots in District 9, and that's because it's like one of those house-trained dogs that begins to act stupider the longer you give it attention. Ultimately I can't entirely hate the film because I was definitely entertained and had a good time in the theater. With some better writing and direction (and cleaner editing), the film might've suffered less under the pressure of its constant effort to be "unique" and "special." And perhaps the sequel (and there may almost certainly be one or two of them) will be better developed or explain some of these holes to me. But I can only recommend a dollar-theater or DVD viewing of District 9. I don't understand how it blew your mind, Sara Vilkomerson, or how the hell you could possibly find it "philosophically sophisticated," Christy Lemire. To me, those are gimmicky buzz phrases indicating only what this movie maybe could have have been.

*I consider alien movies like Independence Day to be part of the disaster film genre because when you look at the tyoical narrative structure of both films, they generally play out the same way whether the planet is threatened with asteroids, twisters, hurricanes, 2012, or space ships. Makes me think we should also throw in Transformers.

See Mike Run

2009-07-10T17:18:00.000-07:00

This is Brother Pratt.

This is Brother Pratt in the Utah County Jail (as seen in the Deseret News).

Michael Jay Pratt - just saying the name puts courage in the hearts of hundreds of Orem High Tigers who remember him as the great seminary teacher. He was not just an inspiration to us, he was the closest thing some of us had to an actual general authority. People described him in terms of actual salvation. "Brother Pratt changed my life" or "Brother Pratt saved my life." He was a hero in almost titanic description; his spirituality, tracing back to Parley P. Pratt, was believed to be penultimate perfection. A short guy with a big heart who had just the answer for your problems and the right shoulder to cry on when he didn't.

And he has been arrested for sexual assault. A 16-year-old girl from his current teacher (and principal) position at Lone Peak's LDS seminary.

Video Courtesy of KSL.com

Brother Pratt - the man, the myth, the legend. It all sounds like gross exaggeration. Like me, and others, have blown things out of proportion. And that's precisely because that's what it is. A fiction. A man mythologized.

Michael Pratt's life story kinda sounds like something that came out of a seminary movie. He had a troubled past as a teenager fiercely rebelling against the Church he was born into until, one day, he was dared to read the Book of Mormon. It changed him into a spiritual powerhouse causing him to go around spreading love for Christ long before he ever blew out the candles on his nineteenth birthday cake. His mission yielded endless stories for what would inevitably be his life's work: teaching in seminary and Sunday schools.

He had a life on the go; he and his family would pack up and move whenever he came to a high school and stay for a few months before picking up again and going to a new school. But he left his mark all over the county. He could get the quiet kid to raise his hand and the talkative jocks to shut up. The door to his office was always open long after school got out for the day and, oftentimes, there was a line of people waiting to lighten their latest load on his shoulders, seeking his advice. His lessons kept you awake and energized; people could repeat the main points from his lessons by topic or memory...and, of course, everyone who took a class from him remembers his "Puddy Cave fieldtrip" lesson.

Like I said - a man mythologized. And I'm certainly no different; Brother Pratt is the reason I almost became a seminary teacher. I was one of a few who could comfortably call him Michael - he had been a lodestar in my life since I was fifteen, being the only church-related figure I felt I could talk to about my struggles with my same-gender attractions in high school - and even years later when I became inactive and began dating my first boyfriend, he came to visit me at my apartment and took me to dinner. There are several stories - from funny anecdotes I even tell co-workers to a curious winter night miracle I still can't explain to this day - that describe my friendship with Mike, and my journals from high school feature him and his advice frequently. He was one of my closest friends, down to his current position as the second counselor of the singles ward I inactively belong to.

What's interesting now is not just his arrest and this scandal that follows; it's the reactions from all my old high school friends. One friend said, "Bullshit. It's all bullshit - the girl was troubled and has destroyed his life." Another remarked, "I'm shocked. He was...well, everyone thought he was so perfect." Even my sister expects that sooner or later we may yet discover this all to be rumor. Some have already begun attributing "this tragedy" and "this dispicable man" to the subjugation of the devil. "All I can say is blame Satan," said one commenter on DesNews' website.

Not many seem to want to examine this for what it is: a beloved church-related figure who is now alleged to be a felon. Instead, all wait in nearly breathless anticipation to see how innocent Brother Pratt will escape and get out of this one intact and precisely as everyone remembers him. The response is largely disbelief, but most of all denial and paranoia. "We'll find out the truth sooner or later - this has all been blown out of proportion."

But proportions larger than life have surrounded and romanticized this short-of-stature man for years. We've put him in a light that, perhaps, doesn't truly exists. And now may be the right time for us - especially me - to admit it. It'll be better for any healing that needs to occur to keep the facts straight from the stories we tell...for such is the stuff that heroes are made of. In this important time, remember him not as that mythic hero-god...but as a human being. Like the rest of us. And in that way, maybe he can continue to inspire us. Brother Pratt can be both hero and felon.

And I think I know how it will all end. This will undoubtedly stain Brother Pratt's reputation for years. But in time, this will be seen as one other spiritual trial Brother Pratt "bravely" passed through. It will become part of the stories he'll tell in devotionals (which I'm either sure of or hoping) he'll be asked to speak at. "You know, when I spent those hellish nights in jail," he'll start, and the room will quiet. And this will all become hushed controversial apocrypha, like most LDS Church scandals.

But - "Do you think he really did it?" people ask me. I answer: "If you love Michael, does it really matter?" Loving doesn't ever mean seeing just the *good.* It means seeing the *person* in spite of the *bad.* And counting in the good. So let's allow God (and the laws of the land) to decide Brother Pratt's innocence or guilt. It need not concern us and is nobody's business but the families and people involved; the rest of us, let's follow C.S. Lewis and "get back to the business of loving." Which is precisely what, as Michael has taught us, Christ is all about.

Mike's mythology is too strong amongst too many people for him to pass away into bare naked factuality. This story could break Brother Pratt's heroic narrative among us old Tigers, as well as his other former students. We needn't completely let go of that inspirational myth surrounding him but we do need to break from any dependency on such hero fiction. We, all of us, have been writing the story from the very beginning. He never came to us claiming he was our hero. We did. ...I did. And I will always - always - love him dearly.

And so it is with all our gods.

Queer Film Spotlight: Shelter

2009-07-02T03:24:00.000-07:00

Shelter (2007) This movie was a pleasant surprise because I thought it'd be just a softporn like Latter Days but with "surfer dudes." It turned out to be a well thought out story about a young graffitti artist named Zach who's stuck in urban California dreaming of getting into art school while taking care of his sister, his father and his orphaned nephew, Cody. When Shaun, the gay older brother of his best friend comes into town, Zach starts to rethink his relationships and the direction he wants to take with his life.

Shelter's fault is its vageness about its own story. It lacks plotholes but it also lacks focus. It's not clear how his sister finds out about him and Shaun, or why Cody's father is gone. One scene makes it seems as if Zach and his sister (as well as his on-and-off girlfriend) all happen to work at the same place. At times, the film's ambiguity gives way to gimicky plot tricks, like the com radio. In addition to taking care of Cody, Zach and his sister presumably must care for their mentally disabled father as well, and yet we only see the father at the very beginning and forget that his character exists until he's mentioned, in passing, towards the end of the film. These might be minor flaws, but they undermine the film's believability.

Zach often sleeps away from home, is socially disconnected, and is defensive over his artwork. He has to worry about being a father figure to Cody while maintaining so-called masculinity and applying to an out-of-state art school. I think these are good ways to underline Zach's feeling of restlessness, but unfortunately it was hard to buy all of these things when they happened because, due to Wright's acting, they went like lukewarm milk.

This brings me to the film's biggest problem: the characters were all believable except the protagonist himself. The character could have been very interesting, but Trevor Wright plays him like a wooden puppet. His angsty fits would be understandable but his age is supposed to be 22. It's difficult to care about Zach when everything he does feels somehow lacking. Worst is Zach's "change of heart" which feels like a magic trick out of thin air because of how sudden and unexplained it is. By the end when Zach is trying to convince his sister about the future, it sounds more like he's trying to convince himself.

Ultimately I think most of the problems I have with Zach were first impressions, and maybe the character will seem better handled on a second round. The film's protagonist might seem like the most underdeveloped part of the movie, which is unfortunate, but ultimately I'd recommend it to anyone. It's very enjoyable, tells a good story, and has a great soundtrack. Shaun's character was well-acted and so was his brother, Zach's best friend. Additionally, the kid who played Cody was good at being both sensitive to the tension between others as well as being innocent.

Batman is dead.

2009-07-01T02:24:00.000-07:00

It's raining blood and tiger cats are riding giant dogs. The fabric of reality is being torn asunder. Batman's got a gun; he must choose between his consistent morality and a once-in-a-lifetime exception. The President of the United States is an African American Superman. Sexual objectification of contemporary female superheroes is fought out between Supergirl (the blonde bombshell, like Marylin Monroe) and Mary Marvel (with a shaved head recalling Britney Spears). Green Lantern Hal Jordan stands trial for a crime he didn't commit. There are crop circles. There are angels and prophets, cannibals and vampires. There's a tiger with a checkered jacket adjusting his bowtie after clawing out someone's innards. Prometheus is bound to a wheelchair. Frankenstein quotes Milton. A Rubik's cube turns people to dust. Hell hounds chase a school bus. An avatar of death, armored in black, is on skis. 98% of the world's population raise their fists to the devil himself after he hacks the internet. A beautiful kiss and tragic self-sacrifice. The first boy on earth, the last boy on earth. Time runs backwards, then forwards. Red and black. Superman screams, winks and sings.

I give you FINAL CRISIS by Grant Morrison, J.G. Jones and Doug Mahnke. And after spending the entire night up reading, enjoying every single minute with laughter and plenty of jaw-dropping moments alternating between shock and awe, I still have no idea what the hell just happened.

Many people have raised the same point about this work - and a true point: this comic is terribly complex and confusing. The story begins as a murder mystery dressed with Greek myth at the curtains, but from there it explodes into wild chases and space odysseys that, by there very dream logic nature, belong in a comic book. Gritty realism and nihilistic philosophizing switches places with completely over-the-top action and complete baloney physics. Earth-shattering truths are delivered in between outlandish dialogue lines you sometimes want to read twice to believe. Deus ex machina abounds frequently. The comic remains completely po-faced about it all from start to finish.

And that is exactly why FINAL CRISIS is so brilliant. It manages to be, simultaneously, what comics *were* and what comics currently *are* - what they have become. For Morrison, superheroes have begun to be little more than moralizing or philosophizing social commentaries with only enough life to sustain a narrative structures that can support "realistic" plots. Stories that give you factual reality to believe in, rather than any merit of the story itself. It's all very formulaic. And it's all so very...boring. The very image of Superman holding Batman's burned and battered body expresses this: the imagery is bewildering and chilling at once, and makes us ask ourselves what comics once stood for, and the grim redundancy they've become. Have we kept the magic alive or did we kill it?

I've been reading DC comics for less than a year. So I had to do my fair share of homework on characters and events. I knew Barry Allen gave his life to save the world in the first Crisis but I've had very little exposure to Darkseid. I was plenty familiar with the Guardians of the Universe but not the Monitors. I know who the Tattooed Man is but had no idea about Black Lightening. Did the story ever contradict itself, or even the artwork? At least a couple of times, yes. Did the story every become so muddled that I couldn't understand what was going on? Definitely.

But again: that's EXACTLY why this works. Because you have to just believe in the story itself. Morrison has said in interviews that while background will enrich the story, EVERYTHING you need to read and enjoy FINAL CRISIS is right there in its own pages. The will to believe - the faith in the magic of stories (not storytelling, but stories themselves).

"I've Waited Here For You, Everlong."

2009-06-26T00:18:00.000-07:00

The first thoughts I begin to believe in after Kristian leaves is that I will never hear from him again. But the first thoughts I have are unrelated to whether I will hear from him again or not; instead, I'm more concerned about why I can't find the shirt - the shirt I let him use after the dust settled and the heat had reached its limits in my small room. Is it this shirt? Is it this shirt? Is it...this one...is it...And before long, my mind is beginning to wonder if he was ever here at all.

Of course he was here. I smell my forearms, then I put the the bottom of my shirt in my face, and I slowly drag my tongue over the dimpled skin between my lips and my nose. Of course he was here; he was here because I can still smell him and taste him.

And I can feel him, too...if the only thing I'm feeling by him is the emptiness and slightly unsettling ordinary-ness of my room. The floor is still a bookshelf for all the books - mostly poetry; all the Ginsberg, Whitman, Goethe, Eliot, Dante, Plath, Homer, everything that constantly reminds me that I have so much reading to do, but these Greeks and Beatniks also share the chaos of my floor with my Silver Age comics. The Flash and the Green Lantern shine their perfectly masculine smiles and costumed muscles up at me, along with a new Captain Marvel issue to my right and the nebulous heap of undershirts, underwear and other clothes scattered in a frenzy across the area to my left.

They are all still, the books and the comics and the clothes, but the fan is spinning widly. Everything is so quietly the same. I can feel my stomach churning. It's something not digesting properly, maybe the Frosty from three hours ago, but more than that, it's all trying to wrap itself around a familiar fuzzy emptiness. I usually feel that indefinite vagueness in my stomach when I pass a couple kissing or think of Erik. It's the damn romantic in me that always hurts when he doesn't get what he wants most. I only feel it now because instead of enjoying this - enjoying even the aftermath of it - I am trying to make it something serious.

"I gotta be cool / Relax / Get hip, get off my tracks...Gotta be cool / Relax..." I have been trying to make this serious from the beginning. I have to remember that the only thing I have to light knowledge on this thing is Erik. But things were particularly clear with Erik simply because we both made it clear from the beginning what we wanted most is what we needed from each other. That's why the relationship clicked together quickly only to burn slowly out on itself. But Kristian and I are moving at lightspeed, and that's precisely because we don't need each other. And the problem is that it's not "just a hook up" because at the same time we care about one another just enough to make it matter. This thing with Kristian is moving so fast that the only thing I can do to slow it down is maybe knock it over the head.

As I brush my teeth in the mirror, I try to remind myself that I have no reason to make things so serious with Kristian, just as I have no reason to expect anything from him. He knows this because I've told him. We've both admitted that neither of us want a relationship right now, and I know more and more everyday that a relationship with Kristian might not last long at all. We work well as friends but we could destroy each other in anything more. Even though we both refuse to "see" anyone else, I don't think he's as stuck on me as I wish he was. I know I'm just trying to save myself the pain again. I can't go through what happened with Erik. I knew from the moment we got together that Erik and I would never last the summer. But that was different. Because I do care about Kristian. But I fell in love with Erik.

It's not serious, Matthew. And, for right now, it doesn't need to be. This is what I've told myself every time I see him. That's why, instead of making the same mistake I made with Erik and always worry about when the spell will be broken, I will savor every day I spend with Kristian and always assume that it could be the last. It's not a fatalistic mentality, and neither is it merely realistic. It's just how I remember not to put my fingers around the neck of this thing and choke it into being serious. So that it will live.

My favorite thing will continue to be how his smell stays all over my hands and my shirt for minutes, occasionally even hours, after he leaves. I will continue to keep my hands off the steering wheel and let this thing drive as fast as it will. And I'll continue to believe. Not that I will never hear from Kristian again. But rather, believe that this - this, this moment...really is worth my while.

There's something slowly creeping down my forehead; I am still sweating.

Notes From The Black Book

2009-06-25T20:20:00.000-07:00

"Fuck you, Chandler. I love ya, but I am sick of your shit. 'You're so dramatic, Matt' - this coming from a guy who boasts of doing every thing...most people never do by age sixty. He talks like he's never seen a human before. Fuck off!"

"Maybe, for the rest of my life
I am damned to look for Erik
in every white truck I see go down the street."

"'I was thinking about getting War and Peace. I've never read that book.'
'Yeah, War and Peace. Dostoevsky.'
'Yeah.'
'You should get this book.' He pulled something off the shelf, and I knew what it was before I saw it: a deluxe illustrated version of Angels and Demons. 'It's the best book.'
'Really?'
'Yes. I've read it three times.'"

[6/14] "I spray the Glade all over the ceiling. An orange-mango-smelling mist destroys itself into smithereens across the patch of space above the living room floor. Lindsey might know as soon as she walks in, but it's meant to mask my most recent of sins in case I get a surprise from the cops' latest round of "Pop Goes the Weasel; 'all around the innocent apartments, the monkey chased the zoobies...' that they play every night at 3 AM. Is it ozone-friendly, empty of toxins and firesafe? Probably not. It is more like the blood of innocent lambs that I spray over my doors and doorways to let the Lord know I don't wish the angel of death to come by. Yes, angel of death, pass me by."

"Him, in the yellow? That's my best friend, Najib. I would die for him. I'd give my life for him. I love him."

Queer Film Spotlight: Latter Days

2009-06-06T01:29:00.000-07:00

I've tried watching this movie so many times and I finally got through it. It's not that the story makes it hard; a table server in a fancy restaurant in L.A. named Christian falls for the recent move-in next door, an LDS missionary named Aaron, and his workers make a bet that the characteristically slutty and shallow Christian can't convert him to gaydom and nail his ass. You'd think that this would be comedic, romantic, meaningful...at least relatable, or something. But these are all the precise reasons why Latter Days is so difficult to watch: it tries to be all of those things at once. From start to credits, the film is completely contrived.

Nowhere is this more evident than in each and every scene with the missionaries. I've never been on a mission but I'm sure that elders are not allowed to say anything close to the phrase "God hates homos" to investigators. What frustrates me most are the interactions between Aaron, the elder, and Christian. Their exchanges feel strained and completely contrived in every scene. Example: Christian gets his mail and one letter blows behind the house, so on the way to get it he gets his pants snagged, causing a cut which makes him bleed and then he faints - all in plain view of Aaron, who is innocently reading The Book of Mormon outside. (Let me add that we've just seen them both play basketball - Christian without his shirt, so that the adoring gay male audience can revel in his tanned, sweaty abs...which, of course, is why its perfectly plausible that same young and fit man would faint from a barely visible leg cut. Oh yes, do me quick.)

But the tragedy is that that's when the movie gets interesting. Because right before Aaron invalidates every Priesthood Quorum lesson he's ever had by lying with Christian, he starts to claim that he feels like he's being used by a superficial boy who doesn't know what he wants and Aaron drops him like a sack of beans - forcing Christian to try to actually win his heart. Have we seen this a million times? Of course - but in heterosexual narratives. So the fact that here, the dynamic is a Mormon missionary who is making a gay man prove his feelings...it's a shame to see the film waste a cliche so commonplace that even Stephanie Myers could make it watchable.

The somewhat decent "character development" lasts for about ten minutes before Latter Days reverts back to softporn. Following Aaron's transgression, his shock treatment, dream sequences, his mother's chastisement and excommunication are completely overdone like the other 98% of the movie, with sniveling suicidal tendencies and all. The character's sudden turn to identity crisis is very poorly composed while we have to wait for Christian to fly to Idaho, which takes much, much, much longer than it should. Christian's own selfish wimperings are empty and ultimately pointless.

All in all, the actor who plays Aaron does the best job. He delivers some pretty bad lines fairly well, in his defense. Unfortunately, he doesn't make the rest worth it and the story falls face flat so many times in its own puddle of sap that in the end I was just waiting for the movie to end so I could delete it from my hard drive. Its good moments are few and far between, but ultimately Latter Days makes Twilight look like A Lion In Winter.

George Tiller and American Paranoia (+ Eminem gets face-raped...)

2009-06-03T00:31:00.000-07:00

In a weird way, the whole story of George Tiller's murder almost sounds like something out of some old folk tune or blues rocker: a Wichita, Kansas doctor saves the lives of women while, with each passing year, threats on his life grow more and more extreme - from getting shot in both arms to having his clinic vandalized, blockaded and bombed, leading to the presence of armed guards outside his clinic - until, at long last, he meets his match in nowhere else but his local Lutheran church on a Sunday morning, innocently ushering. Now flowers instead of picket signs form a ring around his clinic.

There are very few who claim to be happy that Tiller is dead - Wiley Drake, for example, believes Tiller's murder is "an answer to a prayer" - but in general voices from the anti-abortion movement have risen to condemn the murderer, who is as-of-yet-unconfirmed as 51-year-old Scott Roeder. One of these voices belongs to Bill O'Reilly, who simultaneously condemns the violence against Tiller - refering to it as "anarchy" - while unabashedly standing by his well-known past criticisms of Tiller, saying that the far-left is taking advantage of this situation to blame the caring folks like him at Fox and downplay the "seriousness" of Tiller's crimes. This is hardly surprising to me because at this point accusations are beginning to form against O'Reilly for his history of decrying Tiller on his show and thus allegedly "contributed" to "fostering an environment" for a home-grown terrorist to strike out in violence - but, of course, I don't know if O'Reilly ever really surprises me anymore.

Elsewhere, others have voiced opinions all over the Internet and in print; the NY Times Letters To The Editor has several responses, and one from Marquette University professor Daniel C. Maguire seemed especially poignant to me:

"The killing of Dr. George R. Tiller is not dissonant to the broader American culture. It was a very American murder, very reflective of national policy where torture is seen as a strategic necessity and the bullet as the final arbiter."

It's not to dissimilar from a sentiment I had earlier today while walking home, the concept of a contemporary genealogy of extremism in America and the ensuing effects of every group playing the blame game. Nobody wants to claim a homicidal lunatic, so everyone debates about who started the fire and, in the end, nothing much happens to change the situation - in this case, with abortion. It's an interesting comment on these increasingly cynical times for the land of the free, home of the brave.

In happier news...This, I think, is the funniest and most awesome thing to happen on primetime television so far this year. The best part about it isn't even Eminem; since the stunt was scripted, Zac Efron was the only one who doesn't have a clue what the hell was going on. The look on his face is priceless - pure "WTF"-ness.

MTV Shows

Toy Story 3 Teaser!

2009-05-29T18:47:00.001-07:00

The day is here at last. Holy wow.

First Look At Gilliam's Imaginarium

2009-05-25T01:54:00.000-07:00

This is one of three clips from the upcoming film The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, the latest creation of Terry Gilliam (best known as a member of Monty Python and the director of Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, Brazil, 12 Monkeys and The Brothers Grimm).

From what little has been revealed about the plot, it seems like it's partly a retelling of the Faust tale. Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer) is a thousand-year-old theater troupe travelling around London with his imaginarium show, a mirror that can take you to an entire world that exists in your dreams and imagination. Long ago he won a bet with the devil, Mr. Nick (Tom Waits), to have immortality. Now that he's met his one true love, he makes a deal to exchange his immortality for youth. Nr. Nick agrees, so long as the doctor gives up his future daughter on her sixeenth birthday. The years have gone by and the time is approaching for the devil to collect his due - but Dr. Parnassus makes one more bet, and now the race is on as a myraid of wild and surreal adventures await Dr. Parnassus, his daughter and those they meet - including a young man named Tony (Heath Ledger, as well as Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell) they rescue from suicide who may or may not be working for the devil himsef.

Comme Au Cinema

Queer Film Spotlight: The Sum of Us

2009-05-23T00:00:00.000-07:00

The Sum of Us (1994) - This film is a lot more fun to watch than it should be. Even when it's serious, I laughed. Although the screenplay is nothing special - and sometimes a little flat - that's certainly not to say it was a terrible film; on the contrary, The Sum of Us is a great comedy that shows a side of the gay lifestyle I've never thought about. Typically, both on and off screen, parents of gays and lesbians range from the reluctantly supportive to the angry rejecting type. This film shows us a father who's very supportive of his son - but not in a "I don't like what he does but I support my gay son" way. More like in a "Bring your date over so I can get to know him and make sure he's nice, and we'll even sit in the swing and have a couple of beers" way. Often the biggest wish a gay guy could ever have is the support of his father. But is there such a thing as too much? As Jeff (Russell Crowe) laments, "For fuck's sake, how can you be too bloody domestic?"

It helps to know that this film was directed and written by David Stevens, who based it on his own play, because the film breaks fourth wall pretty often and it might throw you off guard when Jeff and his dad Harry start talking to the camera the first couple of times - but probably not nearly as much as their candid and honest reflections might. And that's what this film is about. Honesty and love. Jeff is conflicted about love because he's been rejected before and felt it was about him; now he fears that his dad's love comes between him and receiving love from any other guy. His dad feels like love is love in whatever form it comes in, although he's been through hard times to learn that and might take even longer to learn how to actually get things right. So in the end the nods to the audience are invitations to share in the story, in this exploration of how love works between men and women, former wives and widowers, "blokes" and "blokes," and sons and fathers. How it's all very much the same...and really not the same at all.

It made me laugh and cry. Dammit.

Why Michael C. Hall Is Hal Jordan, The Green Lantern

2009-05-22T02:18:00.000-07:00

It's a quarter after 3 AM and I wanna rant.

I've been watching Six Feet Under again (finally...holy shit, and I'm progressing through season three), and I've had a revelation. Michael C. Hall should be the Green Lantern.

Michael C. Hall is the titular character of Dexter, but I'm only familiar with him as David Fisher on Six Feet Under. David's my "favorite" character (I use quotation marks because you really "can't" have a "favorite" character on Six Feet Under...you'd have to watch to understand), so maybe I'm slightly biased.

Nonetheless: director Greg Berlanti should forget about the rumored Bradly Cooper and tap Michael C. Hall. We can begin just with his physicality. Hall's eyes are green (not clearly green, but Cooper's are bright blue); it's kinda gimicky, but Hal Jordan's eyes are green in just about every portrayal I've come across. And Hall doesn't have the body of a Greek god, but the athletic build is there. He can work on it. I also think you can see Hall in a flight pilot jacket and an emerald green mask a lot better than Cooper. The former would look like a respectable and admirable superhero and the latter might look like a crowd-pleasing pretty boy. (Photoshop, anyone?)

More importantly, as far as physicality goes, what I like about Hall that I see in Six Feet Under is that he can definitely be charming, but when he's serious, he pulls it off like a heart attack. He also brings a subtle physicality to repressed internal conflict and emotion; you can tell if he's embarrassed, hurt or suffering from indigestion just by the way he shuffles his feet or fidgets, or the way he frowns, but not in unrealistically dramatic ways. You can actually believe that he's fearless in some situations and that he's terrified but brave and putting on a fearless face in others. Hall can strike an oddly poetic balance between the two. (Yeah, "poetic." Work with me here.)

Hal Jordan is always drawn with the aesthetic of an American god, with fine brown hair, completely square jaw and chistled muscles. He's known as a man without fear, and he is, but he also struggles with being afraid of one thing - actually being fearless and what kind of person he could become with his unlimited power as the greatest Green Lantern in the universe. He doesn't express his internal feelings very often (unless he's blurting them out). The loss of his father, and the subsequent impact it had on the loss of his mother, make for some interesting Freudian shit. Beneath his Herculean exterior, Hal Jordan's past and his conflict with his own will to power make him interesting. So he needs an actor who will play someone who's clearly mythological but bring in enough subtlety to make him believably human, too.

Seeing Hall in interviews, I think he pays close attention to the psychological processes of his characters and tries very hard to make their responses to situations as authentic as possible. From what I've watched of Dexter, I think Hall's also very aware of how to get certain responses from an audience that both wow you in a "It's only fiction" way and yet make you believe the character could be a real person. Whomever plays Hal Jordan needs to bring this sensibility to scenes like finding a dying alien in the middle of the desert, discovering that the universe is overseen by a group of short blue guys, and reciting a sacred oath to recharge his ring. It requires a fine balance between taking the role seriously and having a ton of fun with it, and Hall seems capable of striking such a balance (again, "poetic" - work with me here).

Berlanti can save Bradly Cooper for later; Cooper's repitoire suggests that he might be better suited to play Guy Gardner - the more cock-sure, womanizing and arrogant Green Lantern. But Michael C. Hall has a more solid acting career, I think, than Cooper. He's just basically kinda perfect for the part. Michael C. Hall for the win!

Can you see it? Yes, of course you can.

...P.S. As long as I'm admitting that I've recently started watching Six Feet Under again, if the powers-that-be settle on John Stewart instead of Hal Jordan, we oughta try to get Keith's actor, Mathew St. Patrick. He's a fantastic actor who can balance good humor, intimidation, vulnerability and rage all in one performance (at least on the show), which pretty much describes John Stewart. Plus he's huge and doesn't make being bald look stupid.

...P.S.S. NO, I do NOT secretly think Hal Jordan and John Stewart should get together. Really, I don't. David and Keith belong together only on Six Feet Under, and I didn't know until tonight that Berlanti is gay. ...Interesting coincidence, though.

Torture Still Happening Under Obama & Clinton "Stabalizing" Haiti

2009-05-19T13:57:00.000-07:00

Jeremy Scahill, award-winning investigative journalist and author of the bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, recently wrote an article for AlterNet.org about the "Immediate Reaction Force," a sort of thug squad or riot squad that is currently deployed at Guantánamo Bay. The Immediate Reaction Force employs horrific torture and abuse methods to use on prisoners who attempt to resist restraint. The squad uses waterboarding, uses human waste and chemicals, gagging and hogtying, putting tubes down the nostrils, and several other agressive tactics that have been known to permanently harm detainees.

On Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman interviews Scahill, who calls out Obama on "cosmetic changes" and rhetoric.

Additionally, Scahill also published another article on RebelReports.com about another scandal: today Bill Clinton might be named the U.N. envoy to Haiti. The Washington Post has coverage from Reuters quoting U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon saying that Clinton could help stabilize Haiti. Scahill writes that such a move "would be humorous for its irony if the reality—and Clinton’s history in Haiti—wasn’t so deadly serious. The fact is that, as U.S. president, Clinton’s policies helped systematically destabilize Haiti." Amy Goodman talks with Scahill about this article as well, and Scahill says that the U.N.'s choice to name Clinton is "grotesque" and that he believes anyone who strives for justice and peace in Haiti "should rise up" to say Clinton has no business there.

I'll have to talk to my dad about this later tonight, and I'll try to update the post when I do. In other news, Obama may have been inspired by Star Trek as a child to invest in politics...I love what he says he's learned from the Republican Party during the past 115 days: "Right now they're sort of trapped in the pattern of having to appeal to the most ideologically pure wing of their party as opposed to thinking a little bit more practically."

Stupid Mondays.

2009-05-18T20:21:00.000-07:00

Lindsey had her psychology class today, where her most recent stalker (this one a slightly neurotic R.M.) would attempt yet another advance. So I went down to campus just before her class was ending and waited outside until class got out. I said "Hey, m'dear" when I saw her and we made sure we were were hugging when the guy turned to get up from his desk. We left the classroom as I asked what we'd do for dinner.

We'd just gotten to the bus stop when we realized "he" was behind us. I took off my headphones and bookbag and suggested that I read something to Lindsey. I had Notes From Underground with me, and she told me I had to read it in a seducing voice. The guy now approached the stop and stood nearby. I opened the book and began to read, in a provocative Barry White voice, "I am a sick man...I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts." You'd be surprised how well some of Notes translates. I think the gas station worker taking the trash out must've been annoyed with our giggling, as was anyone else near us.

The bus was just coming down the hill towards us when I got a text from Cameron saying that Ben had just gotten injured. I called him and asked what was going on. He told me, in bits and pieces, that they were playing a game and then Ben slide into a base when he heard a snap, and then someone called the cops, and then someone took away the kids and the trees, and now Matt (Ben's little brother) was here. Make sense? Of course not, and I was trying to explain to Cameron that I couldn't understand what he was saying when the bus arrived, and the guy took advantage of my phone conversation to ask Lindsey what I was reading. "Notes From Underground by Dostoevsky," she answered. He replied that he'd never heard of Dostoevsky and asked if it was written in Russian.

As Lindsey and I got on the bus, the stalker trailing behind, Cameron kept talking to Matt and then me at once, then finally saying he'd call me back in a few minutes. I hung up and knowing he'd never call back, I called Matt to see what the hell was going on since Cameron was making no sense. Apparently, Ben had been playing kickball at our ward's F.H.E. when he'd broken his ankle. They'd called an ambulance and then cops came by to make sure there was a "legitimate reason" for an ambulance, and finally Ben's dad arrived to go to the hospital.

I got off the phone with Matt right when I got off the bus with Lindsey...which is also right when I realized that, during the nonsensical conversation with Cameron, I'd never picked up my headphones. I turned around and rushed with Lindsey to catch the next bus, but by the time we got back down to the campus stop, my headphones were nowhere to be found. I usually try to have faith in humanity, but I had no stock in the integrity of anyone who'd happen to pass by $60 SkullCandy headphones that are barely a month old just lying on the ground by a bus stop. I slumped on the ground, angry and annoyed.

I was angry and annoyed because it seemed like the reason I'd left them behind was because I was so caught up with being worried about Ben and trying to get a straight answer out of Cameron. It wasn't that it was Cameron's fault, but more like in an odd test of when I place priorities in think-on-my-feet situations, I become completely focused on just one thing. And I really don't feel like that's a good thing. I feel like it could lead me to trouble.

This was what was on my mind when a bus finally arrived and right when Lindsey and I were about to get on, the driver held a hand up to me. I was too distracted by my thoughts to realize a woman was coming down. Then as I came on before Lindsey, the driver said, as if to chastize me, "Ladies first!" before I took a seat. When Lindsey sat down next to me, I was mumbling profanities. I realize that the guy was just trying to encourage me to be polite...but I don't pay $30 out of my tuition for a bus pass so that you can teach me manners, buddy. I pay you to drive the damn bus and shut your mouth. I'm sick, I've had a bad day finding a job, my best friend is hurt, and I've lost my headphones. Fuck you.

I got off before Lindsey did. As I stood waiting for her, I heard her say to the bus driver, "So, is that being polite to women, or being polite to white people? Because that's just cruel." And then she stepped off as the driver hollered, "...Well...ladies first!"

Mainstreamed Fags: Why I Don't Like the HRC

2009-05-14T13:16:00.000-07:00

The Human Rights Campaign should not be supported by the queer (LGBT and non-gender identifying) community in the U.S. - or anyone else, for that matter. The HRC claims to fight for human rights while betraying its own, collecting dirty money and further boxing up the queer community into mainstream America.

My main issue with the HRC is their advocacy for gay marriage, but some of the more minor reasons are that the HRC hypocritically pushes for equal rights for everyone while openly neglecting transgendered people. As one protester las t Febuary put it, there are many gay and lesbian celebrities on TV while thousands of transgendered Americans have to risk just using a public bathroom without getting ridiculed, beaten or even arrested. HRC has a history of leaving transgendered people out of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and even tried to cover up their hypocrisy to make their recent support of a more inclusive bill more legitimate. It's pretty clear to me where the HRC's loyalties lie: a public image that can appeal to more mainstream straight audiences.

HRC also deals in dirty funds. The HRC has a fairly long list of corporate sponsors on their website, and a little research on any of these corporate giants will reveal an adjoining list of human rights abuses. Just a few of these companies that fund the HRC include:

- Nike, who admitted in 2001 that it had empolyed children 10 years and younger from Third World countries to work in sweatshops making shoes. While Nike is doing a little better, they must account for abusing women workers and immigrant workers in Malaysia (basically human trafficking; this Aussie news exposé video will shock you) as recent as last summer. Not to mention the its part in the complete commercialization of American culture (such as its contribution to the rise of American "sneakerhead" subculture; excuse my language, but who the fuck owns over six hundred Nike sneakers when the barefoot workers who made them live on six dollars a day?)

- Shell/Royal Dutch, who was illegally supported by the U.S. Department of Interior's Minerals Management Service last year to drill for oil off the coast of Alaska, harming endangered bowhead whales, polar bears and other marine animals as well as threatening to destroy native Alaskan communities near the drilling area (a plan that was only recently dropped). Moreover, this month in Manhattan, Shell will stand trial for allegedly supporting the Nigerian dictator General Abacha by directly assisting in the illegal execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian poet, environmentalist and human rights activist. Saro-Wiwa, along with other activists, were hanged in 1994 for protesting Shell's wrongful drilling in their homeland, Ogoniland, which began in 1958 and has boosted the Nigerian community while bringing nothing but frequent oil spills, acid rain and death to farmland and cattle of the starving and poor Ogoni (not to mention an increase in cancer and respiratory diseases).

- Chevron, who (claimed to be involved in the illegal trials of the Ogoni activists to a somewhat lesser extent but complicit nonetheless) is also responsible for devastating the Nigerian environment, including disregarding Nigerian law to re-inject gas into the earth and instead pollute the air by flaring it. Additionally, Chevron has been accused of encouraging widespread human rights abuse in Burma such as rape, murder and forced labor. Chevron has also been accused of polluting the air of Richmond, California (where almost half the population is African American) as well as neglecting its oil spills in the Amazon rainforest.

- Chase Bank, who, among other abuses, stated in January 1995 memo that the Mexican government "will have to eliminate the Zapatistas to demonstrate their effective control of the national territory and security policy." The Zapatistas (an armed but nonviolent indigeounos group of Chiapas who have fought for autonomy for decades) had just come into the public eye for their New Year's Day insurrection.

The other big banks and companies on the list show that the HRC is committed to advocating rights for the LGBT community so long as it's on terms and conditions set by their clearly mainstream backers. These terms and conditions consistently prove that actual human rights are as far from these goals as an ant is from the surface of the moon.

Lastly, the HRC seeks for gay marriage which is, as I've said, not something I support for several reasons, too many to list here. In general, marriage is not something that gay activists from the civil rights era would have focused on, as it institutionalizes the very image of "straightness" along with awarding the privileged few with rights to health care and economic stability denied to thousands of others. Instead of pushing for married gays and lesbians to get married in order to have tax cuts, hospital visitation, housing, fair treatment in the workplace, etc., a legitimate progressive group (in my opinion, anyway) would fight for these rights to be given indiscriminately to all people who identify as queer, be they a Christian gay man, an atheist lesbian or a homeless transgender (speaking of homeless, by the way, between 7,000 and 10,000 of the homeless in New York City are LGBT teenagers, and the HRC does little to aid the local shelters there).

Now, this isn't to say that the HRC hasn't done anything of value. I'm saying that instead of supporting the HRC, queers should support local movements that fight for the homeless, poor and marginalized while standing for human rights everywhere. Instead of paying for an annual debit card/membership with the HRC, donate to the Zapatistas or to environmentalist groups. Instead of responding to mass emails about writing legistlators about creating national laws, seek out grassroot campaigns and local efforts to change local laws that help the homeless, end domestic abuse and assist in gay/lesbian teenage suicides.

The Moon, the Moon

2009-05-10T05:00:00.000-07:00

The birds outside of my apartment make a complete cacophony out of 6 AM in the morning. It's like the only difference between the noise of the noonday cars, their rushing impatient metals and smoking, filthy heat all smashed together, and the desperate shrieking of early morning birds at Starcrest Drive is that the birds make a more precise harmony. It's almost conversational. It's almost like they are all talking to each other. Maybe the cars do, too. You can never know.

I went outside to watch the moonset after staying up late again. I can't sleep. I still can't sleep and I can no longer shrug it off in pithy remarks about how "I rewired my body's sleep schedule when I stayed up during finals using several cups of coffee" because that happened six months ago. I know what it is now. It's that I choose not to fall asleep. I just don't want to. I can feel it each night, my body's own sense of displacement when I lay down on that bed. It's stiff underneath my sheets, the insides tighten under my weight and the springs grind with frustration. The whole thing is only held together with a few nuts and screws. It's not my frame, it's Sylvia's. Her father gave it to her. I've met her father before but I can't remember his face. I remember he had a kind one, though.

I stayed up watching Knocked Up. Alison was just barely going into labor when I noticed the window turning blue. I looked outside and saw a single brave bright star above Provo. I sat back down and continued to bite my knuckles, grinning stupidly to nobody but the damn screen, giddy as I always get whenever I watch this movie, especially this part, the one right here where Alison and Ben are together again and now in the hospital and Ben is ready. Because he is going to be a daddy.

When the credits roll, I put my new sandals on. I go outside and I stare at the craters in the moon. Every time I look at the moon, if I look long enough, the craters start to look like little black shadows blinking and dancing, even waltzing in circles all across that cold white surface. A smell hits my nostrils and my eyes widen because I recognize the smell from something very long ago. Which is puzzling. The smell triggers a thousand memories in my head. They are memories of me and Ammon, specifically me and Ammon camping in the summer - and specifically that certain summer. That trip. And soon successively other memories clink along with it like the chain of a ball rolling scattered and confused behind the railroad worker. Smells from other camping trips. I remember Sand Hollow and Billy Brown and Strawberry Resovoir and Kevin Mitchell. I see the moon again and for some reason all I can think about is the word "daughter."

My sandals skid across the dead twigs and the crusty old ground as I walk back inside. They cost me more than thirty damn dollars, and I got them from where Mike works. I remember that Mike recognized me from the picture on that website that pretends to be gay Facebook - and he actually walked up to me. I remember finding out later that evening that Nick no longer comes up on gay Facebook when I search because I always put "single" in the search. He's no longer single. Tonight, or last night I guess, Zack started texting me again right when Lindsey was complaining - and, well, complaining isn't the right word. She was lamenting that "he" wasn't calling her.

And I remained despondent. Because I'm so sick of the guys who keep texting me and the guys who won't. I am mad like Ben Stone because stupid idiots all around me won't fucking love when it's handed to them. And the ones who like to take their love and smear it all over their faces like war paint. You assholes. Stupid idiots, stupid fuckers. What the hell are you people thinking. Huh?

What the hell is the matter with all of you?

Queer Film Spotlight: Yossi & Jagger & The Trip

2009-05-09T17:13:00.000-07:00

This post gonna kick off a new series of movie reviews I hope to write throughout the summer. I'll be reviewing films that focus on gay, lesbian, bisexual and/or transgendered characters and/or romances. Most of the films will likely be American but a few will be foreign, as exemplified by the first gay movie:

Yossi & Jagger (2002) is an Israeli film about two secret lovers in the Israeli military. Yossi is the commander of a small unit near Lebanon who is close to his second-in-command, Loir, who is nicknamed "Jagger" because he is "handsome like a rock star." Two girls arrive at the base, one of whom starts to fall for Jagger at the same time Ofir, another officer, falls for her - all happening as Yossi prepares the unit for an ambush that evening.

One thing I loved about this film was how short it was - barely an hour. Another thing I liked was that in other hands, the story could have been very weak. Two gay soldiers, a girl and a love triange. It could have been cheap, but the characters were all very believable and the story was paced slowly to let the audience digest the different emotions. The love between Yossi and Jagger was performed well - the comedy, the tension, the pain and the caring. I didn't mind the tangent story with Ofir most of the time, but at times it seemed like the main romance was playing second fiddle to it.

I couldn't complain much about film other than the slow pacing. (That, and I thought Yossi was kinda unattractive. He didn't have to be some hot Adonis, but sometimes the pairing with the clearly attractive Jagger felt weird.) I enjoyed it because it cared more about developing solid leading men who love each other during wartime more than it cared about forcing itself to be dramatic and emotional. It was good filmmaking and good acting despite its low budget.

The Trip (2002) is a bit uneven but enjoyable. It spans the years 1973 to 1984 and chronicles the romance between Alan and Tommy, the one a staunch straight Republican and the other a carefree gay activist. Alan is working on a book with the intent to threaten the gay rights movement and asks Tommy for an interview. What starts out as innocent curiosity soon sways to a secret love affair that soon becomes threatened by jealous others and the Christian right. Alan and Tommy part ways only to meet each other for one last time in the mid-eighties when the AIDS epidemic threatens every homosexual relationship, including their own.

The film's low budget doesn't make the production suffer but the writing does. One bad line made me cringe during what should've been a fantastic ending. It's definitely paced more quickly than Yossi & Jagger and while this doesn't fault the story's delivery, the stitching starts to come undone towards the film's climax, and by the end the conclusion seems decently developed but way too rushed. Alan's transition from straight to gay is clumsy but the two actors make the bumbling road fun to watch. For that matter, all the actors make up for the just-below-decent writing in delivering heartfelt performances.

Despite it's many faults, I liked this film because, unlike other American gay films I'm familiar with, it's clear about its own story. Most other gay films are so clearly marketed to horny gay men who fantasize about straight men that it can be cliche, trite and mostly annoying. They make it clear their makers were trying to make a "dick flick." The Trip doesn't try to be anything. The scenes are directed and performed in a way that lets you know that those who worked on the film knew they weren't making Titanic or A Walk To Remember. It's honest - sometimes flawed, but at least honest.

"With God On Our Side..."

2009-05-06T00:21:00.000-07:00

Today I decided to finally sit down and watch The Laramie Project - the HBO film about the murder of Matthew Shephard. The most disturbing scene to me - and simultaneously the most hopeful - was the one where there is a group of fundamentalist Christians protesting outside his funeral, and the friends of Matthew Shephard dress as angels and stand in front of them. The former group echos, for me, the complete disrespect shown towards Heath Ledger and his family from the Kansas Westbro Baptist Church (both in a news release and a subsequent letter). All of these things are still pretty fresh in my mind, especially after seeing Jesus Camp.

It's with little coincidence that Democracy Now! came out with a report today about a recent footage released by Al Jezeera, who have alleged for some time that Christian U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan are attempting to convert Muslims. The Pentagon has denied their claims and, for the most part, has ignored the journalists that have investigated the subject. Now today, Al Jezeera released recent footage of a miliary chaplain discussing how to talk to Muslims about Christianity and hand out translated Bibles.

Amy Goodman interviews Jeff Sharlet, who wrote an article in Harper's article called "Jesus Killed Mohammed." The article tells the story of a soldier who, after seeing Passion of the Christ, goes on a destructive rampage in Iraq, claiming success because God is on his side.

Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism At The Heart of American Power, can be a come off a bit heavy handed, but he argues that this is an extremely serious problem that threatens U.S. military credibility overseas. Mikey Weinstein, Air Force veteran and author of With God on Our Side: One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military, also comes on the show and concurs with Sharlet, saying, "We look exactly like the crusaders of 1096 to the Iraqis, and now the Afghans."

Captain Marvel Falls In Love

2009-04-23T19:56:00.000-07:00

Even though it's finals and I've been cramming, I spend all my free time reading comics. I think one of my favorites right now is Captain Marvel. He's awesome! And I love him.

This nice blast from 1944 (Whiz Comics #53) about what happened when the Big Red Cheese fell in love.

As Billy Batson (the Cap's alter ego, for those who don't know) narrates for his young and eager radio listeners, the story goes that Billy once got a job working at a munitions plant for the military - just as World War II was ending. His boss was a demanding lady named Rosie who dropped her makeup compact at the plant. Billy turned into Captain Marvel to rush it home to her...and the Cap had no idea that this demanding lady Roise is one foxy lady.

(Click on pictures for better quality.)

Later,
as the Cap tries one more time to win Rosie while at the munitions plant...

That image of Captain Marvel sitting in the gutter kinda sums up how I feel about love right now. Poor Cap!

Still Reeling

2009-04-14T20:44:00.000-07:00

It's been about twenty-four hours since I saw a perfect film, and I'm still trying to wrap my brain around it.

It's not so much that it was the most mind-boggling film I've seen recently. Because it wasn't. It wasn't like Synechdoche, New York or The Fountain, the latter of which is my favorite film and, in my personal opinion, also a perfect film. I haven't come across a film I feel similarly about since I saw The Fountain for the second time two years ago.

To begin with: this is a 2007 anime film. Specifically, it's an OVA (original video animation, which I guess is some kind of technical name for an anime feature film).

Title: 秒速５センチメートル.

Which means: 5 Centimeters Per Second.

The title, as indicated in the trailer, refers to the rate at which an average cherry blossom petal falls to the ground, which is roughly five centimeters a second.

My personal misgivings about the film were set aside at Sylvia's insistence - a pestering she's managed to keep up for more than six months. We finally sat down and watched it last night. At some point, I stopped paying attention to what was happening and just let the film "happen" to me.

5 Centimeters Per Second isn't a completely linear film; it's a story that's divided into three twenty minute parts, all of which center around a boy named Takaki Tono and the distance in both space and time between him and a girl from his childhood.

The film is not a science fiction film or a fantasy. It's not told with gigantic robots or demonic aliens or cowboys or big-breasted femme fatales or melodramatic teenage boys. It's most likely part of an emerging genre some (heaven knows who) call "slice of life" (a stupid name for a genre). Put crudely, this category consists of films that have no involving plot and are driven from fade in to credits almost solely by character development. One of the most popular films of this sort is the Academy Award-winning Lost In Translation, and some of my favorite films can also be considered part of this genre, like The Squid and The Whale, The Savages, You Can Count On Me, and most recently Rachel At The Wedding.

That said: I can't really talk much about the plot or what happens. I can't quite talk about how I was affected by it either, except that A: I'd bet you some of my comics you've never see a more beautiful anime and B: I had a hard time finding anything fallible about this film.

I personally believe that perfect films exist, and that they can be made. I also hastily point out that "perfect" is merely a matter of perspective, and that perfect films are not always necessarily good, great or amazing films. So when I say, "5 Centimeters Per Second is a perfect film," one must keep in mind that my category of "perfect" currently neighbors 5 Centimeters with The Fountain. So depending on how you personally gauge the latter will give you an idea of what makes 5 Centimeters amazing to me.

It's not an easy film to find; if you've got the patience, I know it's separated into parts on YouTube. It's only an hour long. I plan on owning it very soon, and if you're interested I'd be happy to lend it out. But I know I can't watch it for a long time. I'm writing this to document my initial thoughts, which are brief and thus: this film had so many beautiful moments that I could hardly stand it, and I can only hope I care about my characters as gently as director Makoto Shinkai cares about Takaki and Akari.

"The Riot Squads Are Restless"

2009-02-07T13:50:00.001-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, My Chemical Romance released their single "Desolation Row," a cover of the 1965 song by Bob Dylan. The song is featured in the upcoming Watchmen film adaptation by Zack Snyder (300, Dawn of the Dead). I guess I'll add my voice to the growing Internet conversation over this...

I loved My Chemical Romance in high school, and even a bit after. Their album The Black Parade (which I own on vinyl) was one of the most important events of my summer '07 existential crisis. Now I'm more of a nostalgic fan, but still think they can genuinely go places. I also love Bob Dylan like I need air. Another Side of Bob Dylan might be my favorite Dylan album (and I own it on vinyl as well), and along with many other Dylan songs, it was a big part of my healing process during my struggles last fall (when I also saw him perform in Park City) with the aftermath of my '08 summer romance. So I have personal reasons for loving each of these musicians in their own separate and different ways.

That all said: I believe that the Dylan fans who are bemoaning the so-called "murder of Dylan" are being melodramatic. Sorry, people - not only is he still alive and walking around, but he actually likes their version. (Even though it's Way, consider that if this was slander, surely Dylan or his assistants would've spoken up by now.) I also think that the MCR fans are being very reactionary, for the most part. As one person has said, it's ironic to note that Gerard Way & Co. remain ever respectful of Dylan and love him, and Dylan himself loves their version. They get along, but their fans are at war.

I enjoy Dylan covers, and I like 80's punk. I'm okay when they're together - and this isn't the first time; The Ramones do a pretty good cover of "My Back Pages" (one of my favorite Dylan songs). It's not an amazing cover and I'm not too big on some of the production elements; I think that some of their live clips are a bit better, in fact. But I still think that given what they set out to do - namely, make a punk-stylized cover of "Desolation Row" that fits into Znyder's version of Alan Moore's Reagan-era - they succeed pretty well. They're brave for doing it and it'll likely introduce people to Dylan. I love both versions in different ways.

"The Revolver"

2009-01-31T00:54:00.000-08:00

         I will be haunted to remember him by southern winds,
        ardent acrobat with brazen sepia eyes, he lilted gently –
        a taciturn man with a pocket for clothespins.

After th’ ripe pitch into orbit, the silence dropped like a balm.
You, I loved. You had a child beneath the autumn tree.
My ears may fatten on bells rung by outback winds

across the current’s ceaseless periphery.
You tucked in, you rolled back from sand dunes at Perth to waters more free,
        a cadenced man made fortunate by his clothespins.

        And light, lacquer those shattered lungs in his past ‘lectric blood.
Weigh down, immaculate collapse, to cold bare floor at last. If I call, refuse me;
I might yet smell my musk on stillblown southern winds

for there are some rivers that never find their oceans.
And shameless, clutching mother in the iris of noisy camera cacophony,
she waltzes: constant, your daughter – your bundle of clothespins.

Your beautiful feet once flew above the ground. Now still, they rest beneath it.
You frequented the places I sleep. Now they are only a little comfort to me.
        I will be haunted, I will remember by south winds
        a taciturn man with a thing for clothespins.

Slumdog Porn

2009-01-30T13:44:00.000-08:00

Things aren't looking to well for Slumdog Millionaire, the acclaimed film that took the Globe for Best Picture and has been nominated for ten Oscars, including Best Picture.

Most critics loved it, but movie lover (and renowned author of The Satanic Verses, one of my favorite novels) Salman Rushdie told the New York Times that he was part of an initially silent minority - including Mick LaSalle of the San Fransico Chronicle - who had reservations about the film. I wrote my own criticial review in the UVU Review (I swear I didn't come up with the title).

Now this week, it seems that according to The Telegraph in the U.K., the parents of the two eight-year-old child actors in Slumdog Millionaire have risen accusations against the producers, claiming that their children have been exploited. The children have reportedly been paid less than an average Indian servant's sum - in fact, when comparisons were made between their salary and the payment to the Afghan child actors in last year's The Kite Runner, it's substantially less.

Yesterday, the AP reported that the parents of seven-year-old Rubina Qureshi are happy about being a part of the film and claim that the filmmakers and Foxlight has promised to put Rubina through school and has paid her a substantial sum - more than three times the annual adult's salary for the thirty days of shooting.

I don't know if the parents are telling the truth and are getting shushed by the big exec's or if they're lying to get more money out the studio. What's almost more interesting, though, is India's own reaction to Slumdog Millionaire, which is - almost predictably - not completely favorable, according to the Los Angeles Times. (It made me raise my eyebrow to find out that it opened earlier this month in the States but didn't open until just this week in Mumbai, the film's setting.) A few believe that it helps to show a side of India's current problems. Others, however, believe that it's a misleading and all-too-popular portrayal of India's problems that offers glamorized and unrealistic solutions to those problems.

"It's a white man's imagined India," says Shyamal Sengupta, a film professor in Mumbai. "It's not quite snake charmers, but it's close. It's a poverty tour."

Reuters reports that protests have begun in India over the film and Alice Miles, The Times writer, officially cemented a connection between Slumdog Millionaire and the phrase "poverty porn."

What may be of some irony is that the country's own Taare Zameen Par got the shaft for the Academy's foreign film nomination. Taare Zameen Par, arguably a Bollywood film in its own right, tells the story of a young school boy with dyslexia who sees the world in artistic manifestations (through animations and songs). When considering what has been suggested that makes Slumdog Millionaire so fascinating to Western viewers, it's pretty predictable that Slumdog Millionaire is now India's stake in the Oscar race.

(I haven't seen all of Taare Zameen Par, but what I've seen of it is pretty good. The acting is heartfelt, and there's great cinematography.)

Perhaps, like some, you get postcolonialist readings out of the film; this wouldn't be Boyle's first time playing with "(a) the slum exotic; (b) the neoliberal exotic, in which global capital miraculously transforms one's life; and, (c) the criminal exotic". Or maybe, like Rushdie or me, you just think the storytelling is spaghetti (slippery) and the delivery is the strainer (full of holes). Or maybe you really do love the film. Either way, I think Miles' concluding sentiments are pensive enough to co-opt here: "Boyle's most subversive achievement may lie not in revealing the dark underbelly of India - but in revealing ours."

Was Obama's Benediction Racist?

2009-01-25T23:39:00.000-08:00

I loved Rev. Joseph Lowery's benediction for its use of language, but the rhetoric have been something else; like Obama, I found myself nodding and smiling as Lowery described a day "when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man"...but I found my smile fading when he concluded "...and when white will embrace what is right."

Something rubs me the wrong way about that last line. Why should only the whites embrace "what is right"?

It apparently also rubbed at Debra Dickerson and her friend John Schwade in a recent MoJo blog entry.

I do remain reserved about the article. Schwade makes, in my opinion, a fallacious equivocation when he states, "By the way, if it is racist to have an NFL team in the nation's capitol with the name 'Redskins,' it's racist to refer to native Americans as 'the red man,' even if it rhymes with 'ahead, man.'" I'm not sure what Schwade is trying to emphasize with that comment; is he pointing out the danger of using the phrase "red man," or is he sugesting it's only racist to say that because such racism is qualified by a similar instance of it? It sounds like a neat analogy, but it confuses me when I try to unpack it.

Likewise, I think there are some moments when Schwade is flirting with "qualifying statements," which is bland rhetoric and becoming one of my pet peeves (most recent example: before dinner tonight at Chili's with Jill's parents, I was reading a November '08 New York Times article about the Mormon hand in passing Prop 8. I think it's an informative article but I call foul when Frank Schubert, chief stragegist for Prop 8, "said he is [not] anti-gay - his sister is a lesbian..." I'd like to know how the hell that's relevant; like I told Sylvia, it's like me saying, "Oh, I'm not anti-Twilight - my sister is a fan." By the way, using gay and lesbian friends to qualify acceptance of homosexuality - and, likely, mask homophobia/intolerance - is something my sister herself has done around me a few times). Schwade does this when he implies that because he works at a prison, where apparently there's a significant population of blacks, he is entitled to sympathize with them as human beings. Right.

At any rate - like Schwade and Dickerson, I cringe a little because the idea ought to be that one acts on "what is right" regardless of race, gender, class, sexuality and religious (or non-religious) persuasion. "What is right" is ultimatley a dangerously vague phrase, and I realize that. I also realize that some may be quick to call the Rev. Lowery's benediction reverse racism when, like one of my professors, John Goshert, I think that's false and deluding epistemology - there's no such thing as reverse racism.

Still, I would hope that along with entertaining the nation with wordplay, the reverend was attempting to reconcile notions of "right" with pragmatism and not further divide the nation into "morally ethnic" demographics.

Movie Quotes Quiz

2009-01-20T20:50:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I decided I was bored enough to do it. Guess what films follow - if you can!

1. “The heart is a sleeping beauty and love the only kiss it can't resist. Even if its eyes lay open wide, there is a heart that sleeps inside. And it's to there you must be hastening. For all hearts dream. They dream only of awakening.”

2. “You wanna hear something really nutty? I heard of a couple guys who wanna build something called an ‘airplane’ - you know, you get people to go in and fly around like birds. It's ridiculous, right? And what about breaking the sound barrier, or rockets to the moon, or atomic energy, or a mission to Mars? Science fiction, right?”

3. “It isn’t simply a question of creating a robot who can love; isn’t the real conundrum - can you get a human to love them back?”

4. “Screws fall out all the time. The world is an imperfect place.”

5. “You know what that song reminds me of? It reminds me of Mrs. Rachel Troubowitz and what she said to me the day I left…She's easily like a 44 double E. These things are massive…And she sees me and she can tell I got a hard on the size of the Statue of Liberty, all right? And she says to me, ‘Richard, calm down.’ And she says, ‘Now when you're over there, if you see anything that upsets you, if you're ever scared, I want you to close your eyes and think of these. You understand?’ So I said, ‘Yes, ma'am.’”

6. “And one more thing. From now on, we're going to have alternate dinner music because frankly – and I don't think I'm alone here – I'm tired of this Lawrence Welk shit.”

7. “Hey, don't knock masturbation! It's sex with someone I love.”

8. “If someone loved you very much, so that your happiness was the only thing that she wanted in the world, but she did a bad thing to make certain of it, could you forgive her?”

9. “And then your Mommy said ‘Just do it already!’ which was very confusing to Daddy, so I took the most literal translation. (whispering) But between you and me, it was the smartest thing I ever did, 'cause now you're here.”

10. “I've always been considered an asshole for about as long as I can remember. That's just my style. But I'd really feel blue if I didn't think you were going to forgive me.”

“I don’t think you’re an asshole…I just think you’re kind of a son of a bitch.”

“Well, I really appreciate that.”

11. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain – wasting years – for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes, or it seems to but doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope for something good to come along. Something to make you feel connected, to make you feel whole. To make you feel loved.”

12. “I’m still stoned. Those eye drops you gave me didn’t do shit.”

13. “Dylan. I'll call my baby Dylan. It's a girl's name, too.”

14. “I really do have love to give. I just don't know where to put it.”

15. “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool.”

16. “I know it hurts. That's life. If nothing else, It's life. It’s real, and sometimes it fuckin’ hurts, but it's sort of all we have.”

17. “Sometimes it's not enough to know the meaning of things; sometimes, we have to know what things don't mean as well. Like, what does it mean to not know what the person you love is capable of? Things fall apart, especially all the neat order of rules and laws…I stopped trying to figure everything out a long time ago.”

18. “You thought we could be decent men in an indecent time. But you were wrong.”

19. “Let me get this straight. You know her. She knows you. But she wants to eat him. And…everybody's okay with this?”

20. “Every shadow, no matter how deep, is threatened by morning light.”

**Bonus** I didn't realize until after most of the quotes were compiled that there's actually a theme that connects them all. Name what the/a theme is.

Twilight Sparkledammerung!

2009-01-13T19:00:00.000-08:00

This is. Pretty much. The funniest thing about the Twilight series. I've ever read.

Pretty much.

So, let me get this straight. Women all over the country are obsessed over (according to "SMeyers") a "new feminist heroine" who is (in the second book, quite literally) nothing without her Man. Said Man stalks her, can't read her mind, and eats her baby out of her stomach. Meanwhile, the Native Americans get stereotyped and shafted and the Catholics (I mean, the Italians) are the only real vampires, but they are the bad ones. Not the righteous and pure ones. Blank pages and nauseating romance that would make an Avon novelist gag.

And this is the amazingness called Twilight. LDS dogma that parades around in "neo-feminism" that, for Smeyers, is gory, incoherent and melodramatic white male masculinity, racism and vegetarianism.

...What. The. Hell.

"Of Sowing & Harvests"

2009-01-07T01:02:00.000-08:00

Subcomandante Marcos, the famous leader of the Zapatista resistance, speaks on the Gaza attacks.

PLEASE READ -
From My Word Is My Weapon, Kristen Bricker reporting/translating:

Two days ago, the same day we discussed violence, the ineffable Condoleezza Rice, a U.S. official, declared that what was happening in Gaza was the Palestinians' fault, due to their violent nature.

The underground rivers that crisscross the world can change their geography, but they sing the same song.

And the one we hear now is one of war and pain.

Not far from here, in a place called Gaza, in Palestine, in the Middle East, right here next to us, the Israeli government's heavily trained and armed military continues its march of death and destruction.

The steps it has taken are those of a classic military war of conquest: first an intense mass bombing in order to destroy "strategic" military points (that's how the military manuals put it) and to "soften" the resistance's reinforcements; next a fierce control over information: everything that is heard and seen "in the outside world," that is, outside the theater of operations, must be selected with military criteria; now intense artillery fire against the enemy infantry to protect the advance of troop to new positions; then there will be a siege to weaken the enemy garrison; then the assault that conquers the position and annihilates the enemy, then the "cleaning out" of the probable "nests of resistance."

The military manual of modern war, with a few variations and additions, is being followed step-by-step by the invading military forces.

We don't know a lot about this, and there are surely specialists in the so-called "conflict in the Middle East," but from this corner we have something to say:

According to the news photos, the "strategic" points destroyed by the Israeli government's air force are houses, shacks, civilian buildings. We haven't seen a single bunker, nor a barracks, nor a military airport, nor cannons, amongst the rubble. So--and please excuse our ignorance--we think that either the planes' guns have bad aim, or in Gaza such "strategic" military points don't exist.

We have never had the honor of visiting Palestine, but we suppose that people, men, women, children, and the elderly--not soldiers--lived in those houses, shacks, and buildings.

We also haven't seen the resistance's reinforcements, just rubble.

We have seen, however, the futile efforts of the information siege, and the world governments trying to decide between ignoring or applauding the invasion, and the UN, which has been useless for quite some time, sending out tepid press releases.

But wait. It just occurred to us that perhaps to the Israeli government those men, women, children, and elderly people are enemy soldiers, and as such, the shacks, houses, and buildings that they inhabited are barracks that need to be destroyed.

So surely the hail of bullets that fell on Gaza this morning were in order to protect the Israeli infantry's advance from those men, women, children, and elderly people.

And the enemy garrison that they want to weaken with the siege that is spread out all over Gaza is the Palestinian population that lives there. And the assault will seek to annihilate that population. And whichever man, woman, child, or elderly person that manages to escape or hide from the predictably bloody assault will later be "hunted" so that the cleansing is complete and the commanders in charge of the operation can report to their superiors: "We've completed the mission."

Again, pardon our ignorance, maybe what we're saying is beside the point. And instead of condemning the ongoing crime, being the indigenous and warriors that we are, we should be discussing and taking a position in the discussion about if it's "zionism" or "antisemitism," or if Hamas' bombs started it.

Maybe our thinking is very simple, and we're lacking the nuances and annotations that are always so necessary in analyses, but to the Zapatistas it looks like there's a professional army murdering a defenseless population.

Who from below and to the left can remain silent?

Is it useful to say something? Do our cries stop even one bomb? Does our word save the life of even one Palestinian?

We think that yes, it is useful. Maybe we don't stop a bomb and our word won't turn into an armored shield so that that 5.56 mm or 9 mm caliber bullet with the letters "IMI" or "Israeli Military Industry" etched into the base of the cartridge won't hit the chest of a girl or boy, but perhaps our word can manage to join forces with others in Mexico and the world and perhaps first it's heard as a murmur, then out loud, and then a scream that they hear in Gaza.

We don't know about you, but we Zapatistas from the EZLN, we know how important it is, in the middle of destruction and death, to hear some words of encouragement.

I don't know how to explain it, but it turns out that yes, words from afar might not stop a bomb, but it's as if a crack were opened in the black room of death and a tiny ray of light slips in.

As for everything else, what will happen will happen. The Israeli government will declare that it dealt a severe blow to terrorism, it will hide the magnitude of the massacre from its people, the large weapons manufacturers will have obtained economic support to face the crisis, and "the global public opinion," that malleable entity that is always in fashion, will turn away.

But that's not all. The Palestinian people will also resist and survive and continue struggling and will continue to have sympathy from below for their cause.

And perhaps a boy or girl from Gaza will survive, too. Perhaps they'll grow, and with them, their nerve, indignation, and rage. Perhaps they'll become soldiers or militiamen for one of the groups that struggle in Palestine. Perhaps they'll find themselves in combat with Israel. Perhaps they'll do it firing a gun. Perhaps sacrificing themselves with a belt of dynamite around their waists.

And then, from up there above, they will write about the Palestinians' violent nature and they'll make declarations condemning that violence and they'll get back to discussing if it's zionism or anti-semitism.

And no one will ask who planted that which is being harvested.

For the men, women, children, and elderly of the Zapatista National Liberation Army,

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico, January 4, 2009.

Voices From Gaza

2009-01-06T23:31:00.000-08:00

Photos courtesy of Sameh A. Habeeb.*

Palestinians continue to suffer as Israelis slaughter hundreds of civilians and keep the press in the dark. Meanwhile, Bush continues to appear ambivilant while Obama finally raises his voice.

FROM NEWSWEEK:

"I was at home when I heard that Israel had begun bombing the Gaza Strip. I was afraid that something had happened to my brother, Osama, so I tried to call his mobile but he didn't answer. I later found him dead in [a] hospital. My brother was married with 10 children. He didn't belong to Hamas; he was just trying to look after his family. My brother is a victim of this crazy bombing in Gaza. Civilians are always victims and they pay the price of wars. What will we say to his sons when they grow up?"
--Saber Abu Reesh, 40, from the Maghazi neighborhood of Gaza

"I threw some clothes into a bag and hurried with my girls to Nusserat, where my father lives, but we still don't feel safe. Before we left, we spent the whole night in the basement with our neighbors. The shelling continued all night and my children cry constantly."
--Etemad Abu Tahoon, 35, fled from Gaza City with her three daughters

"In my work as a hospital nurse, I come into daily contact with Arabs, both patients and staff, and I have excellent relations with them. Of course a peace agreement is possible, I've always thought so. These people are my friends and my colleagues. Despite the fact that Irit is dead, I still say that there is a real possibility to reach a solution. But these are not the people who killed my niece. It's the extremists who killed my niece, and they will stop at nothing right now. There are extremists on both sides and, as terrible as it sounds, maybe it should be the extremists that we talk to. Otherwise, where is the end to this bloodshed?"
--Tziona Peleg, Israeli, 47, aunt of Irit Shitrit, who was killed by a missile on Ashdod last week

"A friend of mine was badly injured in a rocket attack three weeks ago and, for me, this was a wake-up call. I was shocked that it touched my personal life so directly. I served in the Israeli Army on the border with Gaza and I knew the Palestinians in Gaza had the capability of sending rockets deep into Israel, but never thought they would use it. I'm the kind of person who thought a solution was reachable, one way or another. I've lived in Ashdod all my life, and I've heard talk of peace come and go, but nothing has ever been finalized. I don't know if an agreement can be reached while Hamas is in control of Gaza."

--Ortal Suissa, 21, works in a clothes store in downtown Ashdod (Israel)

FROM THE GUARDIAN:

Israel's assault on Gaza has exacted the bloodiest toll of civilian lives yet, when the bombing of UN schools being used as refugee centres and of housing killed more than 50 people, including an entire family of seven young children.

The UN protested at a "complete absence of accountability" for the escalating number of civilian deaths in Gaza, saying "the rule of the gun" had taken over. Doctors in Gaza said more than 40 people died, including children, in what appears to be the biggest single loss of life of the campaign when Israeli bombs hit al-Fakhora school, in Jabaliya refugee camp, while it was packed with hundreds of people who had fled the fighting.

Most of those killed were in the school playground and in the street, and the dead and injured lay in pools of blood...

Hours before, three young men who were cousins died when the Israelis bombed Asma elementary school in Gaza City. They were among 400 people who had sought shelter there after fleeing their homes in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza.

Abed Sultan, 20, a student, and his cousins, Rawhi and Hussein Sultan, labourers aged 22, died. Abed Sultan's father, Samir, said the bodies were so mangled that he could not tell his son from the cousins. 'We came to the school when the Israelis warned us to leave,' he said. 'We hoped it would be safe. We were 20 in one room. We had no electricity, no blankets, no food.

'Suddenly we heard a bomb that shook the school. Windows smashed. Children started to scream. A relative came and told me one of my sons was killed. I found my son's body with his two cousins. They were cut into pieces by the shell.'

...The rising casualty toll, more than 640 Palestinians killed since the assault began 12 days ago, gave fresh impetus to diplomatic efforts. The White House offered its first hint of concern at Israel's actions by calling on it to avoid civilian deaths. The president-elect, Barack Obama, broke his silence by saying he was 'deeply concerned' about civilian casualties on both sides. He said he would have 'plenty to say' about the crisis after his swearing in."

FROM THE PROGRESSIVE:

"I don't know about you but I did not find the Israeli government's Twitter press conference particularly winning.

There is something downright creepy about the juxtaposition of mass civilian casualties in Gaza and Israeli officials' demonstrated fluency in cutesy text message jargon.

To the short but crucial question from 'peoplesworld': '40 years of military confrontation hasn’t brought security to Israel, why is this different?' The Israeli consulate replied: 'We hav 2 prtct R ctzens 2, only way fwd through neogtiations, & left Gaza in 05. y Hamas launch missiles not peace?'

Hype about the 'first ever' Twitter press conference gave Israel a boost in the mainstream media, as Megan Garber observes in CJR.

But the use of Twitter for propaganda purposes didn't sit as well with Twitter bloggers. Small wonder. The messages were short, but the content of the press conference was practically nonexistent.

...A nation at war that sounds like a high school girl texting trite tidbits on her cell phone is not much of an improvement over men in suits who stand behind lecterns and say nothing at great length.

Propaganda is all about narrowing discussion to a few simple points. Twitter, it turns out, is a great tool for that purpose."

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:

"What matters most, General Amidror [Israelis] said, are three changes: coordination between the infantry and the air force; having commanders on the ground with a clear mission and flexibility to achieve it; and methods to keep Hamas in the fog of war, which includes disinformation and impediments to real-time press coverage on the ground. [emphasis added]

'The less Hamas understands, the better,' he said.

The army and government have also made it clear that Palestinian civilians will die in this war, because of the way Hamas has chosen to fight it from within the densely populated urban centers of Gaza. But events like the deaths of schoolchildren are harder to swallow."

FROM THE NATION:

"Hamas is an enemy that refuses to recognize my national right, as a Jew, to live in my country. No one would be happier than I would to see it gone from the seat of power...However...Hamas is an immanent part of the democratic system in Palestine, and the only way to remove it from power is the same way it got there - through the ballot box. Not with bullets...

Israel must decide, once and for all, which path it will take: reach a courageous resolution to the conflict, or prolong it indefinitely. If it chooses the former, it will find the Arab peace initiative of March 2002, which garnered enthusiastic support from Yasir Arafat and vehement denunciation by Hamas. It is unlikely that Israel will get a better deal than what that initiative offers: full recognition and normalized normalized relations with all of the Arab states in return for near total withdrawal from the territories, including East Jerusalem, with reciprocal land exchanges if Israel wishes to retain any areas in the West Bank or Jerusalem, as well as a just and agreed-upon resolution to the refugee problem. One may assume that in such an eventuality, the international community, with the new American president at its helm, would provide the parties with a broad security and economic shelter.

If Israel refuses to pay that price--which has not changed for the past two decades and probably will not for the next two--and if it is willing to risk losing its Jewish and democratic character, instead of fighting Hamas it can easily find common ground with the organization: Hamas also rejects the idea of two states based on the June 4, 1967, borders. Its leaders are begging for a long-term truce and have proved that they can enforce one. They know that they do not have the power to defeat Israel's mighty army. But they also know that as long as Israel refuses to demarcate a permanent border with Gaza and the West Bank, the demographic clock--which will soon bring about a Palestinian majority in Israel and the territories--makes the dream of "greater Palestine" look more and more real."

*Sameh has been receiving death threats to take down his blog. "I have got three calls from anonymous persons stop blogging or I would be killed," he says.

"I Am But One Small Instrument."

2009-01-03T17:13:00.000-08:00

As the year begins with two of the world's largest religions clashing in the latest acrimonious bloodspill between Israelis and Palestinians (six kids were killed today after prayer as Israelis bombed and marched into Gaza, according to The Guardian), I finished one of the most unique and profoundly affecting spiritual experiences I've had in years. It came in two parts; first, it came in the HBO mini-serial Angels In America, which is a discussion for another time. The second part came in the form of a fictional character named Owen Meany.

A Prayer For Owen Meany is a 1989 novel by John Irving (The World According to Garp and both the novel and screenplay The Cider House Rules). I picked it up because I got into the Jimmy Eat World album Clarity last summer; the concluding sixteen-minute track is a delicate dirge titled "Goodbye Sky Harbor" that draws its lyrics and atmosphere from the final scene in Irving's novel. The novel is part the confessional, part coming-of-age story of the narrator, John Wheelwright and his handicapped best friend - a dwarfish boy with a unique set of vocal pipes and the firm belief that he is God's instrument - and their hilarious (mis)adventures in Gravesend, New Hampshire from the mid-fifties to the mid-sixties. The novel begins with one of the most compelling and memorable opening sentences I've ever read: "I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I am a Christian because of Owen Meany."

If the plot sounds familiar, it might be because a film called Simon Birch came out in 1998 with a similar storyline. But Irving wanted nothing to do with the film - and for good reason. The movie is a wholly different creation from the book, keeping nothing but the eponymous character, a similar cast, and the pivotal, incipient scene in the first chapter when John's mother dies. From there, all similarities are left behind; Irving paints a Gravesend and a cast of characters across nearly 600 pages with as much vividness and verisimilitude as the town you grew up in, the church you attended, and the high school you went to.

The characters must wrestle in this intrinsic world with determinism/predestination, faith, loneliness, guilt, forgiveness, historical memory, assimilation, displacement, fear and death. Most of all, the novel is about infidelity with others and with oneself; compromise, hypocrisy and honesty...and storytelling itself. These struggles are set against the independent backdrop of religion, war and the caustic aftertaste of the illusory, postmodern American dream. To put it another way: Irving satisfyingly accomplishes what Yann Martel merely attempts with his more arrogant, overbearing Life of Pi by raising responses to inquiries about the relationship between morality and faithfulness instead of merely raising questions (albiet nonsensically). It's a discussion that is expansive, tedious and ambitious in scope. But most of the time, it works.

There are certainly things to dislike. The narrator's tone is cynical, despondent, and dour, but is intended to be playfully rueful. The narrator's language is verbose enough, at times, to border on the obscure. At first, I thought that was very self-appreciating of Irving. But I began to see a thematic pattern in the vocabulary that was witty, comedic and clever (a few times, the text seems metafictional). Also, it's possible you'll never misuse a semi-colon once you finish this book since it's used so often - but I think it's sometimes used to excess. Irving comes across as rather unctuous, and sometimes even self-righteous. A couple of scenes felt either rushed or contrived, even anti-climactic. But, I decided, to dwell on these things is to simultaneously identify and miss Irving's point.

Publically, there's a love-hate relationship with the novel. Most criticisms seem to either completely missing an interpretive point of Irving's novel or they had certain expectations that were not met upon finishing (although it seems like most people love it). For one reviewer, it's contrived and implausible, and for another reviewer it insults Christianity. But Christianity is hardly (what I think is) the point...while contrived and implausible are exactly what the characters fight so hard for - and against - in this fantastic novel.

I haven't read a book that kept me (willingly) up until dawn since I was eighteen when I read The Kite Runner. And I haven't felt my heart break so much for a character, as well as disappointment at finishing a novel, since I was fourteen when I read Les Miserables for the first time. I started reading slower as the book was ending, just so I could "save myself" the pending heartbreak. When I finally finished, I lay in bed in anguish and hope with myself and God.

If you decide to read it, I recommend that you read it slowly and with a similar supension of belief you'd use to approach a fairytale. Plan to read it over a few weeks, if not a month or two. I also recommend a soundtrack; sometimes I read with music, especially when songs are referenced in the text. I'd recommend Nancy Wilson's acoustic guitar soundtrack from the Cameron Crowe film Elizabethtown and the following: "Too Romantic," "All This and Heaven, Too" and "Fools Rush In" by Frank Sinatra; "Green Onions" by Booker T. and the MG's; "Move Over, Darling" by Doris Day; "Runaway" by Del Shannon; "Palisades Park" by Freddy Cannon; "Easier Said Than Done" by The Essex; "Duke of Earl" by Gene Chandler; "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by The Tokens; "We Can Work It Out" and "Paperback Writer" by The Beatles; "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" by Bob Dylan; "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" by Marylin Monroe; "Mrs. Robinson" by Simon and Garfunkel, and "Four Strong Winds" (preferably) by Neil Young. And, of course, the aforementioned Jimmy Eat World song "Goodbye Sky Harbor" to listen to after you turn the last page.

I believe the novel sets out to ask: "At what moral point does responsibility meet fidelity, and can belief reconcile delusion with doubt?" It asks, "Why do you, or do you not, believe in God? How do you live your life with, or without, God?" It also asks, "How does faith make mortality significant or insignificant?" If these questions interest you, A Prayer For Owen Meany might interest you as well. Perhaps, like myself and others, you'll even find an irrevocable, tender attachment to the characters halfway through. And you may also find your heart torn apart with heartbreak for the last pages and with disappointment for having come to the end, wanting to stay and finding that - like the narrator - you'll be forever "doomed to remember" that final scene at Sky Harbor with Owen Meany...and the prayer.

A Bang

2009-01-01T20:26:00.000-08:00

"This is the way the world ends..."

While a thousand people are ringing in the new year in a high-class nightclub in Bangkok, a fire breaks out. Fifty-nine people die and about two hundred others get injured. "Most of the victims died from smoke inhalation or were trampled in a rush to get out of the club," according to CNN. "Thirty bodies have been identified: 29 Thai nationals and one Singaporean..."

In Colombia, five people die at a New Year's Party from a suspicious accidental grenade explosion.

Eighty African migrants attempt to escape into Spain's North African enclave of Melilla. Moroccan police fire warning shots, then kill one man.

Athens continues to reel from aftermath of the chaotic and violent December riots that lit the entire city on fire for two and a half weeks, and the rest of the Western world deals with a so-called fresh wave of anarchism and a new advent of networked protesting.

In the San Francisco Bay area, a lesbian is getting out of her car when she is struck on the head, then taunted by four men (only one of them is older than twenty-one). She is raped as she is verbally abused about her sexual orientation, say detectives, until one hears someone approaching. Then, according to the AP, "They forced the victim back into her car and took her to a burned-out apartment building. She was raped again inside and outside the vehicle and left naked outside the building while the alleged assailants took her wallet and drove off in her car, police said." This afternoon, the men are arrested and authorities classify the case as a hate crime.

A 72-year-old man in Aspen, Colorado named James Chester Blanning uses cell phone parts and gasoline to make four bombs, two of which he sends to banks along with notes warnings of mass murder and blood, demands for $60,000, and criticisms about President Bush. Police believe that he then abandons his plan halfway through and leaves the other two bombs on a sled in an alleyway. New Years celebrations in downtown Aspen are halted as mass evacuations of sixteen blocks ensue. Later this afternoon, Blanning's body was found in his Jeep, along with a rifle and a will entitling the police to three of his properties.

Meanwhile, in the latest update on the Christmas weekend Gaza attacks, a Hamas leader is killed along with his family when his house is bombed by an Israeli airstrike. Recap: Hamas is the biggest Palestineine militant organization that operates in Gaza, on the West Bank, and within Israel. Mixing Palestinian nationalism with Islamic fundamentalism, the group was elected in 2006, and their goals include the extermination of Israel because they don't believe that the two nations can peacefully co-exist. The also spend an estimated $70 million to fund schools, orphanages, mosques, healthcare clinics, soup kitchens, and sports leagues, none of which are services the Palestinian Authority provides to the people.

On December 27, the terrorist opposition group of Hamas fired rockets into Israel, resulting in an Israeli airstrike that some say violate Geneva Conventions by way of collective punishment; the airstrikes have been aimed at civilian-heavy areas, they have destroyed Gaza police and security offices as wells as killing and injuring civilians (one strike hit students going home from university), and humanitarian aid has been cut off by Israeli blockades, sealing off crucial food, fuel and medicine supplies.

Israel has violently and grotestquely overstepped its bounds by attacking millions of people to punish a smaller group. Some Israeli groups protest the strikes against Gaza while Bush and Obama remain nearly completely silent (Obama stating, according to a spokesperson, that there is only one president at a time).

Back in the States, U of U scientists continue to study something else that happened on the 27th: a swarm of the most intense earthquakes in many years hit Yellowstone Lake in Yellowstone National Park. While scientists aren't issuing a volcano advisory any time soon, the swarms either indicate a short-lived phase of seismic activity that might continue for a few weeks, or a larger earthquake may be on its way.

"...This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
-- T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"

"And everything can change on a New Year's day..."
--Rage Against the Machine, "War Within A Breath"

Futures 2009: "Polaris"

2008-12-31T15:19:00.000-08:00

This year, I volunteered for at least one community service and I'm doing a lot of work with helping others. I wrote at least one screenplay, maybe a couple. I was able to visit Puerto Rico and Haiti - or, at least, I seized the opportunity if it arose.

I was able to do a full detox at least once. I learned either judo or some martial art form of self-defense. I can (kinda) play my twelve-string guitar. Ideally, I'd like to be on my way with the piano, bass, and maybe the pennywhistle. I have a basic understanding of music theory. I also roughly know ASL, and I've got a much better grip on Japanese and Spanish. I'm better with the French alphabet, and I'd like to be progressing a bit with Arabic if I end up deciding to go with the Peace & Justice Studies group to the Middle East next year.

I'm more than halfway done with my English major and I am close to finishing. I might have about a year more to go. I have at least a thousand dollars in savings and I'm saving up for both a motorcycle and, eventually, Japan.

If love came, I wasn't fooled again. I didn't go searching for it; it only came to me, and in whatever form I took. What was most important was the love I could find in revisiting old friendships...and with any hope, one in particular has ideally and finally arrived at the place I've always wanted it to be. With any further hope (and likely a lot of luck had something to do with it, too) there was at last a place I reached with my father, and most importantly with my mother.

I have come to be comfortable with where I stand about God. My choice to either stay or leave the LDS church was not coercion or performance. I made my choice based on what I want most and what I need most. I didn't come to some kind of all-encompassing, self-righteous enlightenment. I only reached a point where the questions were no longer so pressing, or so urgent. I'm satisfied with what I found, even if I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

"Across the Universe"

2008-12-30T23:17:00.000-08:00

Words are flying out like
Endless rain into a paper cup
They slither while they pass
They slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy
Are drifting thorough my open mind
Possessing and caressing me -

Jai guru deva OM*...
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.

Images of broken light which
Dance before me like a million eyes
That call me on and on across the universe
Thoughts meander like a
Restless wind inside a letter box
They tumble blindly as
They make their way across the universe -

Jai guru deva OM...
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.

Sounds of laughter, shades of life
Are ringing through my open ears
Exciting and inviting me,
Limitless undying love which
Shines around me like a million suns
It calls me on and on across the universe -

Jai guru deva OM...
Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world.

--The Beatles (Lennon)

*Sanskrit; can have many meanings but roughly translates to "Victory to God divine","hail to the divine guru", or the phrase commonly invoked by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, "All Glory to Guru Deva." "OM" is a mystical syllable which is (theoretically) the cosmic sound of the universe and used by monks during meditation.

Looking Back On 2008: All You Need Is Love

2008-12-30T22:36:00.000-08:00

"Dici che il fiume
Trova la via al mare
E come il fiume
Giungerai a me
Oltre i confini
E le terre assetate
Dici che come il fiume
Come il fiume...
L'amore giungerà
L'amore...
E non so più pregare
E nell'amore non so più sperare
E quell'amore non so più aspettare."*

--"Miss Sarajevo," U2 feat. Luciano Pavarotti

The year began with that broken-hearted melody. It was cold, and I was standing in the middle of the street in front of my house. I didn't know it then, but it was another U2 prophecy for me (the one from 2007 being "Please").

From there, things got a little crazy. Like Shakespeare’s Romeo, I shut myself in and created for myself an artificial night. I approached the first gay crush I’ve ever had, and when I got rejected, I took it a bit too hard. I fell into isolation with nothing but Abbey Road to keep me company.

In a wild act of desperation, I made the choice at last. I was running out of options; either I could continue this beautiful lie I was living, cheating death every day, or I could find out for myself. And in the moment I opened myself up, Erik dropped right of the sky. So I chose him.

The love I found was more than just paradise found, but I didn't know it at the time. It wasn't until after the break-up that I began wondering just what kind of paradise I had found with Erik. And it wasn't until the guy in the military boots came around that I realized that I had never found paradise with him at all. I had been living under the illusion that we both had true love. I had loved Erik more than anything in the world, and there was little proof I had that he did, too. With the same true, authentic love I gave him, anyway. The fact that I needed proof seemed alone to evidence this. We may have been in love, but my love was different from his. And that is why it took much, much longer to die than his.

The pain that followed was some real schooling. And it was at the end, and only then, that I understood what I really found out last summer when I defeated death. What I saw in the water. I realized that there are many kinds of love. And I realized that I had although I had never found a paradise with Erik. I had created one. An artificial day.

And somewhere along the line, I had to settle for that. I had to accept that true paradise is either impossible, or at least very difficult to find. You've got to settle for the hope that you get blessed with. We live in such a dark, dismal and gritty world. It's filled with shit and lies...and it's so long. When a little miracle comes your way, something that can only make you stronger - something that lets you fool yourself into thinking the world is not so bad after all - you've gotta take it. Before it slips away. It's a first-come, first-serve kinda world we are in. When hope comes, you can't ask whether it comes from heaven or hell. You take it, make it your heaven and you run like hell.

I had never known I could love. I had never known that I could ever be loved, either. It's not that finding Erik was finding that love. I only woke it up. But hey, said John Lennon, you've got to hide your love away. And no kinds of love are better than others, said Lou Reed. Between thought and expression, there lies a lifetime.

More than ever before, I realize just how much choice I have. I also know how much I have to leave up to luck. Or God. And as for God, I hope He's not as hard to find as I've made Him out to be for the past ten years. I am embarking on a new adventure this year. I am going to find Him. And if He's not out there and it turns out I wasted my life on the adventure, at least it was good fun half the time. Erik didn't make that worth it. I did. Because now I know, again: I didn't come here to make that choice. I already made it. I'm just here to understand why. I do not have all the answers. I don't want all of them, either.

My future note from last year says some interesting things about going on a mission and not going on a mission. Since one of those came true - and to the letter - I quote it here:

"I'm happy with my choice, and I'm happy with my companion, whom I'm with every day. I make responsible choices about where I go from now on. Those who judge me for my past and my choices are people who I've reluctantly but peacefully cut out of my life. I can honestly say I've never felt so happy...A lot of my important memories are in 2007, but a lot of my best memories are in 2008."

I cannot be the answer. I am only the question.

*[Translation:]
"You say that the river
Finds the way to the sea
And like the river
You will come to me
Beyond the borders
And the dry lands
You say that like a river,
Like a river,
The love will come
The love...
And I don't know how to pray anymore
And in love, I don't know how to hope anymore
And for that love, I don't know how to wait anymore."

Hollis Brown Comes Back to America

2008-12-28T19:58:00.000-08:00

"There's seven people dead
On a South Dakota farm..."

--Bob Dylan, "The Ballad of Hollis Brown"

When my aunt and grandmother came to visit from Puerto Rico a couple of months ago, they both lamented on how much Americans ignore the Puerto Ricans. They said that every week in their city and the capital, there were desperate and violent suicides because of how much the U.S. economy had hurt jobs all over the island.

Nick Turse recently wrote an article published in In These Times called "The Body Count on Main Street: The Human Fallout of the Financial Crisis," which covers several similar instances of suicide in the U.S.

"On October 4, 2008, in the Porter Ranch section of Los Angeles, Karthik Rajaram, beset by financial troubles, shot his wife, mother-in-law, and three sons before turning the gun on himself. In one of his two suicide notes, Rajaram wrote that he was "broke," having incurred massive financial losses in the economic meltdown. "I understand he was unemployed, his dealings in the stock market had taken a disastrous turn for the worse," said Los Angeles Deputy Police Chief Michel R. Moore.

The fallout from the current subprime mortgage debacle and the economic one that followed has thrown lives into turmoil across the country. In recent days, the Associated Press, ABC News, and others have begun to address the burgeoning body count, especially suicides attributed to the financial crisis."

The entire article is definitely worth reading (a longer version is linked at the bottom of the page for those interested). Notably, Barbra Ehrenreich wrote a fantastic, revealing article for The Nation about the same issue this last summer called "The Suicide Solution" (it's somewhat briefer than Turse's, but both are worth looking into).

It certainly resonates with Dylan's Depression Era tale of Mr. Hollis Brown, who had to make a choice about mortality of his loved ones in times of financial destitution.

"It's Much Too Early For Games"

2008-12-28T13:28:00.000-08:00

Slowly, the room strains to be brighter
As the shadows begin to blacken.
I lie quiet here staring down the blue arch
That the embryonic winter dawn washes on my
Window curtain
It is a makeshift curtain, made from a blanket
With a gigantic sun on it
There is a smiling face on the sun
But I cannot see it right now in the dark
Because there is a globe of the world
Resting in front of it, and the earth’s shadow
Hides his smiling face.
And I can sense her coming to me,
Her breasts are heavy with the sweetest sadness
And her eyes are longing and embrace
Her presence is nuanced by the coldness of her breath
She comes closer, slowly winning me over
But never quite catching me
With palms wet of tears she teases me,
And fingers that own chipped violet polish and a bleeding catchy,
With arms calloused with some goosebumps
Bare feet that are dirty from the backyard
Sweat that is first cold and wet, then only hot
Breath that is weighed deep down with anger
And the scent of sea-salt hangs as a most delicate veil over her eyes.
She comes to me with these precious traps,
Disarming me softly with that tart and bitter song
But I cannot open my mouth
For I have none of these things to give to her
And none of these things to have for myself.

--Sunday, December 28, 2008 at 7:43 am

Rabbits In Your Headlights

2008-12-23T19:04:00.000-08:00

"I used to graze in a field,
I used to breathe - I used to be alive
Did chew the grass in the field
Could see and hear the world around me...
Had a virgin skin but now sold in supermarkets...
Used to hear the cars and the birds going by
And the people going by, they were my destiny
They were my reason, my purpose in this field
For their plates, their cold bodies, their car seat covers
My soul for your soles of shoes.
You may like my taste, you may like my warmth
And it may say in the Bible that you can kill me,
But I don’t want to die."
--"Sick Butchers," a song by 80's punk band Flux of Pink Indians

Yesterday, The Guardian reported on a jury at Winchester crown court took thirty-three hours to convict four members of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), an extremist group faction of the Animal Liberation Front, an organization of animal rights activists.

Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) have been accused of violating animal rights since the turn of the century (like the 1997 television documentary It's A Dog's Life), and are only one of many animal rights violations being uncovered all over the globe getting wide coverage through YouTube and news media. In 1993, there was news footage from Sungnam, the largest dog market in South Korea - which is illegal due to the sanitation problems (most of the time, the torture and slaughter is right in public) and a violation of trade and animal rights. The cruel treatment of dogs has not shown signs of letting up, especially since earlier this year an English teacher in Daegu City, South Korea, recorded illegal dog torture for a restaurant occuring near his house and put it on YouTube. In 2001, a BUAV undercover investigation recorded footage of disturbing experimentation on marmoset monkeys at Cambridge University. And, of course, many places in Europe have fallen under scrutiny for the unethical slaughter and massacre of dolphins and whales.

So in 2005, a TV crew was allowed inside the already criticized HLS labs and recorded harsh treatment of beagle dogs, monkeys, rates, cats, and other animals. One clip of a doctor beating a beagle dog was in particular what sent made many in the U.K. public outcry HLS, with many responses from the Animal Liberation Front. However, it was SHAC that began to take demands to a more serious level: as the trial of seven SHAC members has commenced for the past three months, according to The Guardian, "the jury heard how employees of firms linked in any way to HLS would be targeted at work and at home. Groups of extremists wearing masks would turn up at night with sirens, fireworks and klaxons. They would daub slogans with paint on the individual's home and car. In some cases families received hoax bombs, and many employees were smeared by false campaigns alleging they were pedophiles. The intimidation included sending used sanitary towels in the post, saying they were contaminated with HIV."

Three of the seven SHAC members pleaded guilty and seven have been convicted. The extremist action doesn't show signs of stopping; yesterday, the SHAC website updated with a list of companies to target, "including those who trade on the New York Stock Exchange Euronext," says The Guardian, "which now lists HLS shares."

"Customers are the main thing keeping HLS in business," the posting reads. "It's simple No Customers = No HLS.

An HLS spokesman said: "Freedom of expression and lawful protest are important rights, but so is the right to conduct vital biomedical research or to support organisations that perform such research without being harassed and threatened."

One has to wonder, though, if the harassment and threat that HLS researchers feel is so different from the harassment they inflict on their animal test subjects, as seen in undercover investigative footage taken in the HLS labs over the years.

Animal rights violations are not limited to big corporations like HLS or McDonald's. A simple YouTube peruse will yield hundreds of videos where someone has either recorded themselves or someone else torturing and abusing animals. It's also a common enough thing happening every day - and one of the biggest examples is "Rabbit Night" for some Boy Scout troops in parts of the country, an activity that might yield fun rabbit skins, lucky rabbit feet keychains, and a tasty dinner...but at what cost?

Ultimately, public and societal perceptions of animal rights may be influenced greatly by efforts to expose animal cruelty. A special emphasis might also be placed NOT on anthromorphizing animals or on extremist (even terrorist) measures - but on showing the uniqueness of animals in this world being not that different from our own as human beings.

Here is a video (among the millions) that is a good exposure to the kind of effort that goes into making your Costco chicken breast and your Thanksgiving turkey:

And lastly, here is an amazing, and hopefully optimistic video of an elephant who can paint. It is a testament to the nature of animals...but what that exactly that could mean is left to you.

Top Ten Ethics Scandals of 2008

2008-12-23T01:58:00.000-08:00

From Mother Jones and Citizens For Ethics:

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has released its year-end list of the "top" 10 ethics scandals of 2008. Why isn't the recent criminal complaint against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on the list? Well, for one, it's not a Washington-centered problem. But Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director, adds that while the Blagojevich case may be the flavor of the week right now, she thinks the scandals on her administration's list will have more of an impact in the long run. Here they are:

1. "Unchecked Congressional Ethics" - Congress needs to have "a high-powered ethics office with subpoena power."

2. "No Guarantee that Bush Administration Records will be Properly Archived" - The ongoing missing White House emails problem.

3. "Speech or Debate Clause" - Lots of politicians who are charged with crimes seek to have their indictments dismissed under the "Speech and Debate" clause of the Constitution, which they claim protects anything in their congressional office from being used against them in court on the grounds that its "legislative material."

4. "The Pay-to-Play Congress"- When campaign donors get earmarks from the politicians who they support.

5. "Enriching Family with Campaign Cash" - CREW has released two reports on this problem, "Family Affair - House" and "Family Affair - Senate." We noted the most recent offender, Charlie Rangel.

6. "Controversial Presidential Pardons" - The president's pardon power is essentially unlimited, and that has CREW worried about what President Bush will do with it before he leaves office. Elizabeth Gettelman wrote about the hypocrisy of commuting Scooter Libby's sentence but ignoring Marion Jones. And Bruce Falconer asked if pardoning "all those involved in the application of what [the Bush] administration called 'enhanced interrogation techniques'" would be wise.

7. "VA Officials Intentionally Misdiagnosing PTSD" - CREW broke a story earlier this year about VA officials being pressed to misdiagnose Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a cost-cutting measure. In September, Bruce Falconer wrote a story for the print magazine about whether the Bush administration had "maxed out the military."

8. "Bailout Oversight" - The government spent $700 billion and all you got was a few bank failures. We've covered the hearings and brought you the latest. Most recently, we looked at the Fannie/Freddie bailout and asked about Treasury's blank check.

9. "Political Calculations Dictate Border Fence Placement" - Ray L. Hunt has land that falls on both sides of the border fence, but CREW says he's getting special treatment because he's a Bush "pioneer." That kind of suction wouldn't be unusual for Hunt: in July, Laura Rozen wrote about how Hunt seems to have almost unlimited access to the White House (and, in this case, to Kurdish oil.)

10. "A Politicized Bush Justice Department" - To prevent the abuse of the courts for political ends, the DOJ was traditionally the least-politicized of all the executive branch departments. That all changed when Bush took office. In 2007, Daniel Schulman was among the first to document how the conservative Federalist society may have influenced personnel decisions at the DOJ. Stephanie Mencimer covered another interesting aspect of this story in May when she examined the Justice Department's reluctance to release documents from the 2002 GOP phone-jamming in New Hampshire. And Stephanie was also there for the most unsurprising moment of the DOJ politicization saga: Karl Rove's failure to show up for a hearing on the subject in July.

One More Cup of Coffee

2008-12-20T14:51:00.000-08:00

I finally made it through finals!

...It felt like going to the bathroom in an outhouse during winter.

My first paper was relatively easy to squeeze out in a few hours, even though it was my theory class and I'd only come up with my topic a week earlier. It was about the Dagara tribe near Ghana, Africa, and how they don't have words for "gay" or "lesbian" in their culture because "gays" and "lesbians" are the tribal "gatekeepers," or spiritual leaders who aren't defined by their sexual identity but by their destined role, which is to be the link between this world and the spirit world. I then drew from Butler and Foucault to talk about how "gay" and "lesbian" roles in the West are societal by-products of language and merely performative words for identities that are dynamic by nature, but words attempt to render them static (here I drew from Nietzsche). Then I talked about how the Dagara need the gatekeepers or the village doesn't survive for another year, and how our society may be doomed to self-destruction as a result of the way “gay” and “lesbian” cultural constructions restrict the LGBT community in our society.

It wasn't too bad, for being eight pages. But my next four were much harder, and that's confusing because I'd had those topics lined up practically all semester.

For my film class, I used my abstract for the upcoming UCUR, NCUR, and PCA conferences (I just found out I got accepted to the Utah conference, though!), which deals with the 2003 Bob Dylan film Masked and Anonymous. I talked about Dylan's performance of the song "Dixie" in the film and interpreted it as blackface, talking how it's a recurring motif throughout the film to show the contrasting relationships between “dreamers” and those who homogenize ideologies into societal conventions, rules and standards. I also talked about how how minstrelsy inauthentic representation that is used to affirm authentic identity.

For my comic book class, I wrote about "The Last Temptation of Superman," which talked about Superman and Christ in messianic roles with relations to Greek agape love and its thematic link to world and personal salvation by looking at Jungian femininity and masculinity in Kazantzakis' crucifixion scene and Supes' Black Mercy hallucination.

For my Ethics of War and Peace class, I looked at the morality of Zapatismo and the Mexican Revolution, showing how the Zapatista movement differs from anarchism and resists neo-liberalism more successfully than most "postmodern" revolutions because the EZLN make strategic use of technological communications to gain international solidarity. I also talked about how liberation in Zapatismo ideology is linked with free agency and societal responsibility, which can get side-swept as factors on an intrastate scale.

For my multi-ethnic literature class, I looked at the novels The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron and The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty. I love both of those books - the Beatty novel is like the story of my life! - and I did something similar to my film class and "The Last Temptation of Superman." I looked at both of them as neo-slave narratives that deconstruct the "Uncle Tom" archetype of the "Black Messiah" and showed how messianism is deconstructed in both novels as a process of minstrelization, where a repetitious recycling of illusory history is used to objectify, control, and marginalize others (in this case, African Americans). I also talked about self-suicide as self-sacrificial redemption in both.

For two weeks, I had to squeeze out roughly forty to fifty pages about all this stuff. Maybe more...I had a couple of response papers tacked on as extras. Plus I had to study for my film class and watched Stagecoach and Rebel Without A Cause. I wasn't too fond of the first, but I LOVED James Dean and I LOVE that movie. I talked about how masculinity is threatened and exposed as latent femininity by looking at the homosocial elements between Dean and the kid Plato. I love that movie; I need to own it.

But what ended up happening is that for the two weeks of finals I went either seven or eight days staying up all night, and at least a couple where I was up until three. Coffee is the only thing that got me through; the morning I turned in my Zapatista paper, my fingers and butt were completely numb and I was running on two cups of coffee and buttered cinnamon toast. It was practically a cup or two a night, plus the intermediary, occasional green tea blended with pomegranate, soy milk, and brown sugar. Oh - and my back bike tire popping definitely didn't help matters at ALL.

By the time I finished up with my paper about Styron and Beatty, I was so out of gas that I really just wrote it all in one go (surviving on nothing but a little bag of sea-salt potato chips), attached it to an email to my professor, mumbled, "Go with God!" and hit the send button. Then I shut off my computer and nearly fell asleep on the table in the library while I was finally letting the cables sleep.

That night, I blew off all the steam and got drunk with my friends/co-workers. In the morning I had a baby hangover. I totally didn't care - after finals, I NEEDED Johnnie Walker. I got to try some red wine for the first time, too. Sylvia's gin is what got me, though (it usually does). Incidentally, I had no idea that egg nog is really for mixing with whiskey. Cassie's bourbon and my Red Label tasted SO good with warm egg nog. We had a lot of fun; Whitney M. played a few of her band's songs. Sylvia and I also tinkered with the guitar (I did what people called a "soulful" acoustic rendition of Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower"). Then we had a miniature snowball fight on the porch outside. Ira and Alfonso made these amazing steak fajitas, too. Later we all hung out on the front porch, and Whitney and I took turns taking drags on a cigarette while we were all freezing and talking about crazy stuff. Gosh...I haven't had that much fun in a long time.

Obama Betrays Gays and Lesbians?

2008-12-17T19:14:00.000-08:00

By now, Obama has recieved both praise and criticism, as well as every mixed reaction in between, for his selections and agenda. As some quip, his choices and behavior indicates only change from a Bush era to a more Clintonian era, which is only a step in another direction and not necessarily forward.

David Corn, a journalist blogger for Mother Jones, suggests that Obama's agenda, while baffeling to most progressives, might be "a sort of stealth liberalism draped in bipartisan centrism." He advises that "for the moment, the watchword for progressives ought to be a version of an old Reagan trope: hope, but verify…"

But Corn, along with half a dozen left-wingers and progressives, threw hands in the air in frustration when Obama announced that he has selected Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor of Saddleback Church, California, to give the invocation at his presidential inauguration ceremony next month.

While it's presumable that Obama may simply be sending Warren off to his conservative critics with an olive branch, he may have lost some important allies in the process: the gay and lesbian activists and Democrats that helped him establish base during his grassroots campaign to help him get elected.

"Here’s a question," says Corn. "Would Obama consider inviting Jeffress to give an invocation at an official event? I don't believe he would, for that could rightly be considered an insult to Mormons, Muslims, and Hindus. Which brings us back to the original matter: since Warren goes beyond arguing against gay marriage to denigrate gays and lesbians as the moral equivalents of those who engage in incest and pedophilia, it is a slap in the face of gays and lesbians for Obama to award Warren this prime plum."

Joe Solmonese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, wrote Obama a letter saying, “Let me get right to the point. Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans. And by inviting Rick Warren to your inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a place at your table."

According to The New York Times, "Linda Douglass, a spokeswoman for Mr. Obama’s presidential inaugural committee...noted that the benediction, or closing prayers, would be offered by the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, a civil rights icon who has expressed support for gay marriage, and that the Lesbian and Gay Band Association would march in the inaugural parade, the first time such a group would do so."

Nonetheless, some in the LGBT internet community, such as LeBain, stated with cynicism, "Gay and lesbian Democrats have been double crossed again, just like the were double crossed by Clinton twice. When will they learn?"

Only time will tell how far Obama is willing to go, and how much Americans are willing to trust him. But as Corn states, "If strong progressive voices are not included in Obama's wild and woolly free-for-alls at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., they will have little choice but to find outlets on the outside (remember the Internet?) -- and become their own agents of change." Those who depended on Obama for real change may find themselves back to square one. And no amount of compromising from Christian conservatives who profess liberal, progressives views will be able to stand under scrutiny when actions are brought to light. Warren has made biting remarks about the LGBT community (even going so far as to compare homosexuality to pedophilia) while hiding behind a front of "close friends" who are openly gay.

But that doesn't fool gay and lesbian activists. As Corn observes of Warren and his ilk, "They want to keep attention focused on the altar, not acceptance."

"Gay Marriages Will Save the Economy!"

2008-12-07T15:15:00.000-08:00

Friends at FunnyOrDie.com have come together for "Prop. 8 - The Musical." I'm against gay marriage but I hope God has a sense of humor, or I'm going to hell for laughing at this.

A Year Ago

2008-12-05T22:47:00.000-08:00

Today, I woke up to find that I slept in, and I was nearly half an hour late to work. My boss gave me my final warning - "If you're late again," she said firmly, "you'll no longer be able to work here."

I got my current grade for my Japanese class. There are thirty-six assignments, and my professor only has fourteen recorded. I'm failing.

I missed my multi-ethnic literature class on a day I needed to attend in order to get some information from my professor about my final paper...because I was busy squeezing out a six-page paper for my post-structuralism class.

I got frustrated at work later and snapped at one of my best friends and co-workers.

I took my Ethics of War & Peace test. The four questions I studied the hardest for, I got wrong.

On the way home, I was riding my bike in the dark and got clotheslined by a blackened chain that didn't appear in the road until I was a foot away. As I stumbled about searching for my glasses (they'd gone flying forward), I heard some onlookers laughing at me. I found my glasses - by stepping on them.

I got home to find that my Wendy's Frosty had spilled all over the rest of my dinner in the bag.

Tonight when I climbed into bed, I slowly closed my eyes, and everything about today came crashing down with more pain than any of the petty things I'd endured all day:

...On December 5, 2007, a year ago today, I met Erik for the first time.

O Glittering Consumerism, O Baffling Ignorance

2008-12-02T22:27:00.000-08:00

A: On Black Friday, a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death by shoppers:

Patrick Purcell (Director of Special Projects for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1500) said this on Democracy Now!:

"It is not the local police’s job to control the situation. Wal-Mart knows our economy is on the decline, you’re handing out plasma TV’s reduced well below retail. Again, to us, you’re feeding the frenzy of the economic problems we’re having. They had to know there was a situation that could develop like this. And it bothers us even more that their response was, we’re sorry. Nothing more than we’re sorry. Not that we’re going to review procedures from the top down in every one of our stores throughout the country. Not that they’re going to set up a fund to take care of the worker. Their response was, we did the best we could, we’re sorry. And that’s a horrible response."

B: Yesterday, Variety reported that Shia LaBeouf (and an executive producer who's with him right now in the Middle East filming Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) just got the green light from Paramount to star in an adaptation for The Associate, John Grisham's new legal thriller novel.

How new is Grisham’s novel? It won’t be published until January. Grisham’s rep took The Associate to four studio producers, hoping to nab a deal.

His book must be that bad. Grisham’s success has been leaning on the Hollywood Grisham-spaghetti machine for years. Never before has he depended on them preemptively.

C: Old news, but I just found out about this. In March, Oklahoma Senator Sally Kern called American gays and lesbians a more pressing threat than terrorists:

Those who obtained and posted the recording made sure that it was a public meeting and that the recording did not unfairly misconstrue her comments at the event. Although Senator Kern later claimed that the recording took her comments out of context, she has never apologized nor backed down from her claims; in fact, she reiterated her position, specifically the priority of the so-called gay threat, two weeks later in March and much later in October. Kern's statements caused a response from the Muslim community and the gay community...particularly from Ellen Degeneres:

Good ol' Dory - Ellen always makes me laugh. I love the audience, too.

Alfredo & An Abundance of Noodles

2008-11-30T19:20:00.001-08:00

I've had some shell pasta sitting in my cupboard for a while now, and it's been taking up space. So tonight, it was time to experiment again.

As I finished boiling the pasta, Jill showed me how to make alfredo sauce from scratch. I was surprised that it was much easier than it sounds; however, since obviously one needs milk and none of us in the apartment use milk, we opted for my rice milk. That would've been fine ("I've used my soy milk before and it was fine," Jill assured me)...except that after pouring a bunch into the pot, along with the butter and flour, Jill looked up at the container and frowned. "Um...is that vanilla rice milk?"

I looked at the carton. "Yeah, apparently it is. Is that bad?" Sylvia grimaced behind me and Jill smiled. "It'll probably taste kinda interesting...let's throw some salt in." Sylvia also offered a couple slices of her pepperjack cheese.

After cooking that, I decided to use my yam as well; Sylvia picked it up as she was cooking and said, "Matthew, you may want to use this. It might go bad soon." I've had the yam for a month; its time had come, so I threw some garlic, salt and butter on it, then threw it in the oven. (Two hours later, Jill came into my room. "Did you want to bake your yam?" I nodded. "Well, I'm about to bake my pies, and the oven isn't on.")

Then I made some lentil curry and rice to eat with the yam tomorrow for lunch and dinner at work while Sylvia was making her chicken and bowtie noodle soup. She decided to use the rest of her noodles, so she poured the whole bag into the pot. She stepped back, clutching the empty bag and staring at the pot. "That might've been...too much," she mumbled as I laughed. She split the huge concoction into two pots, and when the smaller one finished cooking, she and I split it between ourselves. Tomorrow I'll have the yam and the chicken noodle soup for lunch and dinner.

As for Tuesday, I'll be eating the lentil and rice soup, plus the leftovers of tonight's dinner: the shell pasta with alfredo. The sauce came out tasting pretty...interesting. I didn't think it was horrible, and neither did Jill as she popped a shell in her mouth. But when Sylvia tasted it, her eyes widened and she needed a glass of water. "I'd throw a bunch of salt on that," she advised.

I put some seasoned salt on it, which helped a bit. Chandler was just sitting on the couch shaking his head. "It's not horrible tasting!" I defeneded. Finally I admitted it was too much sweetened flavor in one sitting and stowed some of it in a bag. Hopefully that'll be good for Tuesday.

After cleaning the kitchen, Jill decided to make pie. "Yippie, I have a pie pan!" She drummed on the pan using her hand with her wedding ring. As I laughed, she said, "That's one of the advantages of having a wedding ring."

I laughed again. "You mean you get to bang things that are hard?" Jill nodded, then paused. "Wow, that sounded really sexual."

I smiled. "It was intentional."

"I'm Not There, I'm Gone."

2008-11-26T16:05:00.001-08:00

I decided to see him today.

I believed that the odds were best to go to Graywhale first. Since I assumed he was still the manager at the store in Draper, it didn't seem plausible I'd have a good reason for being all the heck in Draper without good reason. So I'd pretend I was going to Graywhale, in pursuit of some vinyl record or something. Passing by his store, he'd see me, and then I'd go into Graywhale and text him, asking if it was okay to go say hello. It seemed like a desperate plan (to do what?) but ultimately feasible.

It was a bittersweet relief when I came to his store only to find it abandoned and empty. Void of form. It seemed as if it had gone out of business.

I thought about laughing it off and just moving on, go back to Orem and just spend the rest of the evening with my family. Ideally, that might be what I "should've" done. But I rarely do what I should do. I decided to go to the store in American Fork, and if I didn't find him there, then I'd call it a day and try some other time.

I tried talking myself out of it, of course. I was split in two and my two sides were arguing with one another. It has been seeming, more and more lately, that I am one of two people, and rarely at once. When I am those two people at once, all they do is bicker and fight like a seasoned couple about to divorce.

"You are not ready to see him again! And you know it!" You can't tell me what to do! "You want proof? Then here's one question: Would you feel okay if you didn't see him today?" Yes. "Be honest." ...Yes, I would. "You have to know you'd be okay if you didn't see him today." All right, I am! "You have to know you'd be okay if you didn't see him for another month or so." Well...yeah, sure. "You have to know you'd be okay if it took years. ...You have to know you'd be okay if you never, ever saw him again." ...I........ "...You're not ready."

Before long, I found myself in AF. I was nervous when I walked up to the store; I was even more nervous when I realized he wasn't there, but someone else was. Some almost freakishly tall guy walked up to me. "How can I help you?" By now, the other side was not just angry for me not giving up and going home, but was thrashing inside me in protest, begging me not to ask -

"I'm looking for Erik. Do you know where he is?"

He didn't know. Erik had left the company. What for? From guy's evasive tone, I surmised that Erik had been fired.

So I left the store. And I did one more irrational thing. I texted him, saying I'd been by the store and been told he'd left. He answered, and we had a short conversation that I'm still wondering if it was out of "friendship" or necessity.

I don't know what I want from him. At first I thought it was closure. Then, perhaps, it was to see him again...to know he actually exists. And then I wondered if I thought seeing him again would bestow some sort of enlightenment. Forgiveness. Atonement. And since I'm aware of the danger in depending on someone or something for all that, I have to ask myself if that's really what I'm looking for.

But I do not know what I am looking for. I don't know who I am anymore.

What Are You Thinking, Barack?

2008-11-19T17:41:00.000-08:00

For the first time, I am worried about Obama.

First, the Associated Press reported that Obama has made it clear that he intends to close Guantanamo, and as soon as possible. He told Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes, "I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture, and I’m going to make sure that we don’t torture."

That makes me want to pump my fist in the air. What makes me uneasy, though, is that some of the detainees may be subject to a "special court" that is a cross between a military court martial and a civilian court. "It would have to be some sort of hybrid that involves military commissions that actually administer justice rather than just serve as kangaroo courts," said Laurence Tribe ("a Harvard law professor and Obama legal adviser", according to the AP).

Hopefully, Tribe's right and people will be willing to give an Obama administration the chance to not botch this up.

What makes me more nervous, though, is Obama's recent selections for advising and heading Washington's intelligence folk: John Brennan and Jami Miscik.

Democracy Now! recently interviewed Melvin Goodman, who is a former CIA and State Department analyst. Goodman said, "John Brennan was deputy executive secretary to George Tenet during the worst violations during the CIA period in the run-up to the Iraq war." Brennan helped call the shots on black sites and secret prisions as well as torture practicies. He's publically defended the warrantless eavesdropping and, most unsettling for me, extraordinary rendition.

In a December 5, 2005 appearance on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Brennan said the following:

"I think [extraordinary rendition is] an absolutely vital tool. I have been intimately familiar now over the past decade with the cases of rendition that the U.S. Government has been involved in. And I can say without a doubt that it has been very successful as far as producing intelligence that has saved lives....the CIA has acknowledged that it has detained about 100 terrorists since 9/11, and about a third of them have been subjected to what the CIA refers to as enhanced interrogation tactics, and only a small proportion of those have in fact been subjected to the most serious types of enhanced procedures."

Granted, Brennan's been a bit more lax; in a 2006 PBS interview, he said, "Sometimes there are actions that we are forced to take, but there need to be boundaries beyond which we are going to recognize that we're not going to go because we still are Americans, and we are supposed to be representing something to people in this country and overseas. So the dark side has its limits."

Still, it seems to me like extraordinary rendition can only be completely justifiable in a utilitarian sense; I want to believe that there's other ways of stopping lethal violence and threat besides using "the dark side."

On the other hand, Jami Miscik was the Deputy Director of Intelligence during the run-up to the war and in the immediate postwar period. According to Goodman, "She passed judgment on the October 2002 estimate. She passed on the white paper, which was the phony paper that violated the CIA charter...and sent to the Congress only days before the vote on the authorization to use force in Iraq in October 2002. She was part of the slam-dunk team that George Tenet was so proud of that prepared...the speech that Colin Powell gave, that outrageous speech with twenty-eight allegations, all of them false, prepared in February of 2003, which was the case to the international community. She was part of the team that allowed George Bush to go before this country in January of 2003 in a State of the Union address and use a fabricated intelligence report to say that Iraq was getting enriched uranium from a West African country. Jami Miscik was a part of all of this."

Sylvia told me she thinks Obama selected Brennan and Miscik on purpose, to prove that even though he doesn't have a lot of forgien policy experience he can still be tough on issues. Then she paused and said, "I wanna hope that he knows what he's doing."

I hope so, too. Because I still can't shake the coincidence that I watched The Bourne Ultimatum for the first time last night.

A Cruel Irony

2008-11-16T01:57:00.000-08:00

There was a weird moment during my Japanese class on Friday when in between looking up hiragana in my textbook and the lecture on a clause modifier that something occured somewhere tucked away inside of me. It was stumbled upon like hearing someone's echo from deep inside a cave only to realize that the echo is your own...or like a wrinkled and faded receipt that you find deep in your pocket; a trace or watermark evidencing something unknown and completely unrecognizeable, and yet clearly it must still be yours because, after all, it's in your pants.

It was this odd moment during class that, without warning, I found myself holding back tears. I struggled against it, and yet as class ended and I filtered out with the rest, I was blinking back salty water and taking deep breaths. I went to the breakroom at work and lay down on a couch, staring at the ceiling. I was sad...I felt sadder than I had in a very long time. And the sadness was mixed with some confusion, because I had no idea why I was sad.

It passed, but left a depressive cloud in its stead, and it hovered over me. It hovered while I worked till closing at the Writing Center and walked with my co-worker/friend Whitney to her car. It hovered as I hung out with my friends and watched Quantum of Solace, then ate a chicken hamburger with sun-dried tomatoes at IHOP for dinner. It hovered while I read some Martian Manhunter comics Saturday morning (probably to subconciously replace ancient childhood weekend cartoons rituals). I checked my email and Facebook, then went outside to look in the mailbox. I listened to Dead Kennedys, Bob Dylan, Rage Against the Machine, and The Beatles' Revolver album. I did some Ethics of War & Peace class homework. I cooked spaghetti for dinner, borrowing Sylvia's tomatoe sauce for the upteenth time. I popped in the fifth disc of the second season of Six Feet Under.

It was while watching a character make a reference to the myth of Narcissus that I realized where the tears had come from. The trace, the echo. He was having someone take pictures of him while nude, and he was talking (more to himself) about how paradoxical it seemed that he was unable to take self portraits without being contrived, so in a sense he needed someone else to see him in order for him to see himself.

It was repetitive of a theme barely a day old with me: Friday afternoon, my critical theory class finishsed watching a documentary on Derrida. Derrida made a similar comment on the irony of archiving, recording, and autobiography - or, more specifically, the futility of authentic or "pure" autobiography. The documentary ended with a roof film crew filming the street film crew filming Derrida walking on the sidewalk. It was indicating Derrida's frequent sentiments throughout the documentary: there will always be a distance between an object or person and the observer, and any attempts to capture the complete essence of that object or person is ultimately quite useless. In the end, the determination of the essential is left to the audience, who "communicates" with whatever is being percieved. There will always be a third realm: language, communication.

This Derridian reminder is what made the moment from the Six Feet Under episode stick with me while I brushed my teeth. And when I was through, I looked at the sink, the toothbrushes, and the towel on the wall until I was looking at myself in the mirror.

And I recalled: earlier in the same episode, a different character had mentioned how sometimes people wait entire lifetimes for love, expecting that someone, somewhere out there, will find them and "complete" or "fulfill" them, thereby inhibiting them from completing, fulfilling or even finding themselves.

I recalled also my surprise in the afternoon when Jill and Chandler disappeared into the bathroom together. When a minute later I heard the shower water running, I asked Sylvia if they were showering together. Sylvia nodded. "Really?" I asked. "That's...that's really cool." I think I said "cool" because I couldn't come up with a way of saying I felt really jealous of their intimacy without coming off as a snob. But Sylvia had turned her attention back to her genetics homework. "It saves water," she said.

I recalled when I checked the mailbox, and my disappointment at finding it emtpy. My disappointment that there was still no letter from Ben. No letter telling me what he thought, now that I'd told him the truth about everything I'd been through, everything I'd been keeping from him for the past two years. And I wondered if he had decided not to write back.

As I realized that I'd been looking at myself in the mirror for several minutes, I simultaneously realized two other things. I realized that I would never truely know myself and what I looked like the way everyone else could, no matter how long I looked at myself in the mirror. And I realized that I'd been denying depression to the point of holding back months-old tears to distance myself from how profoundly, poignantly, and painfully lonely I feel. Every minute. Every day.

The Meaning of Life Is, In Fact, A Uterus

2008-11-11T20:32:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, it seems, I'm just too curious for my own good. This morning, I walked into the breakroom at work and a co-worker noted a strange diagram on the whiteboard. It looked like...well, to be blunt, a rough sketch of the female reproductive system. With a bell.

It was my fault, I explained. See, Monday night I was told about how one of my girl friends has her life go kinda nuts when it's her time of month. So, being curious and genuinely wanting to know, I asked three of my female co-workers to explain everything behind a girl getting a period. And I mean everything. I wanted to know every detail. So I got a couple of diagrams, some hilarious stories...and a pretty gruesome perspective on what its like to feel like you have a blowfish with Charlie horses inside of you once a month. I even got to look at some "girl items" - I FINALLY know the difference between a tampon and a pad (and a pad with wings)!

I hope they didn't think it was totally weird to talk about it. One said that it was weird because normally, guys never want to know about that stuff. But I figure it's worth knowing. I think that any guy who is seriously considering marriage - or, better yet, are engaged - ought to sit down and find out just what kind of pads (and what brands) are good, roughly when his fiancee's time is and what to do/how to be helpful.

That way, you don't end up bewildered like me a month ago when my roommate/co-worker/friend Sylvia was in a ball of pain on her bed, and when I started to laugh at her discomfort, she yelled: "You don't even know, okay?! You don't know the truth because you don't have a uterus!"

Anyway, I just finished eating dinner. I made my own stir fry for the first time. Incidentally, as my roommate/co-worker/friend Sylvia said, stir fry really isn't as complicated as it may seem. It's actually as easy as it sounds. You throw a bunch of stuff into a frying pan, and you...well, you stir it until it smells good. Piece of cake. I even threw some tofu in pan.

I also made some Thai brown rice to go with it, and then topped it all with some lentil curry soup - which I used to boil some of the rice and veggies, so it actually flavored/sauced the entire dish. Then I sat down in front of the TV with some orange juice and ate dinner while I watched Scrubs with my roommates Jill and Chandler. For dessert, I had some soy green tea ice cream.

Yeah...sometimes, life ain't so bad.

Mofo Pt. II

2008-11-10T02:38:00.000-08:00

My own mother doesn't recognize me anymore.

I tried to tell her tonight that I've made my choices with the best I knew how. I've told her that my choices must ultimately serve my higher good. I told her that this is not the same thing as "not caring about her" but is, instead, just trying to take responsibility for my own life.

She didn't listen. And she didn't really understand, either. As I was walking out of the room, I tried to explain to her that I'm working hard to destroy an image of her - and a very negative one at that - so that I can see her with new eyes, and she and I can start over. When she asked me what sort of image this is, I told her that it was irrelevant...she would never want to know who she has become to me...but I did tell her that all I asked was that she do the same about her image of me.

She just leaned back and said, "If what you want was to destroy an image of somebody, then you should go look in a mirror!"

Little does she know.

She said that I am not the same person she knew as a boy; I've become a chaotic, enigmatic, giant question mark to her, and she feels that must search for something still to hold on to, something to explain it. (You always fear what you don't understand, I thought.) So, she says, she holds on to those memories of me as a child. And I told her if she clung to that past version of me, she and I could never have a good relationship.

As long as she holds me up to someone I've outgrown, some perception I've destroyed and will never be again, things can never be okay between me and my mother.

I've said it before. Nostalgia is a very dangerous thing.

The First Presidency Flunked History

2008-11-07T17:17:00.000-08:00

The LDS church released a statement yesterday on their website's newsroom about the recent bans on gay marriage. The first part of their statement (thankfully) says that the Church's position should not encourage members to act hostile towards gays and lesbians. But:

"Some, however, have mistakenly asserted that churches should not ever be involved in politics when moral issues are involved. In fact, churches and religious organizations are well within their constitutional rights to speak out and engage in the many moral and ethical problems facing society." The statement then defends the Church's coalitions; it's no secret to anyone who read the reports that the Church was especially significant with its millions poured into opposing Prop. 8.

So, essentially, the Church is suggesting that it has a protected constitutional right to get involved in matters of the state and nation. Someone call me out if I've read that statement wrong. Because if I haven't, then church authorities - or, at least, whomever was the brains behind the news release - have to be either historically ignorant or, frankly, unpatriotic, conniving despots.

The Church shouldn't claim that they have a constitutional ability to use money and position to persuade others on political issues when not only would that appall at least two authors of the Constitution, but it contradicts the historical positions of church leaders and prophets.

For one thing, if D&C 134:9 (or that entire section) was all the support available, that'd be all the evidence I'd need to prove my point. But church leaders have always been pretty clear about the need to stay out of politics - presidential campaigns and otherwise. One of the most clear statements about this comes from President Joseph F. Smith in 1907:

"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints holds to the doctrine of the separation of church and state; the non-interference of church authority in political matters; and the absolute freedom and independence of the individual in the performance of his political duties. If at any time there has been conduct at variance with this doctrine, it has been in violation of the well-settled principles and policy of the Church.

"We declare that from principle and policy, we favor:
The absolute separation of church and state;
No domination of the state by the church;
No church interference with the functions of the state;
No state interference with the functions of the church...
The absolute freedom of the individual from the domination of ecclesiastical authority in political affairs;
The equality of all churches before the law."

This is a belief that has been reiterated by Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, and just about any church leader down to the present day. It has been expressed during the accusations against the Church during its polygamy days, its attempts to create separate seminary schools, and other instances. Not to mention that the Articles of Faith seem pretty clear on how members should behave as citizens. So none of this is anything new; in fact, this church-state separation issue is a pretty old one for the United States.

The earliest instance goes back to December 1657, when New York State was still New Netherlands and Queens was a town called Flushing. The governor had banned all religions except the Dutch Reformed Church. In protest, several denizens of Flushing compiled a petition that called the governor out on persecuting Quakers (and none of the signatories were Quaker themselves). They were all later penalized.

The now-famous Flushing Remonstrance reads:

"The law of love, peace, and liberty in the states extending to Jews, Turks and Egyptians, as they are considered sons of Adam...Our Saviour sayeth...our desire is not to offend one of his little ones in whatsoever form, name or title he appears in, whether Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist or Quaker, but shall be glad to see anything of God in any of them, desiring to do unto all men as we desire all men should do unto us..."

The petition concludes that "...if any of these said persons come in love unto us, we cannot in conscience lay violent hands upon them," but instead allow such persons free entrance and shelter in their town, "for we are bound by the law of God and man to do good unto all men and evil to no man."

A brief perusal of early American history will make it obvious that this is the exact mentality that drove the early Puritan, Catholic, and Pilgrim immigrants to American soil. It wasn't merely freedom to practice religion, but nonconformist churchgoers escaping from an oppressive mainstream religion that banned all other practices. The ability for anyone to believe in what he or she wants is what predicated the freedoms the Founding Fathers built this country on - the freedom to practice not just "religion" but ANY and ALL religion (and even allowance for those without religion). But oftentimes those freedoms are confused with the compulsory freedom to practice just ONE religion - namely, Christianity.

Thomas Jefferson penned the Virginia Satute for Religious Freedom in 1779. The statute stated:

"Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free...yet chose not to propagate [our religion] by coercions...to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical...our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...

"...No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened...on account of his religious opinions or belief...and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."

James Madison addressed the concern of a theological institution's economic power more directly in 1817. In his "Detached Memoranda," he wrote that mixing church and state would be "the means of abridging the natural and equal rights of all men in defiance of [Christ's] own declaration that His kingdom was not of this world":

"But besides the danger of a direct mixture of religion and civil government, there is an evil which ought to be guarded against in the indefinite accumulation of property from the capapcity of holding it in perpetuity by ecclesiastical corporations. The power of all corporations ought to be limited in this respect. The growing wealth acquired by them never fails to be a source of abuses...The Constitution of the U.S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion...The idea also of a union of all to form one nation under one government in acts of devotion to the God of all is an imposing idea."

It ought to be painfully clear, then, that the LDS church authorities behind the official press release are either ignorant of Church history, American history and the Constitution or are manipulating the constitutional protection of expressing opinion to unconstitutional means. Or both.

Remember

2008-11-06T22:40:00.000-08:00

I can remember the fragmented tale.

About a year ago, I met him for the first time. It was on a fifth. When I made the choice that would change my life forever, a choice not just to be with him, but to find the truth about who I am, it was on a sixth.

And today I remember - remember and forget. Nostalgia is a pretty dangerous thing. It takes history in its pressumptive solidified form and completely shimmers and glosses it. Nostalgia takes history and breaks it into a million pieces that are more commodified, manageable, and believable. It can make us believe in some small synechdoche of our memories. Nostalgia can be a weapon - and our very worst enemy.

And what is surprising...or, perhaps, not so surprising...is that our story is erased from history. There's no real record of it. There are just pieces of it here and there. An email here. A journal entry there. But nothing that actually tells the story. Our story...My story.

And I have to wonder if it's better that way.

"Very Busy"

2008-09-28T21:37:00.000-07:00

An email update to family:

Hi everybody,
I haven't had a chance to communicate with everyone since this week I simultaneously had two English papers due, an article deadline at work that kept me at school past midnight, and my phone became disabled (after the mess of working things out, I won't get a new one until Monday, Tuesday at the latest).

I've been very busy, but very productive. I got a chance to meet with one of my professors this week and we're both excited about my term paper for his class. His name is John Goshert, and the class is Multi-ethnic Literature. I also met with my professor, Jans Wager (for my Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality in U.S. Cinema class) about my project in that class, and it turns out that I might get to go to a Pop Culture conference in the spring. I might also get to return to NCUR, the National Conference for Undergraduate Research (reason I went to Maryland this last April) in the spring - and it will be in La Crosse, Wisconsin. In addition, the editor-in-chief and I have gotten to be good friends - his name is Jack Waters, and he and I are arranging to get the staff to go to Kansas City and/or San Diego in the spring. Finally, there's a slight chance that if I work hard, I'll get an internship D.C. for Senator Bennett, Matheson, Hatch, Representative Bishop, or Senator of Nevada Harry Reid next summer! Anyway...basically, it looks like I might go on a few trips early next year.

This week, I saw two movies that I'm absolutely crazy about. One is called Masked and Anonymous and stars Bob Dylan, Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Penelope Cruz, Luke Wilson, Val Kilmer, Ed Harris, Chris Penn (right before his death), Micky Rourke, Giovanni Ribisi...and a lot of other big people. :) Anyway - more importantly, I saw an older independent movie called Bamboozled and directed by Spike Lee (Inside Man, Dad, that movie with Denzel Washington and Clive Owen where they're robbing a bank) and stars Jada Pinkett Smith (wife of Will Smith, plays Naobi in Matrix). I wish I'd seen this movie when I was in high school. I think one day I should buy it, and then [the family] should sit down to watch it together. It's a hilarious satire, but it's a very important message about racial tensions in American society today.

Speaking of movies: apparently, director Ridley Scott (Gladiator) is gonna make a new Robin Hood movie called Nottingham that's set to be released this time next year. Who will play the Sheriff? Russell Crowe. And who shall play Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves? ...Russell Crowe.

I recently took inventory of my library of books. Apparently I own 126 books. So my friend/co-worker Whitney is building me a bookshelf. It's fantastic, and she's very good at carpentry.

Anyway...other than that, I'm doing fine, just busy. I had a stomachache yesterday, but I'm much better today, I think. All week I've had some pain in my jaw because my wisdom tooth is finally starting to impact the rest of my teeth and it hurts a bit to open my mouth and chew. I guess I'd better start saving up money to get it pulled out.

By the way, for anyone who cares - I watched the debates and let me just say that McCain makes me sick! Furthermore, I would rather watch Rocky Horror Picture Show three times in a row than watch McCain smile one more time as he says, "My friends...." It's a creepy smile! Dad, let's move to Canada if he's elected.

Talk to everybody later!
--[Elder Roxas]

Final Cuts

2008-02-03T01:27:00.000-08:00

I found out this week that I won't get to eat until I get paid on Valentine's Day. So I unloaded my bookshelf of some recently bought bookshelf for ones I can still return to the store. Then I turned to my small film collection, and with a heavy heart I decimated the numbers from more than forty movies to around fifteen or so.

It tore me to part with many (i.e. Gladiator, Fight Club, Spider-Man 3...wipes a tear), and some I didn't mind doing without (i.e. The Silence of the Lambs, Jerry Maguire). But there were a select few films I kept realizing that, come leather jackets and lavish dinners or shirts with holes and Cup Noodles, I couldn't quite live without. Ergo, here is a list of the films I now own and consider required possessions in times of poverty; my "deserted island" movie list.

1. The Fountain - I'd have to lose rent for a cardboard box to sell this one. I could live to be one hundred and this film will still blow me away on my deathbed. Arguably my all-time favorite.
2. Magnolia - I have to lie in bed for a long time whenever I finish this movie. It makes me think - a lot. I love that. Everything that makes me passionate about filmmaking is in this movie.
3. Saving Private Ryan - It's incredible, the way I feel about my country and myself every time I watch this. Not love or respect, but something deeper...a kind of honor in awe.
4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - If I could somehow communicate every single thing I feel and understand about true romantic love, it would be this movie. No other love story will ever come close.
5. Almost Famous (Untitled) - The best screenplay I've ever read, the only coming-of-age film I really enjoy, and a sort of love letter to rock and roll, all in one from Cameron Crowe. You can't go wrong.
6. Garden State - I feel so much more alive whenever I see this movie. Seriously, I don't know how I lived before I saw it.
7. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence - Only this one can truly make me cry, from sadness and sheer joy. It can also make me scream and wanna throw up. An emotional powerhouse; I can't watch it more than once a year.
8. The Royal Tenenbaums - One of my favorite character-driven films. Father relationships and redemption are my favorite themes, and they are the backbone of this movie.
9. Big Fish - A cinematic musing on why we love to tell stories. Another father-son film.
10. American Beauty - Not to play on the title...but this movie helps me feel like people, the world, and life itself can be beautiful sometimes.

And finally, a movie I don't own (yet) but would want to have on an island: The Lion King. Mock me if you will, but this is a deep movie for me and I'll always love it to death.

P.S. These are all life-influencing movies for me, and if you feel interested in checking one out, be warned that seven of the ten are rated R. But I'd still strongly recommend any of them.
P.S.S. And yes, we ARE assuming that I actually have a TV on the island. *rolls eyes....

The Hottest Thing Since Abbey Road

2008-02-01T19:46:00.000-08:00

So this week, some very key items finally arrived in my mailbox. First, my director's cut graphic novel for my favorite movie of all time, The Fountain. Second, a book I've been looking forward to read recommended by our dear Miss Spinn from her native Norway, entitled Naive. Super and translated into English.

There were two more: a couple of Zippo lighters. I've been learning how to do some Zippo tricks. At this point, I can:

breath fire - don't panic
make fireballs (in a controlled environment - again, don't panic)
take the flame away from the wick, hold it in my hand, then snap it back.

They're both black. One of them has the Japanese kanji symbol for the word "love" on the front, the other has a white silhouette of the Beatles album Abbey Road. My Japanese Zippo, unfortunately, is getting shipped back to the factory next week. Wanna know why?

I read on the internet and heard from someone (probably a moron) that I need to use butane. Which didn't quite make sense, since butane is a gas and the lighter is a wick, so....one would assume it needs fuel, but I was being stupid. I made a foolish choice and went to sell my soul to that devil known as Wal-Mart. Nothing good has EVER happened from me going to Wal-Mart, and tonight was about to prove it. So I get the butane, only 98 cents, figure maybe Wal-Mart is about to redeem itself. I get back to my apartment and start pumping it into my Japanese lighter, and the whole thing starts to get encased with this layer of strange-smelling ice.

(All you proud graduates of Zack Knappenberger's class are already laughing at what will happen next.)

I hit the switch. Nothing happens. I hit it again. Nothing happens. I hit it once more. The whole thing, case and all, erupts into a burning ball of fire that starts to consume my hand. I drop it on my desk and it starts to light the desk. I blow, slam, and stop the flames.

And then I promise myself out loud that I am never, ever gonna set foot within one hundred feet of Wal-Mart again. Karma has never been so bad.

Old School

2008-01-26T02:12:00.000-08:00

I don't suppose I'm an expert on the mindset young men in the 70's propagated when they were depressed...but I'm willing to bet ya money that if they were anything like young men today, they put on records.

Believe you me: The best remedy that can get Elder Roxas out of a real funk, and real fast, is getting me some cookie dough, some good movies, and some good music, and then locking me up in my room for hours and hours. And when I found myself in the middle of a very complicated love triangle last weekend, I could think of no better cure. Honestly.

But I might've taken it a bit too far. Instead of the usual run to Wal-Mart and going on a movie buying spree at F.Y.E., I did something a bit more old school. I pigged out at Arby's and Iceburg, then went to my last Sundance Film Festival screening Choke, and then raided F.Y.E. --not for movies this time, but for vinyl. You got me: I bought a record player, plus three or four records.

So now I'm sitting here at 3:18 AM, going through some old emails and my new records. Now before you panic, I must inform you that I've got a perfectly good sense of financial judgment when it's called for. The record player is complete with a CD player, an AM/FM radio, and a jack with plug for an iPod. Now, how much better can you get for only $100? I do not know. Especially when right next door to Pink Floyd and The Beatles, one of my three favorite albums is sitting on the shelf in front of me, glistening and begging me to try it in vinyl: The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance. Oh, JOY! Sweet ecstasy! I think I wet myself just standing there, seeing it. So it now joins my slowly growing record album library, next to Abbey Road and The Dark Side of the Moon, since it's just as great in my eyes as these giants of rock as well. And what else do I have? As a true Orem High alumni, I actually own a copy of Survivor's Eye of the Tiger album. On top of that, I also have two albums that came out last year: Neon Bible by Arcade Fire and In Rainbows by one of the greatest bands to ever live, Radiohead.

I'll admit that I've honestly never heard a record before tonight. From everyone I spoke with, vinyl has its own sound, but CD's and mp3's obviously sound better. But I really think that hearing vinyl is a great musical experience in and of itself. Just when I thought I couldn't fall any more in love with The Black Parade, I hear Gerard Way's voice crackling over the song that changed my life, "Famous Last Words," giving an interesting dimension to it....a sort of beautiful imperfection. An older, warmer sound. A higher pitch, a more desperate and heartfelt sounding music. And hey, some guitar solos on the album actually sound much clearer. I'm starting to wonder just what I've been missing from the 70's....I am gonna raid music stores for record albums the soonest I get the chance. Cuz I am having a lot of fun with my vinyl.

I think I found a new hobby.

Futures

2007-12-31T13:39:00.000-08:00

WHAT I HOPE I CAN SAY IN DECEMBER 2008:

I'm further along in school, and I'm happy with my progress with my degree. I got good grades in my classes for spring semester. I enjoyed talking to favorite professors about things that really matter to me. I didn't slack off at work, and I felt helpful around the Writing Center.

I finished my freakin' huge reading list! Also, I finally got around to listening to all those music albums that I could never find the time for. I got into rap and country to see what I like there. I also know (somewhat) what the new U2 material sounds like, since their tour won't start till next year. In addition, I finally finished a couple of screenplays, and got to work on The Dam at Otter Creek.

I've made great new friends. I feel closer to all of them, especially my best friends, and I feel like I'm as worthwhile in each of their lives as they are in mine. I finally made some kind of peace with the friend I lost in 2007.

I've volunteered at an old folk's home, the MTC, and other places where I feel like I helped out and learned more about love.

I'm content with my life. I don't complain as much anymore. I don't need any darkness to help me, because I've learned how to use the light inside of me. I kicked my lifetime bad habits, and picked up some good ones...and some "good" bad ones, too. I've made peace with my past. I have forgiven myself. I can look at myself in the mirror in the eye everyday, say "I love you" ...and for the first time in my life, I can actually mean it.

IF I DON'T GO ON A MISSION:
I'm happy with my choice, and I'm happy with my companion, whom I'm with every day. I make responsible choices about where I go from now on. Those who judge me for my past and my choices are people who I've reluctantly but peacefully cut out of my life. I can honestly say I've never felt so happy.

IF I GO ON A MISSION:
The call was quiet, almost sudden; nobody saw it coming. By the time most people found out, there wasn't much room for me to become one of those "repentant saint" spectacles fortunate enough to be the ward/neighborhood gossip. I can say with honesty that I didn't go to impress, spite, or amuse a single person. I didn't go out of religous dogmatic duty or reckless peer pressure. I went, simply and plainly, because I wanted to have a good time. And I am having a blast.

I don't want to say, "I finally found what I was looking for." I want to be able to say, "I'm content with the answers I have found, and I'll never stop looking for the truth." The year 2007 was the year seeds were planted, and a year of painful epiphanies. 2007 was paradise lost. This year, 2008, was the year of growth and harvest, and a year of second chances. There was more change, and 2008 wasn't paradise regained--it was paradise found. A lot of my important memories are in 2007...a lot of my best memories are in 2008.

Looking Back On Today

2007-12-30T13:27:00.000-08:00

WHAT I DID IN 2007, MY NINETEENTH YEAR:

I ran away from home just a few days into the new year. I received the Melchizedek Priesthood. I said goodbye to my best friend for four years. I got into poetry and philosophy. I got into my first real fight with a friend since I was fourteen. I took my little sister to her high school prom. I went to my first rock concert and met with the band in their tour bus. I saw my first R movies and started cussing. I lost one of my best friends, possibly forever. I was homeless for almost eight weeks, and in that time there were days I didn't eat anything, I didn't shave for a month, and I didn't shower for three weeks. I slept on the ground, on couches, and an air matress. I was chased by the police, in a car pulled over by police, got phone calls from the police, and rode in the back of a police car. I climbed a fifty-foot cliff and gotten in a street fight with a mountain ram. I met a famous movie star. I was connected to someone who made front page news. I held secret phone negotiations about five-hundred dollars, and was almost fired for helping someone. I inherited a longboard from a best friend, and the longboard became my first property to be stolen. I got involved with tarot cards. I could've been killed by a car that almost drove straight through a living room I was in. I suffered from creepy hallucinations for a couple weeks. I had a conversation with an oracle using three pennies. I befriended a diagnosed schizophrenic. I talked to radio DJ's about movies. I got involved with drugs - although I didn't use any. I finally mastered the back flip. My family went inactive. I was almost killed by a train for the second time in my life - and in order to save my life, I had to play chicken and run towards the train. I got my first crushes in years with two different people, then got to have them both as close friends.

And in fancy acrobatics, a rainstorm and hillside wildfires, and staring into a vision of my future by looking death in the eyes (literally)...I finally found the meaning of life.

The God I Believe In

2007-12-27T14:55:00.000-08:00

Recent e-mail to my friend and co-worker, Whitney:

I finally figured something out the other day...

Even though I've had my doubts all my life on the LDS church, I've never been able to fully shake off the belief in some form of God, or that there is a Christ, and that belief is rooted in an experience I had when I was fourteen. You could definitely call it Pentecostal; I was in a young men's EFY group, and we were having a lesson on the Atonement, when one by one every guy started crying and speaking in powerful tones. Immediately, I felt this...I dunno, I can't describe it very well, it was like every blood cell in my body turned into light or something. It was just this incredible rush, like every part of me was saying "Yes! It's true, there is a Christ who did this for me." It was a sure knowledge, but it was also a weird feeling I couldn't understand at the time.

Now I'm two weeks from twenty, and I feel about as far away from God as ever. I have no idea what to think about the LDS church or Joseph Smith, and I'm confused/afraid for my future. But mostly I'm ashamed of my past and myself. For a long time now, I've been afraid to face God. But I've just realized that if nothing else, God has to be some form of whatever I felt that night when I was fourteen. And in that sense, I realized that that weird feeling I had was love - pure, unconditional love. And if that is what God is like, then why would I be afraid to face that love? So now I'm on a new journey: to find a life where I can have that love a lot more often. And regardless of the "Utah Valley Mormon God", I have decided that when I want to pray or worship, that God of love is the one I believe in.

Memories and the Devil vs. God and John Lennon

2007-12-08T20:50:00.001-08:00

I. Hate. Snow.

It's wet, it gets everywhere (like socks, which is no fun) and it's most inconvenient. For example, take today. This morning was looking gray, but relatively pleasant. Then in the space of two hours, there was so much snow that I couldn't see the McKay Events Center outside the Liberal Arts building at Utah Valley University. A co-worker drove me to Barnes and Noble at the risk of her own life, since the car itself seemed horrified of making it up the snow-covered streets. This evening, I was supposed to see a play that I've been looking forward to all week, and the bus was not five, not ten, not fifteen, but almost twenty-five minutes late picking me up due to road hazards. By the time I got to the theater, all the doors were locked. All because of stupid snow.

Needless to say, I was feeling pretty ticked off and dejected by the time I got back to my apartment. And when I'm in a foul mood, certain habits and cravings that I've tried to stop cold are bound to surface; needless to say that I found myself struggling with some familiar demons about half an hour later. I tried concentrating on different things - reading, calling a friend, even the words of a Priesthood blessing I received a week ago. All to little avail. At long last, in the tempest of my subconcious, I recalled (for no apparent reason) the words to a song:

"Oh, I'll be a good boy, please make me well
I promise you anything - get me out of this hell
Cold turkey has got me on the run..."

John Lennon's voice coming to aid a poor, struggling soul fighting addictions on a cold and lonely night...and not just any night, but the twenty-seventh anniversary of his assassination. The irony is not lost on me.

I think that John Lennon's greatness, however, is lost on much of my generation. If I were to question someone my age about who imagined a world without heaven, hell, country, religion, and people living life in peace, the odds are they may scratch their head and reply, "Uh, that one guy who starved himself in China? Whatsisname....Guhndee? Gondee? Somethin' or other. Why does it matter, anyway? Hey, have you heard this new song by Avril Lavigne?" (Is the irony lost on you?) Similarly, the only question I could ask and hope to get an enlightened answer to is if I asked who, out of the Beatles, was the walrus. Of course, that would only be with a grateful culture nod to Ferris Buller's Day Off.

Some people my age are quick to snap at me: "Well, why the heck should I care? He's dead, and the Beatles suck, anyway." Responses like that make me scared about my generation's future. Because I think John Lennon's legacy has far more relevance than rescuing recovering addicts on his death's anniversary night.

There are some who believe that solo artists who break off from original bands are ultimately failures, and I'll admit I'm one of those people. Robert Plant and Jimmy Page were pretty decent when they were apart, and Thom Yorke is a shrug's "all right" on his own. But I think John Lennon's lyrics and music stands apart far from the Beatles in a good way. His lyrics are very simplistic, to be sure, and sometimes to the point of being cliche; you can almost predict what line will come next.

But in a way, that's what makes John Lennon a genius. His music and lyrics was able to communicate human emotion and thought in very subtle ways, ways that keep the power of the song's spirit and deliver it just as well in a shorter amount of time. It's language meant to touch any and every soul, not just those who can decode cryptic wording, or the philosophically minded. That's why I smile when people say that John Lennon and the Beatles get old after a while. That music was not meant for a casual listen on a playlist. It demands your attention; it wants you. And such selfish music is "so" last century.

In fact, a young man of this century will definitely connect to a young man of three decades ago through John Lennon. Whether it's "Give Peace a Chance" or "I Don't Wanna Be a Soldier, Mama" you can feel the emotions and beliefs of a man iconic to his era. I've heard the 70's labeled as something one would prefer not to remember. I think that it's important to remember the past, no matter what. John's voice has a lot of power in it, and a saturation of ego at times, but there's a lot of humanity as well. Listening to his music becomes a personable tour of a revolutionary epoch in the history of America, and of mankind. And all you need is songs like "God", "Instant Karma!", and the incredible "Imagine" to prove it.

So here's my meager cheer to you, John Lennon. From my post-modern electronics and twenty-first century machinations, I raise a proverbial glass to the walrus. Thanks for your freedom and your incredible sense of humanity, truth, and love. And if I sound simplistic or cliche, or you can predict what I'm gonna say next...then maybe that's the point.

Strawberry Fields forever, John.

秋 [Autumn]

2007-12-07T20:16:00.000-08:00

The tanka is a Japanese poetic form similar to haiku. The format is 5-7-5-7-7 syllables per line. Here's one I did recently -

(In Japanese:)
小さいな
日初年和ときに
する葉っぱで
秋の暮れで
看護友達の。

(Pronunciation:)
Chiisai na
Bishonen wa toki ni
Suru happa de
Aki no kure de
Kango tomodachi no.

(Translation:)
As a small,
Beautiful boy
Plays games in the leaves
During the autumn dusk,
I care for my friends.

Notes: The phrase "beautiful boy" (bishonen) is used in this instance for "baby-ish" boys with aesthetically pretty faces. Also, the phrase "care for" (kango) is the same usage for medics tending to the sick. Disclaimer: I'm not sure I'm 100% accurate.

Reply to Ranee

2007-12-04T21:14:00.000-08:00

In an email forum I'm on, a young man named Ranee wrote that he was feeling hopeless and staring down the barrel of a gun. He felt that anyone and everyone he'd ever loved was left and leaving, and that the only choice left to him was suicide. This was my reply:

Ranee, please do not take your own life. You will undoubtedly hear many people tell you this. Let me share my personal experience with you: This summer was particularly difficult for me, and not a day went by that I didn't plan some detail about my suicide, or my "fantasy funeral". Many times I seriously considered it. Early one morning, I found myself on a bridge looking down into the water - staring into fate, as it were. I almost felt like jumping, and half-jokingly I asked God to stop me. As I stared and stared, and as the sun rose up into the sky at dawn, my thoughts became clearer and clearer, and so did my feelings. This is what I felt:

Everything is so meaningless, and yet all so meaningful. Regardless of whether you are Christian, Hindu, or atheist, there is one belief that mankind, through the centuries, has always carried at the forefront of human consciousness: This life is the only one you get. It only happens once. You've got one life you get to leave. And frankly, it shouldn't be our choice to end it whenever we want. What should be our choice is what we do with that one life, that one chance. Have you ever been in a situation where you had only one chance to do something, and the moment of it was just so exhilarating? The choice was "Either do it now, or forever wish you had!" Take this life, make it a moment in eternity, and pretend you are back in the premortal life.

In the Book of Job, Job feels he's questioned his life and suffering long enough to call on God and say "Appear before me! I want to take you to court. I want you to answer for why you've given me so much suffering in my life." God's answer is one that baffled Jewish rabbis for centuries: the voice of the Lord comes out of a whirlwind to say: "Job, remember when I laid down the foundations of the world? And all the angels shouted for joy? You were there, Job, shouting with them. You knew that there'd be suffering in mortal existence - you knew about this. In fact, you were pretty excited about it. And now you're questioning me about it? Where were you the day I went over that in class, my son?" (See Job 38.)

That is God's answer to us. Life on earth was just a moment when we were premortal spirits, looking forward to our futures. God was literally saying to us: "You've got once chance to change everything, my children. And this is a one-time offer. It's a one-way ticket to tears, smiles, heartbreak, laughter, misery, peace, and ultimately happiness. That's the end of the equation, and the only way to do it, so it's a one-time offer. Take it or leave it!" A third left, and the rest of us are here. God sent us into the world....and so it's only right that He gets to take us back. Ever see Bill Cosby? He said, "You are MY son. I brought you in this world--and I can take you out!"

What if an angel appeared to you one night and said, "Ranee, guess what? You get to live this same life over again when you die! Every moment you've ever experienced, every sorrow and every happiness, you get to re-live." Would you curse the day you were born and be miserable....or would you clap out of excitement and be filled with happiness? Some say that it's ideal to live a life with no regrets. I say that defeats the purpose...you should regret times of your life...just as little as possible! Imagine you're standing in front of a mirror, with all your dark and loathsome past raging behind you like a great big cloud. What lies between you and the mirror? Nothing. A dark past follows you around - but there's nothing ahead of you, allowing you to create the future. Don't be afraid. I know you can do it! The courage lies within you. Reach out and take it! Because as it turns out, we are not here to be miserable all the time. As Nephi said: "Adam fell, that men might be. And men are, that they might have joy." You get to step through looking-glass and create the joy - no one can do it for you. And I know you can do it if you try!

That is what I found out that morning, looking at the water. THAT is the true meaning of life. The meaning of life is: there is NO meaning of life. Only the meaning we give it. And frankly, Ranee, I don't wanna be the guy who goes back to the spirit world saying, "I'm so glad to be back home, away from that dreadful place. I'm glad earth life is over." I wanna be the guy who flies in through those Pearly Gates with his hair on fire, his robes torn and tattered, a broken leg or two, screaming at the very top of my ethereal lungs:

"HOLY HECK, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!!"

Thanksgiving

2007-11-22T21:21:00.000-08:00

I just had Thanksgiving dinner. My dad stayed on a computer in another room while my mother, my three little brothers and myself sat around a table eating Kraft Easy Mac and some chicken, watching I Love Lucy re-runs. My younger sister did not come home, but remained at her apartment in Provo. My seven-year-old brother (whom my parents refuse to allow baptism) sighed, "This was the worst Thanksgiving ever."

I'm sitting here at my computer, and I'm looking at some books around me. I raided the library this week; a co-worker asked if I was experiencing some sort of spiritual schizophrenia. There's the Bible on my left covered with an old Batman comic, and the Qur'an (Koran) on my right. There's a book by Nietzsche stacked on top of The Problem of God in Modern Thought,Teachings of the Dali Lama, and a Johnny Cash album. A book about karma sits on my floor next to an article on Christianity from U.S. and World Report. On top of my dresser sits my Yankees baseball hat, the I Ching and three coins.

I don't know if you're familiar with the I Ching. I wasn't until the other night when I was in a bookstore and impulsively bought it. I didn't realize it was considered an oracle by millions throughout the centuries, and I'd paid $10 for some sort of divinitation device. I decided that I would try using it, and I tossed the coins wrong the first couple times, getting strange answers to nonsensical questions like "How's the weather?" But then I decided to be serious. In this schizophrenia I'm experiencing, I'm trying to feel out where I can fit in spirituality, once and for all. I've established that I do believe in a God, and in Christ. I believe in the idea of karma, but I won't accept karma itself just yet because it rules out the need for a Christ. This is what independence is, I guess. Living on my own has taught me that I can't take anything for granted anymore, and I'm being forced to re-evaluate my concept of God. I have realized that most of my life, my idea of God was divided into two illusions: a harsh divine dictator who only favors the Mormons, or a mysterious Creator quasi-billions of who knows what far away. I cannot fit the father figure into my concept of God. I never found out who God was for myself, or Christ. I just relied on happy feelings and the testimonies of others. As Nietzsche famously proclaimed, I found that God really was dead to me.

So with anticipation, I tossed the three coins and asked, "What is the relationship of the I Ching to God?" I guess I was wondering how the book would help me in my search for a connection to God. I don't know what answer I was expecting, but I didn't expect the answer I received minutes later. The answer was: "Limitation." That I Ching, the books around me, and many of my choices lately could only help me with so much, but in the end could not get me all the answers I'm looking for. I was limiting myself in my search and growth by finding answers in narrow places. I didn't expect something as mystical as an ancient oracle to admit it was too "limited" to help me find God. I almost laughed out loud.

Because it seemed ridiculous. With everything that had been going wrong lately - from recent relapses, to the loss of friends (one being forbidden by parents to associate with a 19-year-old not on a mission), to family disturbances, to failing at school - I felt like I was standing on the edge of a shore, looking into nothingness. Deciding to find God suddenly felt like a joke and a duty at the same time.

So it's Thanksgiving, and I'm trying to find my blessings, but I see only a wide expanse of oblivion around me. A waste land. And when I try to think about things I'm grateful for, I draw a blank. Everything I was grateful for - my friends like Ammon or Ben or Eric, my family relations, and my testimony...all of that has disappeared in less than a year. I've been completely wasted away to find...what? Memories? My music? (I thank God for U2 and the Beatles, and all my music - and I don't mean that flippantly.) One can be grateful for memories and music, I guess. But they are "limitations." They can't congratulate you, or hold you, or even kiss you.

I don't mean to sound like I'm complaing. I want to say: feeling like the only person in the universe has taught me to appreciate one thing, and be grateful for another. I appreciate love, and I believe I'm coming closer to understanding what love is and is not. As the great John Lennon once said, "In the end, the love you give is equal to the love you get." And I pondered a few times if I made the right choice in not committing suicide over the summer. This is undoubtedly the worst time of my life. But, for some strange reason, I am excited and glad to be alive for it. It's strange...Indeed, in years to come I may look at this year and say "Those aren't my happiest memories, but they're my most important." And maybe, with that mentality, my limitations will act as signs to guide me down the right road. Then, I'm grateful for my limits.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

Left and Leaving

2007-11-14T21:00:00.000-08:00

My friend Eric Smith finally left for the MTC, and he'll be arriving in Washington, D.C./southern Virginia shortly thereafter. I didn't plan on it being an emotional farewell, but the last day we were hanging out, I found myself approaching his house very slowly. "If I walk slower," I thought, "maybe...maybe he won't leave as soon." We had dinner, went to see a movie, then dropped me off at my apartment. He gave me his longboard, saying, "You need this more than I do." I said, "Eric...I can't take this. Any time I ride it, I'll think of ya, and then I'll crash into something." He laughed, and then the last thing he said to me was: "Matthew, you are my best friend in the whole world, do you know that? If you can, see that you go on that mission." I nodded, then proceeded to go upstairs, watch a chick flick, and feel depressed for two days. I guess emotions don't get planned.

But assigning me as his best friend only reminded me of another friend, Ammon. He's sixteen, turning seventeen in a month. My twentieth birthday is a month and two days after. I befriended him after he moved into the old house of one of my best friends. We got tight pretty quick, and he started calling me his best friend in the world. Thick as thieves, we were. Then, he got a girlfriend. He gave her all the attention in the world, and planned on marriage and having her wait for him after his mission.

And late at night, I would get in fights with my pillows and scream over it. How could he just move into town, and at a whim fall in love? Just like that? My same-gender attractions drove me to insane jealousy. I cared way too much about him. It's not that I was attracted to him. I was jealous of his ability to love. I saw him happy and blissful every time he brought up his girlfriend, and whenever I looked at myself and saw my empty life - without passion or love - I would go green like a light.

Pretty soon, the tension got us into a fight. We didn't speak to each other for almost a month. After we called it cool, we got into another fight a month later. He was angry I wasn't on a mission, and I was angry he was being sixteen. We didn't talk to each other for three and a half months. We started jamming in a band with a couple of friends. Then we got into another fight about him being immature, and me being different. We didn't talk for almost two months. Then, he broke up with his girlfriend. His depression got us talking again, and finally a few nights ago we hung out for the first time since last spring. Eventually, his parents told me I had to go.

As I left, I reflected on the useless hate I let into my life. And, you know? Most of that hate, I came to find, was aimed at myself. I felt like a failure because my friends were all left or leaving on missions, and I was sitting in my apartment going at it with porn every night. I care too much about everything and everyone but me. And I never get anything back. My heart is too big, I decided. It's not strong, and it's not smart. But it's big. I have a lot of love to give...I do. I just don't know where to put it. I finally got sick of myself. I went out Friday night, and bought a pack of cigarettes. I figured, what the heck, I've been trying to do self-improvement all my life. Maybe it's time to try self-destruction. I took Eric's longboard and skated way out to the city limits, where there are abandoned fields and a cold lake. I sat down, lit one up, and put my lips around the filter.

And that's when I realized....that I have no idea how to smoke a cigarette. And what's more, I was too scared to try.

Which further infuriated me. That I was too chicken to smoke, too chicken to go on a mission, too chicken to change my life. But I wasn't too chicken to walk half a mile to get my wallet so I can buy porn, or not too chicken to jack off in front of a P.E. teacher, or not too chicken to slit at my wrists and cut up my arms with a razor. I looked up at the sky, blasting "Love Reign O'er Me" by The Who, and I screamed: "IS THERE ANYBODY OUT THERE?!!" ...Reaching up for a hand, any hand, is not an unfamiliar motif for me right now.

Sunday night, I called Ammon to see how he was holding up. He said he was okay, then told me, "Matthew...I'm really sorry...but we can't hang out ever again. My parents chewed me out the other night when you were here. The thing is, they don't want me to associate with a 19-year-old who is not on a mission."

I guess that's what I get for my big heart.