Cinematic quotagraphy.

Since this is the eve of the New Year, and I just watched a bunch of movies last night, here is my definitive 10 favorite movies lines of 2005.*

"Welcome to Thunderdome, bitch."
- Dane Cook, Waiting...

"It's time to prove to your friends that you're worth a damn. Sometimes that means dying, sometimes it means killing a whole lot of people."
- Clive Owen, Sin City

"You've gotta wait till the seed grows into a plant. Then you've gotta fuck the plant."
- Seth Rogen, 40 Year Old Virgin

"In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people angry and has widely been considered as a bad move."
- Stephen Fry, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"We are the substitute people."
- Kirsten Dunst, Elizabethtown

"I gotta tell you something. I'm really excited about it. Uh, for the first time, today, I woke up, I came to the store, and I - I feel confident to say to you that if you don't take this Michael McDonald DVD - that you've been playing for two years straight - off, I'm going to kill everyone in the store and put a bullet in my brain!"
- Paul Rudd, 40 Year Old Virgin

"Everything in this room is eat-able. Even I'm eat-able. But that is called cannibalism, my dear children, and is in fact frowned upon in most societies."
- Johnny Depp, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

"No... it was beauty that killed the beast."
- Jack Black, King Kong

"Yeah, you should definitely tell her, because I saw this movie called "Liar Liar" and the message was, 'Don't lie'... and that was a smart movie."
- Seth Rogen, 40 Year Old Virgin

"Well, the past is gone, I know that. The future isn't here yet, whatever it's going to be. So, all there is, is this. The present. That's it."
- Bill Murray, Broken Flowers


So, 2005 is come and gone. Not too bad a year, I'll probably do an big end of year recap at some point like I did last year here and here. But for now, we'll just leave it as, another year alive, another year of rock. Here's to an even better 2006, and hopes of romance and adventure.


*I really could put 40 Year Old Virgin as a whole on here, but I didn't think that was fair.

The crazy things I like to read about, Pt. 1

"Today, the technologies of deception are developing more rapidly than the technologies of verification. Which means we can use a television camera, plus special effects, plus computers, etc. to falsify reality so perfectly that nobody can tell the difference. And the consequences of that eventually could be a society in which nobody believes, everybody knows that seeing is not believing, and nobody believes anything. With the exception of a small minority that decides to believe one thing fanatically. And that's a dangerous social/cultural situation.

One of the consequences of living through a period like this, which is in fact a revolutionary period, is that the entire structure of society and the processes of change become nonlinear. And nonlinearity I think is defined almost by the statement that 'small inputs can have large consequences.' While large inputs can sometimes have very small consequences. That also means in a political sense that very small groups can, under a given set of circumstances, achieve power. And that is a very threatening idea for anything remotely resembling what we believe to be democracy. So we're going into a period, I think, of high turbulence and considerable danger, along with enormous possibilities."

--interview with Alvin Toffler, in Modulations: A History of Electronic Music

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Sometimes when I get really caught up in an “Us vs. Them” mentality, I start to wonder if any side really has the right to claim that they know how things ought to be - if there is in fact a correct and proper map for relating with the world around us. It’s the whole hashishim chaos maxim “Nothing is true, everything is permissable” that’s permeated a lot of post-modernity. Grant Morrison’s own ontology speaks to this implying that the material world is simply placental waiting for us to be birthed into the supercontext. Somewhat implicit in this view is that it doesn’t really matter what we do while we’re here. Such concerns are left for moralists and philosophers.

From this notion the modern archetypal conflict of Right and Left - economy vs. humanity - can be imagined as merely a battle of mythologies or behavioral paradigms. The Right is predicated on the notion that nature is a resource and personal preservation is paramount - at least until death or Revelations and we all move on to the next level. This speaks to the preservation of the individual over community and environment. It is the evolutionary inheritance of the alpha male fighting to accumulate and protect resources. Like Morrison’s own ontology, the Right seems wholly invested in the transiency of our time on this humble planet.

The Left however prefers a softer humanitarianism coupled with a desire to live harmoniously with nature. It is extended from ape communities and predicated on an inherent equilibrium or balance with life on Earth. The underlying subtext of the progressive movement is that the conservative designs of nature should guide the development of human culture. As such, it’s invested in the long-term, supposing that through harmony our longevity on Earth will be much greater.

So who’s right here? And is there a Right anyhow? (What’s right for one may not be right for all). Is it all just a battle of relative wills struggling for dominance on an inherently meaningless playing field? Or is there really a correct way of doing things that will ultimately prevail? If the latter, then who’s got the winning ticket?

-- Key 23 --

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"Remember that human consciousness - that is EVERYTHING WE CAN THINK ABOUT - occupies a very narrow bandwidth. Of the 11 million bits of information our senses receive from the environment every second, the conscious mind edits out 10,999,984 bits, leaving 'us' with very little to think about and to look at - only 16 bits of information per second, in fact. Let THAT sink in. The world around us is seething and swarming with multitudes of things we refuse to or don't need to process into conscious awareness - hence those troubling 'sub'-conscious tremors and blinks we call feelings, intuitions, hunches, deja vu. There's also a half a second time lag between any given external 'event' and our consciousness becoming aware of it. Everything we see and do is actually happening half a second ago and we've already done it before our mind catches up to our actions and assigns them a meaning in our ongoing self-narrative. 'Conscious awareness' offers only the tiniest of perceptual pinholes on the universe and yet we tend to think we have it all worked out. The truth is that we're scantly aware of what's happening all around us, quite literally, as science has shown. The magician tries to bring a little more of this 'dark' unconscious life into conscious light and thereby learns to 'see' the universe better and to work with its mechanisms, to more profitably enrich his/her own experience and that of others. Magic only seems 'spooky' because it often deals with these normally-veiled areas of awareness."

-- Grant Morrison --

the opening salvo

So, here we go. First post in an "official" blog thats not myspace or livejournal. I'm pretty sure I'll still use them too, of course. I'll probably use myspace for songs and more "arty" writing, and LJ for boring day-to-day stuff. This will be for my long expository posts on things of a philosophical nature. I'll try to post as much as the muse allows. We'll see how it goes.

In any event, on with the show...


I'm not that guy.

On the way home the other night from a show, I was just driving along and thinking, as usual. And I've come to the conclusion that I'm not that guy. I don't have tattoos. I don't put on makeup. I don't wear girl jeans. I don't pander to people in order to be loved, then dump them as soon as their usefulness is done. So, basically, I'm not the typical musician in a rock band. At least the typical kind these days.

I know its the popular conception of rock musicians as degenerates who sleep with as many girls (preferably underaged) as possible, who dress provocatively in order to inspire lust in those viewing them, and who generally put out the image of "someone you wouldn't bring home to daddy." But I've never found myself attracted to this way of life. I started in music because I love playing it, and love having people listen to it. And to be honest, I'd be perfectly happy playing anonymously for the rest of my life, if it meant that people would hear it. Hide me behind a mask, a pseudonym, whatever. Just get my music out there.

And this is why modern music continues to baffle me, and modern relationships as well. (AHAH, you thought I was not going to cross that bridge again; well, you thought wrong.) Everything, more and more, seems to be based on image: the young hip indie rock band with the elegantly disheveled hair, practicing their looks of faint disinterest in the mirror, in preparation for their SPIN photoshoot. : the studio-technology-assisted pop songstress who doesn't have a whole lot of vocal range or talent, but boy, look at them titties, eh? : the goth punkers establishing themselves by how they dress rather than what they're playing. I'm not calling "sell-out" or anything (since I hate that term), and I don't want this to be taken as sour grapes, but it does confuse me, as a musician myself. I would like to be taken seriously, and have people hear me on a larger scale. But to do that, must I compromise my sense of moral propriety, and personal ideals? I don't think I can.

And this is connected to relationships how? I'm glad you asked.
I go by the same principles in life, as well as music. The reliance on pure physicality (while MUCH MUCH more obvious in love) is a similar thread through both. I'm not saying I never consider physical attractiveness as being a part of the equation, but thats EXACTly what it is: a PART. Not the whole thing, which a large portion of the population seems to disregard. "Yeah, shes a little dumb, but MAN, is she hot." "Sure, he's hit me, but only twice, and I know he'll never do it again. I love my muscle man."

I forgot where I was going with this originally, but I do remember my ultimate point: I'm not that guy. And I'm never going to be. I'm fine with that, and maybe someone can accept that. But this world seems to be going downhill faster every day (in many ways), and everything I do has a definite shelf-life on it anyway.

So, I will continue to do my music and whatnot, tattoo-less, in regular pants, and without makeup. And hopefully, with work and some luck, something will come of it. More than likely not, but I'm never not going to try.
I'm not the guy to not try.

(by the by, this is not a reference to anyone I know personally, more of a reflection of prevailing attitudes and trends in society. So no one be offended, k? K.)