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Babe
Lloyd's Blog
This
blogpage is retired now. I now blog at http://babelloyd.blogspot.com,
where you can leave comments about my blog posts!
Contents may be about music, personal stuff, or
anything. Updates may be sporadic. Please keep in
mind that Babe lives in Edmonton, Alberta.
28 June, 2006
I'm in love with an American. Well, literary love.
I have to come clean. My favourite author is American.
His name is Paul
Auster. I am totally in love with his writing.
It's a mad and blind love. It's like, I have a friend
who told me she would have to wear white to the upcoming
System of a
Down concert, in case the singer wanted to marry
her. That's how I love Paul.
Sure, it irritates me when he talks about "America"
in his books, like it's some sort of new Eden that
everyone has a hand in perpetually creating and recreating.
Blah blah blah, Paul. But I still love him. Even though
baseball figures largely in a lot of his books, I
still love him. I'm sure the prominent role that NYC
plays in his writing helps me love him. (Yes, I'm
full of contradictions. Hey, New Yorkers protested
at a Republic party conference or somethingerather.
That turns me on. Same with their accent(s).) And
he is always printed in the same awesome font.
It's just that his writing is so good. You know that
line between having a "signature style" and always
doing the same thing over and over? Yeah, Paul courts
that line, seriously. But hey, Korn is a one-trick
pony. It's just such a good trick!
Elements you'll probably find in an Auster novel:
- Weird coincidences bordering on the absurd (like someone's phone number being (987) 654-3210 or two guys being called Tom Wood and Nathan Glass).
- Someone having a monumental epiphany about the futility of their life.
- Someone throwing themselves into a pointless, Sisyphusian
endeavour as penance for past sins, crimes, or
failures. Examples include driving a car across
the USA and back over and over till the money
runs out, driving a taxi for a job as penance
for quitting grad school, writing an exhaustive
book about an obscure film-maker, building a giant
stone wall in the middle of the countryside, and
reading the huge number of books found in boxes
in an apartment till the money runs out.
- Intense solitude.
- Stories within stories. Like in one book, by
page 36 you're into a third level story-within-story.
It starts off with first-person narration, then
moves on to focus on the narrator's nephew, then
shifts to the narrator's nephew's boss.
- Weird post-modern self-insertions.
- A private investgator.
- Long dialogues clearly exploring daydream ruminations and ideas that have occured to Paul, such as a comparison of the lives and works of Edgar Allen Poe and Henry David Thoreau (even down to the rhyming quality of the names).
- Men not being good to women, and repenting.
- Talk of sex and sexual things.
So yeah, I adore his books. Even the autobiography I read, "Hand
to Mouth". His fiction has a mystical quality, but
it also never commits, as a whole, to fantastical
outcomes or gritty realism. You never how things are
gonna turn out. A lot of the characters are deeply influenced
by things they read.
Why do I write this? Because I just bought his most
recent novel with a gift card. Woo hoo! If you're
interested, don't start with The
New York Trilogy; it's very weird. (Of course,
if you like out-there , experimental stuff, go for
it!) Oracle
Night may be a good start, or Moon
Palace, or Leviathan.
Mr.
Vertigo is a little on the fantastical side.
The
Music of Chance may also be a good place
to start. In
The Country of Last Things is a post-apocalyptic
speculation. Timbuktu
is written from the point of view of a dog and is
a bit silly and fluffy for my taste. Book
of Illusions is terrific, and is pretty intense.
13 October, 2005
It's really stupid when people say "two thumbs way up". Look, it's a three-point
system. No thumbs up, one thumb up, or two thumbs up. There's no "way up". It
doesn't matter how high you stretch your arm in the air, or how tall your thumb
is. Shaq can't rate a film better then Webster can. There's no "thumbs way up"
any more than there's "two thumbs sort of up" or "one thumb down and one thumb
mostly up" or "two thumbs 0.37 inches short of fully down." They're up or
they're down. Ok?
7 October, 2005
Did you know that the term "gyp" is racist? People
use "gypped" to mean ripped-off or swindled. The
term is derived from "gypsy". Saying "What a gyp"
is jsut as bad as saying "You got jewed".
I watched Russ Meyer's movie "Vixen" last weekend,
at the Edmonton
International Film Festival. Man. it's weird.
The star is incredibly hot. Her body is amazing.
(I really wish 21st century movies weren't so fixated
on women with boyish figures. Why is it that in
today's mass media men primp and preen and pluck
like women, and women have the straight, dare I
say flat figures of men? Weird.) Her character,
Vixen, is totally sex-crazed, which is fine. But
of course, you can't have a woman who is sexually
empowered without making her totally deranged as
well. She maliciously taunts her younger brother
with sexual challenges and insults, then gets in
the shower with him without his permission. Then
she taunts, insults, belittles, and challenges him
until he decides to take her up on her offer and
have loud passionate sex with her in his bed. Meanwhile,
she is completely, flagrantly racist. She calls
Niles, the brother's black friend, "Rufus", and
says things like "I'm not going anywhere with that
spook." It's totally weird. It would have been erotic,
if she wasn't totally horrible. My wife and I argued
on the way home because she was more offended by
the incest than by the racism, whereas I thought
the incest was just weird, and the racism was offensive.
Check out Rachel
Marsden. Actually, check out this column
she wrote. The whole column is a big Canada-bashing
orgy. But what I love about it is the final line:
"Rachel Marsden is a political strategist, columnist
and media commentator who works in both the USA
and her native Canada." And we're so proud to have
her, too! I do agree with many things she says in
the colum, though, such as:
"This is a country where newly wed gay couples were
named 'newsmakers of the year', and the relaxation
of marijuana laws is considered a source of national
pride."
"38% of Canadians surveyed still felt that George
W. Bush was a greater threat to world peace than
Saddam Hussein!"
"Decisive, inspirational leadership and true conservative
values have never really sat very well with Canadians."
"The fact that the [California] Governor recently
ordered the state's Attorney General to stop the
Mayor of San Francisco from granting illegal marriage
licenses to thousands of gay couples would probably
be enough to get him drop-kicked out of office in
Canada."
"Fox News is banned in the country by the Liberal
government-controlled CRTC. It's the only major
American news network that the government won't
allow to be broadcast in the country. As is the
case in Cuba, watching Fox News in Canada is a criminal
offence."
"There's something about a take-charge, charismatic, decisive, inspirational leader that rubs Canadians the wrong way."
Yup, those all sound pretty good to me. Canada's motto is "peace,
order, and good government". So, why does she think our motto is "inspiration,
charisma, decisiveness, and true conservative values"?
Here's why we can feel good about people like her:
In her writing she tries to take on a sassy, rebellious
tone. But she's a far-right conservative. So, if
right-wing conservativism is "rebellious", that
means that the norm is more moderate and centrist.
If she's a bad-ass for being anti-gay and anti-anything-but-Jesus,
that means we're ahead. She's actually selling merchandise
with the text "Evil. Right-wing. Bitch." on it.
So if a right-wing woman is generally accepted as
an evil bitch, I'll sleep better at night. Things
are going in the "right" direction. It seems that
bigotry is the new counter-culture. As much as bigots
want to tout this shift as evidence of their edgy,
critical-minded appeal, the truth is that it's just
a demotion from previously being the accepted hegemony.
It's nice to see that intolerance is taking the
place of the diversity on the fringe of mass culture.
Keep on rocking in your own little world, you evil
bitch!
30 August, 2005
Why do people argue over who has it worse? Because
the only interesting people are people who suffer.
People who don't suffer are odious. I myself have
become intolerable.
My friend who moved to the USA came back for a visit.
It was wonderful! Yay! I'm glad the USA has not
made her into a loser.
7 May, 2005
With help from my wonderful parents-in-law and from Lisa, I got a
screen house set up in the back yard. I'm so stoked about the prospect
of fresh-air dried laundry! Yay!
Wheel of Meat and Eshod
Ibn Wyza moved into a new studio this month.
I was there tonight with The Spanish Interrobang,
working on the sound-proofing. Styrofoam squares
covered in fabric, stuck to the wall with velcro.
Sweet.
I also just bought my first real amp this week.
It's a Kustom 65-watt acoustic guitar amp. I wanted
something intended for electric guitar, to give
my guitar a rougher, rockier sound, but I had to
go with the least expensive amp I could find that
had two inputs and enough power to be heard over
drums. Ah well. It sure looks nice. It's all brown
and earthy looking. In fact, its appearance will
probably contribute to my erroneous reputation as
a folkie musician. Grrrr. But the built-in chorus
effect the amp is super-sweet. It is very lovely.
I love playing on my amp, cuz I've never had sustain
on my guitar before. It's rad!
I have a friend who moved to the USA a few years
ago. I haven't talked to her in a long time. But
she just e-mailed me! Here's a snippet of what she
had to say about her experience "downstairs":
"I really miss Canadian tv for the following reasons:
- Naked people doing it, especially on channels like Bravo or CBC. They just don't show it as much here. It's more violent than naked.
- The ratings in Canada are wayyyy more lenient.
- An outside perspective on the news. Americans are brainwashed with their media and unfortunately it's becoming more conservative. I fucking hate the talk shows on the radio here. They are all pretty much conservative. You need to pay for satellite radio to get the liberal stuff.
- The Canadian accents. I didn't realize I had one until I saw Canadian tv a few weeks ago."
There you have it. A true account from a Canadian doing real field work in the belly of the beast. I'm just glad she's doing it and not me. Ugh.
5 May, 2005
Hey, it's 05-05-05 today! Shouldn't we be celebrating?
No, we shouldn't be celebrating, because Seedy's is
closing down next week. Seedy's is a rad downtown
bar that hosts live music gigs. I've played there
several times. I like that place. I am sad that it
is closing. I went there last night to see King Muskafa. They are good. (Their web site has cool comic strips on it.) They are calling it quits too, though. Argh!
I just noticed that there's a photo of me on King
Muskafa's web site. Go here, scroll down to December 19, and click on "pic's" (which of course, should technically read "pics", as it is plural, not possessive).
4 May, 2005
I directly asked afriend of mine (who is an avid TV-watcher)
her opinion of the "Law & Order" debate. She
pointed out that "in the opening credits, there is
a big LAW that comes on the screen and then they show
the actors who play the cops and photos of cop scenes.
Then the big ORDER comes on the screen, and they show
the actors who play the lawyers and courtroom scenes."
Y'see? These are the things I miss, because during
the credits I'm too busy chatting, or making dumb
jokes, or playing with my cats, or picking at my fingernails.
Still, though, you have to admit, my argument is sound.
I washed the inside of the new car today. It was so filthy. At first
I thought I could get it perfectly clean myself. But once you start
washing the inside of a car, you realize how many "nooks and crannies"
there are to clean, and how deeply grime settles into vinyl, pleather,
and whater that fuzzy stuff is they make the seats and rugs out of.
(Now, what is a "cranny"? To me it sounds like it has something to
do with a festish porn site that caters to a very particular taste.)
So now I realize that I may have to take it into a professional car
cleaning place, when I have the money. (You know how someone invented
those irritaitngly clever "round tuit" things? Those circles of felt
or whatever that say "tuit" on them, so when someone says "When I
get around to it", you can pretend you heard "when I get a round tuit",
and give them your round tuit? I wish someone would manufacture something
like that that says "the money". Then I when I say "when I get the
money", someone could give me their "the money", and we could both
have a good chuckle.)
So, when you sell your car, and replace it with a
different used car, what do you tell people? What
do you call that car? You can't say "I just got a
new car", cuz this society makes such whooppee out
of the difference between a new car
and a used car. You can't say "I
just got another car", cuz then it sounds like you
still have your previous car. So, like, "I just switched
cars?" No. "I just replaced my car. With another used
car. I don't want to talk about it." Yeah, I like
that one.
3 May, 2005
Lisa and I watched Cube
Zero tonight. It was awesome. I love the Cube
series. The first one was so Canadian in its pensive existentialism,
its lack of cleavage-without-nudity, its focus on the problem at hand.
Cube Zero takes the viewer outside of the cube, or so it seems at
first. The DVD has a trailer for Saw,
which isn't surprising, as that film is like Cube meets Seven.
I like the adjective one web-writer wrote about Cube Zero: "retro-tech".
It's a style very much present in Terry Gilliam's work, Brazil
and 12
Monkeys. In Cube Zero, I especially liked the retro-tech "Mr.
Thingy" (see Gary Larson's "Far Side" cartoon) device they use to
interrogate a guy. One thing that pissed me off about Cube Zero, though,
was that the characters say "zee" instead of "zed". Ugh.
So, soon I hope to construct the "screen house" my
mother gave me. It's one of those tenty things that
you put a picnic table under, and the walls are all
screen to let breeze and light through, but not bugs.
I plan to peg it down in the back yard and put my
laundry drying rack underneath it. Yay for energy
conservation!
I rode my bike on the pedestrian bridge that runs
underneath the LRT bridge for the first time today.
Those spirally ramps at each end are mondo fun on
a bike.
I generally hate television. It annoys me. Seriously.
I'm not trying to be all elitist and esoteric here.
I usually get irritated and walk away in disgust.
But you know what I like? Early "Law & Order". It's
just all work, the whole show. People working at their
jobs. That's it. Each episode is like a documentary.
There's no sex, no flashy violence, no romance, or
inter-character drama. Just cops investigating and
lawyers lawyering. Lisa and I have an argument. You
see, the show has a very regular formula. The first
half is the detectives investigating, then the second
half is the District Attorney and his assistant trying
to prosecute the offender. So Lisa says that the detectives
in the show are the "Law", and the lawyers are the
"Order". I say that she just thinks that because that's
the order of the words in the show's title. Clearly,
the cops are providing the "Order" by being out on
the street keeping people in line, and the LAWyers
are the "Law" by being in a court of LAW, interpreting
the LAW, researching past interpretations of the LAW,
and pointing out that the defendent has broken the
LAW. Lisa says that the lawyers provide the "Order"
because of the phrase "order in the court" and the
detectives provide the "Law" because when people see
cops they say "Uh-oh, here comes the law". I think
that's a weak argument. Tell
me what you think.
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