i am rotating, around and in. and and and “barbarella is my favorite movie,” she said; that time we rented it from kim’s in the village and the vhs was awful quality and and and then we went to the bar, the one where they wouldn’t serve me shots; that one next to where bering strait was practicing in the basement, with sam on drums. and and and we watched it in my apartment, she said. watched it and you were a huge asshole; you were such an ass; i can’t believe we ever went out. and that was the night you treated me like i was a porn star and i cried after, she said. and i think and then, and then, that same year, when andru played the same song in sticky rice, up on the top floor when we dj-ed as bill&ted, the strobe lights flashing on shitty turntables; french house from 1999, that was the same song; he played the same song that we heard in kim’s that time and it all comes rushing in like a tide in fast-forward. and that is the song; that is it. that and and and that is it; so perfectly timestamped, dated, to that year, those times; i can see it all in front of me when that song comes on; you, sticky rice, andru, strobes, shitty sex. good job. good job, that is what this song is to me and no matter how i try and rewire my memories, my own memories, that’s what comes out, like a bad slot machine.

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April sent this to me the other day and said she couldn’t stop watching it. I didn’t believe it til I watched it. When I have time and can remake a movie, some sort of insane period piece, almost like Romeo-Juliet as “West Side Story,” this is where I will come.

I just looked up the plot on imdb, since netflix doesn’t seem to have it, but wikipedia does a better job:

Corey Haim plays Griffin, a rollerblader in the not so distant future of Los Angeles which is in a sad state, the city deep in crime and drug activity in the wake of a catastrophic nation-wide economic crash caused by the previous generation. A rollerblade-wearing white supremacist youth gang named the Rollerboys fight for spiritual and economic control of the city, the fascist group founded and led by a childhood neighbour of Griffin’s. The Rollerboys carry out their eugenic agenda through both violent gun battles with ethnic gangs, and especially through their distribution of the drug “mist”. When Griffin’s little brother begins to idolise the Rollerboys and eventually starts abusing mist, Griffin is convinced by the police chief and an undercover cop (played by Patricia Arquette) to join up with the Rollerboys as a mole, in exchange for the promise of a better life for his brother. Having joined up, Griffin’s loyalties to the gang are eventually called into question and he is tricked into beating his African-American friend almost to death. He also discovers that the Rollerboy’s mantra “the day of the Rope is coming” actually refers to a toxic chemical “Rope” being added to the mist drug which renders its (mostly non-Caucasian) abusers sterile, thus facilitating the fascist gang’s genocidal goal.

Corey Haim. Distopian future. LA. Drugs. White supremacists. And rollerblades.

They should have just called this “Gleaming the Cube 2.”
Oh yes, this movie has it all.

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One of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets. Because I haven’t posted in forever, and what better time than now to rock out?

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In a potty emergency, most five-year-olds say something like “I’ve got to pee!” Mine? Mine says, “I can’t hold my liquid!”

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From a reddit thread:

• If you watch the movie ‘Jaws’ backwards, it’s a movie about a shark that keeps throwing up people until they have to open a beach. (also, short video almost proving the point)
• If you watch Jeopardy! backwards, it’s a show about rich people paying money for answers to stupid questions.
• Beverly Hillbillies backwards: Rich family loses everything, goes to live in a shack in the hills and ends up chasing a oily creature back into the ground with his shotgun.
• If you watch Heroes backwards you realise that it’s been getting progressively better over time.
• If you watch Rambo backwards, it’s Sylvester Stallone healing people with his magical bullet vacuum.
• If you watch Scarface backwards, it’s about a man who gives up cocaine and crime to follow his dream of becoming a dishwasher to earn enough money so he can visit Cuba.
• If you watch Fight Club backwards, you see Ed Norton turn from a crazy streetperson into a successful productive member of society.
• If you watch American History X backwards, you see Ed Norton turn from a successful productive member of society into a crazy streetperson.
• If you watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy backwards, it’s a saga about a little guy who gets a cool ring from a volcano and spends the rest of the films walking home.

Update: it’s going around this morning. Via Waxy, here is the same thing for videogames, plus a mention for Superman: A guy who flies around, putting people into precarious situations, then hiding.

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I signed the contract to stay for a third year last week. Staying one more will allow me to see the students who came in the same year I did graduate; it’s an opportunity to see a full educational cycle from beginning to end. My studies, my personal connections with these kids, my growing comfort with life here–everything seems to emphasize that staying is the right thing to do.

Still, the job itself is no challenge, not anymore, not really. And if I’m going to put in another year, I’m going to need a challenge. So I’ve decided to take learning Japanese completely seriously this year. I have low intermediate proficiency, but I still feel barely literate most of the time. I want competency. Competency, according to all the truly fluent foreigners, can take years and years.

And so, in the spirit of hell-for-leather, needing-a-challenge endeavor, I’ve gone full immersion. I’ve gotten rid of all English books, movies and music. I’ve started taking my research notes in Japanese. I’ve purchased a monolingual dictionary. It’s not exactly cold turkey; I still conduct conversation classes and communicate with friends and family back home in English. But it’s damn near close. I’ve ramped up the study, and cut off the flow of escapism. I’ve got one year left in this country. I’m going to throw everything I’ve got at this language and see how far I can get.

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still stuck in the weird flux of in-between.  does wanting to move forward really make me an asshole?

in the last month i’ve felt like i’ve been finding myself again.  in that though i’ve discovered a great disappointment in myself – where did i go?  where DO i go?  will it always be in my nature to acquiesce, and not realize i am doing it until later?  the bitterness and resentment build up and i don’t realize they’re even there until i feel the acidity of the pit in my stomach clashing with the feeling of freedom and flight i get from doing things that make only me happy.  talk about a mixed bag.

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