so my friend, "r," sends me this cryptic email today--no subject, no message, nothing--except this link.

apparently, he's had a blog for almost a year and a half and he's never told me about it. you'd think i wouldn't be so shocked since it's only a blog, but i have memories of telling him in the past about how he should keep one. now i know that he finally decided to do so in cyber-silence. it's strange to read posts that he wrote a year ago. it's like peering into his private thoughts that he never shared in public. it makes me a bit giddy and shy. god knows what he'll think reading me reading him (sounds like some song lyric from an 80's song).

reading my friends' blogs has always been a bit weird for me. for some people i know who live far away, i've been able to know their lives on the daily through the little snippets they throw out into cyberlandia. it would sometimes skew my memory when i see these friends in person again, because i wouldn't quite know if certain things in their lives were things they told me directly, or indirectly. i'd have to incorporate certain phrases in our conversations like, "oh, yeah. i remember when that happened to you. i read that!"

lately, since r's moved out of the country, i thought maybe he'd want to join an online community like friendster or myspace to keep in touch but, he'd always give me some iffy answer like, "we'll see." well, now i saw. maybe he's wanted to keep his cyber-life private and anonymous, which is what the blogosphere can offer you. i just wonder why now he's decided to reveal this cyberlife to me.

it's like he flashed me with his private hypertext.

should i avert my eyes?

Labels: so.i.found.this.on.the.web

it's bush's weapons of media distraction!

unfortunately, i was quite taken by the thrills of crude photoshop work.

i think the american public is supposed to be running and ducking (no pun intended) for cover from pigeons that sneeze on you while it hopefully waits for a new supreme court justice. i kind of miss the original weaponry of distraction. if only there were calls for stockpiling duct tape and saran wrap, again. biological terrorism (brought on by your average, white, anti-government, militiaman from the midwest) seems like a more plausible threat than having fear of a snotty-beaked chicken.


cuz there's nothing else going on in the world. libby who?

like a war...
like the next apprentice for martha stewart...
like newer accounts of prisoner abuse by the US military...
like brangelina (that's brad pitt + angelina jolie for those of you who never crack open a decent newspaper).

seriously, i just want to know if soon-yi calls woody "big daddy" or if he serenades her with george michael's "father figure."

all the other crap in the news these days just makes me dizzy. this inquiring mind, just wants to go (to sleep).

Labels: political bitchings

call me skeptical, biased, paranoid, whatever, but the senate democrats' decision to finally do ANYTHING about this outrageously renegade administration and their illegal war is just their attempt to somehow reserve a space in the american public's short term memory banks for the 2006 elections. it's fascinating how they call their closed door session a "protest."

you mean, they waited until the year 2005, after 2000 US soldiers and 100K+ Iraqis have died to have anything to protest about? you mean it wasn't until now that they figured it was bogus "evidence" used by the bush administration to piece together a sorry-ass reason to go to war two years ago? the dems smelled the bullshit two years ago. they've known it all along, but they had to wait until they had polls showing how a majority of the american population doesn't support the war. they had to wait until the 2004 elections blew over, where they could just battle the republicans over "cultural war" issues that were safe for election year politics. they had to wait for the waves of discontent with the administration brought on by the katrina tragedy. they had to wait until they were ready to play with the archaic notion of "leadership." wait... wait... wait... for the safest wave to finally let it rip.

it baffles me. so, this is what it means to "lead" a country. this country was in dire need of sane and humane leadership since 9/11. the democrats just laid over like roadkill while republican cars repeatedly flattened them to the pavement after the 2000 elections. what sorry squirrels. sorry, squirrels (for the demeaning comparison).

... and i used to be a democrat when i was younger.

it will be interesting to see how the "drama" will unfold with the non-partisan committee (wow. how thrilling!) investigating the "intelligence" findings (we'll be looking hard for a suitable IQ, here) used by the war-hungry bushites. I'm sure the democratic senators are going to have a brief day in the sun in their off-broadway performance of, "we have balls! the musical." though i'm a sucker for musical theatre--as are all REAL men and women, biological and self-identified (right, "r2"?)--i doubt i'll be indulging in any sing-alongs with these musical thespians.

Labels: political bitchings

today, i planned a family outing with my folks where i took them to a "laboratory" performance arts show that showcased works in various stages. the cost? 15 clams a piece. the real value of the show? i want my money back. i had gone to this annual showcase before in the past, and i expected to see some interesting and provocative stuff. but, those terms are always interpreted differently by different people, aren't they?

the showcase was set up to be a carnival, with the artists stationed at various corners of the theatre space at their respective carnival "booths." the most fun my parents and i had was probably when they a) ate a modest soft-shelled taco with beans and rice and b) threw tennis balls at pillow effigies of the bush administration. a friend i knew was doing trapeze work, but his routine was lost in the chaotic distraction of all the other mediocre exhibits.

in one corner, a pit bull dog owner was encaged in a dog carrier case, while the pit bull was held on leash outside the carrier, being tormented into barking incessantly by light reflected off a mirror. all this was done behind boxes that spelled out, "beware." of what? stupid human tricks?

my mom kept trying to interact with another artist sitting nude atop of a mound of granulated sugar while he created a white paste to smear all over himself. my mom kept asking him, "what's going on? are you okay?" she even tried to offer him her carnival raffle tickets. perhaps, so he can enjoy himself, since she wasn't.

one of the ringleaders of the carnival was decked out as a cigarette and candy girl. she asked me to pick out an item from her box labelled, "cigarettes, candy, stories." she said, "pick an item, and i'll tell you a story about that item." i picked an onion dicer gadget. her story, so un-eloquently told went like this:

"uh... i got that at a 99 cent store, thinking i would save like $18.99 by getting it. but... i didn't." -scene-

my dad then offered to sell her a story for a dollar. ouch.

then, there was a puppet show against the war. the puppeteers started running around the audience with the puppets singing, "stop, children. what's that sound? everybody look what's going down." in an attempt to "engage the audience," one of the puppeteers tried to sing right up to my mother. when he sang, "everybody look what's going down," she pointed to his foot and said, "down there?"

what really annoyed me about the show was that there was this expectation to accept everyone's well-intentioned "art pieces" to be taken as something deep and meaningful. none of the pieces really communicated anything really thought-provoking or new beyond what may have been new and interesting to the performers and their performance art buddies. was the show only intended to be seen by readers of baudrillard who get off on the spectacle of the spectacle? there is no tasaday... and there certainly is no reason to be putting on performance "art" pieces that don't engage anyone beyond the world of isolated academia and pseudo-intellectualism.

I guess the disclaimer on the show's flyer should have been a warning to segregate who should've gone to this mess in the first place. it states: "For mature audiences only. (Of very articulate, forward thinking parents whose children probably belong in a carnival sideshow anyway.") who knows? perhaps, if my family all consisted of graduate students in performance art theory, we would've "gotten" this shit. but, we aren't. we're just $45 dollars poorer.