Recommended Reading: Donald Barthelme's "The Balloon"

Barthelme is a master of rearranging particular symbols and conditions to create new feelings. This story describes what it is like to live in a city and participate in a mass movement, while expressing and comforting a whole range of fears about both.

It starts: "The balloon, beginning at a point on Fourteenth Street, the exact location of which I cannot reveal, expanded northward all one night, while people were sleeping, until it reached the Park. There, I stopped it; at dawn the northernmost edges lay over the Plaza; the free-hanging motion was frivolous and gentle."

The rest is here:
http://amb.cult.bg/american/5/barthelme/balloon.htm

There are more of his stories here:
http://www.eskimo.com/~jessamyn/barth/

All of his work is incredible. Some other favorites:
"Shower of Gold": http://www.eskimo.com/~jessamyn/barth/gold.html
"The Dolt": http://www.eskimo.com/~jessamyn/barth/dolt.html
"The Great Hug" (also about balloons): http://www.eskimo.com/~jessamyn/barth/greathug.html

Peacefulness

Tonight I saw Acid Mothers Temple. Today I read and napped a lot. I feel all spacey and whatever.

Listen to this Debussy. It has this wonderful pull. It's heartbreakingly beautiful.

DEMF 09

Ohhh boy am I excited for DEMF 09. Check out the link for the full list. http://www.myspace.com/detroitmusicfest
The best place to hear techno music is Hart Plaza, outdoors surrounded by concrete and water.

I love this festival. I've gone every year that it's existed except for 2000 (too young) and 2005 (the year it stopped being free).

This year I am going to use the power of YouTube to listen to every artist in the lineup beforehand so I know what to see. This is the project: I will post a video or two with short reviews every once in a while. The goal is post them all by May 23 when the festival starts.

I'm gonna start with what I'm listening to right now, and it happens to be the first on the list, alphabetically. Cause that's how i like to do it.

Adam Beyer - Stereotypes: This is pretty solid, normal techno. It's got some pretty awesome noises coming from different directions. It's... squishy and punchy at the same time. It's got a solid beat, I could definitely dance to it, but it is very very normal. I might be bored at a set by this guy. Yet definetly very enjoyable. Have a listen:



It would be boring as fuck to move alphabetically through the whole list, but what the hell, gotta start somewhere.

Adultnapper - Oedipa E: This is a bit more my speed. It sounds newer too, nice modern minimal techno. It's got a killer beat. I had this on earlier and just got lost in the zone to it. Haha just zoned out to it again. It's really minimal. Sweeet.


OK Third times a charm! Looks like AFRIKA BAMBAATAA is third on the list. I really need to say nothing about this group. Pioneers. Geniuses. Just... listen to them. Be excited.


Well, three down, 67+ to go. Good night.

Jesus has risen

Today, Easter, I began a short but intense journey in to the heart of Hamlet for my last essay of undergrad. It's been a lot like other first days of essay writing - full of procrastination, a little bit of reading, and solidifying the general idea of the essay. In honor of Christ's resurrection, I have decided to base my essay on an idea in the works of Walter Benjamin and Jaques Derrida that Hamlet has something to do with Christ. For Benjamin, Hamlet is specifically not like the Imitatio Christi of Church doctrine, but is messianic in the Jewish sense - he will bring peace to the world (presumably through this acts of contemplation and negotiation of the acts of God). Derrida's whole concept is about inheritance - of life, morals, etc. It's all half baked at this point.

My actual pre-occupation today was watching videos on the internet. This new country gem relates to my blog post from yesterday:

"Save" Detroit?

This is week-old news, but I'd like to comment on President Obama's takeover of GM that's supposed to save Detroit. As anyone from the area will tell you, it's too little, too late. Sure, there are still some plants around the city, but the reality is that most plants have been rotting for years. If anything is going to save Detroit, it's stimulus dollars going to desperately needed infrastructure, an underfunded police force and school system, and subsidies for local business outside of the narrow scope of GM and Chrysler. Take a walk around the city of Detroit and you will see for yourself that the current recession is small beans compared to what the city has been through since the '67 riots (a friend of mine has a great ironic poster of the burning streets of Detroit with the floating head of Lyndon Johnson and a caption reading "THE GREAT SOCIETY"). The argument over the state of the auto industry is indicative of the small minded debate in the Washington-centric news media that can't get over scrutinizing every action of the Obama administration and none of anyone else's. Here's a song written in 1998 that truly describes my generation's feeling toward the "Detroit Three":

Places

It's a funny thing to consider, but all the places that I grew up in are slowly disappearing. My mom's parents both died this week and it occurred to me that their passing meant the passing of their home too. I realized that sitting shiva in this house might be my last experience of it. Soon all the books will be taken off the shelves, the refrigerator will be emptied, and the art and furniture will be removed. What isn't claimed by descendants will be sold off. The owners are not coming back for their property. I always felt a connection to that house and I feel panicky at the thought of losing it so soon after losing it's inhabitants, who were themselves an incredibly powerful force in my life. My last memory of bonding with my grandfather was this past January. My grandmother was in the hospital and the two of us went back to their house, stopping along the way for the necessary ingredients of pasta and salad. He showed me the precise ways to make salad dressing (oil, vinegar, mustard, and splenda) and his personal pasta sauce (a very slight amount of olive oil in the pan, red pepper, onions, mushrooms, store-bought tomato sauce, smoked paprika). Cooking was a passion for him, but it was also similar to his work in medicine: well thought out, methodically executed, and carefully timed. In fact many of his recipes included exact numbers of things that I never thought to try to remember. But I realized, slicing bagels and making coffee on that same counter a few days after his death, that not only would I never cook with him again, but it would soon be that I would never see the place that he cooked again. This place will soon become a distant memory. I miss him, and my grandma. I miss them really bad. They're the first loved-ones I've ever lost. Their magical home is all that remains and I can feel it slipping away.

Rubgy Shots

As I get ready to do some work for the upcoming Varsity Magazine, I thought I'd finally upload some web versions of the rugby series I did for the last one.

This is the shot that ran on the cover (we flipped it so it could be a wrap-around)


This one didn't make it into the issue, but ultimately I consider it my favorite.

This one was severely cropped and used to fill space in the spill/advertising section.
This ran with the article itself ("In Pursuit of Common Goals: why sports could be the answer" by Sara Quinn)