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featuringthecreature · 4 years ago

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The Best and Worst Things About Each MCU Movie

These are all just my stinky opinions. You are allowed to disagree, you are allowed to agree. Most of these are jokes anyway. I’m honestly just happy you’re reading this. Minor Spoilers Ahead!

Iron Man (2008) -

Best: This movie almost perfectly sets the tone for the entire universe that has at that point yet to have been created. Looking back, you can imagine the feeling of “Where are they going to go from here?” and I think that’s one of the most important things that this movie needed to accomplish.

Worst: What the fuck is Jeff Bridges doing? What’s his endgame here? I get he’s trying to take over Stark Industries but how’s he gonna do that from inside that giant metal suit he uses to kill people inside their cars?

Incredible Hulk (2008) -

Best: Tim Roth is in it and I think that is pretty cool.

Worst: I haven’t actually seen it, but the cgi looks god awful, what the hell.

Iron Man 2 (2010) -

Best: Sam Rockwell is so goddamn annoying in this movie and I think that’s amazing, he’s such a little stinker.

Worst: I remember basically nothing else about this movie except some guy talking about birds, idk.

Thor (2011) -

Best: It introduces Loki, probably one of the most beloved villains in the entire franchise.

Worst: This movie is so goddamn boring and it’s my least favorite and I hate it. Don’t @ me.

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) -

Best: The first good chunk of this movie is actually a really compelling character study on Steve Rogers and what makes him a good man. Seeing him basically being paraded as this propaganda figure and watching him struggle with this is one of the most compelling things about him as a person. Really wish they kept this up for the entire movie.

Worst: The red skull is really boring guys. He’s red, that’s it. Give me something else to work with man.

Marvel’s The Avengers (2012) -

Best: This movie proved that you can have a superhero team up with this many people and have it fucking work. It doesn’t matter if you hate or love this movie, you cannot deny the effects it has on the genre.

Worst: It’s shot like a bad CW show. It looks so ugly.

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Best: This one is actually my favorite of the bunch. Exploring the question of what makes Iron Man, the suit or the person, is shown really well here. I thoroughly dig it.

Worst: That scene where Harley flip flops about whether or not he really knows Tony makes me so irrationally angry.

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Best: It’s slightly better than Thor, and I actually can feel myself start to have a good time whenever Loki’s on screen.

Worst: Once again, this movie is insanely forgettable. Christopher fucking Eccleston is in this movie and I could not tell you a single thing about this character.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) -

Best: This movie has one of the best hand-to-hand fight scenes in the entire MCU. You know the one I’m talking about. It gives me chills, I love it.

Worst: Having the government stand-in that Steve questions in the beginning of the movie actually be a front for N*zis that he can just beat up, and not an actual metaphor for the issues with the government today? You ain’t slick.

Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 1 (2014) -

Best: This is the mcu movie basically anyone can enjoy. Anybody can watch this movie and find something to love about it. The characters, the messages about family and learning to be okay with feeling love, the jokes, hell, even the space setting. THE MUSIC. It’s the full package baby.

Worst: Chris Pratt has an unfortunate cameo in this one.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) -

Best: I have a couple of things. A) The party scene where we get to watch the Avengers talk and be friends with each other and act like people. B) I love James Spader no matter what he is doing.

Worst: Why is everyone quipping? Why is the robot quipping? Why would they massacre my boy like that?

Ant-man (2015) -

Best: I want Paul Rudd to marry me, best dad in the mcu.

Worst: The moment Edgar Wright left this project.

Captain America: Civil War (2016) -

Best: Introduces two great characters, Spider-man and Black Panther. These two get a lot of love when it comes to designing their characters in this movie and it makes me very happy.

Worst: It made the fandom very unhappy and I don’t like picking sides. It feels like watching your many parents get divorced for two hours.

Doctor Strange (2016) -

Best: The magic looks really fucking cool in this movie. Also, the ending with Dormammu is up there for one of my favorite endings of an mcu movie. Having Doctor Strange actually outsmart the villain instead of actually fighting him is endlessly more satisfying.

Worst: Could not tell you a thing else about this movie other than I heard Tilda Swinton plays a character that’s probably not supposed to be white.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) -

Best: Guys, I gotta come clean about something. I actually like this one better than Volume 1. I know, I know, a good majority of people do not feel this way, but I feel a lot more emotionally attached to the movie, and that’s mainly because of two characters: Yondu Udonta and Rocket Racoon. Rocket realizing that he’s an asshole but his found family still loves him gets me, man. I can’t help it. Helps that Ego is a great villain as well. Also the cinematography is some of the best in the mcu.

Worst: No Howard the Duck.

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) -

Best: I think the best thing about this movie is just the solidness of it all. No one part stands out as the best because most everything about this movie is pretty damn good. Michael Keaton will knock your socks off, go watch it.

Worst: Donald Glover is in it to tease a Miles Morales reveal, BUT NOTHING HAS HAPPENED ABOUT IT SINCE.

Thor: Ragnarok (2017) -

Best: Taika Waititi knows how to do shit right, lemme tell ya. Taking away Thor’s hammer from the beginning was probably one of the smartest choices in the movie, and this is a movie of smart choices.

Worst: Jeff Goldblum isn’t in it more.

Black Panther (2018) -

Best: Erik Killmonger is easily the best villain in a Marvel movie, and you can quote me on that. An amazing performance from Michael B. Jordan. It’s also the first Marvel movie I saw in theatres (I know, I was very late to the game)

Worst: Everett K. Ross is CIA propaganda and the last fight scene on the train tracks looks like shit.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) -

Best: It’s really hard to sum up exactly what my thoughts are on this movie. I think one of the movie’s best qualities is the bigness of it. This movie feels huge, there’s a lot of different stuff to love here. If you like Wakanda, there’s a whole epic battle set in Wakanda. If you’re more a fan of the space stuff, we got a whole lotta space stuff. The best part of this movie is there’s probably gonna be something that everyone can enjoy packed in here.

Worst: I also think the bigness of this movie is also one of it’s larger weaknesses. Because there’s so much stuff in this movie, not all of it is fully fleshed out. Tony Stark gets a lot to do in this movie, but Steve Rogers sort of feels sidelined at parts. There’s a perfect balance that I don’t think was quite hit.

Ant-man and The Wasp (2018) -

Best: I still really love Paul Rudd in this movie, and I think his relationship with Cassie is still really cute. World’s Greatest Grandma indeed.

Worst: This movie really had its work cut out for itself, coming off the heels of Infinity War, so it sort of falls short in that respect. I don’t want to criticize it too harshly, it is what it is, nothing insanely memorable.

Captain Marvel (2019) -

Best: I still think this is a pretty good movie, despite what a lot of people think. I struggle a lot with believing that I have to prove myself to others, so having Carol finally realize that she doesn’t have anything to prove to anyone was really important to me, and probably a lot of other women.

Worst: There were parts where I wasn’t as engaged, like the scenes in the Kree empire. That made some of the movie feel off to me, it’s a bit unbalanced.

Avengers: Endgame (2019) -

Best: This movie 100% achieves what it sets out to do, and that is to be a huge cinematic event. I don’t even really see this movie as a movie, it’s more like one huge experience. My viewing had one of the most energetic crowds I’ve ever seen a movie with.

Worst: I don’t really think this movie holds up to multiple re-watches. Granted, I saw it in theatres three times. I don’t think any subsequent viewings are ever going to pack that same punch that my first viewing had, and that makes it harder to come back to. Also Steve had a totally lame ending.

Spider-man: Far From Home (2019) -

Best: After ending on such a downer note in the last movie, this felt like a weight being lifted off my chest. Jake Gyllenhaal gives an insanely energetic performance that I absolutely adore. (Also seeing it with my dad was fun, he would nudge me every time they switched locations to tell me he’d been there)(Also when I saw it with my sibling a kid ran out of the theatre during the Mysterio mind-fuck sequence, some just can’t handle that lifestyle)

Worst: Peter Parker and MJ remind me of how perpetually single I am.

#movie review #minor spoilers #mcu #marvel #marvel review

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theteenage-dream · 3 years ago

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Bored? Want some Tea? Here:

I just found out my "best friend" of 8+ years got a matching tattoo with her best friend...what the fuck. Let's call her G, well G turned 18 in May and my birthday isn't until the end of this month. We told each other we'd wait for each other so we can get it together...she didn't even tell me right away. The other girl, uhh S drove her (she's 18) and they got Kuromi and MyMelody. G told me 3-4 days afterwards only because she was buzzing with excitement (from what I could tell in her methods of texting). The worst part is that S is the girl she abandoned me for in 5th grade. She never called me her best friend and when people would ask I'd say it and she'd deny it. But G was never so quiet about S. I'm jealous because S is like me but more bold and loud. That's pretty much it. And it makes me sad because now people think I'm trying to be like her.

Fun fact: G once spent the weekend over at my house and actually spent more than 3 hours talking on the phone with S...and worse yet, she didn't want me to hear the convo so she locked herself in my restroom. I mean, I took this time to purge my food out but what the fuck. Who does that? She's always done shit like this and never shows me kindness and is hardly there for me when I put so much effort and love into our relationship. I can't even cut her off because I feel bad for her and don't want her to be alone. But I just think I'm also incapable of doing it because I know how well she'd do without me. She'd make a scene and cry to everybody saying I cut her off for no reason and then get their sympathy and have more fun without me in her life. She's done something similar before. I've told her so many things...deep secrets. Although, not the worst ones nor many. Well I did tell her a LOOOOT but I like to sacrifice the less important stuff and "overshare" so that people never suspect you're actually hiding so much inside. Ugh, I'd always share to try and get her to open up and trust me but she never did. I understand it's hard for her to talk it is for me too! But I'm actively trying to become a better person. That's the difference. But I could never really trust her either. It makes me sad. She never shows me off, gives gifts (besides sometimes on holidays b/c I'm a big gift giver), does favors for me, tells me words of endearment, or spends time with me. She would never say I'm her bsf unless she says "bestie" in a sentence. She isn't as fortunate as I am in money (although my family's broke rn haha) but I always put her needs before mine and she could just give random rocks or flowers she finds on the ground. But she doesn't. Not even a little piece of paper with a smiley face on it or anything. I'd do that all the time. I always try to make sure she knows I'm there for her and say words of affirmation all the time. She'd just roll her eyes or say "ew" "playfully". But at least she knew. I tried to be affectionate and she craves physical touch but yet, she couldn't accept it. So I understood but made it very clear I wouldn't mind holding her hand or hugging her or wtv. And sometimes we did hold hands. But she'd always complain about craving physical touch and I'd just look at her like "hello what did I say? I'm here for you dude". She would also never really do anything for me. Sure she did small favors like plug in something for me but otherwise she didn't even help me turn light switches off when I was using crutches. SHE'D WATCH ME LIMP TO RETRIEVE THINGS LIKE BRO. Sure she had her nice moments but there were a lot more moments where she wasn't so nice.

But maybe well maybe she didn't tell me about her tattoo b/c I never respond (i struggle with depression and social anxiety so I get scared to respond to texts) (i was also sick when she got it). But she could've. She never texts me first :(. I always have to text her and she never checks on me and I randomly make sure she's alive and at least trying to stay hydrated. Holy crap...she never texts me first. I'm starting to realize a lot more things. OH and she wouldn't really try to do stuff together unless it benefited her. Like when she was home alone or stuck babysitting her lil sis, she'd ask if we wanted to hang out and ofc I said yes (unless I was unable). Or like, since my parents are strict, she wouldn't even try to ask me and one time, S picked up G and then asked me if I wanted to go to Sonic with them and I asked my parents and they said yes. We had fun together but I felt like the 3rd wheel. Oh also btw S is dating my ex boyfriend that I had to break up with because my depression was getting severe because I realized I had been raped by another guy. I love him (S's boyfriend not-) but he always had a thing for S. And it hurts me so much, but as long as he's happy...that's all I want for him. Even if it can't be with me... anyways G told S she doesn't ever try to invite me anymore since it's likely my parents'll say no. But like...i could at least try. It's always good to invite someone even if you know they can't or are busy. It's just basic etiquette. She was very two-faced as well. She'd talk behind my back and betray me easily. She'd spill my secrets to S because she wasn't loyal to me and I was...one time, she started hanging out with someone dangerous. Someone who spreads rumors and purposely causes drama. So I warned her about it and she told the girl. I ended up getting into a talk with the other girl. She came up to me "Can I talk to you?". I so should've said no. I will now. I'm growing. I'm learning how to not be duch a doormat and that saying no is my right. It's just really hard when those people try to beat you down because of it. But that was it. G was the closest thing I had to a "best friend". I'm always everyone's last choice. I'm not anyone's favorite or preferred friend. I'm the forgettable one in the group. I'm not special. I really just want to die. I'm all alone. Perpetually alone. I'm not perfect, and I'm fucked up too. But, I try to be the kindest for people. Because I don't want them to feel the way I do. I crave affection. I need validation from others. I care so much about what others think...

I like being alone but it gets tiresome when you've done it all your life ans have felt different from everyone. I think I'm a terrible person because I can't cut her off but want to do it to her before she does it to me so that it protects my dignity and because I have pride...well tbh it's more like if I do it first, I'm not being rejected so that I won't cry as much bevause someone doesn't like me. This post is getting long. There's more but it's 2:52AM. Oh and for those who wanna know, G is a Gemini and I'm a Virgo. S is a Sagittarius and her boyfriend is a Cancer. I miss him dearly. Well time to watch cheesy tween romance characters to fulfill that need.

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roaringgirl · 4 years ago

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Books read in January

I am keeping this as a little record for myself, as I already keep a list (my best new year’s resolution - begun Jan 2018) but don’t record my thoughts

General thoughts on this - I read a lot this month but it played into my worst tendencies to read very very fast and not reflect, something I’m particularly prone too with modern fiction. I just, so to speak, swallow it without thinking. First 5 or so entries apart, I did quite well in my usually miserably failed attempt to have my reading be at least half books by women.

1. John le Carré - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974): I liked this a lot! I sort of lost track of the Cold War and shall we say ethics-concerned parts of it and ended up reading a fair bit of it as an English comedy of manners - but I absolutely love all the bizarre rules about what is in bad taste (are these real? Did le Carré make them up?).

2. John le Carré - The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963): I liked this a lot less. It seemed at the same time wilfully opaque and entirely predictable. Have been thinking a lot about genre fiction - I love westerns and noir, so wonder if for me British genre fiction doesn’t quite scratch the same itch.

3. David Lodge - Ginger You’re Barmy (1962): This was fine. I don’t have much to say about it - I was interested in reading about National Service and a bit bogged down in a history of it so read a novel. As with most comic novels, it was perfectly readable but not very funny.

4. Dan Simmons - Song of Kali (1985): His first novel. This is quite enjoyable just for the amount of Grand Guignol gore, and also because I like to imagine it caused the Calcutta tourist board some consternation. Wildly structurally flawed, however. Best/worst quote: ‘Hearing Amrita speak was like being stroked by a firm but well-oiled palm.’ Continues in that vein.

5. Richard Vinen - National Service: A Generation in Uniform (2014): If you are interested in National Service, this is a good overview! If not, not.

6. Sarah Moss - Ghost Wall (2018): I absolutely loved this. About a camping trip trying to recreate Iron Age Britain. Just, very upsetting but so so good - a horror story where the horror is male violence and abuse within the (un)natural family unit.

7. Kate Grenville - A Room Made of Leaves (2020): Excellent idea, but not amazing execution - the style is kind of bland in that ‘ironed out in MFA workshops’ way (I have no idea if she did an MFA but that’s what it felt like). Rewriting the story of early Australian colonisation through the POV of John Macarthur’s wife Elizabeth.

8. Ruth Goodman - How to Be a Victorian (2013): I mostly read this for Terror fic reasons, if I’m honest. I skimmed a lot of it but she has a charming authorial voice and I really like that she covers the beginning of the period, not just post-1870.

9. Gary Shteyngart - Super Sad True Love Story (2010): I read this on a recommendation from Ms Poose after I asked for good fiction mostly concerned with the internet, and I thought it was excellent - it’s very exaggerated/non-realistic and that heightening of incident and affect works so well.

10. Brenda Wineapple - The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation (2019): What a great book. I had to keep putting it down because reading about Reconstruction always makes me so sad and frustrated with what might have been - the lost dream of a better world.

11. Halle Butler - The New Me (2019): Reading this while single, starting antidepressants and stuck in an office job that bores me to death but is too stable/undemanding to complain about maybe wasn’t a great decision, for me, emotionally.

12. Halle Butler - Jillian (2015): Ditto.

13. Ottessa Moshfegh - Death in Her Hands (2020): Very disappointed by this. I don’t really like meta-fiction unless it’s really something special and this wasn’t. Also, I’m stupid and really bad at reading, like, postmodern allegorical fiction I just never get it.

14. Andrea Lawlor - Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (2017): This was really really hot! I will admit I don’t think the reflections on gender, homophobia, AIDS etc are very deep or as revealing as some reviews made out, but I also don’t think they’re supposed to be? It’s a lot of fun and all of the characters in it are so precisely, fondly but meanly sketched.

15. Catherine Lacey - The Answers (2017): This was fine! Readable, enjoyable, but honestly it has not stuck with me. There are only so many sad girl dystopias you can read and I think I overdid it with them this month.

16. Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall (2010, reread): Was supposed to read the first 55 pages of this for my two-person book club, but I completely lack self-restraint so reread the whole thing in four days. Like, I love it I don’t really know what else to say. I was posing for years that ‘Oh, Mantel’s earlier novels are better, they’re such an interesting development of Muriel Spark and the problem of evil and farce’ blah blah blah but nope, this is great.

17. Oisin Fagan - Hostages (2016): Book of short stories that I disliked intensely, which disappointed me because I tore through Nobber in horrified fascination (his novel set in Ireland during the Black Death - which I really cannot recommend enough. It’s so intensely horrible but, like Mantel although in a completely different style/method, he has the trick of not taking the past on modern terms). A lot of this is sci-fi dystopia short stories which just aren’t... very good or well-sustained. BUT I did appreciate it because it is absolutely the opposite of pleasant, competently-written but forgettable MFA fiction.

18. Muriel Spark - Loitering with Intent (1981): Probably my least favourite Spark so far, but still good. I think the Ealing Comedy-esque elements of her style are most evident and most dated here. It just doesn’t have the same sentence-by-sentence sting as most of her work, and again I don’t like meta-fiction.

19. Hilary Mantel - Bring up the Bodies (2012, reread): Having (re)read all of these in about 3 months, I think this is probably my favourite of the three. I just love the way a whole world, whole centuries and centuries of history and society spiral out from every paragraph. And just stylistically, how perfect - every sentence is a cracker. I’m just perpetually in awe of Mantel as a prose stylist (although I dislike that everyone seems to write in the present tense now and blame her for it).

20. Muriel Spark - The Girls of Slender Means (1963, reread): (TW weight talk etc ) As always, Hilary Mantel sets me off on a Muriel Spark spree. I’ve read this too many times to say much about it other than that the denouement always makes me go... my hips definitely wouldn’t fit through that window. Maybe I should lose weight in case I have to crawl out of a bathroom window due to a fire caused by an unexploded bomb from WW2???? Which is a wild throwback to my mentality as a 16 year old.

21. China Mieville - Perdido Street Station (2000, reread): What a lot of fun. I know we don’t do steampunk anymore BUT I do like that he got in the whole economic and justice system of the early British Industrial Revolution and not just like steam engines. God, maybe I should read more sci-fi. Maybe I should reread the rest of this trilogy but that’s like 2000 pages. Maybe I should reread the City and the City because at least that’s short and ties exactly into my Disco Elysium obsession (the mod I downloaded to unlock all dialogue keeps breaking the game though. Is there a script online???)

22. Stephen King - Carrie (1974): I have a confession to make: I was supposed to teach this to one of my tutees and then just never read it, but to be honest we’re still doing basic reading comprehension anyway. That sounds mean but she’s very sweet and I love teaching her because she gets perceptibly less intimidated/critical of herself every lesson. ANYWAY I read half of this in the bath having just finished my period, which I think was perfect. It’s fun! Stephen King is fun! I don’t have anything deeper to say.

23. Hilary Mantel - Every Day is Mother’s Day (1985): You can def tell this is a first novel because it doesn’t quite crackle with the same demonic energy as like, An Experiment in Love or Beyond Black, but all the recurring themes are there. If it were by anyone else I’d be like good novel! But it’s not as good as her other novels.

24. Dominique Fortier - On the Proper Usage of Stars (2010): This was... perfectly competent. Kind of dull? It made me think of what I appreciate about Dan Simmons which is how viscerally unpleasant he makes being in the Navy seem generally, and man-hauling with scurvy specifically. This had the same problem with some other FE fiction which is that they’re mostly not willing to go wild and invent enough so the whole thing is kind of diffuse and under-characterised. Although I hated the invented plucky Victorian orphan who’s great at magnetism and taxonomy and read all ONE THOUSAND BOOKS or whatever on the ships before they got thawed out at Beechey (and then the plotline just went nowhere because they immediately all died???) I had to skim all his bits in irritation. I liked the books more than this makes it sound I was just like Mr Tuesday I hope you fall down a crevasse sooner rather than later.

25. Muriel Spark - The Abbess of Crewe (1974): Transposing Watergate to an English convent is quite funny, although it took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that’s what she was doing even though I lit read a book covering Watergate in detail in December. Muriel Spark is just so, so stylish I’m always consumed with envy. I think a lot of her books don’t quite hang together as books but sentence by sentence... they’re exquisite and incomparable.

Overall thoughts: This month was very indulgent since I basically just inhaled a lot of not challenging fiction. I need to enjoy myself less, so next month we’re finishing a biography of Napoleon, reading the Woman in White and finishing the Lesser Bohemians which currently I’m struggling with since it’s like nearly as impenetrable Joyce c. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man but, so far... well I hesitate to say bad since I think once I get into I’ll be into it but. Bad.

#book club

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maxtrickey · 5 years ago

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[[MORE]]

[ I constantly feel shit, ulcerative colitis makes me feel lazy when I'm chronically fatigued and it sucks that with all the effort I made with uni it's probably not going to end well with how much I've missed recently due to this flu and it affecting my stomach, state of the world doesn't inspire much hope either.

Medicine is going to be scarce if things go to shit but that doesn't effect everyone so no one really cares,

Ironically I've been making way less of the art I want to make at uni but that's down to objective assignment briefs, still doesn't feel great though and it doesn't help inspire me in terms I've what I've missed because it's a portfolio submission for a fuckin mobile game, but I make the best of it with trying to twist the themeing as much as I can to make it something i want (usually by making it spooky or fantasyesque)

Having a disability that people have legitimately told me "it could be worse" about, makes me feel insane.

I dont really talk about it but I'm still feeling what happened almost 3 years ago now and how little I must have meant, how forgettable and easy to erase I am. I'm nothing like i was i constantly have to distract myself or just dread seeps in. Aside from laughing I dont smile often anymore theres a really noticeable cutoff in pictures and I hadn't noticed which was funny so you can really pin point the trajectory of trauma

I also didnt realise I'd taken to leaving clothes and shit on one half of the bed that I was telling myself was laziness/ease of access when I wake up but I've taken to thinking it's the sleeping alone (i dont hate that, I enjoy being entirely alone sometimes, just not perpetually) sometimes I'll wake up with some change beside me on the bed and I laugh to myself that I've become a dragon just isolating myself with treasure

Fewer and fewer people deny that I'm like cosmically cursed now aswell going like:

emetophibia -> anxiety disorder from a young age -> saw my nans torturously slow death resultantly of multiple tumours when I probably should have not been in that hospital environment -> bullied relentlessly when I suddenly and mysteriously gained a fuckton of weight (linked to the undetectable spontaneous mutation thought to have occured that inexplicably gave me ulcerative colitis which wasnt documented in my family -> my my becomes an alcoholic just as I start secondary school according to her because of the crippling guilt she had from "killing her mother" which was her in reality making the decision to have her hospitalised and have a chance of beating the cancer rather than being in more pain -> I almost die when rushed to hospital for an undetectable unknown reason and am told I would have died if I was 10 minutes later to A&E (this is after the paramedic didnt want to take me because "he looks fine") => immediately have to sit my GCSES arguably the most import exams of my educational career after just leaving the hospital -> during all of this endure the emotional and psychological torture enduring and surviving an alcoholic parent who steals from you, lies and when numerous times you try to stage this little intervention on your own because you're so sure that it's up to you to save her because everyone else has given up only to be met with propositions of mutual suicide, just all really added up to make me feel worthless

Then it got better I found someone it was all great for a while, then my mum was found dead by police apparent liver failure as she was trying to actually stop drinking which is ironically what killed her, and 3 days later my girlfriend of 4 and a half years dumps me when shes over consoling me about it, it's honestly a farcical existence and probably very funny from an outside perspective, I've definitely laughed at the comic timing of every single thing that's happened in my life as it just (like me aswell I guess ahaha) mutates and amalgamates getting worse and worse with the passage of time

I haven't vented in a while and I just feel, not empty just like, spent? I'm optimistic, if also cynical and it's like something out of the blue kicks my allegorical ladder away from under me, and that ladder was teetering on top of previously scaled ladders

#personal #read more #my cosmic comical ladder climbing bonanza

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autonomousbosch · 6 years ago

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An Authentic City

The thought of meeting total strangers from online spaces has always seemed a uniquely terrifying prospect to me. Perhaps because of the anonymous culture in which I spent most of my time, social spaces have always had a speculative disconnection from reality, either due to pseudonymous or anonymous nature, that encouraged either a looser definition of reality or a heightened critical interpretation that suspends a great deal of ideas and concepts in a column full of at best dubiously accurate information. Reading things in a manner which holds that they may or may not be real forges a very bizarre scrutiny as welcome trade-off for allowing people to escape or at least make voluntary certain aspects of their existence. Even if something is lost in terms of identity, something is gained in the amount of new flexibility to experiment in ways that would otherwise be denied.

In most cases I think this is a healthy state of affairs, to take people seriously but maybe not literally. To care less about the physical form or immutable characteristics of the agent delivering information, or even ignore the ethical components in which some incongruence might cause a critical disconnect in a more physical space. To many people I think such a thing is a great liberation, to explore components of your character or interactions with other people that you could simply never have access to.

Such is definitely the case with me. There are certainly elements I do not feel privileged or afforded in person that, without online communication, would simply be lost to me. Downwind of this is a deep concern that perhaps I’ve established some ostentatious front, some unreal impostor doing all this communication with total strangers who at best I hope to call friends. It should go without saying that in many of these instances, all that people tend to have access to are handles, forming brands; social media effigies and facsimiles in place of the tangible, observable features of their personality.

Absolutely stricken with this fear, I set out to conquer it Friday morning at 9 AM, but actually it became 10 AM. It turns out I also needed to let the dogs out before leaving and had forgot about this, so 10:30 AM. From where I live, it’s two hours and some change to Charleston, South Carolina, where I am meeting the second Jewish person I have ever met.

Opening Up

The details of the trip there were largely forgettable, the usual exorcism of nervous energy through listening to powerviolence and biting my lips or blastbeating my hands on the steering wheel barreling down the interstate at 80 miles per hour. Managed to arrive a small little coffee shop right at two or so hours in Charleston, a city I’ve never actually spent a ton of time in as an adult. Cities are extremely large and noisy, very busy. The sheer number of bodies moving through, in and out of them confounds my want for a relative intimacy. There is a paralysis to it all, that the small stretch of land I know so deeply is taken from me and replaced with a paralysis brought about by an over-stimulation of sorts.

Somewhat still frightened at what things will be like, I walk in and have the sudden realization that we could not be more obvious as strangers demystifying some curious affect. There is a handshake, a smile, and a plea to go to the restroom. I shake some jitters off and greet Jay again (obviously Jay is not his name, but it’s his name for all intents and purposes). He offers me an espresso while I’m still in a quiet shock and of course I accept, I’ve never had an espresso before.

We sit down at a small wooden bar facing out to the road and begin the process, making small talk the way normal people would. Maybe? The circumstances certainly don’t feel normal, a bit more naked than that in a way. There are things I’ve only ever typed simply because there is no incentive to say them out loud. A great number of things it occurs to me, never before have I felt so silly constantly mispronouncing things I love to chit-chat about or analyze in pseudonymous spaces.

Jay’s demystification was also quite fun for me. I settled on wearing pineapple pants very much ahead of time just to make sure I was easily spot-able, on the other hand Jay was very obvious in a way that’s difficult to describe. Even down to the way he held his cigarette while smoking, it was obvious he wasn’t from around here.

We talked about our brothers and then about our families, when Jay told me about his parents and how his interest in psychoanalysis were no doubt cultured from youth. I think about epistemic lineage, how the things most people consider or think about have a highly cultured and traceable structure, and how this accounts for the lack of incentive to talk about anything deep or meaningful around my usual haunts, the places where I’m real.

I’m discovering, slowly albeit, how good it feels even though I must seem pretty silly about things. After noticing the ideas I share in common with Hannah Arendt, something Jay had inadvertently introduced me to less than a month earlier, we read pieces of The Human Condition (I believe it was) on Jay’s tablet.

Out comes a small wooden plank with a shotglass full of espresso and a small glass of water. I instantly reach for the espresso when Jay tells me that the water should go first. For cleansing the palate obviously!

Obviously, huh. Quietly I begin considering the depth of things that aren’t obvious to me. Jay is a very cosmopolitan person while the list of cities I’ve set foot in could probably fit as fingers on two hands. In fact, perhaps nothing could have articulated the contrast between two people quite so well. I’m very intensely self-aware of an unsophisticated classlessness that might seem like some sort of self-abasement to others but to me very much feels like just how things are. I do not travel, I do not read. I don’t really have much of an education to speak of. When I bring this up, people say that stuff doesn’t matter but this awareness is something that I don’t think is motivated by any kind of resentment, as I’m certainly not resentful of Jay. With a near immediacy I feel a deep sense of relief that I immediately love Jay. It’s just that there is an articulation I don’t feel like I have access to, a finite number on the experiences I will ever have to glean insight from or develop some kind of feeling on. An acknowledgement that at the root of humbleness is humility; a life lived in perpetual embarrassment at how much greater the world itself is than any singular person.

We go on about minutia and I feel so great finally getting all these words out of my mouth to smooth out the difference between whatever I am digitally and whatever I am physically.

Authenticity

We arrive at a southern BBQ joint in Mount Pleasant just outside of Charleston. I’m even less familiar generally with Mount Pleasant but that doesn’t really matter, the idea is that no visitor and much less a friend could leave the south without experiencing authentic southern barbecue.

In the American southeast, the only region that has truly figured it out, barbecue is pulled pork (sometimes pork shoulder, but best when it’s a whole hog), smoked and covered in a vinegar-based BBQ sauce which is, like all good things, created to taste. Being the lovely day that it was, I selfishly opted for us to sit outside. We roll over the menu and discuss beer and food, and in the process a waiter approaches us in one of the most puzzlingly aggressive manners I’ve seen in quite some time. It’s almost a caricature out of some film the way he stands, delivering the laurels of this restaurant as an imaginary photographer would zoom his imaginary camera directly onto his eyebrows, straightened with a purposed fury as he informs us that this place was rated the number 2 restaurant for southern cuisine in all the land.

We place our order for beer and food and our waiter scuttles away, after which I remark how bizarre it is for a genuine southern restaurant to have British staff, as clued in by his accent.

I tell Jay the same thing I’m writing now, that this is doubtful because authenticity itself is such a strange concept. For southern BBQ, it’s much more likely that the authentic thing would be had by a merchant with a portable smoker on the side of the road of any given main street. What I’ve discovered since is how much more I had to say about authenticity. What I couldn’t articulate then, the thing that struck me so odd about our waiter, wasn’t that I have no faith that a British chef could not produce authentic southern cuisine but that authenticity is dubious itself, something I feel much more intensely and immediacy as we talk.

I had been scared for days leading up to then that I have constructed some version of myself that is if not a lie to other people, than a certain smoothing of the reality of things. People message me for advice lifting and exercising when I’m still a pretty overweight guy, all things considered. Maybe they wouldn’t do such a thing if they saw me. People talk to me about firearms, things I’ve owned and been intimately aware of for perhaps three years now. People talk to me about all manner of things I would never interject into reality, because I have no real confident voice in basically any of it.

Online I am allowed a layer of sincerity and affection I simply don’t have access to in reality. In no way am I less interested in these things, in learning about people, in empathizing with them or engaging with them. There is no irony to it, no disinterest in the aesthetics I commit myself to. I love Jay because of the contrast between us, because Jay can help me articulate things in a way I never would’ve been able to; to pattern match the observations I’ve had on my own to the language the institution itself has. Even beyond this, Jay is a powerful ally in that even though my core convictions aren’t always able to articulate, he is perpetually at the ready to really understand me even if the things I’m saying are frivolous (they might be! they usually are!).

Just like me, I have zero doubt from the killing intent our waiter had that what he is doing is not done simply out of a coerced obligation. Just as I can confront this now, I can also confront the reality that there truly is no separation between different versions of me. I am no impostor keeping up a facade I’m uninterested in when finally given flesh.

Contrast

Jay is an exceptionally well-read person. Maybe he wouldn’t describe himself that way, but this is what you’re going to appear to people who are functionally not literate.

We set out on foot (people do this in cities right?) to a nearby coffee shop, on the way I enjoyed the ways in which Jay illuminated how much of the thoughts I had about serious things had some psychoanalytical phrasing or framing, a comforting revelation in a number of ways. It turns out that in many ways simply thinking something in solitude is agonizing, the chance to share them and, what’s more, discover a great well of corroboration is no small gift and, if even for the moment, I’m happy to have received in part.

I got a macchiato. I’ve never had one before of course. Jay tells me that the perfect macchiato should have an excellent balance of bitterness, something which I can’t possibly know and doesn’t really have any bearing on how delicious it was and how much I needed it in retrospect.

The one instance I remember quite vividly however was perhaps the most revealing. We were discussing psychoanalysis and repression, and I asked Jay outright if he thought that repression had some relationship to metacognition. I’ve since realized I have developed an awful knack for picking out particularly interesting things people will say and then immediately interrogating them about it with an intent stare waiting for a reply. I don’t mean to be intimidating, I just dislike letting interesting moments pass unseized. His response was that he had no idea, that it would require a much more in-depth familiarization with someone and that this knowledge needs a certain amount of consent from the subject. It’s reassuring considering the nature of psychoanalysis, but what I’ve since wished I would’ve said after this moment where Jay looks out across the deck is that I feel a remarkable amount of insight from the distance between us.

I care primarily about art. Not in the classical definition of things, but in the inherent artfulness of the world itself. I feel a deep conviction that people can do very little, take very few steps and interact with very few people without creating narratives of some nature, and that the best any person (projection, read this as me) could hope for is to be at the heart of as many beautiful ones as possible. To be a wonderful friend, a warm person. These are things I don’t consider myself now and certainly have a hard time meeting the standards of as much as I should, but they influence and inform my relationships with people so deeply that I would be remiss not to mention it.

Even in a pragmatic sense, I feel very much like an artist too inept to properly express himself at anything. I adore artists as I’m jealous of their singular dedication to one thing above the many joys of creation given to people. If I have arrived at any single correct thought, any astute observation, it stems primarily from this. Regardless of what else I am confronted with, nothing will make as much sense to me reflexively as art itself.

I feel this relative difference between us in small tokens throughout any conversation. When we talk about resentment, I feel it’s a problem of removing people of a call to action and creation while Jay reads it as part of a cognitive system. Both may be correct, but my observation is motivated by wanting people to explore and articulate themselves unencumbered. When Jay considers psychoanalysis to be something too strong to be engaged in without consent, I see art itself as something people simply don’t have the option to opt out of in the first place. Psychoanalysis has a rich canon of materials to draw from, but fiction and artifice have always held a unique position above all else; in many ways it’s through artistic and creative expression that we make us and pay tribute to the rich history of thought itself. Building an AK47 will remove the necessity of much of Mao’s work, much of Joseph Campbell’s bibliography is easily derived from mythical texts themselves.

There is no feeling of these positions being at odds however, more a wonderful revelation of how well the two work in concert with each other; how easily the conversation sways and meanders without any hint of irrelevancy in sight.

Friendship

Walking with Jay along the streets of Mount Pleasant to a used book store, he is sharing with me small bits of Lacan who seems like a pretty interesting fella. We talk about the development of bants in the western canon, which is the first time I ever mention Titus Andronicus out loud.

We arrive at the bookstore which could not be more adorable, kitschy wallpaper on the glass resembling piles and piles of books hiding a store that is piles and piles of books. Of course I walk in with the desire for two books in particular, while we both silently separate to browse the bibliography on offer.

I do not find what I’m looking for, but I do find interesting artifacts my friends have enjoyed. While browsing I realize the necessity of these people who are newly revealed to not be internet strangers. They are real people. In front of me sits a series of novella-length writing by Albert Camus and I’m immediately reminded of the treasured relationships I’ve managed to cultivate somehow. The serious people I am obscenely happy to have had become an influence on my life, the cultivation of my person perhaps none of them are aware of regardless of my attempts to explain to them. Albert Camus, Virgina Woolf, Leo Tolstoy, I grab this list of books eager to learn more about the aesthetics my friends cling to so tightly that I might learn more about them.

Just as I make this consideration, Jay approaches me with the cutest pulp scifi book telling me that perhaps I’ve got too much and perhaps I should consider whether these are books I feel like I should read or if they’re books I’m genuinely interested in. I of course immediately ignore this advice.

Parting

I don’t know how to start things and I don’t really know how to end things. After making a decent trek back to our cars and a somber realization that work calls the very next morning, we decide to leave. I was determined to hand Jay a token of the south, some coffee I’ve come to love recently that he could only get from here, hoping he enjoys it. He tells me that we should meet again and, embarrassingly, the thought had never occurred to me. Something about this instance did (and still does) feel positively magical, that such a thing could happen twice was simply not a consideration. Of course I said yes! He suggested I visit New York City, which of course I said yes to!

What I realized parting, more than anything else, was how much time I had spent worrying when I should’ve spent time preparing. I didn’t think to bring shoes to enjoy a match of tennis, I didn’t think about the things most prescient to talk about with one of the most influential people in my life. The feeling of a deep frustration with the lack of time to be free to engage with the people I cherish and the things I hold dear, the accomplishments I want to make in no small part thanks to them. The question of authenticity, the real me is illuminated by the people I choose to become my treasured peers, influences that compel me to refuse to leave the totality of my passion inert and left to wither in an environment devoid of stimulation. There was never a separation between the person I felt I appeared to people and the person that I am, only a figure lacking definition and much magic is stored in that revelation.

Of course I simply can’t be done seeing their faces, hearing their voices, picking at their brain in a bizarre manner in which nothing has changed; the only people who exist then are the people we choose to hear. We are something old constantly becoming something new, and regardless of the influence we claim little will change us more in the long run than the influence we exert on each other. It’s precisely the indulgence of these influences that I deeply desire, more than the answer of the dubious nature of authenticity itself.

#male friendship #internet meetups #random #offtopic

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justmyownoutlet · 2 years ago

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I wonder when this ocean will stop crashing down on me.

One wave is the most intense, pure joy I've ever felt in my entire life. I do not hope, I know I will spend the rest of my days with you. I miss you like a shotgun blew out my sternum, and I feel its absence every moment of every day. I feel like I live my life in month-long stints, where I live a false life in this small town. I pretend and I smile, I work and keep up the charade, but I live in a perpetual state of waiting. I enjoy my life in such small, random moments. I grow grey and cold, and bide my time until we're together again. When we finally are, the sun comes out for what feels like the first time in ages. I cherish and relish and smile and feel everything, I am alive and feel lit from within like a warm tavern at midnight. I pretend we live life together and this is how it always is. There is no goodbye, there is no separation. But it always must come. I dread leaving, and dread it so much that it ruins the entire day before. When one of us must go, I say goodbye to it all and fall dormant again.

The other wave is apathy, sadness, also intense but cruel and terrible. I am insecure, terrified, anxious. I rap with tired knuckles on the inside of my skull to give my lifeless body a beat to dance to so my family doesn't get worried. I fear constantly you harbor feelings for her still. What if she has gotten better, what if you still talk to her on other platforms and realize you still want something with her? I imagine you letting the other one kiss you again, should alcohol find its way into your bloodstreams. It matters not that it wouldn't happen, I still see it in my mind and I allow my creations to haunt me. I'm so sorry, my darling. I have been so sure of the nature of others before, only to be entirely wrong. All my life, I have created different versions of people in my head that are much kinder than they really are. I have been burnt so many times by this that now I fear what I'm not seeing in you. Its going too well, it feels too right - I must be imagining things again. My judgment is never quite right. So I imagine terrible things. Things you could hide from me, things you could think of me. Things you'd do to hurt me.

I know you would never do those things... but I've thought that before of people who hurt me more than I'd ever know.

I see my face disappear from your mind. I fear I'm forgotten sometimes. I think its because I feel forgettable.

I think if I were to see a car crash happening seconds before, I might not avoid it. I can't explain why. I want a future, travel, babies, happiness, snow, sunrises, birthdays, campfires forever with you so badly. I'd fistfight the devil if he dared to try and take you from me. But if he wanted me instead, I would take the trade.

Please stop it. Please stop with these waves. I'm drowning in my own mind. I've created a vortex, and I am draining down the funnel.

After writing this, I've come to a conclusion.

I think I'm obsessed with you. I think i love you in an unhealthy way. I think I rely on you, and am codependent. I rely on you for socialization, for happiness. For everything.

I'm doing it again.

I hang the faces of the people I love in my night sky. I call that my moon. I follow it, I heed its direction and let it guide me through the dark.

I squeeze the life out of love, second guessing and controlling and choking it out of you. I am like a child much too young to know things have to breathe, and end up killing what I love most from loving it too much.

I cannot lose my way with you. I love what we have. I love who you are. I cannot lose this.

///

I am unwell right now.

I am so sorry I can't be a happy sunshine girl all the time.

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curareblog · 3 years ago

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{Zara // More Samples Than You Can Shake a Stick At // See Below}

Well boys, girls, theys, gays, and nonbinary babes… It’s been long awaited.

In fact, it took me months to build up to this. ~ Jk I fell of a cliff of emotion ~

But you know the fragrance community is obsessed with Zara fragrances. Whether there is duping, originality, or just a great deal afoot - Zara is the name on everyone’s lips. So I did what any rational person would do, and purchased every sample kit I could get my hands on.

Because what we want is a snobby nobody to comment on our beloved working girl of the scent world: Zara.

I don’t know who that snobby nobody is, but we want them to do it! Meanwhile, you can ready my review of ((too many)) Zara fragrances below.

Pink Flambe : 6/10

I don’t know what I expected. Zara fragrances are also notorious for being inaccurately named. For all I knew, this could smell like smoky incense. Alas, for all of us cynics - that is simply not the case. In fact, I’m immediately called back to summer camp in Mansfield, Pennsylvania - where the girls’ dorms were perpetually filled with the smell of Body Fantasies Cotton Candy. Truly, no scents marked that experience more than that neon body spray and Herbal Essences shampoo. Pink Flambe is giving me all of that pink, sugary fantasy. For those of us who do not love the smothering embrace of a saccharine fragrance, run far away before you’re transported to 2005.

Femme : 6/10

I am, once again, asking you not to accost me with a gourmand. Ok well I tried. Femme is not quite as overtly in my face as Pink Flambe, but the effort is there. This smells kind of like Bath and Body Works’ Warm Vanilla Sugar, but without the weird sweaty vanilla that BBW favors, and with a strange hint of wintergreen. Something about this almost makes my stomach turn. Thank you, next.

Tuberose : 7.5/10

Not tuberose. Natch.

Twilight Mauve : 7/10

Giving me “If Acqua di Gioia were a hairspray” vibes. There’s a strange buttery note in the drydown. Blursed if I could ever find a scent to describe that way.

Ultra Juicy : 8/10

It smells juicy! It smells kinda like hairspray! I love a good musky fruity floral and Zara delivers.

Similar to Halloween Kiss Sexy, Trussardi Donna… Just more lightweight. DISTANT cousin to Fleur Narcotique.

Cashmere Rose : 6/10

Mostly cashmere, no rose. Another ambiguous sweet scent. Forgettable.

Violet Blossom: 5/10

Black Opium but with a candied violet note. It’s not the vibe, stop!!!!

Lightly Bloom : 7/10

Quintessential pissy floral. Tart, ambiguous peony/lychee/tea rose fragrance? Check! I’ll take 20.

Rose : 7.5/10

Rose laundry deterrent, hardly abhorrent. I’ll let it pass… This time.

Wonder Rose: 6/10

Not rose. NEXT!!!

Nude Bouquet : 7.5/10

Muted pissy floral bouquet viewed through an amber paned-glass window. Pleasant.

Fields at Nightfall : 8.5/10

I have smelled both This is Her and Fields at Nightfall. Fields at Nightfall is a near perfect dupe - I love a good chestnut note. In fact, This is Her is weirdly like a wet… almost too sweet chestnut. 10 to 1 I prefer Fields at Nightfall.

Applejuice 8/10

Tart n’ juicy. Not odious. I can dig it.

Deep Garden 6/10

Floral mishmash. I have no idea what I’m smelling,

Ruby Berries : 6.7/10

Thankfully not a noxious synthetic berry note. A little bit tart a la cherry FunDip. I don’t make the rules, I just enforce em’.

Nuit : 5/10

Vanilla baby powder demon. Double ick.

Red Vanilla : 7/10

I am confusion. Namely, Is the red in this name intended to be ruby grapefruit? Mama, this is citrus. Citrus with splash of vanilla. I’m not unfavorably impressed.

Gardenia : 5/10

One of a million ambiguous vanillas that I’ve smelled from this brand before. Just make it stop.

Gourmand Addict : 6.5/10

Vanillic root beer barrel. Addict, my foot.

White : 7/10

Inoffensive clean musk. At least it isn’t soapy musk! I cannot emphasize that enough!!!

Black Amber : 6/10

Bubble gum mixed with amber. Smells perverse.

Orchid : 5/10

I get mostly alcohol drying down into the vaguest musky floral. Thank you for your efforts.

Orchid Intense : 5/10

The same! But different! Grass note? Sure, give them the ole’ razzle dazzle!

Ori*ntal : 1/10

0 effort name. 0 effort vanillic mishmash. Just give it up.

Yellow Sun : 6/10

Apropos of nothing, we start off with summer camp memories… And end with them! This smells a lot like Herbal Essences Body Envy with a strange buttery note. The sentimentalist in me is satisfied, but at what cost?

I went on a face journey, a nose journey, and maybe about 2 inches of a real-life journey. Zara gave me some hits, some misses, and a shocking number of weird vanilla amalgamations. My favorites are of course a good pissy floral, musky fruity floral, or Fields at Nightfall.

#fragrance #cologne #zara #perfume #dupe #cheapies #fastfashion #curareblog #photography #blog #review #samples #memories

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electronictragedy · 7 years ago

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My Top Albums of 2017

(aka what I discovered and listened to mostly)

This was kind of the year of darkness as I discovered harder and darker music. Perhaps my taste is becoming more nuanced? AKA I’m a Judas Priest fan now. Whoops.

Turbo - Judas Priest (Heavy Metal/New Wave) [1986]

(yes I used the 30th anniversary cover because it’s hi-res so SHUT IT)

Fans didn’t like this one because of the band’s foray into “Glam” metal, but it was my entrance into the band by having the mixture of rock and electronic that I liked. Also it rocks hard. My favorites include:

“Turbo Lover” – More New Wave than metal, but still a banger.

“Locked In”

“Private Property”

“Out In The Cold” – Moody, gothic, a bit sad, best use of synths

Screaming For Vengeance - Judas Priest (Heavy Metal) [1982]

People mostly remember this for the first two songs, the titular track, and the hit “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming”, but there’s a lot of love songs that I enjoyed:

“The Hellion/Electric Eye” – I’M MADE OF METAL, MY CIRCUITS GLEAM, I AM PERPETUAL, I KEEP THE COUNTRY CLEEEEAN

“(Take These) Chains” – Who hurt Rob Halford? Oh wait-

“Pain and Pleasure”

“Fever”

“Prisoner of Your Eyes” – Sad sad sad ballad but awesome nonetheless!

Deeper - The Soft Moon (Downbeat electronic) [2015]

I discovered “Far” off a playlist by a music artist and I loved it. I want his guy to make more music. The songs are about usually “emo” things but the singer doesn’t whine–instead he yells and sings monotonously as if wondering what has become of himself.

“Black” – The beat is great as hell and the song moves to its will.

“Far” – Play this when you feel you need to drive really fast to forget your regrets. I played this one at 2 am on the highway and sounded best then.

“Wasting”

Synchronicity - The Police (New Wave) [1982

The Police’s last studio album before their breakup. I knew most of the latter half of this album, so I really just discovered the first half, and boy it has some strange ones in there.

“Synchronicity II” – Great guitar hook and over a strange story of depressive and oppressive suburban reality and the loch ness monster.

“O My God” – Yeah, another “where is God when there’s bad things going on” track that doesn’t guilt humanity and make you feel bad about yourself.

“Miss Gradenko” – The lyrics keep it memorable along the breakdown once the lines “Is anyone alive in here? Nobody but us” come in.

“Mother” – Uncharacteristic song about a nagging overbearing mother. Strange, but an overlooked gem. Actually not sung by Sting.

Showtime - Nitzer Ebb (Industrial/EBM) [1990]

Electronic Body Music is like darker EDM. Both you can dance to, but the latter is more “metal” and dark than raves. There’s more energy and nuance to it than EDM songs imo. Instead of minimalist beats, they go all out.

“Lightning Man” – Just… A really great song. Dark, strange, with great instrumentation of electronic and analog instruments.

“Getting Closer”

“Fun To Be Had”

“Rope” – YoU cAnt EveN If yOu TRied tO gIvE US enoUGH …. ROPE

Beyond The Black Rainbow Soundtrack - Sinoia Caves (Synth Score) [2014]

I only saw the trailer to this film and most called it boring, yet hypnotic, fever-dreamlike, etc. However, the vintage visuals definitely influenced the synth score which can rival Stranger Things.

“Sentionauts I” + “Sentionauts II” – Memorable hook in both, definitely different to show different sections of the film.

“1983 - Main Theme”

“Forever Dilating Eye” – Spooky and mental thanks to the Vox usage.

Humanz - Gorillaz (Electronic/Hip Hop/ETC) [2017]

TOO MANY CONTRIBUTERS. Damon, please, believe in yourself and make more songs by yourself under Gorillaz. While a mostly forgettable album (sorry, Demon Days still holds water), some bops stood out:

“Momentz” ft.. De La Sol – Why wasn’t this a single? Most fans loved this one. It’s got a great beat.

“Ascension” ft. Vince Staples

“Andromeda” ft. DRAM

“Sleeping Powder” – Didn’t come with the release, but Damon Albarn made it weeks after release and made it a bonus single.

Blade Runner Original Soundtrack - Vangelis (Synth Score) [~1985]

I saw both the original film and 2049 this year. I liked the first one a lot better tbh, but that’s another post. Gorgeous film with an equally gorgeous soundtrack.

“Main Titles” - This song paired with the opening visuals send chills down my spine.

“Love Theme”

“Blade Runner Blues” - a bit long, but beautiful.

“End Theme” - The only “bop” song really.

#great music #top 2017 #fave music

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reminiscent-bells · 7 years ago

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best-ofs, 2017

putting in a break here, this is real long

best book I read: The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

It seems trite to pick this in a year where every Tom, Dick, and Harry was comparing the Trump administration to Atwood’s novel and when Amazon was putting on a big-budget adaptation (which, for the record, I have not seen). The effect that this had on me, though, cannot be understated. Sad, wry, and all-too-familiar in places, this is a masterpiece that deserves to be up there with 1984 and the rest of the great nightmares.

honorable mention: The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, David Mitchell

I’m not much of a historical fiction person, but this masterfully wrought story of a Dutch clerk and a Japanese midwife in early-1800s Japan is well worth your time.

best comic: Batman, Volume 1: I Am Gotham, Tom King, Mikel Janin, et al.

King and his collaborators’ work on Batman since DC’s most recent relaunch seems to be on a trajectory to match or even surpass the Grant Morrison era in the pre-New 52 era, a reshuffling of the core cast that will pay huge dividends down the line (if DC actually makes a wise long-term decision for once, which, who knows). Despite his tendency to learn a little too hard on certain stylistic tics, I think King might be the best writer working in superhero comics today.

honorable mention: Detective Comics, Volume 1: Rise of the Batmen, James Tynion IV, Eddy Barrows, et al.

Yes, two Batman titles in one year is a bit of a cheat, but this is so fun that it’s hard to pick something else. Tynion turned up on a panel discussion on the great comics podcast Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men where he was introduced as the writer of “DC’s new X-Men title, Detective Comics”, which is exactly what this is - a team of misfits and outcasts cobbled together by a reticent, demanding mentor...who in this case is Batman. This is easy to miss out on with all the fireworks over King’s work, but give it a shot.

best comic (non-2017): MIND MGMT, Volume 2: The Futurist, Matt Kindt

Kindt’s work on the beginning of his psychic-X-Files saga MIND MGMT was good, but the second collection reveals it as a ship-in-a-bottle in the middle of a much weirder, wilder museum - there are few volume 2s that build on the success of the first as much as this one does.

honorable mention: BPRD, Volume 3: Plague of Frogs, Mike Mignola, Guy Davis, et al.

The first few collections of this series, following Hellboy’s teammates after he quits the secret BPRD organization, kind of flounder, but Davis and Mignola really hit their stride here with this sequel to an earlier Hellboy story that grows into a hybridization of Mignola’s earlier work and a Stephen King novel.

best movie: Blade Runner 2049

This also feels like kind of a cheat given my love for the original, but there was simply no other movie that had my gears turning after I walked out of the theater like this one did. The plot elements of this, of course, have been speculated on endlessly since Ridley Scott released the Final Cut of the original film, but My Guy Dennis Villeneuve manages to introduce enough new elements and uncertainty in the mix to keep you guessing - I found myself continually questioning what I really knew about anything that had happened or was happening. It was always going to be impossible to make a movie as good as Blade Runner, but Villeneuve came closer than anyone could dare.

honorable mention: Star Wars: The Last Jedi

I have my misgivings about the Finn and Poe portions of this, which feel like they mishandled the two more than a little, but the Rey/Luke Skywalker storyline is, as a whole, a barn-burner, building on both Rey and Luke’s characters in extremely satisfying ways. It was easy to imagine where they might go from Rey and Luke on the island at the end of The Force Awakens, but I don’t know if I imagined they’d go here, which is what makes this so great.

best album: I See You, The xx

I gave this a pretty casual listen on Spotify when it came out as I was kind of a marginal xx fan - I enjoyed their first album but didn’t really care for Coexist. I was totally blown away and listened to it all the way through several times (this is something I rarely, if ever, do with big pop/pop-ish releases). Virtually every track on here except for the extremely forgettable closer is perfectly performed and produced, from the playful, somewhat taunting “Dangerous” to the self-doubt-as-anthem “On Hold”. Should go down as their best album to date.

honorable mentions: Piety of Ashes, The Flashbulb / Sleep Well, Beast, The National

I couldn’t decide between these two, so here’s a twofer for you. Benn Jordan’s style as The Flashbulb has shifted along a spectrum of sweet spots between acoustic music and electronic music, and he seems to have somehow found the sweetest one yet in Piety of Ashes, which alternates between intimate material you might have expected on Arboreal or Love as a Dark Hallway (”Starlight”, “Goodbye Bastion”) and big, broad electronic pieces that feel like Jordan uncovered something he could always do that was just off-camera (”Hypothesis”, “As Water”).

When I first heard Sleep Well, Beast my comment to a coworker was “I only like some of it now, but I think I’ll like it more as time goes on”. This was a rare example of me actually showing some predictive ability, because this has really grown on me with time (maybe its intent as commentary on life in the Trump world as something to do with this). Highlights are the sad, sweet “Nobody Else Will Be There”, also-sad-and-sweet, but in a different way “Carin at the Liquor Store”, and the driving dark heart of the entire thing, “The System Only Dreams In Total Darkness”, which has been a constant play for me this fall/winter.

best TV show: Twin Peaks/Twin Peaks: The Return

A triumph for David Lynch and Mark Frost in every sense of the word. The era of “prestige TV” feels like a cheap trick by HBO, AMC, et al. to get us to watch the same old stuff with a slightly higher budget after 18 hours(!!!!!) in, around, and beyond (and I mean beyond) Lynch’s little town in the Pacific Northwest. Kyle MacLachlan deserves about 400 awards for his triple (quadruple?) role here.

honorable mention: Mr. Robot

I think Sam Esmail failed to stick the landing again (I wasn’t a fan of season 2), but the earlier parts of this season are maybe the highest highs the show has ever hit - Elliott and Mr. Robot fighting over his body in the bowels of the ECorp fortress from the end of season 2, Darlene struggling to extricate herself from the FBI, and the terrifying-yet-awe-inspiring scene of Angela laying out her plans to Mr. Robot as New York comes back to life at the end of the first episode. This isn’t always the best show, but boy, can it ever be good.

best video game: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

This is to video games as Lynch’s third season of Twin Peaks was to television: a throwing of the gauntlet to every competitor to dare and match this. Where other games would put physics puzzles in their own little sandboxes, BOTW applies its physics to just about everything and lets you see how far your tools can take you. Where other games would put everything on the map in perfectly zoomable, filterable control for you, BOTW challenges you to build the map yourself and actually get out there and explore. I’ve gone back to this in the harder Master Mode with the release of the last DLC, and there’s still nothing that can touch this. This is destined to be a touchstone for decades to come.

honorable mentions: The Talos Principle/Batman: The Telltale Series

The Talos Principle is everything I wanted The Witness to be that The Witness wasn’t: thoughtful without being heavy, clever without being impossible (well, mostly not impossible, there are a few of those puzzles I don’t think I could have cracked on my own). The writing is sharp as a tack, featuring a variety of philosophical discussions between your character and a whip-smart AI. A really excellent puzzler.

Batman: The Telltale Series marks yet another appearance of the Batman on this list, but what an appearance! Telltale throws out several sacred cows of the Batman behemoth, but instead of making something malformed and uninteresting, it feels like the freshest Batman has been in ages. I eagerly await every new episode of this, because I never know where they will go next.

best podcast: Important If True

This is yet another “feels like I cheated” entry, but the Idle Thumbs guys’ work on Important If True deserves to be recognized. They could have simply recycled the Robot News segments from Idle Thumbs for this, but instead they went for something much wilder, taking people’s advice on what wishes to ask for from a genie, going through breakdown procedures for old Chuck E. Cheese competitor restaurants, and speculating on a Jessica Fletcher vs. Jaws matchup (as in the shark). The most wildly funny podcast going now. Recommended episodes: “Fight Garbage With Garbage”, “Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins”, “A Wish Upon a Star”

honorable mention: Waypoint Radio

With the Idle Thumbs guys winding down to a monthly schedule (sorta), Vice’s Waypoint staff’s podcast has readily stepped into the hole left behind by the Thumbs for regular doses of industry coverage. It’s great to see Danielle Riendeau and Rob Zacny getting more exposure outside of the Thumbs ecosystem, and Austin Walker, Patrick Klepek, and Danika Harrod are this sort of perfect perpetual motion machine at the heart of everything. Recommended episodes: “The Orange Casket”, “R.I.P. A.I.M.”, “Someone Explain To Me The Alien Alloys Before I F'ing Explode”

#best-of #2017

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partwolf · 7 years ago

Text

I am 23, a nonbinary person of transmasculine experience, and a recent post-graduate.

I’m beginning to write now for several reasons, and as part of a desire to be visibly queer, visibly trans, and visible to the intersectional, feminist, LGBTQIA+ community.

Although I now ID as nonbinary transmasculine, I haven’t always. Until about a year ago, I tried hard to erase any visible marks of my transness, and distanced myself from trans spaces. I identified as FtM, but hoped that after several years on HRT, I would be cis-passing; that I would be able to look back on my time in an AFAB body as an unusual episode in the life of an otherwise regular man.

I’m beginning to write and be visible now as a way of recognising that the way I want to constitute my identity has changed for the queerer.

I want to reflect on my past-experiences of recoiling from my own transness, and of aspiring to a toxic masculinity by replicating misogynist behaviours, not because I believed in them, but because I felt that by echoing androcentric sexism, I was protecting myself from being othered by it.

I want to recognise and address the ways that my former subscription to gender binarism, my desire for a cis-looking body and a cis-looking life, were the result of persistent and coercive forms of structural oppression; the results of cis-normative, white, able, heterosexual society’s attempts to condition trans identities into ‘normative’ expressions, and the ways in which it structurally marginalises and isolates vulnerable and under-represented people.

I’ve been on HRT for fourteen months, and am now six months post-op DI chest-reconstruction. I’m read as male in public, and benefit from the privileges afforded to white, affluent, able, cis-passing men. I nearly always feel physically safe; I receive preferential treatment from other men (who look) just like me; I’m assumed to be competent in nearly everything I attempt; my opinions are treated as valid without reservation, and I’m never expected to be polite to, interested in, less intelligent, or less articulate than my male colleagues in order to protect their fragile egos.

However, the more I’m read as cis male in public, the more uncomfortable I’ve felt about it, and the less desirable it has felt to me. I don’t really want to be read as cis male primarily because I dislike the majority of cis men I interact with, their values, and what they represent.

I’m really happy with the personal and emotional growth I’ve experienced over the last fourteen months, since I began my medical transition. I feel empowered by the knowledge that both gender and sex are social constructs, that no characteristic is inherently sexed or gendered, and that refutations of these statements originate from the neurosexist assumptions of western capitalist-industrial medical gatekeeping, which has a vested interest in keeping the privileged in power, and the under-privileged disenfranchised. At the same time as I know these things to be true, I feel at peace in my masculinity and my femininity for the first time; I’m able to enjoy the simple pleasure of preforming a task or activity that feels masculine or feminine to me for no other reason than that it feels masculine or feminine to me.

I’m really interested in becoming more engaged with the intersectional feminist LGBTQIA+ community, but don’t know how to begin. My fear is that as HRT makes me less visibly queer, I am becoming invisible to the queer community. I want to have queer perspectives in my life, and to be seen and recognised by my community. I hope that blogging might help to facilitate this. I also have social anxiety, which has made making friends difficult for me in the past, and I struggle with the feeling that I’m not likeable - although, increasingly, I’m beginning to wonder if that feeling could more accurately be identified as the product of my interactions with more cis, more able people - where those interactions are structurally and inherently prejudiced in favour of affirming and consolidating their privilege. Perhaps the problem isn’t that I’m not likeable, it’s that I’m not likeable enough for cis-normative standards of sociability. I’m often read as antisocial, or rude, which isn’t true: I’m just not interested in cis standards of good social conduct when small-talk is the privileged preserve of those whose rights aren’t at stake, of those for whom conversation isn’t the front-line, of those for whom conversation can just be diverting, entertaining, forgettable.

I’m interested in using this blog to discuss my experiences, as well as to begin friendships. Some topics I’m thinking about are:

- my developing trans and queer identities

- my experiences as someone with an invisible disability: I was diagnosed with cataracts in both eyes and with juvenile arthritis as a child, and a year ago lost all vision in one eye due to glaucoma

- my experiences as a post-graduate with the privileges of a University of Oxford and a University of Cambridge education

- my experiences of structural and institutional oppression within prestigious universities, and the ways in which the marginalisation of vulnerable and under-represented groups is perpetuated even in higher education institutions with robust anti-discrimination policy and a vocal student population advocating for access and equality

- documenting my transition

- observations about cissexist, cis-normative culture and queer relationality

- my experiences as a queer nonbinary transmasculine person in a long-term monogamous relationship

This blog will engage primarily with my experience, but any and all parts of the transgender/gender spectrum are supported, as are any and all parts of queer, intersectional feminist, LGBTQIA+ communities.

I want to add, to be clear, that although I’m comfortable IDing as transmasculine nonbinary, I will always support trans men who identify as, and present themselves as masculine, and only masculine. Trans men who don’t feel comfortable presenting as visibly queer, androgynous, or feminine are not problematic and do not reinforce negative gender stereotypes. Masculine trans men don’t need to be educated out of their masculinity, and they don’t need to apologise for it. The same goes for trans women: shaming feminine trans women is not feminism.

#ftm #nonbinary #trans man #queer #intersectional

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jerardeusebio · 7 years ago

Text

The Emancipation of Me(mi)

The month was April. The year was 2005. I—a scrawny, ill-proportioned boy of 16, with skin the color of Lily’s peanut butter—had set out in the mild morning heat for our quaint town mall.

I began my day knowing how it will be spent. It would start with a 14-minute journey to Robinson’s. I remember vividly how I left home to do just that, with the clanging of our iron gate as it closed behind me. I didn’t even try to hide the spring in my step.

You see, I had marked April 11th on my calendar like it was my birthday. And who could have blamed me? After months of revisiting various websites and countless hours of staying tuned to the radio (a thing that began and ended in this period in my life), it was finally here. For those who’ve had to wait for something with great anticipation, you know what it feels like when the wait is finally over.

The day of The Emancipation of Mimi’s release ultimately became a hot one, scorching even. Smack dab in the middle of summer, with the 9 AM sun hovering somewhere above me, I walked. I couldn’t look at the sun, of course; I only felt it. The sky was cloudless, blue as it could ever be. I felt a drop of sweat drawing a line behind my back and still another one rolling just below my left ear. I kept on, feeling my bag jostling next to my waist. In it was the money I had saved from skipping recesses and denying myself after-class trips to McDonald’s.

When I reached Robinson’s, I sat on its front steps, in front of its still-closed doors. The security guard, fidgeting with his phone, was oblivious of me. I knew I was too early. I wanted to be the first one in the music store. I wanted to hear the whole 50 minutes and 10 seconds of it. I didn’t have to search for what the word emancipation meant; it was defined in Mariah’s website: To set free from care or restraints.

I had gained a bit of freedom myself at this juncture in my life, having hurdled high school in a fashion not a lot could emulate, having been able to secure a spot in the top university.

I was a generally a happy boy on the outside. A lot of things were working out for me. Inside, however, there was a growing tumult, a barrage of self-perpetuating questions regarding my identity.

High school graduation, entering college—these times told me I was growing up. And growing up made answering these questions more urgent. Who was I? What would I become? Where is my niche? Every day that came and went, with these questions unanswered, I got a little bit more lost. I remember looking at the mirror and not liking what I saw—the way my hands moved, how I could easily roll my eyes, or just the way I stood. I even hated that I loved Mariah so much, something I shared with one of my closest friends. Being bullied about this was another thing we shared. In hindsight, maybe it was because I didn’t want to be queer and yet everything I knew pointed to just that. (Why is it that a lot of us like Mariah?)

At 16—in a devoutly Catholic family, in a provincial town, inside a campus where everybody knows everyone, where your parents are both professors—growing up gay was an unnecessary scourge. Life is unfair, isn’t it? I had a support group, though, comprised of a few good friends, but most of them were to study in other universities in far places. I guess that added, too, to the dreading of the growing up part. In a lot of ways, college was the beginning and the end. And in this paradoxical time, little did I know, The Emancipation of Mimi would serve as its soundtrack.

My love affair with Mariah Carey began in our car, in a parking lot. I was with my father and he had just installed a CD player. He had me listen to My All and pointed me to notice the texture of the singer’s voice, how she easily glided from a breathy, sultry coo to a strong chest voice. I listened. By the start of the new millennium, I was already purchasing copies of her albums and had memorized all of her runs and melismatic ways.

I had also learned about her story: How she was discriminated as a child, for being of mixed decent, for being somewhere in between. How their family car was burned and their dog poisoned because her interracial family lived in a white neighborhood. How this molded her and made her strive to be more. How she already knew at a tender age that she was going to sing for the rest of her life, how she wrote her feelings, made them into songs, which would later become no. 1 hits. I started to be a true fan, I think, at that point—the previous years, I was just mildly obsessed about her.

Her life became even more fascinating, particularly in the light of all her achievements in the music industry, not to mention the influence she’s had on so many artists. She vehemently denies it, but to a teenager, her life easily looks like a fairytale. That is, up until her famous breakdown in 2001, following her debut film Glitter tanked in the box office and its accompanying soundtrack’s sales failed to compare with her previous releases. (Interestingly, the album was released on 9/11. Yes, that 9/11.) She received bad publicity after bad publicity and people forgot that she had at least one no. 1 song for each year since her debut, nor that her collaboration with Boyz II Men, One Sweet Day, was and still is the longest-running no. 1 song in music history (16 weeks), and never mind that she had just received the Artist of the Decade award by Billboard. All these and more in less than a decade, but one failure was all it took to relegate her to pariah status.

Mariah sort of bounced back late 2002 with Charmbracelet–easily forgettable save for the lead single, Through the Rain, which became an anthem here in the Philippines. She became quiet afterwards. Rumors about Mimi went around in late 2004. Here, only a few people cautiously predicted it to be her comeback album. Most didn’t want to bet on her. She was easily a has-been in the early 2000s and understandably so. She had been counted out. I wasn’t one of them. In fact, I was betting on her, to prove her critics wrong. I saw myself in her, somehow. Growing up, I was bullied and teased a lot, for acting soft, for reading books too much, for liking to hang out with girls more often, for not being sporty, and for favoring Mariah Carey songs.

Mariah has claimed music saved her life. Whenever she’d feel low, she’d write lyrics or listen to the radio. I realized that I did the same, only I listened to her music. Songs like Hero, Through the Rain, My Saving Grace, and Can’t Take That Away (Mariah’s Theme) have helped me get through a lot of dejection. And my showing up there, half an hour before the mall opened was my thank you, my statement that I was rooting for her, like how she rooted for me.

That day, after getting my copy of The Emancipation of Mimi from the town mall, I immediately went home and locked myself in my room. I placed the CD gently in the player and carefully unraveled the album inlay, which to my surprise doubled as a poster. I looked at the large photo of a woman in gold, beaming with triumph, like a phoenix from the ashes. I took a deep breath and pressed Play.

I—a scrawny, ill-proportioned boy of 16, with skin the color of Lily’s peanut butter—had set out to find saving. Being in this world was harsh, I had learned early on. But within the confines of my room on that hot summer day, in spite of everything, life seemed fair. The month was April. The year was 2005.

This essay first appeared on Unread.com

#literature #mariah carey #the emancipation of mimi #gay #lgbt

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castlehead · 7 years ago

Text

: sonnet,

"You think more than feel, and dote Upon your own shallow extremes As if they were an ailing child —Slowly, as the eyes roll back Dissolving the periphery of self Into a median of the self."

as though by this old anniversary some

crucial song was to be so removed, left for dead; to fatten the flies. The shadow gave me all of what made him him. He asked nothing of me—only that I do his good work well; explicitly yet echoed in the chasm of sweet, unsated thought, unsated, bitter,

but no matter, now— was enough. It opened ends. He chimed in a black breath of night and death, droning his own random sleep in blessings. He told me I was to take his work somewhere; didn’t tell me how it would go down. Of course, you bastard, said that shadow; of course you are the one to yammer on about my Moneta and the muse she brings to me. Her cursed tears couldn’t speak enough—for Saturn—to break his exile. He said, explicitly, that I needed to stop believing my own strictures of sought structure, though Moneta clutched hard her heart not

there. On he flared. And on, and on. He flared

. . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .

Little youth leave me barren Undressed and understood in my nakedness —As presumed life, seen in the tempers Of my ribcage, and the small hairs On my chest. Taste this suffering in the sweat And deny deny deny. Tell me you get it In a concentrated part, as concentrated As atoms into flesh. Tell me you feel this: The touch of my hand against your skin Hanging like a veil over the tedium —Of the work of your bones, the tedious Circulation of blood, the perpetual creations That, like all things, have become —What they distribute, and become Fallow: in yur brain the VOID Plays out, and becomes something —But something curiously deficient:

YET: I will consider the movement of day. For the day and the night drop equally from the WORLD. For time has made all the light & darkness a rending. This rending considers the day as hindrance And the night as relief.

She does not live within this sense of things, She does not live the concept. For, the concept Is strange enough to rend it from itself —As the day from night: it is quite Complicated thus flawed.

For the flaws of things are only such If the thing is complicated. The night —And day are complicated. They are A division. They are an idea made Two things two different things, Two things that are so precious, so very flawed —And precious.

She is that rending that is perfect in the WORLD.

The schematics of yur body —The creases in your neck that glint In the light with perspiration Your interminable breath, the breath —Of ages. Tell me you see this, Tell me you see yourself and know Only yourself, and that all things Though not a part of you will part in you As a flower blooms—that is, as The enclosure opens to reveal A small and yielding center.

Give me your graces, Know not the universe Know only that who you are —Is how you meant to be, That is, in the absence of love, All things, it seems, deride you. You Weather a shifty gang of blighted fools By their own protest against a WORLD That is, from the outset, stricken of what The fool desires most, and, is left to live Only in the fickle head, as —A confusing, inaccurate metaphor. See the dense desires of men And, know yourself the promise of all men: Given to the WORLD as a coy meditation On the parallels of the universe and Your shoulder, akimbo with your naked thigh So lost in pose, that any picture Would do not proper justice to the movement of your naked limbs —So faint, and yet, there it is: the Special kite of kinetic pressures Moving in relative syncopation —With one another. Grope … please … Ignite!!!! Pull my hair and let me scream The glories of my created race From nothing, save the infinite dream.

And see the seams, see how they are —Stapled together, as tho one wrong move Would rend together the particles of life And leave us walking on our hands And, leave my hands without yur hands— —To squeeze hardly in weakness. I am Without a familiar creature strong enough to hold under my largesse —Besides the pastoral EARTH that trembles —Under the weight of my assimilated self.

You say you will sleep and do not close your eyes. I hold you together with staples, unsure —Of whether or not the tether will be broken … Will leave me walking on my hands And leave the little youth abandoned This frustrated youth, this innocence —Twain, then mended, and, yet, not the same As before. But, do not worry, you, you Have your own problems, your own mistakes To rectify, and even fix, even make things Better than before, if you wish It does not matter to me: my wisdom Of you is found in intimacy And in the spaces of my ribs And in the eternity of your desperate Heart, beating between dilemmas … With each fixing a new choice arises, And the only lie is this: that The finely tuned ringing, in your ears —Is singing, for you to walk away Walk so far away that even in my dreams I cannot find you, besides in busted minutes That in their cloudy confusion slight the signs And leave you impatient, and leave me Slightly confused, and leave every concentrated part —As separate as my nerves from the coital spasm Running from my dick up through my spine … To nowhere, to remind one of the dank penalties of a mind —That is too illustrious in its dreaming Too infrequently ambitious, too Obsequious hankering for oneself To be right, and never wrong

And so: we two are phantasm Yur a hallucination, a prolepsis To an argument that never intended —To be argued, and, thus, I can never get to the center Of this pome, and things get undone, And our ribs become Construed together—we are beasts, Trapped within the solitude Of bizarre desires, and fantasy That claims all, and denies Without saying that it shall deny, Leaving us both in silence Leaving us both to sit on the side of the bed Looking at our reflection in the blank TV screen Waiting both of us to see a different person In the reflection, and do not.

It is something you would find by the inflections —Of a throaty vehemence, some animal Restrained in the night, and howling From the guts. I look at you and see Such ambivalent seclusion. I look at you, and see A mighty, inescapable reflection —Of nothing, save what I implant:

Such finely calculated damage, How horrifying. So slowly over the careful precision Of time I changed: that scary plan of the clock, Minute to hour and hour to feckless year:

Our flaky judgment of time is duped into believing That due to the expanse, that due to the length of it, That due to the complete absence of effort needed For one second to usurp the one preceding it

In our WORLD of conflict, well, we believe, such ease Seems, well, the product of something ingenuous

While it is quite deliberate, pernicious As those spectral perspectives of ourselves Which time will drain from who We were, and now,

And then, we are Another person—and know the fact of this beyond denial In dankest obscurity of mind,

That instinctual skepticism of prolonged spiritual comfort As regards even the cheapest identity…

This is humorous, in a way, as like the idiot Uniquely aware Of his idiocy—

—And I know only how to alter The nature of my limitations As regards the poem. It has become something of a grey fabric Tousled improperly out The rickety loom A freakish and bizarre sweater chidden From the mouth of psychic heddle, Such is my lorn attempt at ending The riddle, for all, for once:

And have I little left to say that would not further Malign the vacant hesitance, of my splintered voice, —If I were to speak after such a laugh! It would have been better to be silent For a time, then follow that With a stupid phrase or forgettable comment, Rather than making By barking laughter, loud and inhuman, That itself speaks of a primitiveness. And the dark plus of shame upon shame, In these sundry notes These spastic hawhaws Contend to make A petty music —The brittle hitherto of sarcastic life— But enough of these depressing things:

So long I have had to mull things over To resist change, to let change come falsely To make time for my thoughts. My thoughts are now all I can think of And what I think of is her

She is the vision of my name And she does not let me sleep Her approximation itself plays vigil In my mind. She lives in this —Altitude, above my head And will haunt me until I am Dead: left to become a ghost That haunts others. The painful Peace that I catch on like a fucking nail

I see her face and know no other face. This cloud, this apparent cloud Of people on the street I see in the rapport of young and old, Of old and old and young and young I see The figments of the schemes by which they live, I see the seeming portals Of little attitudes, through which each human passes Reaction to reaction, slaving to reach The numbering platitudes of contentions —Or gratifications between Simplicities and complexities And also at the farthest ends of both Just once attained, and again a different way— Depending on the figment to be approached And yet to me her shadow in it all Stays more or less the same.

Yeah. Ridden in the phlegmatic glory glory beneath Each face through to the pallet, the nakedest pallet Of this cloud of equipages They all of them contain The figure of her miracle. She is there And soon departs, only to be revealed Again. This time, the spare foundation of her eyes Is there behind all eyes there are to see —This happy delusion, held aloft By the crumbling scuds of recollection

Yeah. I find the imprint of her glance Traipsing in the active mull the sequence —Of another’s look, in unfinished residuum find The delicate planet of her sacrosanct, Surprising, it is made a stronger memory By the tragic perpetuity of this broken muscle This device that grows abnormal growing more and more Abnormal, by the bawd of feckless years undone —It stutters with a growing spavination Under the prison of my crooked ribs In the sty of these assembled guts I feel her pretty heat

—And, in the tone Of her voice, the tone of her voice Is lost to memory, but something Was in it: some creeping life That hovers, like a sentimental Holiness: sounding like a priest the Words of heaven in the church

I try to imagine another WORLD In which I am not plagued by these stilted chains —Of thought contiguously woven into living, and living Strung out to senselessness between Boredom and fatigue. I seem to purposefully Mangle her power over me into some sorta indefiniteness, as if it were- -Involved too much in too many parts of my happiness, And, in terms of if that happiness would be truly happy … well, The only way I could lift up The sad heft of it—to be placed on the shelf Across the room from the other shelf Where I keep the good things—the only way to lift up Such a beautiful aberration as this would be to figure it into Something less than what it was.

And, the decision is made by someone else Inside my brain, to let go, and deceive Myself into thinking that my thoughts Will not again seduce me to regard the circular question That is the subject of her eyes

She has the darkness of a saint Her body conforms to the shape of my hand

The sound of her is desperate and cloying

She has fixed her eyes in her mouth And this language is a breath of her The peaceful, muttering message of a language —Is her, and all that is lain Within her dark, empathic eyes. These whispers these figurations Are they not the birth of an answer Already told, in a deadly human? Or, are they whispers milling out The sense, like water round a wheel, And had not this removal of heat From bones shown to me the probity Of my own psyche, I would have said That I had been starved, my energy —Beaten out, until all that is Left, is lifeless and woebegone But no, what I originally presumed was destructive —Was, in actuality, a wise chance Taken, without knowing The outcome:

And, thus, I live between living Not really living but in my own sanctified past That curtails my future into the present —A past that is vivid and dark, like her eyes At least from what I can remember

Thought between living. Thought: another life. Thinking of another life that contends With this one. The panic of an abyss … A senseless portal in my chest that leads To another, trembling life: it is living opening up Like an abyss … like some thin words of respect:

This is that sober portrait of her name:

You are the whining deep In the emaciated night-thicket that By this weary lozenge of stone transposed, Rheumy with moss I have forgotten

By that one dead thing I have oughted To honor with these useless words. I go And build a grave on ruin—awful cataclysm.— I have refused to bury the herd

Of thoughts on what, and who, and where, Bury the nettles of my discontent along With you. They don’t shut up. Nonetheless I too know, Have dormant in me that wondrous image

While the lozenge of stone remains the one I use. A tribute too much, should rather have Made the celebrant clearer, that it was For what was. For that is the important thing,

Though what is is not remembered; not, that is, Of your deep. It grew then weakened, as what’s neither Gay nor sad but fleet as wind and I in the crud Of my dismal thicket-veins, remember graves.

In want of making more out of destruction. In want of taking all my thoughts down with a current Of inevitable dissatisfaction. Of you Pardis

. . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .

What I feel is not quite anything —It is a dispersal of shadows and light As they translate through the jaws of the tree And invade the room, like a trifle dismissed Only to resurface in the midst —Of a problem that does not seem to end.

One could witness the tree out there Thru the pane of a dusty window As it grows slowly, slowly grows

What I feel is thick in its own evil mask

—What is right, what seems to be right Slipped into a guise. What is wrong??? A second’s Thrift of doubt pervades The guise, the avatar, With a sense that what is right to it May just be a farce, perfidiousness, a seeming.

This doubt: neutrality, insistent, trembling: It keeps me up for nights on end And has me looking at the tree thru the window: The simple strings of shadow and trembling light:

To create motion in a hand —That suddenly clasps yours, tightly.

As if to let go would be to lose you, And to hang on would keep you where you were

And as who you are, forever, forever

Training my mind to keep you as you are Straining to see again the image of your face Thru listlessness, listlessness

There’s something different going on Right now. My focus is elsewhere. My focus is on the tree outside Of the house, rather than you . . . the tree —Is green and tho green, becomes the sample Of other colors, other distinct WORLDs —Of the purple sun. In other words There can be colors not —Made of colors. You try and Tell me, things are not bad But worse than you had originally thought And you were happy about this because At least, it was something important Enuff, to cause distress.

As you touch my hand your hand —Seems a remoter thing from mine Than Mars above in the parallax. I look into Yur eyes and see a face in —Each iris, a different face A different accuser. I have Two faces, each one abrupt In the choosing of a reaction. Perhaps . . .

The will to give a heavy hand to gestures To listen to people speak and hear Something different, will tell me What you are trying to do With your hand. And, your look: Meditating, and earnest, speaking Halfheartedly, though, you try and hold back Yur feelings of ambivalence There is still much to squeeze —Or dredge up from the experience: the red flags The quarreling—and yet, above it all The parts of hope slowly coming Together; that is, until mistakes Grew in the eye too much—so that even The most insignificant of them could Not be rectified.

Morbid experiences hold no depth but in —Whatever name I slap on the darkness, I presume the name that I slap, to be the real deal. In reality There is no catharsis no yearning For a new destination Only spangled time, a grunt collapsing And starting again, like starting A chainsaw. Perhaps, in the bloom —Of change, time will soon catch Up, and overtake change, pursuing A limited paraphrase of time, A cheap facsimile. And so, I think —Of the tree outside, seen from the Window, and of your hand gently On mine, and I think, most of all —Of you, as you look at me And see nothing. So, then, I ultimately am reminded Of time, which holds in it Something meaningless Something, in the classical nothingness

—Of time:

#poetry

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invokingbees · 8 years ago

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The Void was a bad fucking movie.

I’ve been pretty consistently pissed about the recent “Lovecraftian” 80′s revival horror movie ‘The Void’ because not only did I watch it, it won’t stop showing up everywhere.

So I thought I’d just make my feelings known to all two or three of you that might care and/or possess a passing interest. I’ll put the whole thing under a read more because regardless of me truly, truly hating it, I don’t hate you, [mutual/follower], and you might not want spoilers just in your face because perhaps you intended to watch it. SO.

My main complaint, that sort of over-arches the whole thing, is it hadn't a single original notion in its head. It was a heavily watered down horror fanboy mishmash of better movies, and its inspirations are pretty clear, like Hellraiser, In the Mouth of Madness or The Thing. I know, I know, THERE’S NO ORIGINAL IDEAS LOL but here’s the thing, my man, it presented none of its ideas in any kind of interesting or unique angle,with no flair or dynamism, there’s nothing in this movie to differentiate it from a million others. It was a featureless collection of surface-level horror tropes. It’s like watching a movie through a glazed window. It's the movie you always passed over in your local rental chain seven years ago, maybe that was the goal, to be forgettable? Its characters were cardboard cutouts. The main actor, Aaron Poole, was in a better movie called The Conspiracy, go watch that instead.

One thing I see people saying as a bonus to this movie is that it uses practical effects, where I am sure the majority of the budget went, and this really fucking bugs me. Practical effects - especially ones so stiff and unbelievable as we see, with such uninspired designs - do not give any movie an automatic merit. There is no benefit to purposely regress in an artform other than for the sake of industry snob brownie points and nostalgia pandering. It’s why I ended up liking Kubo and the Two Strings less over time, one of its selling points was ‘We did it all with stop motion!’ and as pretty as it was...all you did was five yourself more work. It was inventive and creative in how it did it all, way fucking more so than The Void, but at the end of the day, all you did was be awkward for the sake of it and it shows in how bland the story and characters are in Kubo. It’s a red flag for me now.

So here’s the OTHER big thing, and my own personal problem: it wasn't Lovecraftian in any way, shape or form. If dude tentacles lmao and dude cults lmao constitute what is Lovecraftian to you, please reconsider your understanding of the term and genre. This movie presented no underlying themes of human insignificance, human limitation and ability, BARELY any hints of degeneration and loss of humanity, no inherent evil in old things or staunch materialism in its story or characters to juxtapose the concept of limited human understanding and perception. It’s a story about a cult summoning monsters to ascend to their paradise. Wasn’t that also the plot of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion? The insistence of the use muh tentacles on every single iteration of the poster, by the way, just goes to show how much of a fucking meme it really, truly has become, and this mess of a movie just perpetuates that bastardized shorthand even more. Just happily follows right along.

I feel like I should talk about the plot, but it’s so fucking negligible, who cares? Regular cop boyo finds a dude messed up on the side of the road, takes him to small town hospital that had a fire recently and it shutting up shop, ate at night, brings him in, nasty stuff begins to happen, two lads show up and wanna kill the messed up dude because he escaped from an evil cult house. Turns out the head doctor of the hospital is the cult leader and he’s evil and stuff and he caused the fire and he has monsters in the basement. He wants to like make people immortal or something by bringing them back from death but they come back wroooong. In truly cliched mad scientist fashion, he thinks they’re beautiful and perfect creatures, then he transforms himself somehow and takes off his skin and he looks like an unfinished Hellraiser cenobite make up job, he looks like a rip off of The Wishmaster. He’s just a skinboy, he’s a meatman. He gets defeated and cop and wife end up in the spooky black pyramid dimension, everyone else is dead save for someone who, and I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure had NO FUCKING LINES and the bitchy intern girl.

I really do not like this movie on any particular level and I wish it would fuck off. Thanks for reading and I hope you hate it, too.

#piss shit fucking garbage ass movie for losers

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