U9O.net: You and I Know.

Theresa and Kim, this is for you.

My shadow.

My shadow betrayed me yesturday,

it was my friend, always behind me.

behind me every step of the way.

But it was my spokesman that I did not need.

It spoke for me, making me bigger, smaller, taller, thinner,

and sometimes invisible, sometimes made me look like a monster.

I have many shadows, just as the number of candles

that warm me, befriend me, warm me, light my path.

but this one was behind me, and it stabbed me.

and i didn’t even know. i’m sure it didn’t either for shadows

they do not see, they do not feel. they are naive to the world.

Shower

The faucet turns, unleashing tears of cold

down my body, into the dark drain, gurgling,

sound like tears, visualizing happyness, sounding

like weeping.

hot then cold, i wish i could control the

flow of water which runs from my body

the way i do a faucet, sprinkling down,

around, smelling the tasteless water,

which burns and chills, while i run my fingers

through my eyes brushing away sting

it burns, it soothes, it coldens, it makes me

cold the water from the shower as it

soaks through me around me breathing

in the soothing vapors of water tinged

with suspcious chlorine.

i wonder why i stand there with my eyes

closed at the same time i sit basking in

the water which bathes my body, basking

in the droplets which run down my face into

the infinite drain, washing away my happiness

washing away my sadness, washing away misery

and good times, shedding, molting.

the dirty and clean soap suds collect on the botton and i use

my feet to wipe them away from the ground

making sure it flows down into the underground

never to be found, until it flows in the ocean

where all the other emotions go.

i’m left sanitized, one hundred bacteria free except, neutral,

scientific, empirical, clean slate, bleached–

with artificial smells, without a tinge of dirt on my skin

except inside, where the waters does not reach.

Sometimes I think I’m a bit too harsh, too blunt, too logically rational for a lot of people. I apparently say a lot of “cold” things to a lot of people, but which I perceive as being better for them in the long run in terms of knowing how I think and to make apparent my emotions when I consider something wrong or shady. I think the “Dave, that was cold” statement has been said about 5 times this past couple of days. But I honestly think it’s better for a friend to be pissed off for a little bit than to have anything fester for weeks. I’ll make it obvious, and say something which seems callous on one hand but which I feel would illuminate my point of view. which incidentally, due to my over-inflated ego, I always feel I’m right– not that i’m saying i’m right all the time– i’ll listen to people if I feel i have no knowledge what-so-ever n a certain subject or just keep my mouth shut. lately for the past couple of months I’ve been keeping my mouth shut unless asked because I realized over the past year or two most people don’t want to hear the truth or if not the truth, criticism or suggestions which are contrary to what they think. Same goes for me as well, I admit…

I’m very wary when someone asks me to be honest with them. A lot of times, if they aren’t my friend I just tell them what they want to hear. If they are my friend, I’m bluntly honest, which invariably ends up as me being nice to strangers and mean to my friends, hah. But is it better to tell them what I think and lay it on the line or just to keep it myself?

Things to write about.

- Things you remember you wish you didn’t.

- Changes in my life since high school.

- Aspirations and failures.

- Goals.

Thank you Mark for your donation! Thank you so much!

I had one of the best weekends that I can remember, it was also one of the most complex, one of the saddest, one of the happiest, one of a kind weekend, actually.

I’m glad I went through it.

Two possible scenarios in the next 12 months of the war.

since waylan is trying to teach me more about hiphop, and as i’m trying to learn more, i’ll write from time to time about what i observe.

music review: mos def & talib kweli are blackstar

the lyrics flow smoothly, clearly, enunciated strikingly conveying a message of an afrocentric experience that is mixed and uncertain at times, to pragmatically optimistic at times. track two, “Astronomy” is almost entirely devoted to conveying, through a metaphor of mixed messages the ambiguity that these artists face being black. At times they advocate a revolution. for who or for what is not defined, but will happening none-the-less. This mixture of militant melancholy coupled with uncertainty in life is illustrated in:

Black like my baby girl’s stare

Black like the veil that the muslimina wear

Black like the planet that they fear, why they scared?

Black like the slave ship that later brought us here

Black like the cheeks that are roadways for tears

that leave black faces well traveled with years

Black like assassin crosshairs

Blacker than my granddaddy armchair

He never really got no time to chill there

Cause this life is warfare, warfare

More coming later…

I went to club Release to hear Kevin Yost spin, and I must say that it was one of the more interesting experiences this week. For one, the club was 20 and over, which I presume was done to keep the immature high school kids out.

The crowd was mostly white, with sprinkings of asian, latino, and blacks. Most were tragically hip and almost all could at least groove a little. There were some great dancers there. People were just so into the music. You could tell the people were there for the music because every single one of them was facing the DJ, who spun a very jazzy house mix. Theresa, you would have adored the crowd, who dressed damn cool, and the music too. Too bad you aren’t twenty yet. The friggin women were HOT, but I felt so intimidated because I had the under 21 stamp on my hand and they had drinks in their hands looking sexy and cool and grooving beutifully somehow.

I’m at a standstill in my life in that I’m forced to wait for things to happen in terms of school, finances, and personal life, but I guess waiting for things isn’t my strong point. I need to learn a bit of patience or something, or maybe I should plan my life out so I don’t get faced with this kind of dilemma. I don’t understand why I can’t be happy sometimes. I don’t think I can feel deep sadness anymore either. It’s like a numbing sensation my mind puts out so I don’t get hurt by things as much as I should. Or maybe that’s sadness and I’m so used to it I don’t feel it anymore. It’s not despair. It’s a feeling of melancholy and the sense that things should and ought to be a certain way.

Maybe I’m just demented and I’m never satisfied with what I have.

Book I’m reading at the moment: High Fidelity, I was actually pretty surprised by how close the movie was to the book. If you seen the movie, you’ll notice minor changes such as the setting (it’s in the UK instead). I’m getting a kick out of how this guy thinks–a singularly unique bloke just like me.

So I went to go eat with Theresa today, and picked up her zines to read. While she was in my presence:

- The sister of the woman my mentor from 4 years ago eventually married saw me at Togos and recognized me. I haven’t spoken to her in almost 2 years.

- This girl from norcal who lives in Canada now called me. I haven’t spoken to her in like 6 months.

Theresa is like some kind of magical talisman that connects me to various parts of my past.

Somehow, with all the things that should make me happy, I feel sad.

Today, a bright day with gray skies, I walked across the parking lot dodging impatient asian females in honda civics, when I felt a heavy thump on my chest.

I looked down to see bright yellow and black stripes. My heart started to flutter as I pondored how a direct sting to the center of my chest would affect my walking and pain threshold. I looked a bit closer and I noticed there was not just one but two hornets stuck to each other.

I then realized that they were too busy having wild sex on my chest to give me a moments notice. I turned around a bit to the side so that the breeze would push them off my chest and I felt immediately grouchy as I realized that these insects were having more fun than I was at the moment.

American Jedi, a spoof of American Pie and Star Wars.. incredibly detailed and funny.

so i went to class today, walking aside my roommate who was in a hurry to take a quiz that he thought he was prepared for. we stumbled inside mindlessly, realized we were thirty minutes too early, so we left as soon as we set our foot inside, ignoring the questioning-what-the-fuck-you-idiot glances of the teacher’s assistant who was wearing a faded red dress that was purposely too small for her.

we sat down in the hall, looking through our notes. the quiet noise indicative of our early temporal status was evident– and i knocked my head against the side of the wall, pretending to drift into a nap just so that i’d have something to do. an asian guy stumbled past me wearing a D.A.R.E. shirt. he looked like he hadn’t shaved in days, he smelled like nighttime piss in the afternoon, and his eyes looked vacant. he looked like a heroin user. his blue jeans were a bit on the scruffy and small side.

he woke me up, and asked me what was on the quiz. i told him it was elementary matrix operations. he responded with arrogant deprecation: “oh you mean those pivots and matrices right, and then you get the right side, attach that to the matrix and make that into the identity matrix to solve the unknowns”

i told him yes. and i wondered why he chose some guy sleeping on the wall to ask. why couldn’t he ask that smart looking guy with the glasses and buckteeth who smiled broadly. that kid was going to ace the test. he looked like he had enough sleep, no Starcraft or Counterstrike or Diablo 2 for this student. No parties obviously, but no LAN parties either. Not even late night blogging.

he stood close to me, his vans squeaking on the floor next to me while my roommate gave me a i-feel-sorry-for-you-doood look. my nose felt repulsed as i was thinking this guy’s crotch was too close to my eye level and not only that he smelled like rotten garlic processed cat food.

thankfully the door opened and the first student trotted out with a big grin. i stood up, made a small motion with my head, and we went inside.

I didn’t sleep yesturday, finishing up a computer science paper, and I drove to class (in order to turn the paper in) in a stupor almost getting myself into 5 accidents.

I got myself into the admin building parking lot, deposited a quarter and walked up. In the background was one of those loudphones blaring near the admin building with a voice of a very nervous girl. I listened for a little bit and the speaker was talking about muslims not all being the same and that media representation of muslims were wrong ellie must have been around somewhere…

in any case, i dropped off my paper to this guy who hardly spoke any english because i didn’t feel like going to class. I sat around for awhile, and then I ran after him and I took the paper back from him because I didn’t trust him. I don’t know why. I thought maybe he didn’t understand my plea to turn it in and maybe he’d use it as toilet paper or something. It was irrational I know– but I spent overnight on the paper and I didn’t get to sleep. I wandered aimlessly outside the classroom for a couple of minutes until I ran into someone I knew. I gave the paper to him and got back to my car with 3 minutes left in the parking meter and the guy giving tickets eyeing my car with an almost perverted longing. Ass….

Words Get In The Way (electronica related, if not interested, feel free to skip)

by M. Tye Comer

A decade ago, most people only recognized two kinds of underground dance music. There was house (the mellow, vocal stuff DJs played in gay clubs), and then there was techno (the aggressive, instrumental stuff DJs played at raves). But that rudimentary classification system quickly went the way of the leg-warmer as serious techno students started to mark the fluctuations of sounds, temps, rhythms and overall temperaments of the evolving music through the creation of myriad subdivisions. Soon, soulfoul “techno” begat pounding “hardcore”, which begat the hyperspeed rhythms of “breakbeat”, which begat the dubby bass and beats of “jungle”, which begat the intricate rhythmic structure of “drum ‘n’ bass”, and so on and so forth.

“Within the most styles of music, people will jump on a particular artist or a band,” explains Scott Richmond, content manager of Satellite Records, one of America’s most comprehensive electronic-music outlets. “But in dance music, there’s more development wihtin genres than there is within artists themselves. You’re not standing there waiting for the latest record from Joe Blow to come out because whatever style of music hemakes, there are a ton of records that come out this week that are within that genre.”

But the inherent problem with classifying the constantly multiplying forms of dance music is that, since there’s no universally accepted guide for defining where one genre ends and another begins, the categorization process is extremely arbitrary. Some sources, such as Richmond’s Satellite Records site, register around 40 distinct genres of dance music, while other rattle off more than a hundred.

“Nine years ago in England, people were already talking about how everything was getting so fragmented and that no one knew what was what anymore,” says Gabe McElwine, a former vinyl distributor who previewed and categorized about 500 pieces of vinyl each week during his seven-year tenure at the Watts and Syntax distrbution companies. “I think all of the genre-tagging has gone a bit overboard, but it’s a necessary evil. People are just getting a little bit more savvy about the music.”

For the newbie listener, grasping the swarm of genre titles that pervade dance music can be intimidating, if not impossible task. Since words alone often impede the comprehension process, the internet’s ability to juxtapose text with audio has made it an essential resource for serious students who forgo the jargon of DJs and journalists and keep their own ears tuned to the actual music being produced. Here are a few of the best sites fo tracking the historical and curent trends of dance music.

www.satelliterecords.com

The chief motivation behind Satellite Records’ online database is capitalistic. They want you to buy records. But to make it easier for their 21,000 monthly visitors, Satellite archives nearly ever piece of vinyl in its catalog as Real Audio. Each record is referenced by artist, title, label and, most importantly, a cross-reference of the subgenres to which it applies. With an average of 200 new records added to the site each week, Satellite has arguably become the internet’s best resource for not only buyers who want the newest music, but for enthusiasts who want to keep tabs on emerging sounds and scenes as they develop.

www.groovetech.com

Groovetech’s “Listening Lab” allows surfers to hear and purchase dance CDs and 12-inches by searching an extensive online music database. The site is designed for experienced music listeners who know what they’re looking for (searches for specific labels and artists yield better results than generic genre tags), but the lengthy, high-quality Real Audio clips make the site worthy of a visit. While you’re there, check out the site’s radio stations and archive of live sets from up-and coming and superstar DJs.

www.newgrounds.com/portal

With “Chemical Breakbeat”, “Terrorcore”, “Stupid House”, and 97 other subgenres diagrammed flowchart-style in Ishkur’s Guide to Electronic Music (developed by 22 year old Kenneth Taylor), this site verges on the ridiculous. But the ease of nagivation, pithy genre descriptions and fairly accurate audio accompaniment make the site one of the most well-organized and ambitious tutorials for those looking to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes.

MTV’s Becoming

The purpose of this show is ostensibly letting a fan of a particular star become the star, by doing all the things that the star does and then finally making a copy of a music video. I was bored today, so I was watching this perfectly normal looking woman try to be Janet Jackson and then finally taking part in a re-enactmant of a particular music video that Janet Jackson was in.

…

No really! Seriously!

I have to admit I’ve never been more subtly disturbed watching a television show. It was worse than watching someone miss a thousand dollar “brain teaser” on Who wants to be a Millionaire. This perfectly normal woman was going gaga over eating a few pieces of leaf because Janet ate those things. She was put in a nice beach house which supposedly emulated the glamourous lifestyle of America’s second favorite Jackson Five member. Too bad it was what most stars would consider 3rd rate. You could actually see a public park with tourists in one of the camera shots overlooking the house. Ewww. And you could see stains on the wall next to the bed. Hrm.

She was surprised by a personal massage therapist, but they didn’t really show her back because of her blemish problem (from the .5 seconds I saw it was a pretty bad problem). The therapist looked grossed out too. But I bet she was happy she got some airtime to support her acting and amphetamine habit (she looked a bit on the thin side).

The next day the token gay hair stylist who looked about as artificial as the white member of the Jackson Five came in with the mission of making this slightly overweight woman look like Janet Jackson. Difficult you ask? Not really. All you have to do is make her look like an alien. I mean come on, if they can make Spock have big ears I’m sure they can add fake plastic surgery. The gay hair stylist ended up putting gobs of make up on her, doing some kind of mumbo movie special effects and in any case, her face looked passable enough as a “Janet”, but she wasn’t grotesquely “fit” as the real Janet was. They should have hired the CGI artists who did Final Fantasy to make her a body. Mmmm.

The music video itself was passable. It was a straight copy of the original video but they still couldn’t get it right. I mean come on, realistically, if those video editors could, they’d be working on the real thing right?

In any case, what disturbed me most was the hero- worship and emulation of someone on a level that really bothered me. I mean, sure, make a music video, wham bam over and done with. But do you really have to pretend to like eating 4 pieces of lettuce and basil leaves for dinner? I mean come on, the real Janet would build a new home somewhere instead of living in some place where Marilyn Monroe lived (read: that is soooo 1950′s).

A blogger my sister knows – Very intelligent, full of emotional angst. Insightful writer.