Friday, April 27, 2018
Thursday, April 19, 2018
I am evil forest...
"... Kill a man on the day that his life seems sweetest to him."
- John Darnielle "Mountain Goats"
"The work on the house moved slowly, both because of cash-flow problems and because they wanted to ensure that every decision was adequately discussed and agreed on. This very slowness, however, put a strain on both of them, as Gregor saw his building weekends stretch out into the future and as Judi worried about how long she would wait for her space to be finished. Ironically, however, the process of planning and building together was seemingly allowing Gregor and Judi to come to terms with each other's needs and differences. The fact that they now shared, and planned to share, more spaces together than they originally deemed possible, seemed like a good omen. How could they relate--I wondered--when all this work was finished? Was the building such an intrinsic part of both of their lives that there would be some kind of letdown when it was all over? For some people, living in space together is the main challenge--creating that space just an irritant along the way; for others, the creation of space together is the relationship."
This story ends in tragedy. On Sunday, October 20, 1991, the combination of hot weather, tinder-dry vegetation, strong winds, and a small grass fire that apparently had not been totally put out led to a conflagration in the Oakland-Berkeley hills of devastating proportions. The urban forest of eucalyptus and Monterey pine trees that atrracted so many to these steep hillside lots was a major component in the rapid spread of the fire. The attractive narrow, winding roads, including the one that led to Gregor and Judi's still-unfurnished house, were a significant impediment to the rapid response of the fire department. Gregor's body was found in the backyard; he died trying to save the house. Judi, on a business trip, was out of town. The depth of her grief at losing her lover, her home, and all her possessions is impossible to imagine."
pp. 172- 173
From: "House as a Mirror of Self" by Clare Cooper Marcus
- John Darnielle "Mountain Goats"
"The work on the house moved slowly, both because of cash-flow problems and because they wanted to ensure that every decision was adequately discussed and agreed on. This very slowness, however, put a strain on both of them, as Gregor saw his building weekends stretch out into the future and as Judi worried about how long she would wait for her space to be finished. Ironically, however, the process of planning and building together was seemingly allowing Gregor and Judi to come to terms with each other's needs and differences. The fact that they now shared, and planned to share, more spaces together than they originally deemed possible, seemed like a good omen. How could they relate--I wondered--when all this work was finished? Was the building such an intrinsic part of both of their lives that there would be some kind of letdown when it was all over? For some people, living in space together is the main challenge--creating that space just an irritant along the way; for others, the creation of space together is the relationship."
This story ends in tragedy. On Sunday, October 20, 1991, the combination of hot weather, tinder-dry vegetation, strong winds, and a small grass fire that apparently had not been totally put out led to a conflagration in the Oakland-Berkeley hills of devastating proportions. The urban forest of eucalyptus and Monterey pine trees that atrracted so many to these steep hillside lots was a major component in the rapid spread of the fire. The attractive narrow, winding roads, including the one that led to Gregor and Judi's still-unfurnished house, were a significant impediment to the rapid response of the fire department. Gregor's body was found in the backyard; he died trying to save the house. Judi, on a business trip, was out of town. The depth of her grief at losing her lover, her home, and all her possessions is impossible to imagine."
pp. 172- 173
From: "House as a Mirror of Self" by Clare Cooper Marcus
Saturday, April 14, 2018
Intergenerational rant
Enter the generation that experienced this music for the first time beating subsequent generations over the head about authenticity, real love, real relationships, real jobs, jobs that lasted a lifetime, jobs that didn't require a motherfucking 50-thousand dollar cocksucker-ascendant college degree to acquire, that could be gotten right out of a high school that actually taught you something useful, jobs whose pay allowed Joe and Mary America to start a family right out of high school and kept Mary at home comfortably to raise a couple of cute little kids, and they could do all that adult shit right at a time when love was something palpable, before you turned 30, still had no job, started losing your hair, your idealism, and your erection.
So stop wagging your fucking finger at me.
You motherfuckers' experience of authenticity was strict observance of segregation, all white organizations and workplaces. Mothers' place was not only in the home but it required her to slap daughter into silence when she confessed that dad, uncle, grandpa, neighbor touched her wrongly. Dad got drunk, drove with impunity, beat mom also with impunity, cheated on her with impunity, and at best, mom got to take a non-price-gouged Valium after dad went away to work. And what do we have? The tattered remnants of your suburban dream and the hollowed out cities that you left to pursue them. Now we don't have seasons. Hell even the kids don't have sex, nor do they have sexual characteristics. All that motherfucking chemistry that you dickheads touted and turned into megabillion dollar industries are embedded in our every cell. So don't tell me about what is real and what isn't. It's me and my generation that is trying to shepherd you motherfuckers to comfortable retirement homes, while the 1% of you put all our money in exotic tax shelters, and we get to listen to an orange asshole with no sense of reality telling us what matters. Well I matter, and so does every dickhead in my generation that fights the desire to curl up into a fetal ball and play video games high as a kite in a basement, driving around in dead grandpa's Mercury Grand Marquis with a 'Tool' sticker on it. That's the lost wealth of a generation, and all you fucks that decided to sit in front of that motherfucking TV ignoring the world, your kids, thinking the only thing that mattered was bringing home some hard-earned bread. Well, wake up if you aren't dead yet. You were duped. We were duped. Everyone was duped. There is no money, no future, no environment, no beauty, nothing left but skeletons of coral reefs, charred hulks of the once-beautiful night life of cities, and we inherit a shattered money hungry and selfish consumer culture marooned from our roots with last names that were watered down either at Ellis Island or by some faux-entrepreneurial spirit to be something other than Jewish, Polish, German, whatever. That's my America, a vast simulacrum receding from some Plymouth moment of reality that gets repackaged over and over, generation to generation, as some Shibboleth of Americanism. There, I said it. And the reason I'll listen to your music is because my generation's music is so damn emotionally overwrought due to being sodomized by this American Dream-turned-Nightmare.
So stop wagging your fucking finger at me.
You motherfuckers' experience of authenticity was strict observance of segregation, all white organizations and workplaces. Mothers' place was not only in the home but it required her to slap daughter into silence when she confessed that dad, uncle, grandpa, neighbor touched her wrongly. Dad got drunk, drove with impunity, beat mom also with impunity, cheated on her with impunity, and at best, mom got to take a non-price-gouged Valium after dad went away to work. And what do we have? The tattered remnants of your suburban dream and the hollowed out cities that you left to pursue them. Now we don't have seasons. Hell even the kids don't have sex, nor do they have sexual characteristics. All that motherfucking chemistry that you dickheads touted and turned into megabillion dollar industries are embedded in our every cell. So don't tell me about what is real and what isn't. It's me and my generation that is trying to shepherd you motherfuckers to comfortable retirement homes, while the 1% of you put all our money in exotic tax shelters, and we get to listen to an orange asshole with no sense of reality telling us what matters. Well I matter, and so does every dickhead in my generation that fights the desire to curl up into a fetal ball and play video games high as a kite in a basement, driving around in dead grandpa's Mercury Grand Marquis with a 'Tool' sticker on it. That's the lost wealth of a generation, and all you fucks that decided to sit in front of that motherfucking TV ignoring the world, your kids, thinking the only thing that mattered was bringing home some hard-earned bread. Well, wake up if you aren't dead yet. You were duped. We were duped. Everyone was duped. There is no money, no future, no environment, no beauty, nothing left but skeletons of coral reefs, charred hulks of the once-beautiful night life of cities, and we inherit a shattered money hungry and selfish consumer culture marooned from our roots with last names that were watered down either at Ellis Island or by some faux-entrepreneurial spirit to be something other than Jewish, Polish, German, whatever. That's my America, a vast simulacrum receding from some Plymouth moment of reality that gets repackaged over and over, generation to generation, as some Shibboleth of Americanism. There, I said it. And the reason I'll listen to your music is because my generation's music is so damn emotionally overwrought due to being sodomized by this American Dream-turned-Nightmare.
I blame parents
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Monday, April 9, 2018
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