7MIN

This should take you seven minutes or less to read.

I went to churchy church today. I've been going to services and sermons and stuff for months, but it's been a while since I went to main service at North Hills. I don't think I've ever listened to Tom as closely as I did today. I have almost no idea what he was talking about, except he said we should be making an impact in the world, as Christians. Did he say how? No. He babbled about some holiday that is tomorrow.

So I thought about it for two seconds. How can I impact the world? Well, Galations 5:22 came to mind:

22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

That'll make you stand out as a human being, let alone a Christian. Practice ONE, just ONE of these things and people will start to notice you live a lifestyle of love, whether you say it or not. Easy.

Also, it's not against the law. Brownie points for not being illegal to be nice.

Another effective way to impact the world is to pray. It doesn't have to be a prayer more than five minutes, and it doesn't have to be about anything important. The key is communication with the Almighty.

There. Now, you don't have to pull out any change from your linty pockets or listen to me talk about tomorrow. The rest is up to you.

Hope you learned something.

The Last King

If you like long, boring historical dramas like I do, you may want to skip the Last King of Scotland. Its forced dialogue and weak plot failed and made a tragic historical event humorous instead. Which I did not appreciate in the long-run. Forest Whitaker did an excellent portrayal of a paranoid, insane dictator but that didn't save this mediocre film. I don't know how you can screw up a historical event; it's right there in front of you.

It didn't help that the main character was an asshole. He only cared about himself and his sex drive and did a lot of foolish things that killed a few people. While the dictator Idi Amid killed 300,000 people under his regime, Nicholas killed about five people, albeit indirectly. He ran one over and caused about three to be gruesomely executed by his insane boss. The fifth is in there somewhere.

Anyway, that's my review. I've been trying to experiment with some new forms of writing, including writing accurate (decent) movie reviews. It takes practice and so far these leave much to be desired, especially with my random tangents (like this one). However, I am mostly analyzing this film for the objects used in it.

I've been reading Chuck Palahniuk's writing tip essays on his site. They come out once a month and you have to pay to read them, but every time a new one comes out you can read them for free, once you register. They're important to me so I wait and read them.

This month's was on objects used in fiction. It describes how personal effects in a story can have personality and change meaning and progress action. For example, the ring in the Hobbit is a nice, magical trinket but by the Return of the King it is a device of complete wretched evil. I want to start doing this in my fiction, making items a part of the story but it takes practice. Noticing the items in movies is a good way to start.

In the Last King, there is a medicine bottle with poisoned pills instead of aspirin and a bag with the ingredients for an abortion. These items are used to build tension that Nicholas may be caught and executed by the raving dictator he works for.But that's all I can think of.

I can apply this to my day-to-day as well. A couple of days ago I bought a silicon head from a thrift store. It is incredibly creepy, it has real human hair and you can remove the face. I have no idea what it's used for. I named the head Cirby. I wish I could show you pictures, but my camera mysteriously broke. I've been using this cheap, crap one my mother owns.

I went to the zoo today with Dave and brought the head. I took pictures of myself next to random animals, posing with this creepy head. It freaked an antelope out and it grunted at me and lowered its head, about to charge. Several monkeys were so interested they stuck their grubby hands through the wire and groped the head. I whispered to the monkeys, "Yes, yes, yes! Touch it my precious!" I got plenty of weird stares from single mothers pushing strollers and trying to avoid having their kids ever run into people like me.

The peacocks were especially not amused by my antics with the head. They were running around in the mud and squaking at me. I found two eggs sitting by a fence, which I assumed were peahen eggs. I put them in my backpack and have them now. I plan on eating them later. I also found a fake ID.

The pictures we took were amazing. However, I somehow accidentally deleted all the pictures on the camera. It made me very frustrated but not frustrated enough. With this and my camera breaking I should be really angry at the universe. Yeah yeah yeah. But somehow I'm not.

I think the lesson I learned is that art is about living. It's about doing. It's not about showing off. That's the best compensation I can come up with. You don't need to see those pictures and I don't need to show them to you, no matter how amazing they are.

Now I just look at the head as a new opportunity. I have to top whatever I just did. And I will.

How was that for implementing objects into my writing?

Need for Speed. . . and Reality

The Wachowski Brothers have made some interesting accomplishments in film, and now they've taken on a different kind of challenge: working with animals and children. Ironically, the film is not bad, even if it is for kids.

I think there's a reason they call it "Speed" Racer. It is clearly a drug film. Like "The Matrix" and "V for Vendetta", Speed is full of flashy visuals that could give you seizures. On acid, the schizophrenic color wheel wielded by the Wachowskis would be amazing.

The Brothers do an excellent job of making the film still look like a cartoon while still maintaining some credibility. That means, they don't become retarded or sloppy. In fact, they take the show to a new level.

The story was pretty bad, but forgivable. In fact, the thing this reminds me of the most is all the podracing in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Speaking of which, there is a new Star Wars coming out, based on the Clone Wars, that is completely CGI. It seems that Star Wars gets progressively more fake, but all films seem that way now.

It was Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park that brought CGI to the big screen. Things haven't been the same since then. Now we have Beowulf and Transformers and 300, some of the worst movies I have ever seen. But other than that, I don't know why I complain about the integrity of CGI films. I don't think there has ever been integrity in Hollywood. In fact, everyone moved there a long time ago to evade the patent laws that Thomas Edison implemented. The whole city has been a group of thieves from the beginning. Film itself is made out of dead horses.

But anyway, Speed Racer was quite good.

Precious Man

I will not give in

IF I GET OLD, I WILL NOT GIVE IN
BUT IF I DO, REMIND ME OF THIS

Polish

POLISH

On a night that I stayed up til the six a.m with insomniac creativity, I painted my toenails.

My toenails used to grow inward and get infected. Pus and blood would ooze out. It was painful to endure but even more painful to treat. So I would usually let them rot and stink in my brown blood-crusted socks as long as possible. My doctors said I had the worst ingrown toenails they'd ever seen.
I finally got them so infected that the roots fell out. So the doctor lined the bed of my toe with rat poison and now I will never have another toenail on my left foot, and my right toenail will always be thin and short.

So I painted them with sparkly red nail polish. I did a horrible job, cause I don't usually do this. I like how covering my scars with glitter and color and still doesn't make it look pretty. Another reflection of society? Or I did it cause I was bored.

The paint came off in a few days, but showering in the dorm showers was a little embarrassing.

Another thing I can do with my toes is suck them:

Notes on the Wall

April fools? Art is like a joke and if you explain the punchline, the work loses integrity.
I'm sorry if my jokes are a little too vague or sophisticated.
Or illegal.

Embrace it or reject it, but my generation's art movement is street art. It doesn't need your approval to be considered art. It doesn't need a fancy gallery to be considered art. It doesn't need fame or fortune or identity to be considered art. It only needs a wall.


Street art is not about following the rules. It is not about me me me. It is about you you you. If they don't like my work, they paint over it. If they do, they are not charged an admission to see it. I risk jail time to show them my work, some would say, truly suffer for it. Not for me, for you.

Don't even call it art.


These are some examples of my street art and the responses from other artists. I don't know who they are. But I think this is all immensely amusing.

This is some of the first graffiti I ever did. It took me standing on a row of bike racks, barely aiming. The stencil was upside down and soon as the paint was applied my friend Ninja and I crossed the street. A security guard showed up and started screaming into a radio that we were just there. That's the closest I've ever been to getting caught.

The red eyes are still there, as of this date. The real "eyesore" is the fact that this wall was boring white and hadn't been painted over in some years. Notice the peeling. I made it look much better in my opinion.
It wasn't until recently that someone, a much better stencilist than I added "SORE" to the end, making pun of my art and possibly making fun of me. I don't mind, because it amuses me.

The argument still goes on, is graffiti art or vandalism? I decided I don't care. It is what it is. So I made stencils that claim: "THIS IS ART", "THIS IS NOT". I finally understand what the FREE ART? wheatpaster was trying to say.
It was clever to do, and then ZEAL/LABOR tagged underneath, as if to agree with my sentiment. It made my day.


Good things come in threes, but I only have two examples. I haven't done much stenciling in a coupla months. In any case, I feel as if I am communicating with my environment and people around me, albeit sarcastically, illegally and unintentionally. That's really what this movement is about. So what if I created an "eyesore"? I created much more than that in the process.
I'll leave the rest for you to interpret. That's your job.