TOUCHING DOWN
Flying never feels real to me. For the first time, instead of feeling superior, looking down on all the people, cars and buildings slowly shrinking, I felt small. I felt like a spec in the eye of God. Nothing.
I think it was the sleep deprivation. Sure, we’ll blame that. I had two hours before arriving at the airport at 4 a.m. and I can never sleep on planes. I guess that adds to the surrealism. Without sleep, the world becomes white static, I drift through the day like molasses and I feel mummified. Without some kind of upper, caffeine, nicotine, what have you, I can’t function at all.
18.8.10
In Rotation: Bizarre rants and insecure R&B ballads: M.I.A. and Drake
Bizarre rants and insecure R&B ballads
By T. Farah
Published on 08/12/2010
Artist: M.I.A.
Album: MAYA
Rating: 5/5
Maya Arulpragasam, better known as M.I.A., is the whole package. She’s got enough fashion sense to match Lady Gaga without looking trashy and bends more genres into one song than some can fit into an entire discography. M.I.A.’s latest mishmash album, MAYA, is a step up from 2007’s Kala, with 53 minutes of irritating, catchy samples and hooks that will either infect the mind or aggravate the senses.
7.8.10
Country Leaver
My flight is booked, my room is reserved, in little more than two weeks I'm leaving.
Breda is going to cost me a lot of money. Thankfully, school pays for the bulk of it, but cost isn't going to be easy. So I want to thank all the awesome people I hung out with this summer for sharing drinks and smokes with me and understanding I was completely broke. I won't forget any kindness and I hope I'll be able to return the favor tenfold.
College sucks. The last three years have not been a non-stop party like you were maybe imagining. If college is really supposed to be the best four years of your life, I want a refund. I wish I hadn't left behind Phoenix and lost connections with so many people. Thankfully, I had this summer. It's been one of the best and brightest thus far.
Breda is the only thing making NAU seem worthwhile. And yeah, college did change who I am. So will the next four months in Europe.
When I was in high school, I was jealous of all the people who were taking trips to Europe. Now I finally get one and I'm not gonna be some tourist or whatever. I'm going to make the most of this. And I'm gonna miss everyone. So there.
I'm going to leave off with this song. It's perfect for the occasion.
Breda is going to cost me a lot of money. Thankfully, school pays for the bulk of it, but cost isn't going to be easy. So I want to thank all the awesome people I hung out with this summer for sharing drinks and smokes with me and understanding I was completely broke. I won't forget any kindness and I hope I'll be able to return the favor tenfold.
College sucks. The last three years have not been a non-stop party like you were maybe imagining. If college is really supposed to be the best four years of your life, I want a refund. I wish I hadn't left behind Phoenix and lost connections with so many people. Thankfully, I had this summer. It's been one of the best and brightest thus far.
Breda is the only thing making NAU seem worthwhile. And yeah, college did change who I am. So will the next four months in Europe.
When I was in high school, I was jealous of all the people who were taking trips to Europe. Now I finally get one and I'm not gonna be some tourist or whatever. I'm going to make the most of this. And I'm gonna miss everyone. So there.
I'm going to leave off with this song. It's perfect for the occasion.
25.7.10
Uncertainty - Look What the Cat Dragged In
Old, never published before. Now seems good.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
"I find this uncertainty exciting and embrace the indecisive nature of my work." - I don't care.
My computer, crashed. My cell phone, dead. I couldn't ask for better circumstances.
It came suddenly.
For me, I've never felt the desire to slow down, become one in isolation. But I love being abandoned in the middle of nowhere. I love being inaccessible to humanity, no one has any idea where I could be. I love that. Stranded, helpless, in the wonderful vastness of nothing.
Now, I hope that great expanses of technology collapse. Some say, solar flares are gonna burst up 'round the year 2012 and that will demagnetize everything and destroy computers all over. Makes Y2K look weak.
Or, better yet, the poles are gonna shift (in 2012 again) and demagnetize everything again. No more laptops, iPods, or 3G networks. Fuck it all.
I don't really believe these fantastic theories, but one can dream. I want to be sent back to the stone age. All great things must come to an end.
But until then, I have my moments of isolation, where I have no perceived audience, where my rules are my own, where freedom is it's own weight.
In the desert, I imagined it much differently. Everything hot, with a warm filter on the lens. Sweating heavy, til it dribbles down the bridge of my nose, dabs my lips and I can taste nothing else.
I would extend a stiletto and cut down the forearm because I wanted the swelter to mingle directly with my blood. Would anyone understand that? That I need fire in my veins.
I would have brought a gallon of water and enough bread for three days. And I'd pour the water over my head, til it soaked into my salty flesh. I would have fed the bread to the vultures. I would have screamed and run my fingertips over cactus needles, sewing them into my fingerprints.
But what did I expect? Instead, I walked for less than ten minutes, drank what little was left in a small water bottle and discovered nothing. I found the burned out wreckage of a car, perhaps set aflame in the desert by drug cartels or the Mafia. But nothing else. I returned to air conditioned slavery and schedules and homework and paychecks, directly deposited, every two weeks.
Starving! Thirsty! Delirious!
The End can't come soon enough.
(appendix):
A second visit to the desert proved more fruitful. Where were we, the other end of the planet? It was darker than a basement, the stars like old, white Christmas lights.
We happened upon some bombed out shell of a brick house, inside, nothing but the remains of pests. Nothing even infested this place anymore.
Of course, we burned it all. I flicked cigarette butts into the underbrush, hoping to "accidentally" start a blaze, but it didn't happen, of course. I pulled out a flare and it bloomed like the sun and wielding it like a torch, chased Luke through the wilderness. He swung a wooden bat at me, but even as I stepped back, my voice advanced with eerie strength.
"C'mere, c'mere," I said. Yet, it was not I that spoke.
The flare burst in two directions. Eric sparked up a bonfire and the flame grew luminous and green.
The air is not natural here, I thought.
When the flare started to dwindle, I threw it into the fire and the whole blaze turned red as blood. I darted off, blinded and snagged myself on a rusty barbed wire fence. I was able to snap it back and the wires crumbled in my fists.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
"I find this uncertainty exciting and embrace the indecisive nature of my work." - I don't care.
My computer, crashed. My cell phone, dead. I couldn't ask for better circumstances.
It came suddenly.
For me, I've never felt the desire to slow down, become one in isolation. But I love being abandoned in the middle of nowhere. I love being inaccessible to humanity, no one has any idea where I could be. I love that. Stranded, helpless, in the wonderful vastness of nothing.
Now, I hope that great expanses of technology collapse. Some say, solar flares are gonna burst up 'round the year 2012 and that will demagnetize everything and destroy computers all over. Makes Y2K look weak.
Or, better yet, the poles are gonna shift (in 2012 again) and demagnetize everything again. No more laptops, iPods, or 3G networks. Fuck it all.
I don't really believe these fantastic theories, but one can dream. I want to be sent back to the stone age. All great things must come to an end.
But until then, I have my moments of isolation, where I have no perceived audience, where my rules are my own, where freedom is it's own weight.
In the desert, I imagined it much differently. Everything hot, with a warm filter on the lens. Sweating heavy, til it dribbles down the bridge of my nose, dabs my lips and I can taste nothing else.
I would extend a stiletto and cut down the forearm because I wanted the swelter to mingle directly with my blood. Would anyone understand that? That I need fire in my veins.
I would have brought a gallon of water and enough bread for three days. And I'd pour the water over my head, til it soaked into my salty flesh. I would have fed the bread to the vultures. I would have screamed and run my fingertips over cactus needles, sewing them into my fingerprints.
But what did I expect? Instead, I walked for less than ten minutes, drank what little was left in a small water bottle and discovered nothing. I found the burned out wreckage of a car, perhaps set aflame in the desert by drug cartels or the Mafia. But nothing else. I returned to air conditioned slavery and schedules and homework and paychecks, directly deposited, every two weeks.
Starving! Thirsty! Delirious!
The End can't come soon enough.
(appendix):
A second visit to the desert proved more fruitful. Where were we, the other end of the planet? It was darker than a basement, the stars like old, white Christmas lights.
We happened upon some bombed out shell of a brick house, inside, nothing but the remains of pests. Nothing even infested this place anymore.
Of course, we burned it all. I flicked cigarette butts into the underbrush, hoping to "accidentally" start a blaze, but it didn't happen, of course. I pulled out a flare and it bloomed like the sun and wielding it like a torch, chased Luke through the wilderness. He swung a wooden bat at me, but even as I stepped back, my voice advanced with eerie strength.
"C'mere, c'mere," I said. Yet, it was not I that spoke.
The flare burst in two directions. Eric sparked up a bonfire and the flame grew luminous and green.
The air is not natural here, I thought.
When the flare started to dwindle, I threw it into the fire and the whole blaze turned red as blood. I darted off, blinded and snagged myself on a rusty barbed wire fence. I was able to snap it back and the wires crumbled in my fists.
8.7.10
In Rotation: Against Me!, Crystal Castles, Magnifico
In Rotation
Cliché punk, pleasing incoherence and raunchy Euro fun
Troy Farah
Published on 07/08/2010
Artist: Against Me!
Album: White Crosses
Rating: 2/5
If you’re in a punk band in this day and age, you’re entitled to a lot more scrutiny than other genres. It’s that age-old question: is punk more about the attitudes and lifestyles or about how one plays a powerchord?
27.6.10
Everybody Poops but Not Everybody Eats! - Free Book Download!
It seems important to teach kids how to poop, how to recognize colors, how to count, etc. But they're saturated with that, so I wanted to teach them about something no one really talks about - starving slowly to death. That's important, too, right? I wouldn't know. I don't actually have kids.
You can download the book for FREE and decide for yourself. Don't tell me you're above experimenting with your kids. You're already gonna treat one of them better and see which ones becomes more successful. So take this a step further, B. F. Skinner, and scar your children for life with my cheery colored pencil drawings of hunger ravished people. You'll thank me later.
P.S. The book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. This means you're free to copy and share this book, but you can't sell it. Let's make the world a less hungry place. By thinking about it. That works, right?
20.6.10
Chugging Past Collectivist Consumerism
One of the weirdest pitfalls of consumerism is collectivism. Nearly everyone I know who owns a house has a room for junk filling. In some cases, an extra room just for storage is a huge plus when shopping for a new home. Those that aren't so lucky rent one of those dozens of Armored Storage cells, surrounded by barbed wire and guarded 24-7 by rent-a-cops and surveillance cameras.
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