Today I came to a decision over my creative writing essay, which is actually only 1500 words anyway and apparently can be as subjective as I like. Rather than write it about Virginia Woolf, which could be construed as an admission that Jim Stewart has had any effect of my learning this year, which he most definitely hasn't, I'm going to write it on the New York school poets (Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, Kenneth Elmslie etc). In the very few words that I have I'll hopefully be able to compare these guys to the beats, who I like muchly.
Anyways, I was doing some research on these cats today and came across this poem, which is wonderful:
It's always great to find a poem read by the poet. I kind of feel I'm missing out on something important when I read the poetry of others myself, out loud or in my head.
Today I spoke to our landlord and we're actually going to be staying in the same place this year, which is awesome. I like this flat a lot, it's big and good for Jam.
I was in town today, looking for a belt and a long sleeve t-shirt (I have this sweet wooly jumper which is just a tad too itchy to wear at the moment), but I couldn't find either. Seems like you can only get a belt from Primark if you buy trousers to go with it, and they only really had thin crappy jumpers and no long sleeve t-shirts in sight (apart from a couple with really shitty, stupid looking collars).
While I was down there I went to Superdrug to look for Cherry Coke, and found "Cracker Drinks", some sort of fancy looking fruit juice. Cracker, also a pejorative for white person:
Guess they have their target audience figured out up front. Even if you ignore that as being strictly an American insult and not applicable in Britain, I hardly think any of the other connotations that the word carries are any better; a gritty cop series? Crack cocaine? Someone/something that breaks limbs? I just don't know what they were going for. Probably not a good time to launch an overexpensive health drink, either.
Creative writing is really pissing me off. Yesterday I attended a class which I thought was going to be one of the four hour workshops but turned out to be another of Jim Stewart's bore-a-thons. Pointless, pedantic and a complete waste of time - this week we were looking at a 2 page extract from No Country For Old Men for almost an hour, with the smartarses in the class all crawling over themselves to argue that it was fast paced, or wasn't fast paced, or that Chighur was enjoying himself, or that he wasn't etc... I left half way through, I couldn't stand it. It seems the reason I got confused was because the workshop was actually scheduled for last week, or it would have been if Kirsty Gunn hadn't switched it for a "down the line" (her retarded way of saying "online", ie via email) tutorial, which basically consisted of me sending her a writing piece last Thursday and her only just getting back to me today, with a couple of paragraphs of advice, only after I sent her an email reminding her she hadn't bothered to answer.
On top of this I have an essay to write for next Tuesday, based on a text chosen from a great big list they provided. None of the texts are by authors we have ever studied; there's no advice about what the essay should roughly be about. Just a "Get on with it, everything is explained in the manual!" said in Kirsty Gunn's lazy, dumb hippy voice.
So that'll be fun.
I might compare Mrs Dalloway to Aliens or something, see how they get on with that.
A lesson in exaggerated masculinity, ebonics and (in terms of script writing and characterisation) in creating a stereotype defying, multi-dimensional and morally questionable character (very minor spoiler):
Omar from The Wire is pretty much the greatest Robin Hood figure ever to emerge in the history of television, and I include Robin himself in that sweeping statement. He's gay, he cries about his dead boyfriend, he only robs drug dealers and yet he himself provides drugs to some random woman with a kid (I'm not sure about what kind of relationship he has with her yet, although he has a lot of affection for the child, so perhaps it's his sister or something)... He's just awesome. Unfortunately, curiosity killed the cat when I looked up his Wikipedia page and accidentally read something about his future in the programme... I hate the ease of information on the internet. It should be restricted, like one of those crazy communist/theocratic/fascist countries I've always wanted to have a go at running.
Today we had to Escape to Victory by taking Jam to Alex's flat for a whole 6 hours of cat related hi-jinks. It was almost completely unnecessary however, as the landlord only arrived late afternoon, and was only around for a very short amount of time. We're actually now considering staying on, so we'll have to catch him again before he starts advertising our home left right and centre column.
But anyway, it was nice to hang at Alex's for a while, although we were pretty dead beat from staying up late/getting up early, and we might have been getting in the way of some serious studying (sorry Sophie). Alliteration is a fun thing.
I think tiredness is really getting in the way of how quickly and eloquently I can write this, so I might call it a night for now. Go and look at some pretty Heather pictures instead, or stare blankly at Ed's and pretend you know what he's talking about, or read Matthew's which is HI-LARIOUS.
Night night.
P.S. I found a tampon on the doormat today (not Heather's, presumably not the landlord's, thankfully unused). A lesson in carefully picking your future flatmates.
Heather accidentally bought a trashy American magazine today, instead of a British trashy magazine, an advert inside of which inspired today's blog title.
I also bought a collection of short stories by Virgina Woolf for a creative writing essay, as the library only has ONEFUCKING COPY, which is currently on loan, of course. That and Creative Writing Dundee, issue #3, with poetry by Tim Morris and James Stewart. I wasn't that keen on Jim's work, but I kinda liked Tim's, although it's pretty out there. You can see why he teaches American Modernist Poetry. Here's one of his poems, which isn't in Creative Writing Dundee, but which I just found on a random website (by searching for Tim Morris poetry on Google, if anyone is that interested):
"Then go back slowly after the travels,
once every longer and longer time;
for prevention is bodyweight, and pound for pound this will help her,
flaring twice a day under a chloroquine sky.
Skip the missed beat of injected muscle, taking as little as the
sense of balance, bleeding inside the eyes; until the next, do not remember,
to protect you, completely as unless is, or other medicines. High, sever
disorders, are given in this way for oral schedules, based average of
prescripted groups, even as the week's missed dosage. No you completely."
Tim Morris is a pretty cool guy, he says "Gotcha!" and "Ah, c'est ca!" a lot, (although he only gave me a B something for American Literature last year, the git), so I can totally imagine him reading this aloud. Hope he doesn't mind me posting it...
I had to change my blog theme also, because I was keen to put links to Heather's blog on the sidebar but the last theme wouldn't allow that for some reason. Also over there on the right is a link to Ed's blog (some nice photography mixed with incessant, bamboozling rants about technology and computers), and a few sites that I frequently rip off/exploit.
To end today, here's an amusing video of John Lennon taking the piss out of a Swedish (or some sort of Scandinavian) person:
But I'd rather know a shover than a pusher, 'cause a pusher's a jerk.
Today has been a jazz/hip hop/classical music day, the very fringes of musical society. I was reading Pitchfork earlier and found a post about MF Doom, who now wishes to be known simply as "DOOM" (ALL CAPS!). He's releasing another album soon also, named Born Like This, but rather than simply reiterate an article I've read, here's a linky:
I think I might actually try and get hold of this one and then work my way back through his discography. I love Dangerdoom but it's the only work by DOOM that I've listened to extensively; apart from a couple of tracks of MM...Food. As far as modern, intelligent hip hop goes, he's pretty hard to beat.
Anyway, before I completely alienate the one or two people who read this by going on about hip hop, I reorganised my LoveFilm rental list last night, but it was a bit of a struggle. Recently I seem to have really lost interest in film, pretty much since I stopped studying it, so it was hard to think of anything I wanted to see... I added a few Jimmy Stewart flicks, having watched Harvey recently, which was awesome. In fact, I'll see if I can find a clip... yep, here we go:
Jimmy plays this drunkass who is friends with an imaginary 6 foot 3 white rabbit. It's pretty funny and heartwarming.
As well as stocking up on Jimmy Stewart (the next film we have coming is It's A Wonderful Life, which neither of us have seen), I ditched a lot of arthouse films which I don't really have the energy or patience for right now, like Last Year at Marienbad.
So leave a comment if you have any good film suggestions; we tend to avoid modern mainstream films, but aren't adverse to pre-sixties Hollywood classics, Noir films, murder mysteries and the like...
More Tom Waits. I do apologise. I love this video/song because someone showed it to me a while ago (I think it might have been Lum) and I thought it was pretty weird, but then I came understand Tom Waits a little bit more, and it all started to make sense. It's claustrophobia and paranoia rolled up into one creepy video.
We got a little letter this morning from our landlord, telling us that he plans to start showing people around the flat next week. Nice of him to:
A) Let us know that he was coming to deliver the letter.
B) Let us know that time was running out on us making a decision about whether we were going to stay next year or not (guess not)
C) Let us know that he's going to show people around at such short notice.
We pretty much crapped our pants when he turned up to deliver it, and Jam escaped from our bedroom after we stuffed her in there, so we ended up just not answering the door and he eventually went away. So I spent today tidying and listening to music through my (pretty) sweet new headphones, which came this morning.
Speaking of music, and things that are pretty sweet, check this shit:
The Only Fun In Town is a great indie night here in Dundee, presided over by our good friend David "Tiny Tim" Mcleish (sp?). It used to run at the Reading Rooms, under the name of "Felt", but that is now past, lost in the sinking of Númenor at the end of the First Age.
Anyway, if you're in the Dundee area, or just close, check it out. It's on at the Union, which usually sucks, but not on this occasion.
I must go, I smell apple and blueberry crumble. Ciao!
Jeeze Louise, there's a programme on BBC 2 right now about Harold Pinter, who died at the end of last years. They're talking about The Birthday Party, which is an awesome play, very frightening, but the film adaptation being shown seems pretty silly. If you haven't read Pinter, be sure to give him a read; he deals with the human condition, has quite a sinister and negative view of humanity, and his plays and characters are often very cryptic and realistic at the same time; realistic in the way they talk, and the way that Pinter captures natural speech (with interuption, mistakes, repetition etc), but very mystic in terms of interelationships, and how they talk about their past etc. He avoids opening character description also, so your interpretation of each character comes entirely from what they do and say in the play.
Check out The Caretaker (which has a great movie adaptation, with Donald Pleasance, the blind guy from The Great Escape, as the tramp), The Room, The Homecoming (which is hilarious and extremely frightening), The Dumb Waiter and The Birthday Party. Keep an eye for them anyway, The Room and The Dumb Waiter are often published in one collection.
I forgot what else I was going to write about now... Probably not a whole lot. I set up Heather's rowing machine today, which took a fair bit of time, but it's pretty fun to use.
Also, I had a class today on Derek Walcott's poetry, which is pretty fantastic. Here's a couple of his poems for you to peruse, if you're into that sort of thing:
The first one is pretty long, don't attempt it if you don't have a lot of patience because there's a fair bit of coloquial Carribean language. It's worth it though; it's full of wonderful imagery, for example:
"I ain't answer the ass, I simply pile in the back seat and watch the sky burn above Laventille pink as the gown in which the woman I left was sleeping"
or...
"I knew when dark-haired evening put on her bright silk at sunset, and, folding the sea, sidled under the sheet with her starry laugh, that there'd be no rest, there'd be no forgetting."
Sigh...
Check out A Far Cry From Africa also, which is much shorter but very dense.
I love buying books, but when it comes to poetry it's often very easy to just find what you're looking for online. It was in the news today that books are going up in price, along with alcohol. Now is the winter of our discontent...
Anyways, Heather's writing and reading about her disertation and I'm sure using the computer wouldn't hurt, so I'll wrap this up.
On Saturday night, Heather and I attended a Women gig. Supporting were The French Wives, who weren't all that great, and Share, who were pretty good. If you happen to get a chance, check out Share's track Fish Out Of Water, it's a thrash tinged indie assault on the senses (in a good way).
Women were excellent, which was to be expected. In a similar way to last time I was completely amazed by the juxtaposition of wonderful, almost ethereally light guitar riffs and heavy, heavy bass lines. Their music is very menacing and very uplifting (in that order), and they alternate between sounding like the Kinks and some rhythmic, tribal, death-voodoo noise rock band, if they aren't sounding like both at once. So yeah, pretty amazing stuff, check them out if you haven't:
This place was called the Flying Duck. There was a kitchen that wasn't a real kitchen, a microwave that wasn't a real microwave, portaits of people saying all kinds of WACKY and HILARIOUS shit. We played Connect 4 and Jenga - tempers frayed, champions were made. It was tons of fun. I'm pretty much in love with the Flegels. And Mike, Chris and Robert, to be honest.
Speaking of great bands on Jagjaguwar, Parts & Labour are touring at the moment in the UK, and are playing Captain's Rest tonight in Glasgow (where we were on Saturday night - a pretty cool, but expensive pub with a cosy little venue downstairs in the basement), so if you're around, check 'em out:
But the drummer said "Yes, yes, yes! This blog is a test!"
I'm under no illusion that anyone will find anything I have to say interesting, but it seems to be common practice these days to spit opinions in to the maelstrom of the internet, in the hope that it might land on someone's face and they'll take notice. So here's a lovely new blog, in white on black. Hopefully it will serve several purposes, including:
A) A sort of diary, which I can peruse in the future and feel sentimental about days wasted writing rubbish.
B) A vent for my constant urge to push my tastes on others, particularly in the form of my musical tastes, but also anything else that takes my fancy.
C) Hopefully, eventually, a forum for my creative writing, once the university module is finished and I'm free to post things without being accused of plagiarizing my own work.
D) A way to kill time.
There's not much to say as an introductory post, except here are two blogs which I am in DIRECT COMPETITION WITH:
