Fuckit Mondays.

Finally a coffee shop with free wi-fi and its 2:30pm. Seems like South Africa is still getting used to the idea of the internet and we purchase the amount of gigabytes we use per month. Alas, I have consumed every morsel of the March quota and am now forced to find establishments that support the concept of a writer who needs internet, ALL THE TIME. Never fear, its almost perfect, except for the weird stares from locals, the beggars who keep on asking me to by cheap shit from China and the fact that "Time to say goodbye", the PAN PIPE version is on repeat. At least the coffee is hot. So whatever, fuck it. It's Monday.

Sean Connery in a wedding dress

Album covers used to look like this.

And the best of them all here is proof that sometime in a galaxy far far away, a man named Freddie Mercury rocked out on the shoulders of Darth Vader. (Oh ps. Vader in Afrikaans means Father. Just saying.)

Man. That shit is cool.

Hagane no Renkinjutsushi and the Neo Nerd.

So I have these cousins. By societies' standard they are both suffering from what I have recently read is called the "Peter Pan syndrome". This dear reader, is what happens when young adults move back in with their parents in troubled economic times. AHEM! There has been a (shocking) rise in the number of young adults aged 25-35 who return to their parent's homes to lessen the financial burden of renting/owning property/sorting through their debts/failed marriages and what not.. As they get free meals and laundry its not all bad, but they have to watch Frasier with their mom and take out the trash. And bringing home dates..at 28. Awkward.

In truth that doesn't actually relate to my cousins as neither one of them seem interested in much else than computers. It sounds like a bit of a cliche to call my cousins nerds or geeks (there is a bit of a difference I will have you know between a geek and a nerd, but they are very closely related so for the purpose of this blog I'll just group them together), but their obsession with all things electronical kind of lumps them into that category. You have to admit though, that the nerds of old have been replaced with a different kind of nerd all together. Something I would like to call the Neo Nerd.

That would be me motherfucker.

Today's nerds don't just sit around with pencils in their breast pockets and calculators in their hands. And that weird bit of tape holding their glasses together. What was up with that anyway?

Nerd circa 1980

Today's Neo nerds are all about computers. Perhaps a generalization, but I don't care. There are still transparencies between the two breeds (an interest in scientifica, mathematical equations etc, thick rimmed glasses, socially awkward, overweight/skinny physique and speaking in a language about topics that seem specifically foreign and exclusive), but being a nerd of the 20th century is cool. And  thats because they seemingly have an insight into a world that we all traverse daily, namely the INTERNET. If it weren't for Nerds we would never have had a programmer named Bill Joy, who with his obsession with computers and timely access to them, become the writer of the interface we now know, use and understand as the "Internet".  Ask any girl with a laptop. Who do you think she is happier to see or more likely to call when she can't figure shit out on her Mac? Her jockey boyfriend or the nerdy guy next door?

See hot chick, dudes with computers. What did I tell ya?

In other words if you are a Neo Nerd, you have game. You may feel unappreciated as a human being called upon to save the day by rebooting computers, but your longevity as a popular and vital member of my speed dial will long surpass any need I may have had to copy your math homework, circa 1980.

Add to that the popularization of nerd culture as a influence on "Hipsterism"(Hello again big ol' glasses, starwars mug and ill-fitting pants) and the equalization of stigmas concerning the interests of nerds, and being a Neo Nerd suddenly makes sense.  I have never seen as many Neo Nerds wait overnight in sleeping bags for the opening events of the "Avengers" premiere or weep at the trailer of the very promising and yet ultimately disappointing "Prometheus". There is just something about those obsessive, passionate, argumentative and earnest types of people who we classify as nerdy or geeky that crept its way into the standard of our obsessions in the 20th century.

Most Game

The Internet is the watering hole for Nerds of this century and its perfectly acceptable to be a freak for apple products, wear Star Trek underpants and be anxious about the newest Star Wars film to be released in 2015. Two years and nine months away. But who's counting?

I might not have your underwear (yet), but I do at times have your hairstyle.

And its this obsessive cataloging which brings me back to the Lost Boys aka my cousins. Both of these fine twenty-something year olds are admittedly Neo Nerds. And they are really good at it.

Entering what I call their "Mancave", they had transformed my Aunt's biggie best sitting room into a computer enthusiasts wet dream. As these guys built their own computers with transparent casings, aquarium like you could see the machines' guts at work; monitors,  multi-fold, pinned on walls like butterflies, stacked games of EVERY imaginable kind, even the damn mouse with its standard tampon format, was decidedly untampon like and very much transformer toy with a crash course needed in the simple working of this complicated device. Add the temperate atmosphere controlled to preserve the machinery at ultimate levels and the light quality of the room and my intimidation was complete. I quietly pitied the piano underneath the cables and the living room furniture, now covered with sheets and blankets, stored in perpetuity.

Fuck you throw pillow.

Throwing me a bone, these lads decided to boost my entertainment value and connected me to the most intricate network server and a collection of every conceivable film, TV show, documentary and more interestingly Anime (standard to high definition) known to man. Imagining that my years in Asia taught me something about Anime, I soon came to realize that I didn't know diddly squat. Turns out there's more Anime out there than you can throw a rock at. And for those who believe Anime is only a cartoon series of little value for children, or and excuse to draw semi-nude girls with big eyes, I will say shame on you for being so close minded.

How do you get Pikachu on a bus? You Poke him on.

Essentially Anime is when a Manga series (which is basically the story in comic book format) gets turned into an animated television show. These things can run for years..I mean decades. Imagine being that invested in a show.

As long as they dye my hair black, and hide the old pace maker we can fool 'em. 

See as an art form, Anime is the perfect storytelling device. The narrative structure and tempo of the series allows for amazing character archs and development. In fact there are certain Anime's out there that follow the lifespan of characters, and then duplicates in other dimensions (say wha?).
The character's appearance is controlled, i.o.w a character can live for years and never age. You don't have to pay for sets, costumes or actors. It's all about the voice work and animators and more importantly THE STORY. As a rule, you have to watch the first five episodes of any Anime series to get a feel for it and the characters.
As I got into these shows,  I started watching multiple episodes nightly. Not sleeping, so eager was I to find out what was to happen next. It was like that time when Heroes first came out all over again. Urgh.

You will always be my Hiro.

And that is the story of how I found Hagane no Renkinjutsushi or THE FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST BROTHERHOOD.

Plenty of best-of-lists, puts this particular series squarely on the top, time and time again.
Here is a bit on the plot of the show. Two little boys named Edward and Alphonse dabble in Alchemy (in this reality Alchemy is a skill and Alchemists are warriors or scholars, but well respected dudes) and they decide to bring back their mother from the grave through human transmutation, which it turns out is forbidden in the world of Alchemists. It goes terribly wrong and the brothers bring back something that is NOT their mother, and in return the cost is the body of Alphonse and the leg of Edward. Moments later, maimed and alone Edward transmutes his brother's soul to an Samurai-like Japanese Armour set, losing his arm as payment for the act. Throughout the series, these two brothers try to regain their bodies, Al because he can never sleep, eat or feel the warmth of anyone, and Ed because his guilt at losing his brother's body and his own mutilation drives him on. And that's just a glimpse of the whole thing.

Whoever uses the last pennzoil  is definitely on the outs in this household.

As this particular series starts stacking up the goodies, the baddies, the subplots, the deaths, the intrigues, it feels like you are watching a house of beautiful cards being built or a room of dominoes being stacked.  Add that the animation is of the best and the musical scores that interchange between episodes make you forget that you are reading subtitles its pretty hard not to become invested, dammit. Like how you should be when you watch a GOOD story.

Also known as 'Meh' story telling.

It kind of made me wonder whether the "western" entertainment industry or Hollywood would ever wake up to the untaped market of the Anime world. Maybe when they get tired of rebooting Spiderman or reshooting 21 JumpStreet, or making another fairy tale action epic, they might consider the dark, gritty world of anime and the largely untapped world of story-telling.

Well technically Disney ripped off this Japanese Anime called Kimba the White Lion and that was pretty excellent. Unfortunately the folks at Kimba is still waiting for the acknowledgement and maybe some royalties.

Fantasy based stories are obviously the trend of our cinematic and television based viewing. Every Marvel comic book has a screenplay in the pipeline, whilst the anticipation of HBO's "Game of Thrones" newest season, is  avidly discussed over games of Settlers of Catan. Wasn't Lord of the Rings named Book of the Century? Come on! Ample proof that people can handle the challenge of multiple characters, complicated plots and strategic storytelling.

The problem is, that  one wonders if Hollywood could do Anime its due justice or will they inevitably fuck it up. Mmm..

Until such time, you might as well download and watch The  Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood to get a feel for all this Anime business. Now if you will excuse me, I need to clean my foggy glasses and sew the hem on my Princess Leia costume.

      Follow this link for more on The Brotherhood of the Fullmetal Alchemist:

http://devilsbats.blogspot.com/2010/07/full-metal-alchemist-version-english.html

I hope you don't mind, but I doodled my thoughts in the comments section in the survey. You know. For variety.

                  Why do you study art? So that I can look at books with pictures all day. -2004

Theatre

With the advance of the world wide web we have the ability to look at pictures on the Internet all day if we like. Thank you Facebook. Thank you Youtube. Thank you Tumblr. Thank you Twitter.

And yet, as quickly as our eyes graze over the images, pictures, gifs, memes, jpegs, whatever, we tend to forget them. Our brains have adapted to this onslaught of imagery to filter out that which is useful, memorable and in some way meaningful to the voyeur. And boy oh boy, there is a lot of crap out there. It reminds me of fast food..it's like our visual diet consists of crappy food that we force down our visual cortex which in turn informs our understanding of the world. I don't know about you, but I find this to be a frightening thing. So when in the abundance of quantity, you come across some quality, it's worth pausing to take note of the situation.

Let me introduce you to the Polish artist Pawla Kuczynskiego or as he is known in English circles, Paul Kuczynski. Born in 1976 in Szcsecin, there is very little else I could find out about the man (who is mistaken by Youtube to be a woman?), except that he studied Art in Poznan. His name comes up repeatedly under "political satire artist" and although the juxtaposing of  different elements of cultural perceptions in his body of work, comments on societal stigmas in a satirical way, it is the simple humor often found in the pieces that really endear them to the viewer. Much can be said about his work, and some may like it, others don't. But as an artist of any kind, musically, visually, poetically, it is our responsibility to report on the world in the time that we are alive and Kuczynskiego has his finger on the pulse on that one. I think I'll quote Anaiis Nin on this when she said, simply that..

.."We see the world as we see ourselves." 

Word.

Flavour

Loading

Hope

Apple

Oil

death of Marat

Christmas

Hamlet

Hunting

Locomotive

Passion

the toaster

Trenches

Water crisis

Wedding

trouble

unhappy walk

the car

breakfast

For links to Pawla's work: 

http://capu.pl/node/271

On being cool.

"So I ran into a girl who went to the same High School as you. I told her my sister went there and when she asked me who you were and I told her, she nearly freaked out. True story. Not only did she remember you but she said you were so cool".

Promptly spitting out whatever food I was chewing, I gaped at my sister with sincere disbelief.. the type of look you expect when you find out you won the lottery, or that you are becoming a parent. It's just so unbelievable a statement. Enjoying my confusion my sister continues, "Oh yeah, she said you were so strange and cool. Like nothing fazed you and were really unique. She was also pretty sure you would never remember her, she said she was a dweeb, but she still remembers you."*

Now I am the last person to assume that I was anything near cool way back in High School. In fact, High School was like unnecessary punishment for being human and I loathe those people who gush that those were the best years of their lives. In fact I pity the fools really, but sigh, you do get them.

To some High School was like this..

..and for some reason like this.

But more often than not, it was more like this..

..and this. Definitely.

High School was just one long feeling of not belonging and feeling outcast. Yuck. Thank God for University/College. But it got me thinking. It got me thinking of the meaning of coolness..

I think most of us have this perception about our own coolness. On a scale of 1 to 10 there are varying degrees of cool and all shades of grey. You can be cool in the traditional bad boy way- this category would normally encompass musicians as for some reason, a man who can hold a guitar and chortle out some chords is just, cool. In that moody artistic way.  Those kinds of cool people say very little, but act very suave. They are the Johnny Depps of the world, the James Dean with the leather jackets, the bruised heart and temper. Mmm..these kinds of cool people also ride on that sex appeal thing and sometimes have an addiction to something thrown in there, that make us amp up their cool factor. This also of course those unworldly beautiful and popular creatures that seem like ooze cool. Meanwhile back at the ranch, these cool kids have an ice tray melting between their ears and are about as lasting as the flavour of Joaquin Pheonix' s gum at the Oscars.

Mr. Swagger.

Then you get people who are cool because they are different..initially they are not so cool, they just seem weird or geeky. But then they come up with shit so cool, its like revolutionary. Think Steve Jobs or like Quentin Tarantino (except he just cleverly rehashes old cliche's in films and represents them in a pop revenge theme - not saying its not entertaining, it's just not completely original) or any of the artists of their time that were NOT POPULAR but made it big post-mordem. These kinds of coolies normally take a while to sprout or blossom, but when they do, boy oh boy. They sometimes fall from grace, Spielberg/Burton has yet to make a recent movie that doesn't drip with obvious sentiment and poor Dan Brown will have to just pull up his old catholic conspiracy breeches and find something new to write about. Waxy and wany..

More radical behaviour from men who wear whatever they want as it occurs to them..Hunter.S.Thompson

So if you fall in the first category you are kind of cool or revered because you look cool or are extremely good at something that is cool. Or if you are in the second category, your creative output is different and therefore you are cool for possessing a certain otherly ability or talent.


But I think there is another kind of cool. It's a bit trickier to see and to realize as it doesn't seem cool to be in this place at this moment and it certainly doesn't make you feel very "cool".
It is what you when you realize  a certain path you chose comes to an end, like those follow-the-story novels, where you turn the page, and maybe the dinosaur eats you on p. 12, or maybe you survive on  p. 19. It just didn't work out.
Maybe you are jobless after living abroad for years and had to move back in with your folks, or after 5 years of studying accounting you realize you never want to audit another damn number, perhaps you are wearing a house arrest bracelet, or you got your credit cards cut up, or you're still buying pot from you ex-husband.

Good T.V.

None of these are desirable life situations, but they happen. It feel like life is forcing you in a loud way to face some challenges, and that you are gonna show it what kind of stuff you are made of. It's the ability to see you failed at some things, and to  keep going regardless. It would be cool if we could do that gracefully, but whether you do or you don't, it matters more that you realize you are cool for just being there and realizing that it is cool..it is. It's cool like the Dude sipping white russians, cool like speaking japanese, cool like remembering all the lines to Family Guy, cool like shooting a bow and arrow, just damn COOL.

Doing your own thing kind of Cool..

Even though it doesn't seem like it in the beginning. It may seem just downright awful. But we all overcome these struggles in time..Martha went back to decoupaging, another bank will call you after a bit (they always do), something else will pickle your academic interest, eventually you will meet someone else and yes, I too will leave my parents house and find employment ... right now it may not feel cool to be here, but it is probably the last time that I will be able to speak to my parents in this way, before age and time takes them from me, that my little exotic existence is still carefree of husbands and babies and that I can take this time to figure out who I want to be.

Even if you felt like walking around like this Dude, its all good.

And even though it's not obvious, and even thought its frustrating to at times and yes probably my quarter life crisis, I think it is just a little gift from the universe to remind me that it is cool. Everything will work out. it always does. And that I  realize that right now, in this place, maybe I am cool after all.

And I pity the fool who doesn't believe it.

 * I did remember this girl in fact and although we weren't friends, I do know who she is and what she looks like.  If I ran into her again, I would tell her as much and maybe we would go for a drink. I'd like to think so, but as she was in fact a dweeb, she is probably driving a BMW now, so it may have to be latte's. And they would be on her.