Amy Winehouse

Its sad that someone so beautiful and so talented has fallen victim to celebrity culture and prying eyes. Hopefully she recovers. I'm a bit slow on this one.

Rap music

I've picked up listening to rap music again and I am struck at how positive a lot of it feels. Mos Def, Common, even a lot of the Wu Tang stuff is kind of soulful interactions with simplicity, pop culture, even the meaning of life. A lot of Wu Tang stuff consistently references a branch of thought that identifies us as co-creators with God. There's some sex and violence but then there are these thoughtful reflections on mans relationship with God. Its almost as if there are these swings from one extreme to another. I also like the identity adopting stuff the Wu Tang does. Its almost like this Andy Kaufman type performance where the act leaves the stage and becomes part of what most us consider the real world. Some of it is gratuitous, and I don't even recommend most of the Wu Tang stuff unless you take it at a distance,but I find it kind of happy and free and sometimes even wise.

1974

A lot more violent the TV series that was inspired by 1974, the original text is somewhat disturbing. This underground pit where children are allowed to be harmed is not so difficult to imagine after the guy in Austria. There had to be people that were involved and in some way everyone is involved in the sense that a society is capable of producing and protecting such monstrous individuals. Society can never be blamed for all of humanity's ills,; some of it is down to people who are disturbed and go undetected for a long period.
But the hero of the novel tries to change the world because he can't stand himself or the world that surrounds him. A good noir but really heavy.

Barack Obama

I think he's great.

Horrible things

Tonight I felt like I heard of something so horrible that when I realized what was being said I could not think of anything but how incomprehensibly evil some men can be. Apparently a man in Austria raped his daughter repeatedly over 24 years and had 7 children by her which he has kept locked up in a dungeon in his house, never even letting them see the light of day. I thought of how I and others have joked about incest before and I just felt ashamed. I could almost feel myself making a pledge never to feel sorry for myself again. I guess everyone has their own troubles and the measure of their emotions are only comparable to what they know through their own experiences. But I can't imagine that these children thought that they had normal lives. The way the world naturally works and operates in every relationship from one thing to another, ying to yang, hard to soft, suggests that this is not right in any way. How can society deal with something that troubling? We don't even want to immagine that a human is capable of that but it hurts to understand that they are.

Roommates Stepping on Cats and Hey Ya

So four of us stepped out from my house on Tuesday night to go over to the super huge tesco's nearby. My roommate Seanybaby yawned, stretched his arms, closed his eyes and kept on walking right to the point when he stepped on an unsuspecting cat on the sidewalk. The cat shrieked and Seanybaby jumped up and ran backwards afriad that he had woken up a furry monster. That was funny but I felt bad for the cat becuase it only has one eye.

I think the song Hey Ya was inspired by the way English people say hi to one another. If you think about the music video Andre 3000 is refrencing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. Its like hes trying to bring something British over to America. Everytime I hear Hey Ya I feel like dancing and singing 'Shake it like a polaroid picture. Shake it, shakeit'.

Biographies and Federico Fellini

This probably goes without saying, but every time I read a biography I find myself identifying with the subject and am saddened at the end when they end up dying. Tonight as I finished Fellini's Biography by Tulio Kezich I teared up a little bit, perhaps because I found myself using my experience in Italy with one of the most visible icons of Italian culture of the twentieth century. Though many men who lead extraordinary lives seem to always be unfaithful, they are also almost always portrayed as being a philanthropist, and you find these expressions in their work and their sins seem easily forgivable, but of course this is made from the sideline and not from the experience of lives. Though Giulietta Masina loved her husband, she knew he was unfaithful and their relationship suffered from it probably in ways that are undocumented as so many experiences are.