I’ve been thinking a lot about amber lamps today. I wish that instead of having to do one monolithic thesis for the master’s’ that I could do smaller, loosely connected nodes on things that are current and interesting. I got tired of the idea of a grunge thesis about a year ago.
I’d like to unpack the amber lamps meme. I must admit that the first time I watched ‘fatnigger’s’ utoob clip I was mainly paying attention but did note in passing the girl on the seat in the background and that she did not react or move away from the fight. Perhaps it’s the case that fights on buses are so common in the USA that this was for the most part, the unremarkable part of the video. However, by-standers who are not easily phased, I take it, are rare.
I can identify with amber lamps. I too am non-interventionist, even to a fault some would say. “how can you just stand there and say nothing yakky?” they say. But everything will work out the way it’s meant to. Was that what amber lamps was thinking?
I want to get an amber lamps t-shirt if there is one. I’m sure there is.
PS. They played the rock and roll animal version of sweet Jane at starbucks. I haven’t heard that album in years. I’m at starbucks because cafe Benny was full.
Anger. Rage in america is another issue. Epic beard guy was feelin it. This seems fairly typical of many Americans I’ve seen. It’d be easy to interpret it negatively. As if it’s epic beard guy’s weakness. But I’ve learnt that it’s a positive sign to be able to express anger. Even when it seems to be conveyed poorly it is still moving in right direction. And that’s the main point. It’s on the way to somewhere. Somewhere better.
You know I was going to say that as far as music goes, the two-zeroes pretty much sucked. Aphex twin quit it and Amon Tobin only had a few albums in the early part. There wasn’t anything else good.
But this decade is off to a good start. I like the rhyming in this and I like the way it came about.
Although, bandcamp is a cool idea too. It’s like myspace, but the webpage design is infinitely better. And it’s not owned by rupert murdoch, yet. The challenge is sorting the wheat from the chaff because there’s about a zillion artists on there. I guess someone could make a blog that did it, but you’d have to have all day to sit around and listen to new music.
I started from the back, alphabetically. I even paid $2 for zoos of berlin’s 3 songs, lending evidence to the argument that if you only have to pay a small amount then you’re more likely to pay than gets in for frees. But most people are giving it away for free there. And I found that a lot of people are into retro-electro, and that the thing that really makes an artist is a good singing voice because there aren’t that many of them.
Here’s a couple that I like:
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Also, why wasn’t the Taiwanese earthquake that happened yesterday in the news hardly at all? Three serious earthquakes in two months. Do the news people think the audience are tired of earthquake stories? I think there is something seriously unusual going on with the planet.
These are sad times because my plants are dying. I entrusted them with a coworker during my time away. I’d had them four years or more. The chances of them reviving are about the same as that of some dude splitting a sea in two.
I’ve been watching 1950s epics with charleton Heston in them. Ben Hur was pretty cool. Must have had a huge budget for it’s time. I liked how it had the alternate viewpoint of history angle going, at least in the first part. It would’ve been better if they’d just had that bit where jesus is giving charleton some water, but then not crossed paths with the biblical stuff again. There was some good bits of scoring in the soundtrack too. Also pretty cool that Frank Thring got to be Pilate.
A little more cheesy was The Ten Commandments. This is probably the most memorable scene:
But I liked the bit where charleton had just come back down from talking with the burning bush.
Joshua: Whoa Moses, nice blow wave. Who did?
Moses: The Hand of God held the hair dryer that blew this wave.
Sephora: Sage.
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I’m trying to start my masters thesis. I don’t know where the apostrophe should go there. And I don’t know where to start. 20,000 words is a lot.
I watched this last night. There was loads of toplessness in it. I know that the 70s were a strange time, and that science fiction movies were all the rage, but somehow I think that Charleton Heston got the better roles, when compared with Sean Connery going from the 007 franchise into this, uh, I don’t know what kind of outfit you’d call this.
My powers of description fail me when it comes to this film. It was weird.
I’m at kl intl airport waiting for my flight back to wintery Korea. I had a very decent Thai dinner for $2 and there’s free wifi. Even before getting here I was near moved to comment on the atrocious state of tullamarine airport. Another contrast is Malaysia airlines compared with qantas. I can easily say that MH has been the best I’ve flown with, Singapore the only other that’s comparable. Malaysian have been friendly, polite and they comunicate well. They make the mistake of letting qantas staff handle their check-Ins at Melb. and despite them having English as a first language they’re really bad at communicating. I was sitting at tullamarine thinking about varous aspects of public infrastructure in Victoria and it was enough to make me wonder if this is part of Australia—is this a first world country? Yes of course it is I hear you say Dianne. Then what is the problem? I never thought I’d say this but it’s the unions. They are like idiot children when eating: they always want more, more, MORE without regard for those around them or even for their own wellbeing. As a consequence, public projects like whatever the hell it was they did to nunnawadding station cost squillions and take ages. I’m not saying cut peoples’ wages but they should take a look at blue collar work that gets done in other countries—and realize how lazy they’ve become. From what I’ve seen here and in Korea, people still take pride in their work and the extra effort they put in pays off in creating infrastrucure that the whole community can take pride in.
How’s this for a lunch? The Indian food here has been totally sweet, and by sweet I mean excellent, and not necessarily sweet. Although one side-dish I had yesterday of, I think pumpkin was sweet. It was sweet~!
What I’ve liked is the staff being totally unphased by tourist of the year walking in with no idea of what the normal way of ordering is. Have I mentioned that basically no-one I’ve talked to in service positions (including checkout-chicks) have had any trouble being understood in English?
Anyway, the Indian people have been totally cool, and obviously word hasn’t got out to the malay-indian community about how terribly racist australians are, because they’ve been totally nice.
Featured in the foot above was some mammoth calamari rings, and one killer-sized prawn. I don’t know what the accepted way is for tackling a prawn like that, but no-one stared when I mostered it with bare hands. Actually, the prawn was a bit mushy. Probably it was supposed to be like that, but the rest was ace. For 18.5 ringgits = 6k KRW = 6 bucks aus. = 5 and a half US.
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I was going to launch in a couple of days ago and say I wasn’t going to watch the winter olympics on principle. Principle being that it’s just a bunch of yuppie-vacation pastimes dressed up as ‘sports’. Having a go at curling is like shooting fish in a barrel though. And I have been watching it because there’s only about two tv channels in the room I’m staying in and one of them is espn honk-kong. winter olds is still rubbish though. The real sports are ones that can be done by people living in any part of the world, and that have a minimal amount of money needed for equipment, like marathon running.
Luge. What’s that all about? How is that related to anything in the real world? You know what the real story is, don’t ay? Worldwide luge is financially backed by the military industrial complex in order to advance the technologies needed to shoot men into outer-space. Human missiles to combat the impending Plutonian invasion.
And I find it amusing that it’s the world’s strongest economic and military powers who are the only ones competing in the couples figure-skating. Russia, Japan, China, USA, and Germany. IN fact, Russia poached one of Japan’s skaters.
Following are some size-minimal fotos (w/catchy captions) to assuage the abuse of bandwidths.
The people here are really nice. Yesterday I was walking around and a guy says hello and we chat a little. He says his sister is about to go work at paramatta hospital in sydney and asked me if I wanted to have lunch so he could ask me about australia. I declined, perhaps a regrettable decision but I was roaming, and frankly I was still a little suspicious of motive despite the vibe of the guy being genuine.
It’s a vastly big difference to Vietnam where pretty much everybody is trying to make an extra buck out of you. It’s almost non-existent here. I don’t know why that is – if it’s a byproduct of the more religious attitude, or if there’s some nasty laws against grifting that I don’t know about. I guess things aren’t as cheap as inn vietnam, but still a bit cheaper than korea.
Another situation was that I was in a line to get a monorail ticket out of a machine at a station. I pressed the buttons to get the ticket I want and waqs about to put the note in to pay but it said it wouldn’t take notes and I didn’t have enough coin to pay. They young guy behind me stepped up, dug into his pocket and gave me about 50cents worth of coins. I tried to give him the note I was going to use as compensation but he wouldn’t have it.
I am digging the muslamic architecture, and just notice that the petronas towers kind of look like minarets.
Everyone here speaks English quite well. I guess my preconception of the young women wearing the headscarves is that they would be taciturn and a little cool in their approach toward the whiteman, but it’s not the case at all. So I guess I can dig it apart from the thing I notice that there is no equivalent with men. Some of them wear little caps, but very few. When out in groups, the young guys couldn’t be picked apart from non-islamic guys, while the women have the scarf. And so, in order to equalise the situation, I propose that the guys wear .
Also, I know it’s a thailand thing rather than a malay thing, but I saw a pic of the reclining Buddha on telly and I totally got it. Given the weather and everything. As a novice seeker on the path of slack as a way of being I think I have to get one of those reclining Buddha statues.
I arrived in kuala lumpur last night. The tradeoff for doing airtravel during the day is that you invariably arrive at your destination in darkness. It makes hard to get a feel for a place when there’s no sun.
It’s one thing to read the brief history blurb about racial makeup but another to walk around in it. There’s people from literally every part of Asia here and it would seem that it’s equally home to all. As a whitey residing in east Asia the Islamic people here seem the most interesting. Like head scarves. I really want to ask a woman if they ever get Jack of it. Especially in the hot weather.
But being back in multicultural hoju and now here has reminded me of the universal truth that people are people regardless of culture. We really shouldn’t be afraid of each other. Everyone loves shopping malls. I’m going to stop watching sbs news.
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