Watched Inception, was thoroughly unimpressed. Watched Dogtooth soon after, was thoroughy blown away. Any way you look at it, that filim is insanely well done. I particularly loved the muted palette, the pastel colours juxtaposed with the blue of the pool and the greens. For a movie about "dreams" Inception is nothing like a dream whatsoever - dreams are not constructed like that. Dogtooth is thoroughly a dream-nightmare. I really wish Baudrillard and Derrida and Marcuse were still around, so I could watch movies with them, and then we could all laugh and cry together at the good parts.

10 minutes and 2 cigarettes after arriving in St.Catharines my Mom took me along with her for manicures and pedicures - a "girl" tradition I am highly unfamiliar with. I don't "do" pedicures or manicures, I feel really childish and get very skittish. I felt like a ridiculous imposter, and accidently ruined by pedicure seconds after walking out of the salon. My mom rolled her eyes and said something about her failing at trying to make me more feminine. I felt a little bit better after that.
I felt like an imposter because when I walked in to the salon I felt like I had entered a secret sect of tired-looking white women, all staring like drones in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors, clutching their purses. But all eyes turned to me when I walked in, and there was a moment of appraisal that I haven't felt so strongly in a while - and then the awkward look away when I proved myself uninitiated. I think that the easiest way to fit in most places is to look bored. If you look a little bit bored, you look like you belong. I have learned how to do this in most bars, on the streets, sometimes - but when I am over-stimulated and interested, boredom is difficult to simulate. Which is why I always become a little clumsy in movie theatres, a little zoned out.
In the salon, there was this little mini shrine, one of those kitsch-chinese displays that I see all the time in mock-authentic chinatown restaurants, complete with lcd-lit incense sticks and scalloped mirrors. It was high up, close to the ceiling, not low enough that anything could have been placed haphazardly. Cheap red and gold plastic. But there was an empty styrofoam coffee cup sitting amongst all that paraphenalia. I looked at it for a long time.



ps. really enjoying tom wolfe - "yah! lower orders. The new sensibility - baby baby baby where did our love go? - the new world, submerged so long, invisible, and now arising, slippy, shiny, electric - out of the vinyl deep"

My 3-card tarot reading last night was Abundance - Prince of Disks - Queen of Disks. The more I think about it, a very straightforward and positive reading, especially considering that I had a really fucked up day yesterday. I think I was a little bit manic. As for the cards - I'm a little confused about the Queen of Disks, considering the relation to domesticity. Maybe heralding a happy home life in my new apartment. I really like the illustration for the Queen of Disks:

Not sure if I trust Aleister Crowley more or less because he looks like this (though I'm thinking more):

My friend Lendl is publishing an anthology of visual and lit works by a bunch of people, including myself. Below is one of my poems that will be included, along with one more and a flash fiction/hybrid piece. If you're interested in a copy you can email me, they will be available in September, I believe. Or you can email him at passivecollective@gmail.com.

Possess

The pussy-pushing thoroughfare:
unsubtle notation you've written out and
pulled over your body,
now becoming a map without edges or an
incomplete song showing itself in the patterns of your
damp body hair. like a miracle or demon the
pulse of symbols
push against all surfaces.
We read it: never listening with eyes shut tight and a
half smile, like in the movies.
directions protect you
and the parting of each curtain of skin
is a process of dismantling:
not colonization, just curiosity for what you lost.
open up for the double-entendre
embedded in the surface of narrative
[still hot and raised]
and your hands still sticky
from self-service.

we are plural and dispersed and I love you!

I continue to have dreams where I am exposed to a friend or a stranger's art project film etc. and feel completely repulsed by what they show me - cartoon characters from my childhood being slaughtered and raped, half-human hybrid beings being tortured, group murders on stage. My disgust and fear during the dream is vivid, and then when I wake up I realize - fuck, all of that stuff is inside of me and worst of all I condemn myself for it. Return of the repressed?

I've been reading Jameson: "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism," just finished up Bataille's "Literature and Evil" and I'm currently about half-way through the theoretical section of Barthes "Mythologies." I packed up all of my books and only left out the theory, hence my lack of easy reads. The question that has been on my mind is one of Jameson's:
"Can we infact identify some 'moment of truth' within the more evident 'moments of falsehood' of postmodern culture?" I'm sure the 'Answer' is yes, it usually is. But I feel that new theories of the 'hope' inherent in postmodernism need to be articulated by the latest generation. Jamesons's "Postmodernism...or" was initially published in 1984, and I am struck doubly by how outdated and obvious some of his theories are, while also thinking how genius he is - he taps into things that people are saying now as if they're original. And one of his comments struck me in particular - "there has been a mutation in the object unaccompanied as yet by any equivalent mutation in the subject. We do not yes possess the perceptual equipment to match this new hyperspace...in part because our perceptual habits were formed in that older kind of space I have called the space of high modernism." I feel that my generation is maybe different, maybe this time is composed of entirely new kinds of subjects, hyper-subjects. Maybe not. I'll be thinking about it. Also - I flinch away from using terms like "subject" and then feel simultaneously ashamed and pissed at myself for giving a shit about whether or not we can still talk about "the subject." Pow.

1.2.3 - various tumblr's, if you know or want recognition or removal, let me know.
4. - fuck oui jean-luc godard

Here's a little eye candy to take away from the heaviness/cynicism that has been my blog lately.
These are some of the ones that really struck me, but Kander has a tons of amazing work.
Krisatomic/BOOOOOOOM/Nadav Kander
In other news, I found out that I am getting a big scholarship from the government via sshrc. I feel honoured and happy.
I am reading Baudrillard's The Ecstasy of Communication, Bataille's Literature and Evil, and Perdido Street Station by China Meiville. All of which singularly and combined make for some fucked-up, evil dreams. I really need to record them more quickly than I do.
Any recommendations for great science fiction novels, other than the usuals of Gibson, Philip K.Dick, etc.? I'm house-sitting for my Mom and step-dad next weekend in their spacious home with a pool and a garden and a full fridge, and I'm half terrified of feeling isolated but mostly excited to have the house to myself. I'm planning a little spiritual/intellectual retreat. There is much to be done.