Subconscious Thesbian Cookery

I just had the wierdest dream from which I have just awoken. It was actually a series of dreams, but I can only remember pieces. One of them featured me being somehow casted simultaneously by Carey Barney to act as both Othello in the play of the same name (which I have played as before in "Goodnight, Desdemona, Goodmorning Juliet") and aleading role from another Shakespeare play, and I remember being flattered that I was being trusted with two lead roles at a time and also intimidated by the sheer amount of line memorization and character development that would be required. I also found this ironic upon awakening because after watching "Twelfth Night" I came to the conclusion that either I didn't do as good of a job acting in this one as I thought I did or I'm just really good at seeing all of the things I could have done better. Anyways both of the plays were interestingly being done during the same semester, echoing the reality of "Twelfth Night" where I had a really short time to figure out my role. I also remember snippets of me hanging around the theater where we have done the plays with some of the people from "Twelfth Night;" I can't say who exactly but I suspect Patrick Benson, George Stoica, Daniel Snow, Cathy Smith, and most of the people from the SLU female apartment near the school were there, given the second half of the dream.

The other half of the dream was at the SLU apartment near school where Sadie, Eleanor, Myriem, Jelena, and Tadz live, but something was wrong with it, because apparently by opening the door from the kitchen, instead of leading out into the hall it just lead into another apartment where other SLUdents lived. I remember something about a lime pie being in this other student's house, or I was making a lime pie, but in either case I got ballsy and went over into their apartment to get something out that I needed, which I guess I wasn't supposed to do, but I didn't get caught. Then I was in the kitchen, which wasn't set up the way it is in real life, and Ealanor and Danielle Lagman were chilling on the couch from the living room which was now at the end of the room in the kitchen, and I was cooking salad and spaghetti for them. For some reason I wanted to grill the tomatoes and some of the salad leaves, for "texture," and then put them back in the salad. I was going to finish the salad later, and I started boiling the spaghetti, which I managed to finish, but then when I went back to finish the salad, which they had already started eating, I got really weak and fainted. They didn't really notice what had happened and it took a supreme amount of effort to sit up and call to them for help, and then Danielle comes over with the spaghetti, but all of a sudden it has lots of olives and spaghetti sauce in it, neither of which I had put in it! Anyways I ate it and felt better, so I could get up again, and as I got up to finish cooking I also got out of the dream and woke up to realize how bizarre it was to dream about cooking for friends. Now I'm really hungry for spaghetti...

How to REALLY make love, not war...

So I was checking out the archives of good 'ol humpjones.com, when I came across this article. Basically, this European couple has found a way to do what I listed as step two in my blog about liberation of the human animal: take something nasty in society, figure out what drives it, and turn it on its head to make it into something awesome: they created a non-profit company called Fuck For Forest, where they sell porn videos of themselves and donate the proceeds to activist lawyers and indigenous peoples in an attempt to preserve the rain forest. Their basic philosophy is, all of nature derives from the drive to create life, in other words, reproduction, in hippie terms, love. In our society, both nature and human sexuality are repressed and disrespected, and through sexual liberation it is possible to liberate the environment. It's a pretty genius system--it removes the potential for gender abuse through voluntary association, elevates porn to a level of art, encourages people to become more sexually liberated, and protects dwindling portions of the earth that remain wild. If only they had thought of this back in the 60's, all those free-lovin' hippies might have actually achieved some of their aims.

Seeing the Dope Show

So I met this girl name Eleanor at the orientation barbecue a year ago, when she leaned back too far in her chair and fell all over the grass. Hilarity and friend-making ensued. I come to find out about two months ago that she's a big fan of Manson (Marilyn, not Charles). She proceeds to persuade me that seeing him live WOULD, in fact, kick ass, and in the middle of November, we show up to the Palacio de Deportes to see the uber-goth mega-artist superfreak scream his guts out. Which he did admirably.


I was surprised to see so many people wearing brightly colored shirts. I guess the Spaniards are a) more casual with their concert attire, b)cross their musical genres more often or c) just don't give a shit about things like that.


For Eleanor, Manson is a god. I've always admired his music, artistry and sense of style, but he never really converted me completely.


That is, of course, until after I saw him live. This concert was the consummation of a life dream for her, and the beginning of new dream-states for me.


During "Heart Shaped Glasses," this animatronic robot came out in a sort of French maid's outfit, but with a corset on (yes!), carrying a tray of stuff, and Marilyn started to sing while playing with her leg and being Mr. Sexy. At the crescendo of the song, he ripped its head off, started singing to it, and made out with it before putting the head back on the tray, at which point it walked back offstage.


Another very memorable moment was when the lights all went dim, and when they came back up for "Fight Song" (one which I was personally hoping he would play), he was wearing a boxing robe and gloves with the microphone suspended in midair, and the ropes all around him. Goofy stunt but still kinda cool.


At another point, he was lifted up on this hydraulic platform about 12 feet above the audience, as multicolored confetti sprayed from the guns on the sides of the stage.

Another time, he started a song with all the lights off; the only thing visible was his mask, which had giant spotlights mounted where the eyes should be, with wires trailing out behind him. Very cool effect.

For "Mobscene" he came out in a suit with the top hat deal. He pretty much changed costume after every song.


I forget what song this was for[edit: this was for Antichrist Superstar}. The lightning thing is his logo. There were a bunch of microphones on the podium but one of them fell down so he broke them all and threw them off. Then he pulled out a bible and held it up in midair and it spontaneously combusted.

I'm sure I'm leaving some stuff out but overall it was a thrilling experience. Oh, did I mention his microphone was a knife? Sweet.

The Ramacastanas Trip

This is waaaay old news by now but I felt compelled to let family and friends *cough*Eric*cough* where I've been going this semester. A Spanish friend, Antonio, invited us up to his house in the country pueblo of Ramacastanas (pronounced: rah-mah-cah-stahn-yahs) in September, and we took him up on his offer. Awesomeness ensued.

The first night was dedicated to drinking, since, after all, it's the country and there is nothing in particular to do. I proved why God doesn't want giants to ride children's bicycles when I crashed into something and banged up my something else. Okay, God, point taken. Then we engaged in storytelling, interpretive dance, acrobatics, and wind tunnel. For those who don't know, wind tunnel is when you shake your head back and forth really quick while relax your face muscles, and then take a picture, with the intention of getting a really bizarre photo. Props to Marisha for showing me this game originally.

The next day was spent at the river. We bought the bare necessities (beer, horribly greasy potato chips) and some actual food and took in more of the gorgeous scenery. I believe Alex decided the correct this to do after eating and drinking was jump in the river. We all agreed that this was excellent advice and followed suit. Some other tourists took our picture, during which time I cursed at them effusively in English to hurry up because my man-parts were shriveling on account of the unexpectedly arctic water temperature. So then we decided to head up a trail and found edible berries along the path. I think they were blackberries. We got to the mouth of the river and climbed up inside, where it looked like a little grotto or a natural day-spa kind of thing, carved out of rock and only a foot or two deep, so we chillaxed there until Alex and Rachel and I think Liz got bored and climbed up one of the rock walls and jumped into the lagoon below. Then on the way home Antonio dropped me and John off near his house and told us to follow this trail, because we could get fresh spring water at the end. Sure enough, a couple hundred meters down the trail it ducked into the foliage, and we crossed a little bridge and there was a couple meter-wide pool of fresh water, creating a little creek to the left. There were water skaters on the surface and the rocks kept floating up and back down in the middle, indicating that fresh water was bubbling up from underground. Very cool and nothing I had ever seen before. We drank our fill then filled the jug and headed towards Antonio's house.

That night was, for me, the highlight of the trip. We made spaghetti and accompanied it with cheap wine, and then we all grabbed blankets and seeping bags and went and laid out under the stars. It was beautiful. If you have never been out in the middle of nowhere and looked at the stars, please plan to do so soon, because it is amazing. It reminds you how very small you are and how very big everything is, and that sense of being overwhelming beauty is missing a lot in the city life, where you can only catch glimpses of it here and there. We played a game where we each say a song lyric in a row. It was really cool because people chose lyrics that demonstrated their personalities, and thus we expressed who we were by letting other people do the talking. I translated what the English lyrics meant for Antonio. Then we discussed the nature of love and other such nonsense before finally retiring indoors (too bad...sleeping outside might have been nice). Antonio later called the trip "one of the best experiences of his life;" it's definitely up there for me, as well.

There are a million other snapshot moments in my head that I'm equally fond of, but really don't make sense out of context; what I remember most about the trip, though, was the incredible sense of beauty, tranquility, and peace nature ceaselessly offers. It served as a reminder that while I may be irrevocably a city-boy, a part of me is always wild at heart.

Ramacastanas Trip Photos

Photobucket Album

Spiritual Judo: A Response to the Human Crisis

A friend of mine wrote one of her sad but beautiful pondering-the-state-of-humanity blogs recently, and inspired me to write a whole separate blog on my own about it. I hope it still makes sense out of context.

"and maybe people really honestly believe [racism] no longer exists... or maybe we are complacent and after all it is well hidden...under this sort of cloak."

We were talking about immigration between the US and Latin American countries in class a few days ago and I brought up that often this issue is just a smokescreen for racism...people continue to fear and forget we're a planet and everyone deserves a little piece of happiness...

"you are taught to care selectively...care about the sad story of a woman with cancer who you see on oprah...care about your family..but you aren't suppossed to care about random people..."

Oh you care about plenty of random people, as long as it is in your interest to care about them. Since we're one of billions our actual lives become less relevant. What becomes relevant is something else we talked about in class today, something I'm sure you as a tool fan are quite familiar with...the idea of living vicariously...more and more we are passive partiipants in our own lives. We want to be voyeurs, see and feel all of the emotions of knowing someone without actually having to invest the effort to do so. Each generation is sucessively more passive, dissecting other people's lives in reality shows so we don't have to do that to our own, god forbid. And glory factor, how the average person on the street an only give us so much attention but we can almost touch the fame of the nothings on American Idol that have become Somethings...not to mention the "DANGER!" of the masses--even a child can figure out that the more people there are, the higher probability that one of them will be a murderer or a rapist...so why trust strangers?

"but...imagine this world if people just cared.

good and evil...why are there so many people who hate and so few people who love?"

Oh, people do care, and people do love. They just do so selectively, as you pointed out. Don't forget cynic's rule #1: People always act in their own self-interest. It's in the definition of the words. It is perhaps not an ideal world where cynics are the only non-delusional people, but that is simply how people work. You love and care for things which benefit you in some way. The problem is sometimes those who do evil percieve it is in their best interests to do evil instead of good, since it is more profitable and runs you less risk of getting fucked if you reach out to the other guy. Game Theory controls the power dynamics, even on a social level, which inevtably leads to human survival and wealth but leaves the beautiful parts of humanity poor and going extinct.

Proof comes from your own writing.

"that you become NUMB and INDIFFERENT to because they are JUST A PICTURE you wont ever know that person and yah its sad but you know...you arent there witnessing it before your own eyes...what about the people you see everyday though...on the sidewalk sitting so hopelessly...those pictures...those images are real"

In another class earlier today, Tannas told us of her experiences in India, where she stayed for four months, and how incredibly different the culture was there--getting usued t the sights, sounds and smells, which were all mainly horrifying, like the image above. And she talked about how over that period of time a sense of numbness and helplessness set in, and eventually indifference, because she realized there was nothing she could do and it's simply the way things are. Apathy is lethal; first it runs a deficit your soul and eventually the blank check--on the environment, on the poor, on the value of a human being--will bounce, damaging you physically in the form of tidal waves, riots, and emotionally generations emotionally maimed people and pleasure-receptor-trained hiveminders.

"and i know i should stop bitching like a maniac and do something proactive instead of sitting behind an energy consuming cancer causing computer screeen...."

I wish I had a 12-step program for liberating mankind. AA already did that for alcohol but I think some of those steps are useful in removing humans from other forms of bondage as well. So here's my 3-step program for human animal liberation:

1. Admit you are powerless to save the world. Adopt the cynic's attitude. History is a pretty good litmus test for the power of self-incentive. In all probability, we'll continue down this path until something big and nasty makes us reconsider the other fork in the road.

2. Reprogram yourself using Cycnic's rule #1 as a motivator instead of a hindrance. Remember why it is that this life isn't in your best interest, and most importantly, replace it with one that is, to the maximum extent allowable under the system. Remember why the risk is worth it, why imagination trumps the cliche, why a moment of genuine connection is more fulfilling than lifetimes of instant emotional fallacy. Create systems that emphasize and reward self-improvement and self-expression, and the sharing of these products in community, as an end in itself, not as part of economic commerce. Trade the ignorant bliss for the terrible knowledge, and be content in that choice. Flip the value switch from instant gratification to long-term reward, from personality to character, from destination to journey. Stage a coup on your heart, and dethrone the false god of Pleasure and restore the Trinity of Truth, Virtue, and Beauty. Not because you have to, but because you WANT to.

3. Since you can't save the world, think smaller. Use that motivation to make ripples in the circles you swim in. Lots of individuals united in making ripples in their immediate vicinity, together create a tidal wave of change. That's the secret: lead by example; act, do not speak; play the hand you are dealt the best you can with what you've got. It's beyond your control whether the cards come out right, but it's not beyond you to stack the deck in your favor. Greatness is just consistently doing a lot of little things right.

"but why don't people care...do people really just not realize???? "

The physical precedes the mental with our species. We've got a lot of lag time between the defeaning boom of material development and the deafening silence of our own ignorance. Our species needs to evolve to the next step up--controlling our animal brains with our human ones, instead of the other way around. Short of an act of God or a catastrophic global emergency, the only way to make this happen is YOU. Be better in all the right ways and breed like rabbits. Cause right now, evolution is favoring the stupid.