Any love is good love

Yesterday someone told me about how they had woken up in the middle of the night, thought about something, thought it was genius, but didn't write it down and in the morning forgot it. It got me thinking about the last thing i thought about while not being able to get back to sleep: the lyrics of You Ain't Seen Nothin Yet by Bachman Turner Overdrive. I remember thinking about it for around an hour and was pretty much convinced that it's a song about a man who falls in love with a transvestite. it's a little more subtle than lola, but still i don't think it needs explaination:

I met a devil woman,
She took my heart away,
She said, I had it comin' to me,
But I wanted it that way.
I think that any love is good lovin', and
So I took what I could get mmh,
Oooh, oooh she looked at me with big brown eyes
And said:

You ain't seen nothin' yet,
B-B-B-Baby, you just ain't seen nothin' yet,
Here's something that you never gonna forget,
B-B-B-Baby, you just ain't seen nothin' yet.

And now I'm feelin' better,
'Cause I found out for sure.
She took me to her doctor
And he told me of a cure.
He said that any love is good love
So I took what I could get mmh,
Oooh, oooh she looked at me with big brown eyes
And said:

You ain't seen nothin' yet,
B-B-B-Baby, you just ain't seen nothin' yet,
Here's something that you never gonna forget,
B-B-B-Baby, you just ain't seen nothin' yet.

the lyrics pretty much tell the story of the crying game, except without all the ira stuff.

Sonic Youth

Two days ago i recieved a Sonic Youth dvd in the mail. The video clips on the dvd confirm what everyone already knows: thurston moore doesn't age. kim gordon also doesn't age but rather than being perpetually early to mid 20s like thurston, shes stuck in her 40s. the first video on the dvd is dirty boots, released in 1990, when thurston was 32 and kim was 37.

i'd forgotten about the video for sunday (can download from http://www.harmony-korine.com/paper/main/vid_sunday.html). shots of macaulay culkin filmed close up with a high speed camera and then slowed down together with clips of ballerinas. the part with the spinning ballerina i'd class as genius, but on the whole i'd classify the video clip as hard to watch, but also hard not to watch. the same can probably be said about the director's film, gummo (something else i'd forgotten about). i haven't seen gummo but i remember someone telling me about it and the more he said how bad it was, the more i wanted to see it.

to show what i mean, here's what wikipedia has on gummo:

The two main protagonists are Solomon and Tummler, two teenage boys who kill cats and sell them to a butcher so they can buy glue to sniff. Other characters, odd enough to make a black midget in an Israeli flag t-shirt seem like the most normal person in the room, pop in and out of the narrative, wrestling kitchen chairs, discussing nipple-darkening techniques and threatening to shoot their children if they don't smile. And the enigmatic Bunny Boy wanders silently through the landscape, urinating off bridges and playing the accordion.

from imdb on the bathtub scene:

Solomon is in the tub eating spaghetti and drinking milk. There is a peice of bacon scotch taped to the wall. This particular thing made Werner Herzog write Harmony a fan letter.

It's disturbing yet beautiful.

Dreams

One thing possibly more boring than someone writing a pretentious old theory based on little knowledge is having some random person go on in detail about the content of their dreams. blogs are self indulgent, its what i feel like doing, so im going to do both. there's possibly another thing more boring and i plan to write about that as well, but i'll leave it as a surprise to create some interest.

so as a warning, the rest of this will probably be boring and/or annoying to read.

boring pt 1.

if i wake up while dreaming, i find it difficult to get back to sleep as i'll start thinking about a whole lot of things at the same time. i only really do this while trying to get back to sleep. therefore, my dream theory is: while im asleep my brain has less input from the senses and so uses this time to organise what it already knows (and when i wake up, it's still trying to do this, but in a conscious state). part of the subconscious sorting out process is trying to find connections between things - which is where symbols in dreams come in. so, as a simple example, if im worried about an abstract concept such as where im going with my life, my brain might try to deal with the problem by thinking about a physical object which i associate with direction, such as a compass. dream analysis might have some validity, however, symbols in dreams are probably tricky to interpret as obviously the same symbol might mean different things to different people. like you can't really interpret a dream by looking up some generic dream symbol web site. my guess on the possible evolutionary reason for all of this would be that people who dream are likely to be more stable and therefore less likely to do themselves harm.

boring pt 2.

last night i dreamt i was at a kraftwerk concert somewhere in adelaide. they came out and started playing a remixed version of computer world. at concerts i've been to, there are usually people at the front trying to dance, people in the middle nodding their heads and people at the back trying to look like they fit in while not dancing. im usually in the nodding to standing section. in this dream, everyone in the audience was dancing and dancing well. being part of this, i felt really excited. i usually enjoy concerts, but don't get that excited. some exceptions have been:

pavement - i can't really remember if they played well or not, but i'd listened to the albums so much and looked forward to seeing them so much that it didn't really matter.

the flaming lips - basically because of the large balloons, the people dressed as animals, the large screen and the story about the peach pit

and more recently at falls:

ian brown - but only during the stone roses songs, and the part where a someone behind me started giving me a head massage - when i turned around it turned out to be an attractive girl (ok, reading that now, it sounds a bit gross, but i was partly drunk at the time and a head massage seemed appropriate. my hair was newly washed and soft that day and so probably was appealed to someone on drugs. i guess what im trying to say is the 10 second head massage wasn't anything meaningful. and its not like i could have done anything to stop it....anyway, why do i feel like i have to justify it?).

the shins - probably because of songs i like played well and an enthusiastic crowd

so back to the kraftwerk dream. half way through computer world, the tempo started to slow down. the song eventually stopped and was replaced with what could best be described as abstract noise (i know thats not a good description, but it really is the best one). some people dressed in black appeared on stage and in the audience and started doing the thing which is possibly more boring than listening to people talk in detail about their dreams - performance art. and not just any performance art, but audience participation performance art. i lost the feeling of excitement and wanted to leave.

boring pt 3.

when i was younger i thought it was my fault that i didn't enjoy performance art. like i thought there was a deeper meaning to it which i wasn't intelligent enough to appreciate. now, i think it's just not for me. i still think there must be something in it though. i've met people who like it.

i don't think that its just because i don't understand it that i don't like it (i enjoyed donnie darko and some david lynch movies without really knowing what was going on). it's that if i don't understand the meaning there's usually nothing else to it...

take the first example given in wikipedia for performance art: 'A performance artist, with eyes closed, sits motionless for long periods balanced on an uncomfortable railing'. i don't think that even needs a comment. without understanding the meaning, i could probably watch that for around 45 seconds.

the second example sounds more interesting: 'The performer speaks and sings. On his chest and face, some electrodes record his emotions. These measures alter a live video stream.' based on the description, i could probably watch something like that for a while and remain interested. however, i think the actual performance would have the same problem that a lot of performance art has: it's not actually possible. as far as i know emotions are fairly complex and can't be measured by attaching electrodes anywhere. ok, so possibly electrodes can measure pulse, conductivity of skin, tension in muscles, and assumptions can be made from the measurements, but i think thats still a long way off from knowing proper emotions. like nothing is going to say 'we have detected you are angry'.

the third and final example in wikipedia is: 'Performance artists in Jubilee Gardens, London, England, remain perfectly motionless for long periods. Even when asked a question they will not reply'.

i can't think of any good conclusion. i'll have to sleep on it.

animal behaviour

as a result of the nature of the internet, i occasionally find myself watching porn. i'd like to clarify this a little by saying i don't go looking for porn, porn comes to me. usually as links on blogs i've been reading - and not porn blogs either, just people writing stuff like 'i went to the shops today, had lunch with friends, watched a movie.....and here's a great link i found'. anyway, i probably didn't explain that very well, but the point i'm trying to get across is that when porn comes to me it usually comes unexpected.

so, a few minutes ago is an example of a time when i've come across unexpected porn. at least i think it was porn. there wasn't any nudity. the site i visited contained a series of nicely filmed, user submitted videos of their face while they masturbate (i won't put a link to it, but the site is called 'beautiful agony'). normal porn like naked people, facials, golden showers, girl on girl, etc doesn't have that much effect on me. however, after viewing this site today, my mood has changed considerably. basically, i've gone from:

1) going about my normal daily business

to

2) watching a free sample of a well lit, nicely filmed video of a woman's face while she masturbates and has an orgasm

to

3) having a very strong desire to have sex.

and this is where i am at the moment.

highschool does some good things like teach history, mathematics, english, etc, but one thing i think it does poorly is prepare people for practical situations in life, such as the one i'm currently in. of course there's a very simple and obvious solution to all this (and at the moment i'm by myself) - but i'm not suggesting that highschool teach people that. rather teach something about the origins of emotions such as sexual desire, anger, sadness, etc, ways of thinking about these emotions and how they affect interaction between people. perhaps something like a simple psychology subject.

my highschool had sex education classes which lasted for 1 term of year 9. i have two memories of the classes:

the first is of when we were asked by the teacher if we knew how a woman could urinate and wear a tampon at the same time. most of the class were stumped. i knew the answer: there are two holes. i knew this because the first book i borrowed from my local library after it installed a computerised system where people no longer had to talk to a person to borrow was a sex education book directed at males. in addition to female anatomy, the book contained a section on 'how to talk to your penis'. the instructions were: first gain an erection, next, think about something thats worrying you, perhaps a test that is coming up. im not sure if this is the right answer, but when i do this, obviously the erection goes down and my penis then says 'what the fuck do you think you're doing?'

the other memory i have of sex education class is when we were asked to write an essay about sex before marriage. i got 8/10 for my essay, but also a comment in red pen which said 'i pity your views'. i talked to a number of people in the class and none of them had a similar comment. the point i tried to make in the essay was sex before marriage is an individual's choice.

i don't know if its possible to guess from these two stories, but i went to an all boys anglican school where the sex education teacher was also the school chaplin.

ok, so back to possible solutions to the current problem. i've had a little more experience with sex from when i was in year 9, but i still think this where people might start having the 'i pity your views' type thoughts. i saw the movie shopgirl a couple of days ago. one of the main parts of the movie is that the two men in it, even though very different, both had the wrong idea about sex - im probably not giving too much away, but they both realise this through their relationship with the shopgirl. so maybe i haven't had my realisation yet. anyway, here are the options. i've decided to stay away from euphimisms:

1) masturbation. during, feels pretty good. afterwards, can go two ways: either a sense of calm and relaxation or a feeling of being the most lonely pathetic person ever who also has a mess to clean up. i've decided not to go for this option today.

2) sit it out. when i was a teenager i thought this was the best option. as i said, i went to an all boys angican school where the sex education teacher was also the school chaplin. i don't think sitting it out is the best option. it makes it hard to concentrate on anything else.

3) sex with another person. more specifically, sex between two people who both share affection and respect for each other and where the end result is a mutual satisfaction of interests. in theory, i would rate this option higher than either option 1 or option 2. In theory, my brain can come up with a large number of rationalisations as to why it would be ok to call up a friend and ask if they want to have sex. however, in practice (or reality), it probably wouldn't work, because of the emotions involved, expectations, need for communication and a whole lot of other things.

5) think of things that are a turn off. say like a problem at work, or as in the talking to your penis example, a test thats coming up. i think this option has dangers, namely, what if instead of being a turn off, the thing thought about becomes associated with sex in my mind. sexual feelings at work are not always the best thing.

6) sport. - possibly a good option to go for a run or something, but its raining.

7) write on my blog about it until the feeling goes away. what i can say about this is that so far, this is the longest post i've had on my blog and the problems not yet solved.

its stopped raining..perhaps a good time to go for a walk.

Names / One of the reasons i can't have children

In highschool i got caught by a ticket inspector on the train for having a student ticket, but not a student card. I had no id on me so all i had to do to avoid a fine was to give a false name. i didn't and got fined. i find thinking of names difficult. the only names i can think of immediatly are of well known people. like right now if i had to give a fake name i'd say richard dawkins. the problem with that is i don't think i look like a richard or a dawkins. another problem i have with false names is that i want to come up with smart false names and can't do that immediately. something where later that day while reflecting, the ticket inspector will think 'hey that guy said his name was Trip Multi, i must have been dealing with some type of criminal genius'

i have a friend who has been trying to think of a name for his band. Hes been thinking for two years. band names are difficult and the evidence of this is the amount of bad band names around. one of the worst would have to be '...and you will know us by the trail of dead'. what's with the '...'. am i supposed to pause for the '...' should i go to the record store and say 'hi do you have the latest cd by' *pause* ' and you will know us by the trail of dead?'. i seriously feel embarassed even thinking about saying their name. i'd equate it with the time i went to a restaurant with my parents and to get a discount customers had to say 'im a seven summer super saver' to the waiter. we got the discount, but the phrase was whispered very quietly.

I find bands with 'the' at the start annoying. are they listed under 't' or the first letter of the second word? my precious mp3 collection created two folders for The Beastie Boys. one as 'Beastie Boys' and one as 'The Beastie Boys'. now when i want to hear 'whatcha want' i have to look in two places. very inconvienient. also i can say 'i really like that song by The Shins', but do i also say 'i really like that The Shins song'? Or are each of the band members a Shin? 90s english bands had the right idea. simple one word names. Ride. Blur. Oasis. None of this 'The Ride', 'The Blur', 'The Oasis'.

Two Dollars

When people on the street ask me for money, i usually give it. people have told me this is wrong and it encourages bad behaviour and the people who take the money are only going to use it for drugs or alcohol anyway. however, im pretty sure these people are less fortunate than me. i guess the money would be better used if given to a charitable organization that would help less fortunate people, but its hard to say no when they're standing in front of me. one thing tho, is i don't like the lying for some reason. i don't know if i'm being harsh, but i find it embarrassing for both involved. i know the money isn't for a bus ticket. is that the only valid reason someone can have for needing money? i don't mind if they're planning on spending it on drugs or alcohol. they're probably going to spend it on the same thing that i would have spent it on. anyway, i think i was going somewhere with this. i got one of those survey calls the other day from adelaide council and one of the questions was what could be done to make me enjoy the city more. i guess i could have said anything. like waterslides or free movies. or allow people to stand outside pubs and drink instead of having to sit down. but i didn't say any of those. i gave a suggestion which was perhaps a bit selfish. i said free public transport.

For No One

Another beatles post...whenever i hear 'For no one' i'll aways at some point start crying. i'm not writing this to explore or expose some sensitive side of my personality. i find it annoying. i have to make sure i don't hear it when in public or i'll be surrounded by people hugging me and saying things like 'don't worry, it'll be ok'. its weird, im fine with elanor rigby, yesterday and all the other soppy paul songs, but with this one i can't hold back.

ok, now i'll try to redeem some credibility by saying i'm off to listen to some interpol, just like the cool kids. i like the bit in pda that goes 'yoo hoo, yoo hoo'.